VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, April 10, 2021
East Oregonian
A5
KEVIN
FRAZIER
OTHER VIEWS
Urban, younger
Oregonians
believe they
can have more
of an impact
large percentage (43%) of Orego-
nians do not believe they can
make their community a better
place to live, according to a recent Oregon
Values and Beliefs Center survey. That
figure becomes a majority among Orego-
nians ages 65 and over; just 62% do not
believe they can have a big or moderate
effect on their community. That percent-
age is also a majority among rural Orego-
nians (54%).
Comparatively, urban (64%) and
younger (66%) Oregonians feel much
more capable of having a positive effect.
What explains these differences?
There’s no one answer. Instead a
variety of factors have convinced some
Oregonians that the system is just too
stacked against them to be able to turn the
gears in their favor.
One explanatory factor: access to
information. Nearly 6 in 10 urban Orego-
nians have a high degree of trust in the
people who publish the news about their
community, whereas just 4 in 10 rural
Oregonians share that view. There’s also
a 10 percentage point gap in how much
Oregonians in the tri-county area trust
broadcast news when compared to Orego-
nians in the rest of the state (57% versus
47%).
The connection between faith in
local news and faith in capacity to incite
change makes sense. If you feel confi-
dent that you know what’s going on in
your neck of the woods, then you likely
feel capable of getting involved or at least
staying informed about major changes in
your community.
Another factor impacting the impact
gap — personal security. Oregonians 65
and over seem to feel more in control over
their personal well-being. A full 85% of
these older Oregonians reported they feel
able to control what is important in their
lives on a majority of days. That number
plummets to 65% for Oregonians between
18 and 29 years old. Perhaps insecu-
rity about their own lives spurs younger
Oregonians to feel as though it’s only
through community-wide changes that
they can improve their own well-being.
One final factor and more evidence for
the thesis: disparities in how much people
feel as though community leaders care
about their needs. Almost 60% of younger
Oregonians agree that “(t)he people
running my community don’t really care
much about what happens to me.” On the
opposite side of the spectrum, only 44%
of older Oregonians doubt the responsive-
ness of their community leaders.
A
Why these gaps matter
Our democracy hinges on its perceived
legitimacy. If people don’t feel as though
the levers of change are responsive to
their efforts to make their community
better, then faith and participation in our
democracy understandably decreases.
Consider that around half of Oregonians
in the tri-county area are somewhat or
very satisfied with the way our democ-
racy works, but only 39% of Oregonians
in the rest of the state share that level of
satisfaction.
The aforementioned factors suggest
that we’ve got a lot of work to do when it
comes to giving Oregonians the informa-
tion and leaders they deserve.
What are some ways to chip away at
this impact gap?
First, address news deserts. Orego-
nians in every community deserve news
that’s well-funded and well-resourced so
that they can keep local officials account-
able and share opportunities about how
and when to get involved.
Second, make our elected officials
more accountable to voters, not special
interests. One way this is happening is
through campaign finance reform. This
will help give all Oregonians a chance to
impact an election, while also reducing
the extreme sway wealthy individuals and
organizations hold over candidates.
Third, we can end the idea of Oregon
exceptionalism when it comes to good
governance. This may sound harsh, but
Oregon is not living up to its own stan-
dards when it comes to being a leader in
democracy. Across the urban/rural divide
and age spectrum, only 1 out of every 4
Oregonians think the state’s democracy
has gotten stronger in the last four years.
That’s abysmal.
To improve our democracy here in
Oregon, we have to be more open about
the fact that it’s flawed and more inten-
tional about instituting meaningful
reforms.
———
Kevin Frazier was raised in Washing-
ton County, Oregon. He is pursuing a law
degree at the University of California,
Berkeley School of Law.
Carpenter tales spice up the lunch break
J.D.
SMITH
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
O
ne good indicator of impending
spring is the number of ladders
rattling around on pickup racks.
The carpencheros are getting back to busi-
ness while government folks are talking
about building more affordable (whatever
that means) housing in Umatilla County.
