Saturday, March 20, 2021
VIEWPOINTS
Questions to reflect on
SCOTT
SMITH
THE EDUCATION CORNER
O
ver the last several months, we have
witnessed history happening in our
country that has not happened since
the Civil War. It is United States history in
the making. Now is a good time to reflect
on our U.S. history from when we were in
school.
Do you remember your U.S. history
classes? In Oregon, U.S. history is usually
taught in fifth grade and again in high
school. How well do you know the Constitu-
tion and amendments, and what they stand
for? Yes, there are those who do understand
really well and those who think they know
them, and those who really don’t know. What
does the First Amendment really mean?
In many schools dealing with remote
learning, especially at the elementary ages,
the teaching of social studies has sadly taken
a back seat. Understanding the schools are
doing their best in these unprecedented
times, now is a great time to review for all
of us what our founders felt would make
us a leading country. The United States is
a network of people and cultures working
together for the betterment of the world, and
was designed 246 years ago knowing the
country would grow and change. Have we
taken it for granted?
stronger understanding of just how to locate
and discuss information about questions that
develop during their life.
Our government is built on three areas;
the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and
the amendments. Understanding them and
discussing why they were written might
provide for a better understanding of just
“THIS IS A GREAT TIME FOR US AS ADULTS
TO REFRESH OURSELVES AND BRING OUR
CHILDREN INTO THE DISCUSSION OF WHAT
IT MEANS TO BE A UNITED STATES CITIZEN.”
This is a great time for us, as adults,
to refresh ourselves and bring our chil-
dren into the discussion of what it means
to be a United States citizen. Below are
some general questions along with general
resources you might consider when locat-
ing and fact-checking yourself. There are
many ways of using the internet to search
and locate information. Engaging with your
children on this quest will help them have a
why our government operates the way that it
does, along with what our responsibilities are
as United States citizens.
The Constitution: When was it written?
Who were the authors? Where was it writ-
ten? How many parts are there in the Consti-
tution?
The Bill of Rights: What is the “Bill of
Rights?” Who were the authors and why? Do
they still apply today? How?
East Oregonian
A5
Amendments: What are amendments?
Who and how can you make an amendment?
How many amendments are there? You hear
people say, “It’s my First Amendment right.”
What does that mean?
How do the Constitution, the Bill of
Rights and the amendments impact our
daily lives? Do they really mean what you
assumed they did? What are some ways you
might be able to support our government?
We are a diverse country made of multiple
cultures each having its own perspective
and understanding. Over the last couple of
months, has our government been in jeop-
ardy?
These are all questions we should reflect
on as Americans, United States citizens,
and how these issues could be peacefully
addressed.
———
Dr. Scott Smith is a Umatilla County
educator with 40-plus years of experience.
He taught at McNary Heights Elementary
School and then for Eastern Oregon Univer-
sity in their teacher education program at
Blue Mountain Community College. He
serves on the Decoding Dyslexia-OR board
as their parent/teacher liaison.
Oregon needs a moratorium on permits for large dairies
EMMA
NEWTON
OTHER VIEWS
W
hen Washington-based Easter-
day Ranches announced it had
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
on the heels of allegations that it cheated
Tyson Foods out of millions of dollars, it
had a bizarre yet familiar ring to it here in
Oregon. It doesn’t take long to figure out
why.
Only a few years before, the Lost Valley
Farm mega-dairy filed for bankruptcy after
more than 200 environmental violations and
photographs surfaced showing its manure
storage areas (called “lagoons”) overflowing
and threatening local groundwater.
The cleanup took 11 months. Soon after
Lost Valley was shut down by the state of
Oregon, another company swooped in,
purchased the property and submitted a
permit for a new, 28,000-cow mega-dairy
on the same site. That company is Easterday
Dairy, owned by the same Easterday family
currently embroiled in the Tyson #cattlegate
scandal.
