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Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, October 26, 2017 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 What doesn’t work for Portland doesn’t get done Northwest Umatilla County is a Hermiston could not be finished this construction season because no one bustling place filled with farms and bid on the project. food processors, fast-growing cities Area legislators and economic and industrial development. development professionals That growth requires labor, and thought this could be a problem lots of it. Hermiston and Boardman the Legislature would love to take have more jobs than residents on — a legislative fix that would and housing stock, which means promote growth many Oregon and development laborers commute from across the License reciprocity in places that have outpaced Columbia River in between Oregon been by the strident Washington. That’s growth not ideal but it’s and Washington economic of Western Oregon. lawful — except would help Reciprocity could when it comes to just benefit contractors and Umatilla County, not Umatilla County, building specialists but all along the such as plumbers but don’t count Oregon and electricians. on the Legislature Eastern line with Idaho, That’s because and the southern Oregon and helping. Oregon line with Washington do California and not have license Nevada, if legislators so choose. reciprocity for a number of trades, But it didn’t happen quickly, and plumbing and electrical being it seems unlikely to happen at all. the most notable. That means a Remember that the Portland company fully licensed in Walla metro area is, overall, a labor Walla or Tri-Cities would be unable to do the same work across the river supplier to Washington, meaning or the road in Oregon. In places like that reciprocity there wouldn’t have the same impact as in Eastern Hermiston and Milton-Freewater, Oregon. It would, however, open that means that big construction Oregon labor unions to more and development projects are often competition, and we know how beset by a lack of qualified bids and something that would negatively delayed construction. affect unions is handled in the For example, retailer Ranch Oregon legislature. & Home has partly blamed their The chances of legislation is behind-schedule project on the almost nil when it would greatly difficulty of lining up contractors benefit much of non-metro Oregon and subcontractors. And a but ever-so-slightly have a negative stoplight project that would have effect on Portland. That’s a shame. helped traffic flow and safety in 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. OTHER VIEWS Not all children have equal opportunities to succeed The Eugene Register-Guard A new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that children of color and children in immigrant families face significantly higher barriers to success than children from white, non-immigrant families. About 57 percent of children from immigrant families in Oregon are living in low-income households, for example, while only 40 percent of those in non-immigrant households are. Similarly, 63 percent of African- American children, 64 percent of Native American and 67 percent of Latino live in low-income households in Oregon (an income of less than $49,000 per year for a family of four). Only 33 percent of white children do. These findings and others in the report (www.aecf.org) have ramifications that go far beyond the children and their families. In 1985, Grammy-award winner Whitney Houston sang “I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” In a very real sense the children, including children of color and from immigrant families, are Oregon’s future. They will provide the goods and services, make the discoveries, pay the taxes and fund Social Security for those who came before them. But many of them are being failed by education and other systems. Children in immigrant families are far less likely to be proficient in reading and math. Many have suffered trauma, including a half million nationally who were separated from their immigrant parents between 2008 and 2013 alone. The vast majority of these young people — 88 percent — are U.S. citizens. Another 7 percent are legal permanent residents or have other legal status. (Almost 80 percent of their parents are citizens or are otherwise here legally.) Researchers at the Casey Foundation attribute barriers these children are facing to several factors, including a national history and past policies that have been racist in nature, the suspicion and hostility directed at immigrants and people of color today, a failure to connect minority children and children from immigrant families with opportunities that are available, lack of resources for schools in low-income neighborhoods where many of these children live, and language and cultural barriers. Failing to provide the tools to narrow the gap between these children and their more privileged peers will harm Oregon and the United States. This will require a concerted effort at the national, state and local levels to deal with what has become a nationwide issue. The Casey Foundation offers a variety of suggestions, all of which are worth consideration. These include developing programs and policies to improve opportunities for low-income workers; helping parents in immigrant families become fluent in English; connecting families to services such as child care, food and medical assistance; and making a concerted effort to enroll immigrant and minority students in early childhood education programs. Oregon also should look to other states to see what could be adapted for use here, including California’s system to fund schools with large numbers of English- language learners. The United States’ greatest resource has been, and will continue to be, its people. Making sure that it embraces the needs of all, so that they can contribute to the best of their ability, is of critical importance. Many Oregon children are being failed by the education and other systems. OTHER VIEWS How to engage a fanatic I ’ve had a series of experiences over the rhetoric of silencing, and instead the past two weeks that leave the regard this person as one who is, in impression that everybody on earth his twisted way, bringing you gifts, is having the same conversation: How then you’ll defeat a dark passion and do you engage with fanatics? replace it with a better passion. You’ll First, I was at a Washington teach the world something about you Nationals game when a Trump by the way you listen. You may even supporter in the row in front of me learn something; a person doesn’t have unleashed a 10-minute