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Citizens State of the City Address Below is the text from the fourth annual Citizens State of the City address given at noon Monday, Jan. 10 at the Eugene Public Library. The event traditionally serves as a counterpoint to the Mayor's State of the City Address and highlights issues of pressing importance to Eugene, as viewed by citizen groups in the community. Speakers this year are Lisa Arkin of Oregon Toxics Alliance, Rob Handy of River Road Community Organization, Gary Gillespie of Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network, Kevin Matthews of Friends of Eugene. and Hope Marston of the Lane County Bill of Rights Defense Committee.
Eugene
as a Sustainable Community A few days before the end of 2004, I awoke to the patter of voices from a local radio station. I listened to a public-service spot where the announcer urged listeners to rush out and buy new SUVs before Dec. 31 so they could take advantage of the administration's tremendous tax credits and other economic incentives. The message defied common sense. Remember last summer's astronomical gas prices? Those low-mileage SUVs would only add to more dependence on an increasingly erratic international oil supply. And what about Eugene's own challenges surrounding land use, pollution, and transportation? More SUVs would pump yet more pollutants and climate-changing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Fourteen of the past 20 years have had lower than average rainfall, a situation that prompted EWEB's recent rate increase. And, 2004 will go down in the books as Eugene's second driest year on record. Now, imagine an entirely different morning broadcast, a public-service message that really paid the community a service: "The city of Eugene has committed to purchasing 100 percent wind and geothermal power by the year 2010. Eugene residents can take advantage of tax credits and no-interest loans for investing in home and business energy conservation." Eugene can join dozens of other communities, acting with conviction at the local level to create forward-looking civic policies that respond to a changing world. Simply put, we are obligated to act not only on our own behalf, but also to meet the needs of generations to follow. To its credit, Eugene already has a variety of policies, goals, and resolutions relating to sustainability. The recently released brochure titled "The City of Eugene and Sustainability" refers to habitat, energy, water, economy and more. The brochure's assessment that we have a long way to go toward sustainability is a realistic appraisal of the current circumstances. The city now needs to develop a comprehensive sustainability mandate and identify a timeline for its implementation. An extremely valuable consensus-building tool is the principle of fore-caring. That is "fore" with an 'e,' as in forethought, beforehand, and foresight. Fore-caring includes identifying those things we all value and acting together to protect and maintain them. Fore-caring would embed shared community goals and values into all city policies and practices. What does fore-caring look like in our own community? An excellent example is the Lane County Food Coalition's project at Sheldon High School that brings local organic produce to our school children. The coalition also is forming a permanent council that will advocate for local farmers and food processors. Working at a grassroots level, the United Methodist Church is leading an interfaith movement to support local farmers called "That's My Farmer!" In the words of Pastor John Pitney, this program "puts a neighborly face on our food." The congregation is recruiting 500 families to join Community Supported Agriculture, a program where people buy weekly food boxes directly from local farmers. The congregation also sponsors youth to learn organic farming, and raises additional funds to subsidize fresh vegetable boxes for low-income families, thereby modeling fore-caring and economic justice. Another example of fore-caring is the preservation in the Whiteaker neighborhood of two local grocery stores, the Red Apple and the Red Barn Natural Grocery. The Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation (NEDCO) prevented the closure of these two businesses because they are convenient and neighborhood-sized, and they help define the character of the neighborhood. Of the many facets of sustainability, none casts a longer shadow than energy. This map depicts the gas-fired power plants proposed for future operation in the Northwest. Energy production fuels, so to speak, many problems — from the loss of salmon habitat to climate change, from the gobbling up of Northwest farmland by merchant power plants to rising electrical bills. Our city must prioritize energy conservation and require the highest standards of energy efficiency in building design. Local efforts, like this solar-panel array on the old library building, can help end our dependency on non-renewable energy sources and cut back on the pollution that comes from fossil-fuel power plants. The city of Eugene has a unique chance to practice fore-caring by teaming up with River Road and Santa Clara residents to preserve their neighborhood's character as each one makes the "transition" from semi-rural to urban. Using fore-caring as the principle to guide development in the River Road and Santa Clara areas can prevent the kind of poor planning seen on West 11th — in particular, Target and Wal-Mart. Without land-use standards in place, fragmented and redundant commercial development will continue unchecked. We applaud Mayor Piercy's