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Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes News: News: Happenning Person: Mary Ellen Bennett
NEW POLICE STATION GETS ZERO SUPPORT Nobody voted for a new police station in an unscientific ballot by Eugene Weekly over the past two weeks asking what the city should do with $29 million in internal money it has squirreled away. The City Council voted last month to use the $29 million in internal money plus a $7 million property tax bond measure to build a new police station (see story, 7/29). Forty percent of ballots mailed or e-mailed to EW favored using the money to support local schools instead. Buying parkland came in second at 31 percent, fixing potholes third at 26 percent followed by paying off police lawsuits (19 percent), running the library (19 percent), community policing (17 percent) and refunding taxpayers (12 percent). A total of 46 people sent in ballots as of press time, and many people voted for more than one thing to spend the money on. Many voters also suggested other uses for the money including: rapid transit, a city auditor, catching thieves and vandals, cleaning up the Willamette River, extending bike paths to Mount Pisgah, health and human services, sheltering the homeless, youth and disabled recreation programs, nodal development, free parking and buying bikes for everyone in town. Many voters also used the ballot to express their displeasure with the city and police department. Instead of using taxpayer money to pay off lawsuits resulting from sexual coercion by two EPD officers against more than a dozen women over the last decade, one citizen wrote that the police should cut officer salaries to pay off the claims. Another wrote, officer Roger "Magaña got away with sexually molesting women while on duty for 10 years! It's plain that police policy is at fault, and we shouldn't have to foot the bill for that." Another citizen wrote, "Let them [police] sacrifice something, like their new cop shop. There are plenty of properties in the downtown area that would suffice with some fixing up. It would do EPD good to be a bit humble right now." "If the cops want a new station, let them ask us again," wrote another voter. "Maybe they will get the message that this community wants oversight, independent auditing, maybe even accountability. Is that too much to ask of our public servants?" "Anything is more practical than an unnecessary and voted-against police station," a voter wrote. "I cannot believe that they squirreled away that much money, is that actually legal!" another voter wrote, referring to the $29 million the city cut from city services and squirreled away to fund the police building. "Considering the poor performance of the police in the last decade, how much loss would it be to have their building collapse? Move the secretaries out though," a person wrote. "What part of 'NO' and 'NO' didn't the city council understand?" a citizen wrote referring to the two past failed efforts to pass a tax for the police station. A voter marveled that the city would have the "audacity" to ask again for money after two failed votes. "Clearly, they take us for fools! Which is why their new measure will fail too …. Money to schools, and not to fools!" The bond measure component of the police station funding will be on the real ballot in November. — Alan Pittman
BARNHART, SPASARO CONTINUE SQUABBLE The skirmish of words and accusations continues this week between Democrat Rep. Phil Barnhart and his Republican challenger Michael Spasaro in one of the few contested local races in November. Barnhart represents Central Lane and Linn counties in House District 11. Last week (see News Briefs 8/5) Barnhart voiced concerns about Spasaro's statements on his website saying Barnhart has voted for "extreme, partisan policies," and is "out of touch with the people who live in this district." Barnhart responded that he won 62 percent of the vote in the 2002 election. After EW went to press last week, Spasaro defended his statements, saying, "There is no doubt in my mind that they (voters) have lost faith in their elected officials and in state government. They are specifically frustrated with Rep. Barnhart and his votes on taxes, the lack of leadership he was able to provide on important issues like education, and the fact that they have not even seen him at their door." He goes on to say that "Barnhart was redistricted into this district and though he won the last election, people were not familiar with him and he did not have an opponent who ran a serious campaign." This week Barnhart responded to the above statements as again "misleading." "On taxes, he's probably referring to Measure 30," says Barnhart, who supported the measure, but didn't vote on it since it was referred by petition. "The actual vote on Measure 30 in the district was 48.9 percent yes to 51.1 percent no — not exactly an overwhelming repudiation. I think it's actually pretty good that that percentage of the district was willing to raise their own taxes to pay for basic public services such as schools, health care and public safety." Barnhart also says he was not "redistricted