Despite a scandal colored by increasingly
outlandish allegations over bills for phan-
tom cows and their phantom food, Oregon’s
Department of Agriculture has yet to
deny or even halt the permit review for the
officials insisted Lost Valley’s proprietor
was simply a “bad actor” and his misdeeds
unfortunate, but not indicative of a greater
trend in the mega-dairy industry. The scan-
dals surrounding Easterday and our records
of other large-scale factory farm pollution
clearly disprove that theory.
The only solution is to first deny the
“ODA SIMPLY CAN’T AFFORD TO IGNORE
THE CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES OF
LETTING THESE MEGA-DAIRIES RUN AMOK
IN A CLIMATE CRISIS AND A
GLOBAL PANDEMIC.”
proposed Easterday Farms mega-dairy. The
Easterday family has since given up control
of the Washington farm in question and its
54,000 cows, now fed with a court-ordered
payment from Tyson.
Despite significant public backlash over
the initial permitting of Lost Valley, Oregon
Easterday permit on the site of the former
Lost Valley, then enact a moratorium on all
new industrial dairy facilities housing more
than 2,500 cows. A pause in new permit-
ting would give Oregon time to assess the
damage already done by these mega-dair-
ies and prevent more “bad actors” from
adding to the problem. Mega-dairies are
notorious for the squalid quarters of their
resident cows, but they also disproportion-
ately contribute to the state’s greenhouse
gas emissions. Because of their intensive
water requirements, these facilities drain
scarce water resources and frequently leave
remaining groundwater polluted.
Aside from the sordid details of Easter-
day’s present fiscal situation, ODA simply
can’t afford to ignore the catastrophic
consequences of letting these mega-dair-
ies run amok in a climate crisis and a global
pandemic.
Oregon law gives ODA grounds to deny
a permit if the party fails “to disclose fully
all relevant facts” or misrepresents “any
relevant facts” during the permit process.
Between allegedly billing a vendor to feed
thousands of fictitious cows and apparently
masking a dire financial situation, it seems
Easterday Farms left out a few key “relevant
facts” in its permit application to the ODA.
———
Emma Newton is the Oregon organizer
with Food & Water Watch and Stand Up to
Factory Farms.
Racism won’t be solved by
acceptance alone
BETTE
HUSTED
FROM HERE TO ANY WHERE
A
few weeks ago, during Black
History Month, I reread James
Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time.” “I
do not know many Negroes who are eager
to be ‘accepted’ by white people, still less
to be loved by them,” Baldwin wrote. This
was in 1962, the year before I graduated
from high school, the year before Martin
Luther King Jr. would speak from the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial, three years
before the Voting Rights Act.
“White people in this country will have
quite enough to do in learning how to
accept and love themselves and each other,
and when they have achieved this — which
will not be tomorrow and may very well be
never — the Negro problem will no longer
exist, for it will no longer be needed.”
How much has changed since 1962?
It has been a year since police burst
into Breonna Taylor’s apartment looking
for drugs that weren’t there and shot her
to death, and even as I write, people in
Louisville are demonstrating, demanding
justice. Plenty of others are still finding
the idea that Black Lives Matter somehow
threatening.
But after the white supremacist march
in Charleston and the Confederate flag
carried inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,
we have had some encouraging news. The
Biden administration’s cabinet nominees
are the most diverse in our history — half
of the 26 positions are people of color and
46% are women. There are many “firsts”
— first women, Blacks, Hispanics, immi-
grants — to head agencies, including
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg,
the first LBGT person appointed to a cabi-
net post.
What I find most exciting of all is the
confirmation of Deb Haaland as Secretary
of the Interior. Imagine a member of the
Laguna Pueblo heading the agency once
called upon to help solve the “Indian prob-
lem.”
“It’s profound to think about the history
of this country’s policies to exterminate
Native Americans and the resilience of our
ancestors that gave me a place here today,”
Haaland said after her nomination. “I’ll be
fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our
protected land.”
And we’ve had wonderful news closer
to home this week, when we learned that
Chuck Sams has been appointed to the
Northwest Power and Conservation Coun-
cil, the agency responsible for long-term
planning for the Columbia Basin’s energy
and conservation needs. Sams is the only
tribally enrolled member of the council.