plan to set up a Sustainability Advisory Commission and recommend that the commission first turn its attention to developing a Eugene Sustainable-Community Code. The code should be comprehensive, covering several basic areas: community health, neighborhoods, labor, energy use, the environment — as well as, but not limited to, our economy. It should implement environmental benchmarks that go beyond the minimum state and federal regulatory requirements. Moving toward a sustainable code means leadership from the city but also participation from "green" businesses, traditional businesses, neighborhoods, non-profits, and the interfaith-religious community. We can learn from several nearby cities that are living by their sustainable-community codes and are reaping the economic and social benefits. Portland recently applied the concept of fore-caring to its municipal weed-management system. Just last month, the city announced the establishment of several pesticide-free parks along with a pilot program using chemical-alternatives such as vinegar. Both Portland and Seattle have approved sustainable-paper
policies requiring that all paper products be chlorine-free and made
from post-consumer, recycled content by 2006. The city of Eugene could
purchase tree-free paper for stationery from our local company, Living
Tree Paper. Here in Eugene, voters passed the Toxics-Right-to Know Law, a national model for advancing sustainability goals. Its objective — to inventory the toxic chemicals released into our community — is the first step to recognizing and taking responsibility for reducing harmful chemical emissions. The city could encourage the next step, which is applying green technologies to manufacturing processes. In fact, the UO is a pivotal center for scientific advancements in green chemistry. And local industries could be partnering with it to serve as proving grounds for solutions to industrial emissions. It is time for our business community to practice fore-caring and acknowledge that our land and our air are common spaces, shared by plants, animals, and humans alike. Eugene needs and deserves a popular, thoughtful, and comprehensive sustainability plan. It should explain the stakes, a sensible strategy, and the benefits. Eugene can be among the nation's vanguard as we turn our challenges into opportunities for good.
Neighborhoods What makes a neighborhood a desirable, livable place to call home? What makes a neighborhood more than simply geographical boundaries on a map, but a living, breathing community of people with common values and interests? At the inception of American cities, neighborhoods grew up around industry. Generally, the people who lived in these neighborhoods either worked nearby or provided services to the same neighborhood. These communities were very stable and their population shared similar values and concerns. Neighborhood public schools were the pride of a community, often doubling as social and educational centers. Today it is more challenging to identify inter-connected community within a city and its neighborhoods. Increasingly, residents choose to work, shop, play, and school their children in different parts of town than where they live. As our lifestyle choices increase, what is the glue that holds together neighborhood residents and businesses with a sense of place? Oregon was a pioneer in codifying public involvement as Goal 1 of our trail-blazing state land-use guidelines. The visionaries of that bipartisan effort understood that involving the public at the beginning phase of planning was vital to the success of any plan, and a foundation for our democracy. For many Eugene planners and decision makers today, engaging energetic public involvement seems to have become an afterthought. It may be seductive to believe that policy creation and implementation can skip over community involvement yet still find success and support as a top-down exercise. And when inappropriate planning lacks community support, and proposed projects become controversial, it may be tempting to place blame on pesky residents, who may seem to show up at the last minute — and always in opposition. Are residents really just reactive or ignorant? Or are there flaws in what passes for our current public-involvement processes? Are Crest Drive-area residents just against street widenings? Or maybe we are hearing them voice their shared values and vision for preserving heritage trees, promoting equity in street-improvement assessments, and maintaining neighborhood character. Are the neighbors in Santa Clara just against a large community park that would accompany a land-swap proposal and development scheme from the McDougal Bros.? It may be that residents are asking savvy questions about the impacts of new development on already strapped transportation infrastructure and schools, and about the loss of prime Class 1 farmland that would result from an urban growth boundary expansion. Can we hear these residents say that developing several small, accessible pocket parks throughout Santa Clara is more desirable than a traffic-inducing regional park at the UGB? Is it that the four neighborhoods adjacent to the Union Pacific Railyard are simply against noisy trains? Maybe they are searching for a way to prioritize a community-wide public planning process for this large, polluted industrial site and to envision a future use for the site that would be compatible with the surrounding neighborhoods, as well as the broader community. Are the residents of the West University Neighborhood just concerned about student housing rented from out-of-town landlords? Or can we hear that these