in" but rather has lived in the district for 50 years, though the district boundaries have changed to include less south Eugene and more rural areas and small towns. He says he knows the new district very well, and is well known in return. He says he did have a serious opponent in fellow Democrat Al King, in the 2002 primary, but his Republican challenger in the general election did not actively campaign. Spasaro has also accused Barnhart of supporting a sales tax, citing a story in the Hermiston Herald that says Barnhart "thinks a sales tax is a better long-term answer, but doesn't see any public support." Barnhart says, "Mr. Spasaro is really stretching" to read that quote as supporting a sales tax. "The quote in the paper does not say I support a sales tax, in fact it says the opposite." The Herald story goes on to quote Barnhart saying, "We need to not spend time on the ideal tax system but on the realistic one that people will accept." — TJT
MAJOR UO BIZ CONFAB COMING IN SEPTEMBER Registration is now open for a major UO business conference that will focus on the "practical applications of sustainable development and climate change policies and programs for Eugene-Springfield, Lane County, and other Northwest local communities." The event will be held Sept. 23 at the UO Downtown Baker Center, 975 High St. The conference title is "Making Sustainable Development Work" and is sponsored by the UO Sustainability Leadership Academy along with numerous UO, city and state organizations and agencies. Featured speakers will include mayor-elect Kitty Piercy, along with mayors and sustainable business experts from across the nation describing their successful initiatives and enterprises. Early registration is recommended since space is limited. Cost is $15 which includes lunch. For more information, visit http://cwch.uoregon.edu/conferenceor call 346-4231.
WEBSITE REPORTS BUSH IS ON DRUGS Capitol Hill Blue magazine (http://www.capitolhillblue.com/), which June 4 reported that President Bush is prone to "erratic and paranoid" behavior, now says Bush is reported to be taking "powerful anti-depressant drugs" to control his behavior. The July 28 report by magazine editor Teresa Hampton, says, "Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports as anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the president as a 'paranoid meglomaniac' and 'untreated alcoholic' whose 'lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad' showcase Bush's instabilities."
Eugene police took a lashing last week at a public forum on reforming the city's handling of complaints against police. Courts convicted two ex-Eugene Police Department officers this year of using their police power to coerce sex from more than a dozen women. The EPD ignored complaints from women victims and the abuse continued for nearly a decade, according to trial testimony. Speakers at the forum did not give names and most of those who spoke Aug. 5 said they feared retaliation from Eugene officers for complaining. About 50 people showed up at the forum set up by the Eugene Police Commission. "We don't tolerate retaliation," EPD internal affairs investigator Jennifer Bills told citizens. But Bills said the department tells officers the names of people who complain against them. She said she ignores anonymous complaints. A woman in the crowd questioned how the EPD would know if an officer retaliated against a complainant, especially if other officers helped. In the trial of Roger Magaña, fellow police officers quickly told Magaña that a woman had complained about him coercing sex. Police officials did nothing with the complaint, but Magaña soon visited the woman, put his gun to her genitals and threatened to shoot her if she complained again, according to trial testimony. Another woman at the forum asked how many in the room didn't file formal complaints because they had a "fear of retaliation" from police. More than a dozen people raised their hands. A woman said she filed a complaint and was followed by an officer in her car for a mile and half. The officer claimed that he thought she was drunk. Another woman said she complained to police about an officer who harassed her. Police never responded to the complaint, she said and the harassment "just keeps going on and on." "My whole concern has been summarily dismissed," said a different woman, who says she waited three months before finally calling the EPD in frustration to find out what happened to her complaint. Bills said police have a new policy of responding to complaints within 25 days, but the deadline doesn't apply if police decide that a citizens complaint is somehow actually an "inquiry" and not a complaint at all. Neil Van Steenbergen, who helps mediate police complaints, said people frequently complain that the police say their complaint isn't a real complaint but an "inquiry." One woman said she is helping a young woman who is "terrified" of police after a frightening traffic stop late at night. The woman said the young woman was tailgated by a car late at night and sped up. The car turned out to be a police officer who then turned on his lights to pull her over. After the