And then an even bigger announce-
ment: Gov. Kate Brown has recommended
Sams to lead the National Park Service.
“I envision students — both young and
old, tribal and nontribal alike — visit-
ing Yellowstone, Arches, Mesa Verde or
Oregon’s Crater Lake, and hearing the
stories of our past and present, including
the important stories of the tribal people
who have inhabited these special places,”
she wrote.
So two people whose ancestors faced
the prospect of extermination or forced
assimilation so that immigrants, mainly
whites, could take their land may be guid-
ing us toward a healthier relationship to
that land.
All this made me think of the title
our poet laureate, Muskogee (Creek) Joy
Harjo, chose for her recent collection of
contemporary Native poetry: “When the
Light of the World Was Subdued, Our
Songs Came Through.”
Yet, even now, Asian-Americans are
being attacked, and Republican state legis-
lators in 43 states are trying to limit Amer-
icans’ votes. Arizona state representative
John Kavanaugh made headlines last week
when he explained that Republicans were
happy to create measure that kept people
from voting because “everybody shouldn’t
be voting. ... Quantity is important, but we
have to look at the quality of the votes, as
well.”
And of course it’s primarily brown-
and black-skinned people who remain, for
those who hold these views, a “problem.”
How can we rid America of the belief in
white supremacy?
“There is no reason for you to try to
become like white men and there is no
basis whatsoever for their impertinent
assumption that they must accept you,”
James Baldwin wrote to his nephew in
1962. “The really terrible thing, old buddy,
is that you must accept them ... and accept
them with love, for these innocent people
have no other hope.”
If a 15-year-old in Harlem could face
that challenge, maybe we can rise to ours.
———
Bette Husted is a writer and a student of
T’ai Chi and the natural world. She lives in
Pendleton.
Give Oregonians a bright future
KEVIN
FRAZIER
OTHER VIEWS
U
rban Oregonians are nearly twice
as likely than rural residents to say
Oregon is headed in the right direc-
tion (41% vs. 22%), according to a recent
survey by the Oregon Values and Belief
Center. That’s a difference that should grab
headlines, seize our attention and steer our
policy.
We need a statewide vision that inspires
urban and rural Oregonians alike to see a
better future for themselves, their commu-
nity and the state as a whole.
How you see your future is how you act
in the present. When you’re optimistic, you
make long-term investments, you make
long-term plans and you try to improve on
the efforts and initiatives that are in place.
These are all the sorts of activities that
make a strong community even stronger.
They result in folks going back to school,
launching small businesses and getting
involved in their community.
When you’re pessimistic, you’re not
looking forward to tomorrow. In fact,
you’re likely to be more anxious and
stressed, tired and sick. Pessimism is
unhealthy. I think we can all agree that we
would rather avoid the sort of gloom asso-
ciated with thinking that the best days have
come and gone.
It’s not surprising rural Oregonians
feel less than cheery about the future of
Oregon. On the economy, 51% of rural
Oregonians think economic conditions
in the state are getting worse, compared
to just 43% of their urban counterparts.
What’s more, 25% of rural Oregonians are
very worried about their personal finances,
whereas just 20% of urban residents feel
the same.
A simple goal for all statewide leaders,
then, should be to give Oregonians a future
to look forward to.
What investments from Salem are
going to lead to better tomorrows in Adel
and Astoria? What new programs are
going to lift up families in Baker City and
Bandon? What regulations will be removed
or restored to uplift small businesses in
Condon and Coos Bay?
A detailed vision that specificity calls
out how Oregonians across the state will
realize a better tomorrow is what our state
deserves and needs. It’s no secret that
“moonshots” can compel people into action
and spark innovation. If Oregonians see a
tomorrow worth fighting for, then they’ll
sacrifice today.
———
Kevin Frazier was raised in Washington
County. He is pursuing a law degree at the
University of California, Berkeley School
of Law.