VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Quick takes
Schnitzer scoops up
Pendleton property
This has been a vision of mine for years!
So happy to see someone blessed with the
means to fulill what our community really
needs.
— Robbin Booth Coleman
I used to walk in the bank as a kid and
see my grandad riding his horse on a big
mural. It made me sad to see nothing there
for so long.
— Mark Temple
1.2 million vote in primary
That’s great, but with three million
eligible voters, that’s not good enough. It
should be at least twice that.
— Ann Snyder
Would it be higher or lower if Oregon
had an open primary?
— Richard Ryan III
EOCI work ban lifted
There is a great way to clean up and
maintain our parks and cemeteries, not to
mention helping out the elderly with yard
work, and cleaning up the river walk.
— LoriAnne Dunagan
How about a pothole repair crew?
— Karen Marlene Fulbright
One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is
that much can be summed up in just a few words.
Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours
@Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian.
com, and keep them to 140 characters.
Page 5A
Still dificult, dangerous to be gay in the West
By NATHAN C. MARTIN
High Country News
t was a Saturday night in Rock Springs,
Wyoming, and 30 or 40 of us were
partying in a derelict trailer house on a
dead-end road. Suddenly, a queer couple
we knew showed up and said a bunch of
rednecks had been chasing them down Elk
Street.
Sure enough, four pickup trucks pulled
up moments later and a bunch of burly
guys piled out. The encounter escalated
into a full-blown brawl — teenagers rolling
around in the muddy snow beating on each
other. There were more of us than there
were of them, so we were able to whoop
them soundly and run them off. Then we
celebrated what felt like a righteous victory
deep into the night.
This was in 2001, just a few years after
Matthew Shepard’s murder had made
gruesomely public the anti-gay violence
that was taking place throughout Wyoming.
Shortly after, I left the state for about 14
years. During that time, it appeared to me
that gay rights had made great strides — not
least with the incremental support to legalize
gay marriage nationwide.
Living in places as different from each
other as Buenos Aires, Chicago and New
Orleans, I witnessed homophobia now and
then, but not nearly as often as I saw jubilant
demonstrations of gay pride or, more
frequently, plain old gay normalcy. Among
the myriad people who are oppressed in
this world, homosexuals seemed to be
in pretty good shape, particularly white
“cisgendered” men.
Then I moved back to Wyoming.
Trevor O’Brien couldn’t escape to a
friendly trailer house when ive young men
attacked him one night in December 2015
I
Australia or anywhere
YDNEY — I boarded a light
where everyone discusses the same
at Kennedy Airport in New
thing.
Can it be then that Sydneysiders
York. There were HSBC ads in
the jet bridge. I lew for 24 hours to
are merely New York’s Westsiders
the bottom of the world. There were
with a smile and an economy that has
HSBC ads in the jet bridge.
not seen a recession in more than 20
I had my obligatory duty-free
years?
experience in Sydney, which is to
In his great poem “The City,” C.P.
say that I was channeled through a
Cavafy wrote: “As you’ve wasted
Roger
duty-free store rather than opting to
your life here, in this small corner,
Cohen
enter it, and so was exposed to all
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else
Comment
the familiar brands I had seen a day
in the world.” We never escape our
earlier under similar duress.
own skins, nor our lives lived to
I left a country, the United States, in the
this point, however far we go in search of
midst of an election campaign. I arrived in a
escape. But today’s trap, fashioned through
country, Australia, in the midst of an election technology, is of a different nature. The
campaign. The electoral battle here pits
homogenization of experience is also an
the conservative prime minister, Malcolm
insidious invitation to conform.
Turnbull, from the Liberal party, against
Experience, like journalism, withers
Bill Shorten from the left-of-center Labor
without immersion in place. At some level,
party. But the candidate people talk about is
the truly lived moment involves the ability
Donald Trump.
to get lost — lost in a conversation, or in
America’s election is the world’s election, the back alleys of Naples, or in silence, or
but only Americans get to vote in it.
in the scents and inlections of a new city.
I left an America raging about refugees
There is no greater thrill than being lost in
and immigration and came to ind the
this way because self is left behind, a form of
Australian immigration minister, Peter
liberation.