neighbors want to shepherd the interests of both the local community and the university? Is it that the county residents of River Road and Santa Clara are simply enemies of the city of Eugene who want to be left alone? Maybe these residents have legitimate concerns about whether annexation to the city and the accompanying rise in property taxes will mean a commensurate increase in urban-service delivery. Are these residents being unreasonable when they identify heritage characteristics of their neighborhoods that they want to see preserved 50 years from now — and when they ask planners to forge plans with appropriate neighborhood scale, tenor, and compatibility? Are neighbors downwind of the JH Baxter plant in Trainsong and Bethel being unreasonable to want to go outdoors without having to breath toxic air? Is it that residents of the Friendly neighborhood are just wannabe cops? Or are they to be commended for making streets safer by staffing a residents radar patrol? Can we praise Friendly, Amazon, Jefferson, and Southeast-area neighbors for volunteering to plant street trees in roundabouts and proactively supporting other forms of traffic calming? Or must they be viewed as do-gooders with too much time on their hands? Are residents opposed to a $169 million West Eugene Parkway proposal simply against highways or can we hear that folks value wetlands habitat and public parkland, and that they prioritize funding of infrastructure improvements along existing roads like Beltline, rather than building new roads? Can we respect the intelligence of residents when they ask to prioritize reinstatement of the neighborhood matching-grants program, or when they ask that the city investigate the savings and benefits other communities have realized by hiring independent auditors? Can we accept that the citizenry is informed when they ask for not just any external review for police, but an external-review process that has proven to be successful elsewhere? Public discourse in Eugene has a reputation for being spirited. Is it simply because the public is reactionary? Or perhaps residents have core values and vision for the health of this community, but without an empowering public-planning process we are missing a constructive conduit for channeling our vision and energy. Eugene finds itself at a crossroads. Our new mayor,
Kitty Piercy, is aware of the importance of supporting grassroots neighborhood
vision. Our city manager, Dennis Taylor, got his start in civic advocacy
and public service in Helena, Mont., after his downtown neighborhood
was punctured by urban-renewal decisions that resulted in a monstrous
parking lot. So how do we connect the dots between these noble concepts and the fiscal realities that leave many great ideas on the cutting room floor of the budget-making process? How do we get more police on the ground doing community policing? Can we acknowledge school choice, while simultaneously infusing neighborhood schools with the support and funding they need, so families can keep their children in the neighborhood, building community pride and connection to the physical environment? How do we create a caring community for our youth — one that imbues a sense of place, where they can learn that freedoms go hand-in-hand with responsibility? What is the mix of public involvement that faithfully engages a community? To what degree do resident values and vision get front-loaded in planning processes so that there is community buy-in when it comes to decision making that impacts neighborhoods? Washington, D.C., has delegated much of its decision-making regarding neighborhood-funding priorities to the neighborhoods themselves. Albany, Oregon, has decreed that developers must consult with neighborhoods to get buy-in on proposals before development plans are submitted to the city. Can we learn from these and other communities? The International Association for Public Participation delineates a full spectrum of increasing levels of public participation in community-planning processes, and describes how increasing public commitment correlates with increasing participation. Copies of their chart are available at the literature tables. Most basic is a commitment to INFORM the public with balanced and objective information. The next level is to CONSULT with the public, to solicit comment, acknowledge concerns, and provide feedback about how public-input influenced decision making. Higher participation INVOLVES a community throughout a process, to ensure that concerns and issues are directly reflected in alternatives developed. The next level is to COLLABORATE, involving the public in each aspect of decision making, seeking and incorporating direct advice in formulating solutions to the maximum extent possible. And finally, we could EMPOWER the public, by placing some final decision-making in the hands of citizens, with the promise to neighborhoods: "We will implement what you decide." Eugene has almost 20 active neighborhood associations that, during this past year, have published more than 60 newsletters or postcards and collectively have held hundreds of meetings, election forums, and potlucks. Food, schools, living-wage jobs, and the natural environment are common currencies of our shared values and vision. When core groups of residents make a common investment in a comprehensive view of their environment, neighborhoods can be at the forefront in articulating community vision. With such vision, a city can become proactive, and can strive to develop a beneficial business — and social environment — to build a community that is vibrant, thriving, and responsive to its citizens.
