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May Endorsements Turnouts in the important May school board elections tend to be light and it's possible for special interests to mobilize behind the scenes to elect candidates who would not be elected otherwise. This scenario does not appear to be happening in Eugene, but Springfield is another tale (see our news story this week). Last week in Slant we raised the question, How important is it to elect progressives to school boards? Well, it depends. School boards need financial, legal and education expertise, along with gender and cultural balance, and conservatives can provide that. Many important issues are non-partisan, such as the debate over school equity in 4J. On the other hand, we lean toward well-qualified progressives over conservatives when it comes to school funding. Progressives are not afraid of paying for education, tend to be more open to new funding ideas, and are more likely to lobby Salem to reform the state tax system. They recognize the impact of sprawl and pollution on the health of children. Lefties also get stars for social issues, such as sex education, diversity and tolerance, arts education and keeping religious ideology out of the curriculum. With these things in mind, we make the following selected endorsements in contested races, and we urge everyone who can vote to vote. Charles R. Martinez Jr. has proven to be a great appointment to the 4J board in Position 2 and deserves a full term. He has academic expertise in dealing with at-risk children and the achievement gap, and he is connected to our growing local Hispanic community. Of the three candidates for Position 6, we know Aria Seligmann best. She was on the editorial staff at EW for many years, covering education, social issues and politics, but she was not automatically assured our nod. Anyone we endorse needs to pass the I-like-George-Russell's-school-choice-plan test. All three appear to be more or less on board with the super's critical ideas for school equity. The incumbent Eric Forrest is conservative in most regards (sprawl, West Eugene Parkway, etc.), but did back the local option levy, to his credit. We endorsed Nadia Sindi for the LCC Board a few years ago when she ran against Jay Bozievich, but we see Seligmann as a stronger team player, and she has been racking up impressive endorsements from both her Green Party and Democrats in her energetic campaign. Hopefully, progressives will not split their votes between Sindi and Seligmann and hand a default victory to Forrest. In the LCC Board race for Position 1, we're looking at a repeat of the race of two years ago when conservative Paul Holman was elected over Richard Cunningham and Rob Spooner. We favored Rich Cunningham then, and we endorse him again. Cunningham has a strong background as a school board member in Rhode Island and has been trying to plug into public service locally for several years, despite heart problems. He's now back in action following surgery. We like his politics and his ambitious vision for bolstering LCC's health care programs. Lane ESD has a big line-up of candidates and we're pleased to see that Tom Lininger has enthusiastically jumped into the race for the at-large Position 6. The law professor and former county commissioner has a lot to offer ESD, from knowledge of special education issues to expertise in the workings of state bureaucracy. The race for the Springfield ESD Position 2 is a tougher call. Incumbent Don Kimball has 12 years of effective experience on the board, and he's facing a challenge from a younger and also highly qualified Tom Atkinson. The district wins either way. Springfield schools are blessed with an exceptional superintendent and a stable board, but are vulnerable to takeover by religious conservatives. We see no reason to replace incumbents Jonathan Light in Position 2, Al King in Position 3, and Bill Medford in Position 5. Medford's opponent Wade Richardson has been particularly obstinate and combative in our attempts to interview him. We can only imagine what he would be like on the School Board. — TJT
Sexist
Oppression With mother's day this weekend, why not recognize the bonds of motherhood in all animals — particularly mothers who most need our help, such as those stuck in factory farms. By exploiting billions of females for their reproductive qualities, modern agribusiness is a slap in the face to motherhood that should have caring Americans calling for dramatic changes through boycotts and reform. To comprehend how this exploitation works, let's consider the three worst examples of female animal mistreatment: pigs, hens, and cows used for milk.