Dutton, fuming about “illiterate and
Yet a world is taking form that wants
innumerate” refugees intent on taking
you never to be lost, never to feel displaced,
“Australian jobs.”
never to be unanchored, never to be unable
I had a cappuccino before I left. There
to photograph yourself, never to stand in
was a cute heart shape traced in the foam.
awe before mystery, never to exit your safety
Next to the Sydney Opera House, familiar
zone (or only in managed fashion), never to
from photographs, I had a cappuccino. There leave your life behind: a world where you
was a cute heart shape traced in the foam.
travel for 24 hours to your point of departure.
From my window in Brooklyn Heights
How reassuring! How desperate!
I watch joggers at water’s edge, some with
There may be no choice but to head for
dogs or infants in strollers. Old industrial
the Outback, the vast and empty interior of
areas, piers and warehouses that have no
this continent-sized land where everyone
use in the knowledge economy have been
hugs the coast, or perhaps eat Vegemite,
transformed into parks and lofts for the
apparently a singular experience. I will keep
gentriied. From my Sydney hotel window
you posted, dear reader, should I survive
I gaze at an urban landscape similarly
either.
transformed. I watch joggers at water’s edge.
At least Australians speak a different
They wear the same gear. They use the same language. A colleague tells me to “sing
devices. They are into wellness in the same
out” if I need something. A problem is met
way.
with the reassuring “She’ll be right.” She?
I lose myself in the silvery play of
Who? I am asked if “there’s anything else I
moonlight on water. Where on earth am I? I
can get you, AT ALL.” I eat brekkie. Those
have traveled a long way through time zones joggers, apparently, are on a footpath, not
over a vast ocean to ind myself in the same
a sidewalk, and if I need gas when I head
place.
for the Outback I’ll ind it at the “servo.”
My Twitter feed looks the same. My
Every sentence seems to end with a kind of
Facebook friends have not changed. My
upward-rising lilt that turns it into a half-
little universe with all its little excitements
question to which I have no answer.
and aggravations is still at my ingertips.
So I am somewhere else after all. Surely
My bills are maddeningly accessible.
I am. I wake at night, sleep by day, and ind
Through an immense displacement nothing
myself altogether lost in translation.
has been left behind. Even in another
■
hemisphere I contemplate my life from the
Roger Cohen joined The New York Times
same angle. People argue about climate
in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for
change and same-sex marriage and jobs and
more than a decade before becoming acting
foreign editor on Sept. 11, 2001.
immigration, as if the world is now a place
S
East Oregonian
in Gillette, Wyoming. His mother told
the Casper Star-Tribune that O’Brien had
responded to the men’s comments about
his being gay with a smart remark, so they
threw him on the ground and stomped on
his groin so hard he had trouble urinating
for three days. O’Brien didn’t report the
incident, nor did he report the homophobic
slurs someone repeatedly carved into his car.
In fact, few people beyond his closest
friends and family would have known about
any of this had O’Brien not killed himself in
a park this March 8. He was 20 years old.
It is true that many factors likely
contributed to O’Brien’s decision to commit
suicide. Likewise, the story of Matthew
Shepard’s murder is more complex than it
might seem on the surface. Many people in
Wyoming, for instance, have gone to great
lengths to emphasize that both Shepard and
his killers may have been high the night
he was tied to a fence and pistol-whipped.
But rather than adding nuance to the
conversation — perhaps by acknowledging
that anti-gay violence is sometimes drug-
related, too — this emphasis is meant to
silence people who might suggest Wyoming
has a problem.
In Laramie, where Shepard was assaulted
and where I now live, folks don’t like to
talk about him much. A student organizer
here told me that even the gay community
sometimes shies away from discussing
Shepard’s murder because of all the
negativity and distortion people have heaped
onto it.
But whenever horrifying instances of
homophobia come to light, such as the
attack on O’Brien — or an assault discussed
on public radio last year, in which a Casper,
Wyoming, man had his teeth kicked in for
cross-dressing — any Wyoming citizen
whose eyes aren’t clouded by delusion or
prejudice should be able to put the pieces
together. Anti-gay violence in Wyoming is
real, and it deserves a real response.