Labor The Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network is a coalition of labor, environmental, educational and faith-based groups in Lane County working to educate, activate, and agitate for social and economic justice. ESSN is also a national Jobs With Justice Chapter. In 2005, ESSN will continue our work in a couple of areas as well as add an additional cause or two. We will continue to educate and inform with regards to the struggle of workers to organize and maintain a voice in the workplace through union representation. At this very time, members of Amalgamated Transit Union are on the verge of striking in order to retain current benefits and stop the implementation of unfavorable work rules. Their employer, Lane Transit District, appears willing to cripple the county transportation system in order to implement their last best offer. We are recruiting community leaders for a Workers Rights Board, which will serve as a public forum for workers to air their grievances, and will facilitate community support to seek redress of those grievances. A WRB is the union's counter response to the pro-corporate actions of the National Labor Rights Board. In light of George Bush's efforts to stack the NLRB with anti-worker members, we in the labor movement now refer to the NLRB as the "No Labor Rights Board." The near total ineffectiveness of this organization in protecting the rights of workers was never more evident that during the prolonged contract negotiations by the members of the Newspaper Guild and the Teamsters in their three-plus year negotiations with the Baker family and The Register-Guard. In view of repeated violations by the R-G and their lead negotiator, the contract campaign more resembled a war of attrition than a protected labor-rights negotiation. Portland Jobs with Justice established a WRB a little more than five years ago. In 2004, we organized two demonstrations at Wal-Mart opposing the expansion of the West 11th store to a Super Center. The AFL-CIO stated intentions to organize Wal-Mart workers. And ESSN anticipates participating in that effort. Wal-Mart is expanding at an annual rate of 15 percent and is the largest private non-union employer in the country. Their workers earn nearly 30 percent less than other grocery workers. They are the first company to report more than a quarter trillion dollars in sales, thereby exceeding the combined sales of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco — with a couple billion left over to cover the tip. In the course of one week, 100 million customers shop at Wal-Mart. According to a California economic impact study, it is estimated that a typical Wal-Mart store with 200 employees would cost taxpayers $420,750 per year in taxpayer subsidized services such as free school lunches, medical care, housing assistance and other welfare services. ESSN was pleased to hear Mayor Piercy call economically-sustainable-business support and development a key part of her administration's goals. Educating our community as to the importance of community standards was a cornerstone of our work in 2004. Criteria for the use of public funds in economic development must be defined and enforced. Only establishing such criteria will regain the support of taxpayers in the Eugene-Springfield area. For the last 15 years, public employees have been held to very high standards when using public funds. The time is long past due when private enterprise should be accountable to the same standards. Promoting tax justice through educational workshops will be another key element of ESSN's 2005 activities. In cooperation with the Oregon AFL-CIO and the Oregon Center for Public Policy, ESSN is shining a bright light on the tax credits, exemptions, and deductions offered by the State of Oregon to special-interest groups. In September 2004, ESSN, along with the Wayne Morse Chair at the UO Law School, co-sponsored a talk and discussion by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, the author of "Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else." Mr. Johnston highlighted the negative financial effects of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle-class taxpayer. Since 1995, Oregon income-tax revenues have grown by 58 percent, while income tax breaks have grown by 108 percent. In 1995, Oregon gave away in tax breaks 39 cents on the dollar. Today that figure has risen to 46 cents on the dollar. And sadly, those increased tax breaks have gone to the wealthy, rather than to those in need of assistance. Total revenue given up in the form of tax breaks for the next biennium is expected to equal $8.8 billion. If Oregon just reverted to the tax break levels of 1995-97, it would collect another $1.3 billion in addition to the $10.5 in the projected 2005-07 period. This additional $1.3 billion would more than provide funding for a full school year, without increasing K-12 class sizes. It would also allow for tuition freezes at our community colleges and public universities; keep Project Independence for seniors; and restore the Oregon Health Plan. Worthy efforts, all. And those of you who have followed the efforts of ESSN in establishing a living-wage ordinance, related to the expenditure of public funds for private contractors, may be asking yourselves: "What gives with that?" I'll simply update (in more politically-correct terminology) an old phrase originally attributed to basketball coach Dick Motta, and say that the plus-sized sister isn't about to sing, yet.
