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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 10, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, December 10, 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 EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW Pick your protest, make it count Never let anyone tell you protests And yes, there are insurgents don’t matter. who try to capitalize on the illegal From the French Revolution aspect of protest, who try to twist to Selma, and from the Malheur the mob mentality. Protests require Wildlife Refuge to Standing Rock, extreme vigilance and dedication to otherwise powerless people gain stay on message, to keep everyone influence when they join together to on the same page and to disavow defy the government, corporations, violence at every turn. How well or the law of the land. organizers and protesters can do that Often this often portends how kind of statement successful their The anti-Trump requires some protest will be. law-breaking. Success is not protests in Portland It was the case assured. In fact, were mocked, in the Boston it’s often unlikely. Tea Party, it was The anti-Trump infiltrated by a the case in the protests in Portland violent element, Nat Turner’s were mocked, Rebellion and by a and ultimately did infiltrated in more recent violent element, cases, too. no good except to and ultimately did Protesters must good except to reiterate that many no ask themselves if reiterate that many they are willing people don’t like people don’t want to break the Donald Trump Donald Trump. law in order to be the next to stand up for president. their beliefs. The thousands of They must ask themselves if the people at Standing Rock got at least law in question is immoral or a temporary win, and brought their unconstitutional, or better yet both. concerns to a much wider audience They must ask themselves if they who found their plight sympathetic are willing to go to jail, willing to be and honorable. kicked and punched and humiliated. The people who occupied Wall There is a line of thinking that Street were unable to reach the protesters are sitting on their rumps, politicians who had the power, collecting welfare and waiting despite months of media coverage. for any micro-aggression to get Nat Turner was hanged for his bent out of shape about while the violent rebellion 30 years before rest of us working stiffs earn our the Emancipation Proclamation was paychecks. But living through the signed. blizzard in North Dakota right now The Boston Tea Party spurred the is anything but easy, as anyone who creation of the most powerful nation went outside their front door for on Earth. Maybe because this country was more than a few minutes during this week’s snow storm know. Likewise, conceived in protest, the Founding Fathers made sure to protect the there is nothing easy about heading right to assembly and speech. It’s toward John Day and seeing police something we shouldn’t take for lights in your rear view mirror. granted, and we should always be Black Lives Matter protesters wary when peaceful protests are have blocked streets and even banned preemptively or shut down highways, and similar tactics were violently. used by protesters against Donald But it’s also not a right we should Trump in Portland last month. misuse. Potential protesters must go Negatively affecting people’s lives forth understanding the risks, their is no way to engender support, but organizers believe the problems they rights and what they are trying to accomplish. create bring light to their concerns. 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 Getting the lead out Apparently the Pendleton Convention Center has more than its share of lead left behind by the Oregon National Guard when the building was sold to the city. With traces of lead found in our older schools, perhaps it’s time to check city hall, itself being a former junior high school. During a recent visit to city hall, I noticed a bottled water distributer making a delivery. Evidently the water there is unfit to drink. Maybe it’s time to get the lead out of city hall. Perhaps that would reverse some of those cloudy decisions, such as the planning commission requiring a property owner to install an 18-foot sidewalk out on Westgate in conjunction with a property improvement project, making it the only commercial property in the area with a sidewalk. Is this an example of that new “business friendly” approach the city is striving for? A friend recently approached the planning office wishing to combine two adjoining lots to construct an additional shop/garage, which would raise the assessed value of the vacant lot. Though all survey pins are visible from a previous survey, the planning commission would require a resurvey and hearing, roughly $4,000, before a building permit could be purchased. The property owner has decided not to build. Is this how city leaders expect to raise tax bases? Is it lead in the water eroding all common sense? Then there is speaking out. Apparently that 30 minutes allowed by the city council to citizens for speaking out at meetings on issues has become just too much for the council president to handle, an inconvenience lengthening meetings, and has become intolerable. The simple solution is to ban the public from the meetings altogether. After all, it worked for Fidel. How about that planning commission! After months and months of study, city hall can still not figure out the difference between a stick built, a manufactured, and a modular home. The