police sex scandals, the woman was afraid so she drove to a well lighted area before pulling over. The officer demanded to know why she didn't pull over immediately and began asking frightening personal questions, the woman alleged. Referring to the two officers convicted of forcing sex, the woman said many in the community question, "Does the department have them all?" "The situation is pretty obviously bad," said a man. The man called for the council to hire an independent performance auditor to look at the larger question of how well the EPD is serving the community. A woman agreed that the city needs an independent auditor and said the city manager "should be fired" for resisting the reform. Police Commissioner and newly elected City Councilor Andrea Ortiz said she's heard complaints that officers fail to act when they hear complaints against other officers on the street. "Each person in the police department is responsible for, I think, all the police." A man agreed that while most officers do a good job, "Every one of those cops that's doing a good job knows a cop that's not doing a good job." Officers shouldn't keep silent about co-workers misconduct, he said. "The system is broken." A man called for police to post information on complaints and results of investigations on a web site. "There is no legal or ethical reason not to publicly disclose the nature of complaints." A woman agreed that the police should give up the "old-boy network and the codes of silence" in favor of an open complaint process. In most other professions complaints and discipline are public, she said. With police, "Why does it have to be undercover? What is it they don't want people to know?" A woman who works with homeless disabled people said many people don't complain because they "fear retaliation and have experience of the police department as an old-boy network, looking out for each other, code of silence." Another factor, she said, is "the slow response to these complaints and the fact that there's no significant change that seems to come." The woman said the police system of having an officer's immediate supervisors investigate complaints is flawed because of conflict of interest. Punishing an immediate subordinate would reflect poorly on the supervisor's own failure to adequately train or supervise that person, she noted. A former combat veteran and Eugene Citizens Police Academy graduate agreed that immediate supervisors should not investigate complaints because they depend on co-workers for back-up in threatening situations. "You should absolutely not have that person's supervisor doing the investigation. That's idiocy." The man also faulted the police union for loading overtime on overstressed new recruits. Police should be sensitive to the additional fear of retaliation that marginalized people such as the homeless have in complaining about police, the woman who works with the homeless said. "I work with people who are arrested regularly, sometimes for good reason, sometimes for sport, sometimes for training." A man agreed that people often don't complain because they fear retaliation and know the police won't do anything anyway. "The sense is in general in the community that nothing will be done," he said. "That is exactly what happened in the Magaña case." A man said the police internal complaint system needs to be "beyond reproach" but now has little credibility with the public. The man joined others in calling for an independent external police review board. As an alternative, the city could criminalize officer misconduct and run complaints through municipal courts, he said. Another man said the city needs to overcome the police union's resistance to reform. "I hope the City Council is strong enough to say it's the community's way, not the union's." A man said he fears that police officers have closed ranks into an us-versus-them attitude where there are only two kinds of people, police officers and suspects. "Sizeable chunks of the police department may have that view. If that's the case, then we have got a bigger problem than we think we do." In the past, the woman who works with the homeless disabled said she filed a complaint to no avail. "It took a month and a half and the response was really smug and patronizing and nothing changed." But she said she filed a complaint last week and got an appropriate response back within 24 hours. It was the same person she had dealt with before, so something has changed after the scandals, she said. "There's a little ray of hope." The Police Commission plans to hold additional forums on the police complaint system this fall. Call 682-5852 for information. Written comments can be sent to holly.a.mathews@ci.eugene.or.us or Eugene Police Commission: 777 Pearl Street, Room 106, Eugene 97401.
ONE
SIDE OF THE FENCE Mohamed Isa Abebi and his two brothers farm 20 acres among orchards and rocky hills near Zbouba village, in one of the most fertile areas of the West Bank. Four generations of his family have lived on this land. Their main cash crops are olives and almonds. The Abebis sell olive oil locally and have a contract with a European company for this year's almonds.