profanity- to be right to teach you some of the David strewn tirade at me, my wife and son. Brooks ways you are wrong. Then I went to the University Second, you greet a fanatic with Comment at North Carolina at Asheville and compassionate listening as a way to watched some students engage in a offer an unearned gift to the fanatic heartfelt discussion over whether extremists himself. These days, most fanatics are not should be allowed to speak on campus. Nietzschean supermen. They are lonely Then I went to Madrid, and sad, their fanaticism where a number of emerging from wounded Spaniards told me that pride, a feeling of not being the leaders of the Catalan seen. independence movement If you make these people were so radical there was no feel heard, maybe in some way to reason with them. small way you’ll address Then I went to London the emotional bile that is where I was with pro-Brexit at the root of their political and anti-Brexit activists posture. trying to have a civil A lot of the fanaticism conversation with one in society is electron-thin. another. People in jobs like mine get a lot of nasty Over the course of these experiences I’ve emails, often written late at night after been rehearsing all the reasons to think that it’s libations are flowing. But if we write back to useless to try to have a civil conversation with our attackers appreciatively, and offer a way a zealot, that you’ve just got to exile them, or to save face, 90 percent of the time the next confront them with equal and opposite force. email is totally transformed. The brutal mask For example, you can’t have a civil drops and the human being instantly emerges. conversation with people who are intent on Finally, it’s best to greet fanaticism with destroying the rules that govern conversation love for the sake of the country. As Carter itself. It’s fruitless to engage with people points out, the best abolitionists restrained who are impervious to facts. There are some their natural hatred of slaveholders because ideas — like racism — that are so noxious they thought the reform of manners and the they deserve no recognition in any decent abolition of slavery were part of the same community. There are some people who are so cause — to restore the dignity of every human consumed by enmity that the only thing they being. deserve is contempt. We all swim in a common pool. You can You’re not going to change these people’s shut bigots and haters out of your dining minds anyway. If you give them an opening, room or your fantasy football league, but you’re just going to give them room to destroy when it comes to national political life, there’s the decent etiquette of society. Civility is not nowhere else to go. We have to deal with each a suicide pact. As Benjamin DeMott put it in other. a famous 1996 essay for The Nation, “When Civility, Carter writes, “is the sum of the you’re in an argument with a thug, there are many sacrifices we are called to make for the things much more important than civility.” sake of living together.” And yet the more I think about it, the You don’t have to like someone to love more I agree with the argument Yale Law him. All you have to do is try to imitate Martin professor Stephen L. Carter made in his 1998 Luther King, who thrust his love into his book “Civility.” The only way to confront enemies’ hearts in a way that was aggressive, fanaticism is with love, he said. Ask the remorseless and destabilizing. fanatics genuine questions. Paraphrase what Now I confess I didn’t respond to the they say so they know they’ve been heard. Trump guy at the ballgame with all the noble Show some ultimate care for their destiny and sentiments I’ve put in this column. But I’m soul even if you detest the words that come sure I’ll have a chance to do better soon. out of their mouths. Doing the right thing in these bitter times is You engage fanaticism with love, first, for hard, but the answer isn’t that complicated. your own sake. If you succumb to the natural ■ temptation to greet this anger with your own David Brooks became a New York Times anger, you’ll just spend your days consumed Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He by bitterness and revenge. You’ll be a worse has been a senior editor at The Weekly person in all ways. Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek If, on the other hand, you fight your natural and the Atlantic Monthly, and is currently a fight instinct, your natural tendency to use commentator on PBS. Should you exile a zealot, or confront them with equal and opposite force? YOUR VIEWS Sonic weapons deployed in Cuba may be here, too When I read the story about American diplomats being attacked with an invisible weapon in Cuba, I was overwhelmed. In an Oct. 19 CBS news article, one man described an event that was extremely similar to the one I had. He describes laying on his bed and experiencing an overwhelming feeling while his arms and legs became numb. The event that I was a part of was a loud ringing in my head and an overwhelming powerful feeling of love and joy, while at the same time the fear of not understanding the event was terrifying. I hadn’t included it in the book I had written three years earlier, because it was so incredible. I didn’t think anyone would believe it and I wanted my readers to know that the words in the book were the truth. As I read how tourist Chris Allen had been unable to find anyone who could explain the event he was a part of, I thought about how every health care provider I had spoken to in the last ten years had told me that I was either delusional or schizophrenic. Allen has been to some of the finest doctors in the country and no one can explain this. Every time I have tried to talk to a health care provider I have been accused of being mentally ill. The CBS news article quotes: “Cases like Allen’s illustrate the essential paradox of the Havana mystery: if you can’t say what the attacks are, how can you say what they’re not?” This is the dilemma I have faced in my quest to prove that this technology exists and that people have experienced it. One would have to believe that since the documented attacks have been perpetrated on American intelligence personnel, they are an electronic behavior modification weapon that is being used to cause change. All I know is that I have seen the best and the worst of what this technology can do and what it has done to my family. If we can’t talk about it with a straight face, innocent people are going to be hurt. When we can realize this technology exists, we can begin to see its potential to make the world a better place. Chuck Baker 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.