city manager says he can’t tell the difference. Could be time for a trip to the eye doctor. Rick Rohde 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 Identity politics and an Oklahoma father’s loss T his fall I sat down in Tulsa, job appealing to ALL who have been Oklahoma, with a black pastor left behind — but identity still matters whose unarmed son, Terence profoundly. The Crutchers have lost Crutcher, had been shot dead on the four young people, each in a way that street by a white police officer. statistically suggests a racial element. The Rev. Joey Crutcher told me that How can we discuss a way forward Terence’s killing was just the latest without acknowledging that race is an loss his family had suffered. He had issue here? also lost a child to crib death years The blunt truth is that America’s Nicholas ago, and another to cancer. In addition, Kristof most egregious failures have often his grandson had been shot dead while involved identity, from slavery to Comment driving home from church in a gang anti-Catholic riots, from the Chinese hit that was a case of mistaken identity. Exclusion Act to the internment of Such heartbreak: Three children and a Japanese-Americans, from unequal pay to grandchild dead, each for a different reason. acquiescence in domestic violence and sex I’ve been thinking of the Crutchers because trafficking. Ditto for the threats by President- of the debate raging in the Democratic Party elect Donald Trump to deport 11 million about its future. One faction argues that immigrants or to register Muslims. the left became too focused on “identity Yet Lilla and Sanders are right that identity politics” — fighting for sometimes has distracted the rights of Muslims, from the distress in gays, blacks and Latinos working-class white but neglecting themes America. Life expectancy of economic justice for blacks, Latinos and that would appeal to other groups has been everyone, working-class increasing; for middle- whites in particular. aged whites, it has been Mark Lilla of dropping. Likewise, the Columbia University race gap in education helped spark the civil war used to be greater than with a provocative essay the “class gap”; now the in The New York Times class gap is greater. warning that “American It’s also true that liberalism has slipped broad efforts to create into a kind of moral opportunity would help panic about racial, gender not only working-class and sexual identity that whites, but also working- has distorted liberalism’s class blacks, Latinos and message and prevented others. it from becoming a I once asked Bryan AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki unifying force.” The Rev. Joey Crutcher, left, the father Stevenson, the civil Speaking in Boston, of Terence Crutcher, and his daughter rights lawyer, how to wait in a hallway in the Tulsa County think of the class gap Sen. Bernie Sanders courthouse in September. partly endorsed Lilla’s versus the race gap, and principle: “One of the he joked that for the struggles that you’re going to be seeing in the many people caught in the criminal justice Democratic Party is whether we go beyond system who are both poor and black, “it’s like identity politics. I think it’s a step forward in having two kinds of cancer at the same time.” America if you have an African-American So do we really need to choose between CEO of some major corporation. But you identity and justice? Can’t we treat both cancers? know what, if that guy is going to be shipping In moving beyond that dichotomy, maybe jobs out of this country, and exploiting his we can find some inspiration from the Rev. workers, it doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot Crutcher, who is truly something of a saint: He whether he’s black or white or Latino.” told me that he forgives the white officer who Lilla and Sanders have a legitimate shot his son and prays for her. point, and it’s clear in retrospect that the “Every night, my wife and I cry because Democrats should have talked more about we see our son with his hands up,” he said. jobs and fairness for all. But Lilla and But he added, speaking of the officer who shot Sanders’s argument also collides with the him: “She’s got people around her who are basic truth that it’s not possible to have a hurting, too. My heart goes out to her.” serious conversation about justice, jobs Crutcher is modeling the broadest possible and opportunity in America without talking inclusiveness. Yes, there’s a tension between frankly about race, gender and ethnicity. focusing on bigotry and highlighting jobs. Yes, Consider the Crutcher family: Each of the Democrats should more clearly emphasize children’s deaths wasn’t exactly about race, economic justice for all, including struggling yet each was linked to it. Young black men whites. But I hope that Democrats won’t are disproportionately likely to be stopped by needlessly squabble over whether to prioritize police officers, and shot dead by them. Crib identity or justice. death and cancer both are more lethal among Like Crutcher, we can reach for both. African-Americans, because of disparities ■ in incomes and health care. And crime in Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The America disproportionately involves blacks, New York Times since 2001. He grew up on a farm as both victims and arrested perpetrators. in Yamhill, Oregon, graduated from Harvard, So, sure, Democrats sometimes go studied law at Oxford University as a Rhodes overboard with identity and can do a far better Scholar, and then studied Arabic in Cairo.