I visited Mohamed with my son Joe and his wife, Liv, who were working with the International Solidarity Movement — volunteers committed to nonviolence who accompany Palestinians to checkpoints, protests, work and hospitals. Together we visited farmers in the northern West Bank near the Separation Wall. Mohamed welcomed us with solemn friendliness, and his wife brought us cups of strong Arabic coffee as we sat talking in the dooryard. Mohamed told us that he grows most of his family's vegetables and raises sheep for meat, cheese and yogurt. Apricots, figs, and grapes are for family use and the village market. He gardens organically, using sheep manure for fertilizer, and as a member of a farmers' bee cooperative, he also raises honeybees. In his big vegetable garden, Mohamed showed us snapped-together pieces of plastic irrigation pipe with holes every six inches. He plants seeds beside the holes so each plant receives exactly the water it needs. He relies on olive and almond trees because they need no irrigation. West Bank rainfall is sparse, and the summers are long and hot. In 1967 the Israelis took control of all West Bank aquifers and retained control under the Oslo accord. Israel and the settlements now use 83 percent of the water from West Bank aquifers, Palestinians use 17 percent. Many Palestinian villages and towns buy West Bank water from Mekharot, the Israeli water company. Shortages are ongoing. Scattered through his orchards, Mohamed has built three concrete catchments to harvest rainwater, about 20 inches a year. He irrigates with stored water from May until July, then buys water until the rains begin in mid-fall. Tank trucks used to deliver water, but Israeli bulldozers blocked the roads with boulders. Now Mohamed and other farmers drive tractors cross-country to carry water in small, wheeled tanks. In November, Mohamed plants garbanzo beans and wheat, and fodder crops between rows of olive trees. He plants fava beans, lettuce, onions, garlic and cauliflower in rainy December. In May he plants cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, green beans, okra, zucchini, eggplants and peppers. Mohamed and his brothers have 11 sons and their wives who help work the land. Five sons are in jail, a common predicament for Palestinian families. The sons' sentences (for "security reasons and acting against the occupation," according to Mohamed) range from two to eight years. The remaining family members do the farm work and support the young children of the men in jail. Joe, Liv and I also visited the Turkmans, a family of 31 Bedouin Palestinians living on a 50-acre farm near Jenin. The Turkmans bought this land in 1948, after they fled from Haifa. The soil is dry and rocky, with groves of native pines and extensive orchards. The Turkmans raise olives, sheep, goats and cows. They sometimes sell lambs, and the matriarch and her donkey take sheep's cheese to sell in Jenin, a mile away. The family raises grapes, apricots, apples, figs, lemons and plums for home use. Like Mohamed, the Turkmans have rainwater catchments and bring water by tractor during the dry season. The Turkmans' dwellings cluster on a hilltop overlooking Qaddim, an Israeli settlement that was built in the 1980s on a slope facing the Turkmans' land. In the beginning, Russian settlers from Qaddim used to buy Turkman cheese and come over for dinner, and the children played together. But the settlement needed water for its shade trees and 70 houses, and the Turkmans' wells went dry. Last summer the Israelis posted demolition notices for all five houses, built before building permits were required. In September, Israeli soldiers in Humvees, tanks and bulldozers gave the Turkmans five minutes to vacate two of the houses, then crushed the buildings. Now some family members live in Red Cross tents. Whenever the Turkmans tried to cultivate their most fertile fields, which are closest to the Qaddim fence, Israeli soldiers shot at them. For almost three years, the Turkmans could not tend the young olive trees in these fields. Desperate, they knew the law dictates that land not worked for three years belongs to Israel. In autumn, Joe, Liv and other ISM members came to help. The internationals and Turkman women followed the tractor, collecting rocks and stacking them on terrace walls. When Israeli soldiers asked why the internationals were there, Liv said, "We're students learning about subsistence farming." Days of tense but bullet-free plowing, planting and rock-collecting ensued.