That is good. Everyone should have a home.
I have worked as a wood butcher several
times, rolling logs to the headworks in
an Idaho sawmill, pounding nails for a
contractor who was obsessed with hunt-
ing geese in the Salmon River Mountains,
and as remodeler/handydude in California
and Hawaii. During lunch breaks, when the
carpenters were chatty, the drywallers were
coughing and the painters just sat, chewed
and stared into the distance, I gnawed on
my Spam sandwiches, listened to my fellow
workers and gathered some of their stories.
Here are a couple of examples.
Sanity and Jimi Hendrix
“Joe Bung and I and were framing tract
houses in Caldwell for an old-time, by-the-
book guy who believed that job radios
slowed things down. He would not let us
have tunes except at lunchtime, which was
not included in our hourly pay. He was
wrong. Anybody who has ever swung a
hammer at a 16-penny sinker knows that
music is absolutely necessary for the sanity
of a person who must do the same thing for
a living day after day after day.
“One payday Joe and I invested in a nice
big transistor radio when they were new
to the market. It had a fairly powerful set
of speakers and operated on both house
current and four D-cell batteries. We strung
a cord from the temporary power pole
to the middle of one of the living rooms
in a two-story duplex we were building,
plugged it in and cranked it up, figuring
that if the boss man showed we would have
enough time to shut things down.
“One mid-morning, both of us were
up high toenailing rafter tails when, sure
enough, here came the old dude in his Olds-
mobile Vistacruiser, sliding to a stop on
the muddy road. There was no way we had
time to climb down to the radio. He came
through the cheapo door into the house
just as Jimi Hendrix launched into “Purple
Haze” at full volume.
“Purple haze all in my brain
“Lately things, they don’t seem the same
“Acting funny, but I don’t know why
“‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”
“The old dude stood there for a while,
switching his glare from the radio to us
up in the rafters, then tromped over to the
radio and jerked its cord it from the splitter.
The batteries took over from there. Jimi
never missed a beat.
“Purple haze all around
“Don’t know if I’m comin’ up or down
“Am I happy or in misery?
“Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on
me”
“Joe and I looked at each other, figur-
ing on getting fired for sure, while the boss
stood down there staring at the radio and
actually scratching his head. Finally, he
looked up at us, kinda grinned and said,
‘Well, he is a stout enough boy anyway,’
walked back to the station wagon and drove
away. We had a job radio from then on.”
Don’t mess with Claude
Claude spent 30 years as a Forest
Service packer, wrangling a string of mules
to carry fingerling fish into high country
lakes. After retirement he turned to finish
carpentry as a supplement to his Social
Security. He was a very careful worker, a
private person who had worked alone for
most of his life, was older than the rest of
us on the crew and didn’t much participate
in lunchtime chit-chat. This story was told
by a fellow carpenter one day when Claude
elected to go fishing instead of trimming
windows.
“Five years ago, just after Claude retired,
they decided to build a new Forest Service
headquarters and the low bidder was an
outfit from down in the flatlands. The
jobsite manager was a young fellow with
a lot of book learning and not much actual
experience. The rest of us on the job called
him Dolittle because that is what he did.
“They advertised for carpenters in the
Star News and Claude showed up on the job
to apply. I was cutting rafters for the fram-
ing crew about 20 feet from his interview
with Dolittle, so I saw the whole deal go
down.
“Claude said that (he) had seen in the
paper that they were hiring, that he wanted
to hire on as a finish carpenter and asked
how much they were paying. Dolittle kinda
puffed out his chest and said that they were
only hiring rough carpenters, didn’t need
any finish carpenters.
“Claude looked at the kid for a long time
and then said that, well, he could proba-
bly be a rough carpenter. What would he
be doing? Dolittle said that he would be
cutting two-by-sixes into stud lengths and
blocking on the big old radial arm saw that
was set up by a bunk of lumber, and would
welcome Claude showing him what he
could do.
