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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
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letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
or email editor@eastoregonian.com.