Shepard’s memory was invoked in
2009 when the U.S. Congress passed the
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate
Crimes Prevention Act. This law, co-named
for a black man murdered by white
supremacists in Texas, strengthened federal
law enforcement’s ability to investigate
and prosecute hate crimes, including those
committed against people on the basis of
their sexual orientation.
Forty-ive states have passed similar
laws that empower state-level authorities.
Wyoming is not one of them. It is time we
changed that.
Few of us believe that harsher criminal
punishments can cure social ills. Hate-crime
bills often include tougher sentencing
provisions, but just as meaningful are
the signals that enacting such laws send.
Passing a hate crime bill in Wyoming
would admit to the state’s citizens that hate
crimes persist. It would communicate that
acknowledgement and honest discussion of
the problem are necessary if we want to stop
the violence. A bill would also tell those at
risk that they are not alone in facing anti-gay
violence or abuse. It would let them know
that we, as a state, have their backs.
So far, the Legislature’s consistent
refusal to pass such a bill has sent a different
message to anyone who is lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transsexual in Wyoming: This
is the Wild West. Better run to your friends
and hope they can protect you, because the
rest of us don’t really give a damn.
■
Nathan Martin is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, an opinion service of High
Country News. He is a freelance writer in
Laramie, Wyoming.
California considers
drug sentencing reform
San Francisco Chronicle
nce upon a time, California
lawmakers imagined that tougher
penalties and longer jail sentences
for drug offenders would stem the drug
trade.
This approach led to our statewide
three-year sentencing enhancement for
drug offenders who have prior convictions
for possession with the intent to sell, drug
sales, or similar offenses.
Today, California has met the reality that
this was a failed approach. The sentencing
enhancements didn’t stop the low of drugs
into any of our communities, especially
the most vulnerable ones. What they did
achieve, unfortunately, was great inancial
expense to the taxpayer, and great social
expense to lower-income communities.
California oficials have already begun
the long journey of ixing our criminal
justice decisions with realignment, which
reduced state prison overcrowding by
transferring low-level offenders to county
supervision.
Now the Legislature has the opportunity
to begin the long journey of sentencing
reform with SB966, by state Sen. Holly
Mitchell, D-Los Angeles.
SB966 would repeal the three-year term
enhancement for prior drug convictions.
Offenders would still be subject to base
sentences. Under current law, that’s
between two and four years in jail for the
possession of drugs for sale.
SB966 won’t be a panacea for
California’s drug problems. But then again,
neither were sentencing enhancements.
O
Drugs remain widely available, and in
many instances they’re stronger than when
sentencing enhancements were irst passed.
What SB966 will do is free up some of
the considerable money that the state of
California currently spends on incarceration
for proven options that do help — things
like drug treatment, rehabilitation and
job-training programs. The state is already
struggling to increase money and stafing
for rehabilitation programs in light of
realignment and Proposition 47, which
reduced criminal penalties for certain
offenses.
Increased services could help the many
drug-sales offenders who struggle with
their own addictions. In the long run, it’s a
simple and humane way to save the state
money.
But some state legislators are still
hesitant about ending a failed policy.
It’s disappointing to see that SB966
failed to pass the state Senate in late
April, defeated on a 16-18 vote, with
six abstentions. Most of the “no” votes
belonged to Republicans, but three came
from Democrats — including Sen. Steve
Glazer, D-Orinda.
They need to have a change of heart,
and fortunately they’ll have the opportunity
to do so. Mitchell has until the end of May
to bring the bill back for reconsideration.
It’s way past time for California to
try a new approach to drug offenses.
Sentencing reform will save us money and
allow money that was previously spent on
incarceration to go to more effective forms
of drug prevention.
SB966 is a good place to start.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. Senators
U.S. Representative
Ron Wyden
Greg Walden
Washington ofice:
221 Dirksen Senate Ofice Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
La Grande ofice:
541-962-7691
Washington ofice:
185 Rayburn House Ofice Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6730
La Grande ofice:
541-624-2400
Jeff Merkley
Governor
Washington ofice:
313 Hart Senate Ofice Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3753
Pendleton ofice:
541-278-1129
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court Street
Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582