“Claude said he would like to try it,
walked over to the lumber, pulled out a
10-foot stick of two-by-six, marked off 91½
inches for a double plate, set it up on the
saw, cut it half way through, picked it off
the saw table, swung it over his head and
broke in half over a sawhorse. He smiled at
the kid and asked, ‘Rough enough for you?’
then walked off the job.”
———
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
Oregonians of all stripes support more Wild and Scenic Rivers
CHERI
HELT
OTHER VIEWS
T
he pandemic has impacted all of us.
At worst, Oregonians have expe-
rienced the death of loved ones
and friends. For others, it has brought
economic pain and the loss of cherished
family and community rituals.
The past year has reinforced my appre-
ciation and love for Oregon’s incredible
natural environment. Even with tempo-
rary restrictions on access to certain parks,
public lands and recreational activities,
Oregonians have enjoyed refuge and reju-
venation in and around our incredible
mountains, beaches, trails, forests, rivers,
lakes and streams. The incredible devas-
tation from last year’s historic wildfires
stung all the more because they were piled
on top of pandemic-related hardships.
Oregonians have a proud tradition
of making common-sense, farsighted
decisions to protect our greatest natural
treasures for future generations to access
and enjoy. The Oregon of today is not an
accident. It is the work of leaders and resi-
dents, rural and urban, Republican and
Democrat, working together to balance the
need for economic opportunity with our
desire to take special care of very special
places. It is a legacy that stretches from
Mount Hood and Crater Lake to hundreds
of miles of public beaches and coastline —
and beyond.
Nowhere is Oregon’s legacy of conser-
vation and access greater than our system
of nationally designated Wild and Scenic
Rivers. Over 50 years ago, Congress desig-
nated Oregon’s eight original Wild and
Scenic Rivers — including the epic Rogue
River in Southern Oregon. Since then,
under both Democrat and Republican pres-
idents, 2,173 miles of Oregon rivers have
been designated Wild and Scenic, includ-
ing 250 miles in 2019 signed into law by
former President Donald Trump. That may
sound like a lot, but it’s just a small frac-
tion of Oregon’s 110,000 miles of rivers
and streams.
This year, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff
Merkley have introduced legislation
to protect an additional 4,700 miles of
Oregon rivers as Wild and Scenic. The
plan is called the “River Democracy
Act” and it follows more than two years
of public listening and input from every
corner of the state, with 2,500 Oregonians
submitting more than 15,000 nomina-
tions of their favorite rivers and streams.
While ambitious, if approved by Congress,
this plan will still mean less than 4% of
Oregon’s river land corridors will enjoy
Wild and Scenic designation and protec-
tions.
Wild and Scenic Rivers are proven to be
a catalyst for jobs and outdoor recreation
in rural communities. Oregonians and
visitors from across the nation and around
the world each year journey to view, hike,
fish and raft in and around these special
rivers and streams. Outdoor recreation in
Oregon supports 224,000 jobs and gener-
ates more than $15 billion in economic
activity.
As critical as the jobs and economic
benefits are, the common-sense provisions
in Wild and Scenic River designations to
reduce the risks of catastrophic wildfires
and to ensure access to river corridors in
the event of devastating wildfire events.
Among other fire prevention measures, the
River Democracy Act requires federal land
managers to assess wildfires risks in Wild
and Scenic River corridors and implement
plans to reduce those risks to nearby lands,
homes and businesses.
During these politically polarized
times, protecting Oregon’s most beautiful
and treasured rivers enjoys broad support
among Oregonians. A recent poll revealed
that 65% of Oregonians support Congress
adding more Wild and Scenic Rivers —
including a majority of voters in all five
Oregon congressional districts — urban
and rural. This broad public support is
testament to the love Oregonians share
for our natural environment and the many
economic and conservation benefits of
Wild and Scenic Rivers.
———
Cheri Helt is a business owner in Bend,
a former state representative and a former
member of the Bend-La Pine School Board.