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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 7, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Petticoats and politics A century ago this week, a group of marginalized voters took to the ballot box in Umatilla to make a change in their local government. Informally known as the Petticoat Revolution, a group of women came together on Dec. 5, 1916 to upend the good ol’ boy leadership in town. They were dissatisfied watching the town fall further into disrepair, with laws loosely enforced, and set a plan in motion to toss them out. According to an East Oregonian report from the time, the women conspired under the guise of a card game to write their names onto the ballot. The men who ran the city were so “cock-sure” of their re-election that they didn’t bother to campaign for their seats. Oregon had given women the right to vote in 1912, but the idea was still new and none of the men on the council saw what was coming until it was too late. One element that made the coup possible was dismally low voter turnout. In a town of 198 people, Laura J. Starcher defeated her husband and mayor E.E. Starcher, with 26 votes to eight. Gladys Spinning, Florence Brownell, Anna Means and Stella Paulu all won council seats, Lola Merrick was elected treasurer and Bertha Cherry became recorder by the same means. Once in office, the women got to work. Laura Starcher set the agenda of replacing street lights that were removed by the previous administration, cleaning and fixing the streets and sidewalks, and enforcing the laws of the town, among other things. E.E. Starcher, after the initial shock of losing the election to his wife, found some words of praise for her to The Oregonian, saying she was “the best housekeeper in the United States.” In the 1920 election, the year women’s suffrage was added to the U.S. Constitution in the 19th Amendment, no women ran for the council and it was again filled with men. ——— History has a strange way of not just repeating, but inverting. We saw it just last month as Hillary Clinton, the first female major party candidate in U.S. history, lost a narrow presidential election that she was widely and confidently expected to win handily. Many pundits, experts and editorial boards considered her opponent, Donald Trump, to be the leader of an unsustainable and impractical following. His campaign was not carried out in secret, like the Petticoat Revolution, but his message hit some of the same notes of anger toward leadership perceived as disinterested, complacent and compromised. Trump’s win also relied on a disengaged electorate, with the lowest turnout since the 1996 election and down about nine percentage points from 2008. While Clinton won the most votes, Trump won the important ones in the important states and will take office in January. Both the Petticoat Revolution of 1916 and the Make America Great Again campaign of 2016 gave political power to people with no prior experience wielding it. But the similarities end there, especially considering the magnitude of the U.S. president’s responsibilities compared to that of an early 20th century Umatilla City Council. ——— Donald Trump’s campaign and victory will be dissected for decades, and it is a new template for a political upset. There were factors both in his control and outside of it that led to his election. What the women of Umatilla pulled off a century ago is now a curious footnote in our area’s history, a parable of the ability to overthrow stereotypes and give voice to the previously powerless. They saw the opportunity to take power and grabbed hold, changing the mindset and culture of their town. Donald Trump’s campaign and victory will be dissected for decades, and it is a new template for a political upset. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. YOUR VIEWS City getting in the way of voter-approved pot shops After no small amount of Pendleton pot-smokers urging their fellow Pendletonians to vote yes on the three magic questions, in addition to non-pot-smoking Pendletonians seeing no harm in adults over the age of 21 smoking recreational pot, or people with a genuine need using pot medically, the three questions passed! We could take this time to muse on the hilarity of 55 percent voting for recreational marijuana, 60 percent for medical, and 83 percent for taxing it, since all three needed to pass in the first place, but I’m writing on a character limit here, so we’ll have to have a laugh some other time. My last published letter hinted at a corrupt government apparatus operating at 500 S.W. Dorion Ave. This caused some to wonder what it was that I was referring to. I don’t have a ready-made answer for anything under the sun, but I believe that the headline that greeted East Oregonian readers on the front page of the December 3-4 Weekend Edition sums my statements up quite nicely. If the people vote to do something that is contrary to the agenda set in motion by City Hall, the city administration still has some tricks up its sleeve to pervert the democratic process. Why should a marijuana business license cost any more than any other business license? With the already high cost of opening a marijuana business that meets the requirements set by the state of Oregon, it would stand to reason that a city which hemorrhages money like Pendleton would want to make it as easy as possible for potential businesses to set up shop and start generating revenue that the city can collect taxes on! But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Anyway, let’s have another round of statues on Main Street, complete with tacky voice-overs; that’ll get people coming here again. If the measures would not have passed, then we would not be having this discussion. But from the discussions that I’ve had with various administrators, they didn’t think that the ordinances would pass in the first place. However, they are so out of touch with Pendleton voters it’s