I visited during Eid al Fitr, the three-day November holiday that ends Ramadan. The Turkmans were resting, and pale green sprouts of winter wheat and lentils were sprouting in the moist soil near the settlement. In the daytime, men talked, kids chased each other perched on remnants of toy cars, and women did each other's hair, roasted a sheep, brined green olives in soda bottles, and cooked pita bread in a small outdoor oven. In the evenings, the family gathered on mats around the edges of their biggest room and drank coffee, talking and laughing. Chickens, ducks, cows, goats, and sheep slept in a shed adjoining the house where we were staying. But at 5 am, gentle animal noises were overlaid by a loud "chukka-chukka-chukka." Frightened people rushed outside to look up into the sky, where Apache helicopters circled in arcs toward Jenin. That morning Israeli tanks rolled into Jenin searching for militants. In March I learned that a local "security fence" would be built around Qaddim (though many settlers have moved back to Israel, leaving only about 30 houses occupied). Bulldozers cut a wide strip through the Turkmans' newly cultivated fields. The family was informed that half their land, 25 acres, had been confiscated for the fence. In the background of West Bank landscapes, I often saw the path of the Separation Wall (the Security Fence, the Apartheid Wall, depending on who you are talking to) as a wide, pale strip crossing distant hillsides. Sharon's government says the Wall is necessary to protect Israelis from suicide bombers. Many Palestinians say it is a way the Israelis can annex West Bank land and water, separate Palestinians from each other and make it impossible for them to survive in what remains of their homeland. I saw the Wall up close in Zbouba, where it was outside the back windows of every house we visited. There the Wall consisted of multiple rows of high barbed wire fences and trenches, with a raised roadway in the middle. After a mighty Palestinian feast at the home of Joe's friend Mahmoud Jaradat — hummus, stuffed zucchini and grape leaves, roasted chicken, olives, greens, and chickpea soup — we strolled through the village's olive and almond orchards. We adults talked and picked a few last almonds, and Mamoud's children frolicked along until the lane ended abruptly in barbed wire. An Israeli jeep whizzed past on the patrol road. Traveling through the West Bank, I witnessed the fears and grinding, repetitive frustrations of people's lives. Here is one of the moments that haunts me: Joe, Liv and I were in a taxi driving toward Jenin. A Palestinian girl, about three years old with dark, wavy hair, stood in the yellow dust beside the road. She wore a lacy, pale green dress and pink hair ribbons, and swung a green purse that matched her dress. It was the first day of Eid, when Muslims gather for family feasts. Near her stood a somewhat older boy who looked like her, and a half-dozen Palestinian men, including an elderly fellow in a white djellebah who was shouting at Israeli soldiers. Another Palestinian man, laughing nervously, pulled him back and shushed him. The soldiers who had emptied these passengers out of a taxi-van belonged to one of the roving Israeli military patrols that set up "flying checkpoints" and made our talkative taxi driver freeze when he spotted them. A young soldier strutted up to our taxi — narrow face, dark glasses, M-16 automatic rifle in his arms. "Where are you going?" "Yamoun," answered Joe. "Why?" "To visit our friend who studies Arabic at the university." The soldier screamed, his mouth twisted in rage, "Your friend is studying to make bombs and blow up Israelis!" He yelled, "Go!" and we went, leaving the little girl and her relatives and fellow passengers behind. Was this hysteric the person who questioned them? How many hours did they stand beside the road? Did the little girl ever get to the feast of Eid? I still wonder. A different version of this story appeared in In Good Tilth 4/15/04
MARY ELLEN BENNETT
After growing up on a Hood River orchard, Mary Ellen Bennett came to the UO for a degree in Community Health Education. She stayed on in Eugene and currently coordinates a variety of energy-assistance programs for Lane County's Human Services Commission. A couple of years ago, Bennett purchased an empty lot directly behind her house, a few blocks from downtown Eugene. "I didn't want to see it developed," she explains. "Then I thought, 'Now, what do I do?' I hardly keep up with the dandelions in front!" Bennett approached her neighbors with the idea of starting a community garden. "We had talked about it before, like, 'what if …'" she says. "I was amazed — easily 20 people pitched in." Neighbors from two blocks around showed up for work parties to remove blackberries and till the soil. Hoses, implements, and hay bales were donated, and the first garden was planted in the summer of 2003. This year's garden has 10 vegetable plots plus a communal flower garden. "I have berry patches available to everyone," Bennett says. "But I'm not in charge. They do all the work — it's a symbiotic relationship." — Paul Neevel
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