Land-Use
and Transportation Wetlands highway — riverfront highway — upland habitat denial — riverfront commercialization — urban-renewal gerrymanders — UGB for sale. Four years of a developer-directed City Council majority have pushed Eugene, Oregon, to the brink of crisis. Starting right now, the real changes in city leadership that so many of you have worked so hard and so well for, bring real new possibilities. Congratulations, Eugene, for all your participation! And, of course, to realize our new possibilities will require continued focus and enhanced engagement, both with local government and with active citizens across the spectrum. Consensus has been growing across our community around shared visions of economic justice and environmental quality, as evidenced by election of Kitty Piercy as our new mayor, by the ongoing discussions of the Jobs and Land Use Roundtable, and by the coalition of groups bringing you this Citizens State of the City presentation. However, contrary forces of often distantly-driven real-estate speculation, and of deeply rooted local privilege, are busily jockeying for angles of counter-attack. How shall we respond at this historical tipping point? In essence, our continuing mission is to bring sustainability home to earth, right here in our Eugene. Lisa Arkin has already spoken about several aspects of sustainability. Yet so much of our environmental and economic impacts have to do with the two intertwined threads of land use and transportation, that these threads call for special attention. In short, without achieving sustainability and excellence in our land-use and transportation choices, we probably can't achieve it much of anywhere else. So much of our energy use, pollution, impervious surfaces, and local budgets are driven by land use and transportation. Someone in town recently suggested that about 90 percent of City of Eugene government business is related to either land use or transportation or both. So it's no surprise that several major land-use and environmental issues currently face our community. As well as such defensive challenges — and sometimes, in the very same places — our Eugene faces a host of positive opportunities. * Civic-Center development, done with historical and urban sensitivity, could enhance downtown. Pedestrian downtown really could be connected with a living, green riverfront. Mixed-use development of open pits and paved lots downtown could move it closer to the Node-One status it needs and deserves. * We need an updated and improved approach to downtown planning, that is more realistic and more visionary at the same time, that goes beyond the goals of the last mayor's committee. * We need a city planning department that really listens when there is citizen input, or a design charette like we had for downtown, for the cannery district — where the input opposed re-routing Highway 99 along the riverfront — and for the Civic Center, where the input supported preservation of City Hall. * We need to start saving the important buildings we have left, like the purposefully anti-monumental City Hall, and the classic industrial-Deco EWEB steam-plant building. If you start a development project by tearing down a usable public building, and an important piece of community history, there's no level of green-building rating points that can make a replacement building net-sustainable. * We need improved hospital planning. That should be helped by the recent CHOICES/FoE state appeals court victory against shotgun zoning changes for hospital siting by the City of Eugene. * We do need a hospital in central Eugene, like we have now. But we shouldn't put it right on the downtown riverfront; we shouldn't sell off the EWEB headquarters at 1/4 or 1/3 of its value to do it; and we shouldn't cut the 800-foot Patterson Trench — up to 20 feet deep and maybe 60 feet wide — under the tracks right at the riverfront. A private hospital building, twice as tall as the EWEB headquarters and probably twice as wide, right across the river from Alton Baker Park, blocking the view of Spencer's Butte from the Ferry Street Bridge, surrounded by parking lots, and accessed via the Patterson Trench, is not the way to "connect downtown to the river." On this image, taken from the top of Skinner's Butte, the shadowed area representing the rough massing of the proposed Triad hospital shows how it would block the view from the butte. * In contrast, Millrace daylighting could emerge as a magically inspiring downtown-to-university connection strategy. Activity-friendly development and detailing could fight back against obesity in Track Town. * Reclamation of the rail yards, when the time is right, could foster myriad improvements in our central neighborhoods. * Protection of upland-wildlife habitat and all our open