really a wonder that any of them were elected. I am of the opinion that it’s because of a lack of choices. James Tibbets Pendleton LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. OTHER VIEWS Finding America’s Mother Teresa P INE BLUFF, Ark. — If this pregnant at 16 and dropping out of political season has you feeling school, she earned her GED and a down, meet Annette Dove. She’s college degree, became a star special a salve for our aches and wounds, for education teacher, and, after her she represents the American grass roots’ beloved husband died, she quit her job best. and started TOPPS, for Targeting Our Dove, 60, is a black woman who People’s Priorities with Service. dropped out of high school when she It evolved into an after-school became pregnant and who has endured Nicholas program that also feeds 600 children racism and domestic abuse. Drawing Kristof a day in the summer and offers mentoring, tutoring and help staying out on her own experience overcoming Comment of jail, off drugs and in school. The first difficulties, she now runs a widely children to go through TOPPS are now admired program for troubled children. in college — 33 of them. Funding the program in part with her own “We have a lot of drug-infested families,” savings — even going into personal bankruptcy Dove said, and she and her mentors come to keep it going — she transforms lives. across as surrogate parents, telling kids how to Dove works seven days a week and dress and use birth control, and steering them struggles month to month to pay the bills with donations, foundation support and a state grant; to college admission tests and applications for scholarships. when the money runs out, she prays. The boys learn skills that middle-class The poverty and disadvantage that Dove is children absorb routinely, such as how to tie fighting here in Pine Bluff, a poor, majority- a necktie or look a job interviewer in the eye. black town of 50,000, are found all across This training doesn’t erase the damage from America. But so, too, are people like Dove, battling for progress through churches, schools, troubled schools or dangerous neighborhoods, but it helps. In meetings, they discuss politics, Big Brother programs, advocacy efforts. sex, AIDS, budgeting and financial literacy, and These heroes get no headlines, no reward, how to treat girls with respect. no glory, and they regularly have their hearts “We teach about holding hands with a lady broken, only to soldier on to help the next child. instead of grabbing hold of her and touching This is the spirit that Tocqueville admired in them all over,” explained Mike Dove, Annette’s 19th-century America, and it’s why in a brutal son, who oversees the boys’ mentoring and political year, Dove and those like her help precollege programs in his spare time. restore my faith in America. I asked several boys in the program what Consider Jesse Spencer, a young man who would happen if one made “locker room” says he was kicked out of his house at age 13 comments about girls. They looked aghast. by his mom’s boyfriend. Homeless, he turned “That’d be push-ups,” said Devonta Brown, to street gangs to survive and missed learning who came into the program as a troubled to read. fourth-grader and is now senior class president, Spencer had a few run-ins with the police, aiming for all A’s this year, and headed for and then at age 16 he joined with friends in college. robbing a pizza delivery woman with a pellet Despite all the good work TOPPS does, gun. He was arrested, charged as an adult and Dove still struggles constantly to meet its sentenced to 12 years in prison; he ended up expenses (more information about it and serving more than nine years and was released options to donate are at toppsinc.org). She has in August. no regrets. Dove is helping him get a job and an ID, A month ago, I wrote about a struggling and here’s one gauge of how marginalized he is: Even the spelling of his name is an issue. He Pine Bluff 13-year-old named Emanuel Laster, a black boy who does well at school but has says it’s Jesse, but some police record shows no books in the home and is in danger of being him as Jessie, and because he was arrested at sucked into the world of gangs and drugs. 16, he’s never had a normal adult identification Dove has now recruited Emanuel to attend her card. after-school programs and is talking to him Spencer had brief interactions with Dove’s program as a boy, and he told me ruefully that if about college. She is also giving him books and offering him $5 for each one he reads and he had had more, “it would have made a great writes her a report about. difference.” I keep thinking this: Taxpayers One afternoon, we stood outside Emanuel’s spent more than $200,000 imprisoning Spencer, home and spoke of his tremendous promise yet we’re unwilling to invest sufficiently in — and the enormous risk that he’ll be waylaid programs like Dove’s that help break the cycle without achieving it. of poverty and keep kids out of trouble. “The way we’re going to break the cycle It’s in places like Pine Bluff that one sees is to give these kids an opportunity and show how much federal, state and local policies them how to take it,” Dove told me. By force matter in shaping ordinary lives, and the most of will, she creates opportunities for kids who heroic charitable efforts can’t make up for have none — and reminds us that whatever failed policies. We wouldn’t build an interstate highway system through charities, and we can’t happens in Washington, there are miracle workers at the grass roots. build a comprehensive program for at-risk kids ■ that way, either. But in difficult times, people Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and like Dove keep their fingers in the dike and cherry farm in Yamhill. A columnist for The avert catastrophe. New York Times since 2001, he won the Pulitzer Dove is so driven to help these children Prize in 1990 and 2006. because this is her world. After becoming