Pigs: Thousands of female pigs suffer their whole lives as "breeders" to continuously pump out the next generation of pork. These mothers-to-be spend their entire four-month pregnancies stuck in a "gestation crate" so confining they can't even turn around, without any comfortable bedding or positive stimulation. Once she gives birth, the industry only allows her to nurse for a few weeks before they remove her babies to fatten them up for eventual slaughter. Then the mother is again sexually violated through artificial insemination and put back in a gestation crate. This cycle of suffering typically continues for four or five years until her "breeding production" dies down and she is sent to slaughter. Cows used for milk: Despite California's fraudulent "happy cow" cheese campaign, dairy cows are increasingly being raised on dry lots instead of pastureland. Constantly impregnated to keep their unnaturally engorged udders lactating, cows are hooked up to milk machines several times daily for the majority of their nine-month pregnancies. When a mother delivers, she is only allowed to nurse her calf for a few days before the farmer separates them, despite their days of bellowing. Male calves become veal (notoriously inhumane), while female calves become the next enslaved generation of dairy cows, doomed to the same fate as their moms. After about five pregnancies, the mother's "reward" for a life of servitude is to become hamburger or dog food. Egg-laying hens: Mother hens do not get to raise their babies on factory farms. Born at a sterile hatchery, male chicks are killed by suffocation or grinding because they're economically useless. The female chicks are painfully "de-beaked" with a hot blade to reduce pecking deaths when the industry crowds them into "battery" cages together. Their feathers often rub raw against the cages and bones may break due to osteoporosis from severe calcium loss due to unnaturally high egg production. In some cases, the industry shocks the hens' bodies into another egg-laying cycle by keeping them in darkness without food or water for up to 18 days, which typically kills 5 to10 percent of them. After one year of life, they are typically considered "spent hens" and sent to slaughter. Since birds are not covered by the Humane Slaughter Act, stunning is optional at the slaughterhouse, or the farmer can grind them alive as animal feed on-site. Let's trade places with theses animals and imagine if your mother were: • Enslaved as a breeder in a tiny crate her whole life. • Constantly impregnated as many times as physically possible but never allowed to raise or be with any of her children because her babies were considered "property" of others who are profiting off their bodies. • Selectively bred with hormones to have profitable, gorging mammary glands, pumped by machine, not for her baby, but so adults of another species could needlessly drink her milk… • Crowded in indoor cages with other women her whole life to have her menstrual products (eggs) harvested for consumption. • Killed before middle-age because she was deemed "spent" when her reproduction rate slowed down and was less profitable. Certainly, these egregious injustices against women would be considered a shocking act of sexist oppression that would be condemned and outlawed by all compassionate citizens. So in a civilized feminist society, why do we allow it to happen to any females? Luckily, this needless exploitation can be stopped — by you. Simply withdraw your financial support from animal agribusiness and put it into more humane proteins like nuts, soymilks, tofu, beans, peas and whole grains. This Mother's Day, make a pledge to help all mothers by ending their suffering. Feel good about choosing vegetable protein instead of buying someone else's stolen milk, eggs or flesh. Carrie Packwood Freeman is a doctoral student, UO School of Journalism & Communication. For recipes and info on the many advantages of a vegan diet, see www.vegforlife.organd www.whyvegan.com
Land
Bridge An oxymoron, my dictionary reports, is "a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (as cruel kindness)." If "sustainable growth" means "sustainable economic growth," I think it might be in the ring with "cruel kindness." For 23 years, I've been watching a bigleaf maple grow in my back yard. First it overshadowed and killed the mountain ash that had red berries each fall. Then it grew over the lilacs. If they lean way out, the lilacs can still display a few fragrant flowers. We finally cut back a branch of the maple so the dogwood and its dusty pink flowers could eke out at least a stunted existence. All of this bigleaf maple growth is finite, of course, because one bigleaf maple, like one human, can only grow so large. But bigleaf maples, like humans, like to reproduce. If the bigleaf maple were left to its own devices, little maples and associated plants and animals would gather around it, and my neighborhood would once again be a native forest in the floodplain of the McKenzie and Willamette. But some other land would have to grow the concord grapes, apples, pears, and peas I now grow and that food would have to be transported to me. We humans do inherently take up space and consume energy. Tomorrow I leave for a two-day meeting of about 30 people in Southern California. We will be examining the "perfect storm" gathering over that region, and how that storm can (or can't) be addressed under my favorite environmental law, NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act). The storm being examined has the less-than-bestseller title of "Regional Infrastructure Development for Goods Movement and Related Transportation Congestion in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area." Translation: Building more highways and railroad lines to transport the flood of global trade items that are being brought into the Port of Los Angeles at the same time that Southern California is experiencing record population growth and automobile congestion, and balancing this transportation construction and population growth with the environment. Condensed translation: Building more highways and increasing Los Angeles population in balance with the environment. Really condensed translation: Sustainable growth.
At the moment, inland cities such as the City of Industry, Ontario, and San Bernardino are becoming choked with freeways, warehouses, traffic congestion and pollution as millions of containers of clothes, autos, computers, running shoes and such are brought to the Los Angeles Port, shipped to warehouses, and then shipped on highways throughout the U.S. to factories and malls and small, trendy stores. Things are also transported from Southern California to the eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast and then re-loaded onto ships, because the U.S., in transportation parlance, is a "land bridge" for transporting "goods" from Asia to other ports. Meanwhile, the population of humans in Southern California (as well as their asthma) is soaring. The soaring population is driving around in more and more cars in already-congested truck traffic. (Remember Michelle Shocked singing, "I've driven 500 miles today and never even left L.A." in Repo Man?). This soaring population needs more and more houses, so where do you put the freeways? More airports are "needed" in L.A. to transport more and more things and humans. And (asked in a tiny voice), where do you put the meadowlarks (who are plummeting because they require open space), and chaparral, and coastal sage scrub, and sugar pines (which are dying from vehicle pollution)? Where do you put clean air? Where do you put children losing childhood to asthma? Where do you put silence? So when you next hear the phrase "sustainable [economic] growth," it might be worthwhile to seek concrete answers to questions such as, "What growth? Sustainable of what?" But be forewarned. This topic can bring out the Bolton in some people. Recently I was at a dinner with a retired oil corporation lawyer. He was complaining about occasional power outages in his small town. I mildly remarked that we have become addicted to running numerous energy appliances simultaneously in our homes. "Do you think people want to go back to walking with pieces of glass in their shoes?" he shot at me. We don't yet know how to talk together about consequences of, or alternatives to, endless growth. Mary O'Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at mob@efn.org
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