waterways could ensure living, green hills for the future. * Despite our standing policies and regulations, development has breached the wooded ridges of our South Hills both in the east, like around Spring Boulevard, and in the west, like around Hawkins. Protected only by the difficulty of development and by the historic South Hills Study, these areas that are essential for habitat and for recreation need more protection. The image shows one of the areas where ridgeline protection has broken down badly, around Spring Boulevard. *We should continue to protect and restore Amazon Creek, starting with acquisition of the Amazon Headwaters Keystone at Martin and West Amazon, and continuing all the way through town. In contrast, actual logging continues in this highly sensitive key link in the Amazon watershed system, deep within the city limits. * We should not be exploiting precious public open space and natural areas as siting opportunities for local pork-barrel construction projects. When the city tries to push through park-construction projects against the wishes of the neighborhoods that would supposedly benefit, something is seriously wrong. * An urban land trust could start to protect pocket parks and trail and habitat ribbons by assembling voluntary conservation easements, as well as key acquisitions in situations where the city can't respond. * We need to work together — city, neighborhoods, sympathetic developers, and Friends of Eugene, backed up by 1000 Friends of Oregon — to restart the city efforts on Nodal Development. Urban villages in several neighborhoods could increase density and living quality mid-way between downtown and a better-protected Urban Growth Boundary. Our nodes need to be real nodes, and development subsidies currently targeted to the Royal anti-node should be re-directed to where they will help, not hurt, the goal of developing real urban villages. * To make nodal development begin to work here — as it is working already up in Portland, and down in Berkeley — we could use a new name, like "urban villages." More importantly, we need a real and specific definition of the goals and attributes of an urban village to focus our efforts. * We've shown quantitatively that developing the Royal Node — or any node at the urban fringe — would actually increase car miles; whereas, the main point of nodal development is to naturally ramp down car miles. It is time for the city to pull its head out of the sand and cancel all nodes at the urban fringe. * On Dec. 9, in this very room, 48 citizens testified against the draft Regional Transportation Plan, the RTP, which is partially replacing TransPlan. No one spoke in favor of the draft plan. The Metropolitan Policy Committee, the MPC, then voted to pass the plan, 8-1. I'm pleased to announce that on Dec. 30, 2004, Friends of Eugene filed an appeal of that rushed-through RTP. We are going to stop the WEP! To do it, we need your help. Please visit our web site at FriendsofEugene.org to support this effort. Ultimately, to succeed with our humanistic and environmental vision, the progressive community in Eugene needs to both coordinate and cooperate with, and yet also to counterbalance business-as-usual interests. Those interests together fund the equivalent of at least three, and possibly many more, full-time, paid lobbyists to work on our local governments. FoE has had a key role in trying to balance those special interests, with the PUBLIC interest. Our goal is to continue to nourish and support and help provide necessary community infrastructure for proactive, technically robust, progressive planning — a strong organizational center that can help the diversity of progressive organizations in Eugene transform collective dreams for this community into reality. This community infrastructure is needed to support visionary city leaders, who cannot always rely on the established city administrative structure to deliver timely new thinking and frankly critical, incisive analysis of both potential and legacy initiatives. And this community infrastructure crucially includes
coordination with and support for other local organizations with parallel
and compatible interests in local environmental quality and economic
justice. So this question goes out to the Eugene community. Is it time? Are Eugene progressives really ready to step up and do what it takes to support an emerging progressive establishment? I hope so! City government is part of the answer. But part of the answer lies, quite appropriately, outside of official government itself. It is only the participation, endorsement, and support of so many Friends of Eugene like you that give us hope for such a positive future for our community. Kevin Matthews is president of Friends of Eugene and president of Southeast Neighbors.
Human
Rights Eugene residents deserve a lot of credit for their consistent stands against hate literature. Every time some white supremacist group starts handing out overtly racist pamphlets or flyers, people from Eugene are quick to decry the racism and to provide community education. Eugene is not yet as quick to recognize more subtle yet persistent forms of racism. A common perception is that Eugene is liberal and tolerant, that in Eugene, police won't bother you unless you're somewhere you shouldn't be, doing something you shouldn't do. But that's not true. Just this year, we learned from a well-respected city of Eugene employee that he was racially profiled by a Eugene police officer while walking to his car with four friends on Labor Day weekend. And that wasn't the first time Cortez Jordan experienced racial profiling — or even the second or the third. In the months following his complaint, many more charges of racial profiling have been reported to the NAACP and Communities United for Better Policing (CUBP). In fact, if you talk to people of color in this community, you probably will find that many have been pulled over for driving or stopped for walking while black or Indian or Latino. Racial profiling in Eugene, as in every other community in this nation, is the usual, not the unusual. Largely invisible to the dominant culture, it looms large in the eyes of those who encounter racism every day. We salute the efforts of CUBP in asking the City Council to create an external police review board. Our community needs independent review to ensure accountability in the Eugene Police Department, so that when there are complaints of racial profiling, a critical eye from the community can make an evaluation based on evidence. To Eugene's credit, a series of study circles on racism is being organized. It, too, is long overdue and much needed. Back in 2001, when European-American activists like me became concerned about the sweeping new post 9/11 laws being passed by Congress — like the so-called PATRIOT Act — Latino activists had a different view. "You're worried about police coming in the middle of the night and dragging you or your loved ones away?" one activist asked me. Then she said, "Our communities have faced secret detentions for many years. You're worried about being held without charges? You're worried about disappearing? We've been there for many years. 9/11 just made it worse for us." Following 9/11, a new group of immigrants is also being targeted: Muslim-Americans. Some Muslim men have shaved their beards. Some women have stopped wearing headscarves to avoid being singled out. Because FBI agents are now allowed to go into churches and mosques without probable cause, the mosque has become a place to watch your back — not a place of peace where you can speak your mind. Other Muslims are now afraid to contribute to Muslim charities, even though making contributions to charities is a traditional part of their religious life. The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution promises that police will not search our homes without a search warrant specifically listing what is to be searched — that if you're charged with a crime, you'll have the right to an attorney — and the right to a speedy trial … We, the people must guarantee those rights are not taken away by our government. Already, we know of many cases in which our Bill of Rights were trampled by post 9/11 laws and orders. The Portland FBI secretly and repeatedly searched the home of Muslim attorney Brandon Mayfield. And then, even after he was found to be innocent in connection with the Madrid train bombing, government officials leaked his private papers to the media. More than 1,000 Muslim men were detained after Sept. 11 — some for months, some for more than a year — without ever being charged as terrorists. The U.S. government now requires yearly registration of all men who are citizens or nationals of 25 Muslim countries — a deeply humiliating experiences, resulting in deportation for some — again, without any evidence of crime or a proven connection with terrorism. José Padilla is a U.S. citizen who has languished in prison for nearly three years as an enemy combatant, arbitrarily stripped of his constitutional rights. But what can a city like Eugene do about national laws with sweeping powers that may threaten members of our own community? At the recent city of Eugene swearing-in ceremony, I heard each of the councilors and the mayor vow to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Oregon Constitution. Those were the first words of their pledges as city officials. On Nov. 25, 2002, the Eugene City Council did something that The Register-Guard, Mayor Torrey, and even some council members didn't think was possible. Eugene became the 16th municipality to express its outrage at post 9/11 laws and orders that resulted in detentions and abuse of innocent people. Councilors voted unanimously to pass Resolution 4743, which states that no city funds will be used to support the federal government in secret detentions or in upholding the PATRIOT Act. In some communities, the first place a Muslim is detained is in a city or county jail. But Eugene — and now, Lane County — have promised that Eugene and Lane County jails won't be used for secret detentions. The council took a local stand on a national issue. And because Eugene City Councilors stood up for human rights in this way, other communities took heart, and three months later, there were 50 resolutions. six months later, there were 121 resolutions opposing the PATRIOT Act. Today, there are 367, with more and stronger resolutions being passed. The Lane County Bill of Rights Defense Committee aims to strengthen Eugene's original resolution by asking the City Council in 2005 to pass an ordinance that would make it illegal for city employees to cooperate with federal officials in secret detentions, or harassing immigrants, or racial profiling. In this way, local people can influence a vital national issue. In this way, we, the people can defend the promise of our Bill of Rights, building on what we accomplished in 2002. Let's continue inspiring ordinary people to do extraordinary things — because together we can. Si se puede! |
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