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Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes News: News: Questioning Race: Sports: Happeining Person: Joni Dawning WHEN BIGGER GETS TOO BIG The Christian Science Monitor reports in a recent issue that California communities are starting to rebel against the trend of tearing down solid little single-story bungalows to build large mulit-story homes that practically fill the lots, leaving only narrow yards. The tend has a name now: mansionization. In early September the Los Angeles City Council approved the first "anti-mansionization" ordinance in one small section of the city, and more L.A. enclaves are expected to follow with similar restrictions. CSM reports that the measure will limit homes built on lots of 8,000 sq. ft. or less to 2,400 sq. ft., or 40 percent of the lot size, whichever is greater. See www.csmonitor.com/2005/0803/p03s01-uspo.html for the full story.
GRAND JURY ROAD SHOW Grand jury investigations, which take place out of public view, have been used to harass and jail political activists nationwide, including Eugene activists in recent years (see EW archives for "Inquisition" cover story, Jan. 17, 2002). "As government repression increases, so does the use of racial profiling, FBI visits and federal grand juries to intimidate, imprison and destroy communities and social justice movements," reads a statement from Break the Chains, a Eugene group sponsoring a visit from the traveling Grand Jury Road Show from the San Francisco Bay Area. The group will make a public presentation at 7 pm Friday, Oct. 7 at the Morning Glory Cafe 400 Willamette. On the agenda will be information about how grand juries operate, how they are used as political tools of repression, ways people can respond to grand jury subpoenas, and how to support others in the community when they are targeted. For more information, e-mail breakthechains02@yahoo.com
HOEDOWN FOR THE FORESTS America's old-growth forests are on the chopping block as the Bush administration schemes to undercut logging restrictions and sidestep enforcement of environmental laws. Forest defenders are under more pressure than ever, but once a year they kick off their boots and do-si-do at the Hoedown for Cascadia's Ancient Forests. The big blow-out this year will be held at 6 pm Oct. 8 at the Avalon Stables in Cottage Grove. Dancing begins at 7 with the live old-time bluegrass music of the Dickel Brothers. A shuttle bus will leave from 4th and Willamette at 6 pm. All proceeds from the event go directly to the ancient forest protection work of the Cascadia Wildlands Project. Cost is $10-$50 sliding scale in advance, $15-$50 at the door, children 12 and under free. Food and drinks are included in the ticket price. Tickets are available at Tsunami Books, Cottage Grove's Bookmine and Kalapuya Books, and online at www.cascwild.orgFor more information, call 434-1463 or e-mail info@cascwild.org
Lightningbolt
& Mankiller Columbus Day falls on Oct. 10 this year, and, as usual, federal employees are given a day off in honor of the great explorer who fought through adversity to become the first European to set foot on American soil.
Something sounds fishy, you say? In 1492 Columbus did indeed sail the ocean blue, but he wasn't by any means the first European to drop anchor in the Americas. But, according to indigenous peoples rights activists, that recurring historical inaccuracy is only the beginning of the lies and myths surrounding the red-headed stepchild of national holidays. Activists could talk for hours about how observing Columbus Day as a national holiday reflects a much larger dynamic of falsehoods meant to justify the genocide of Native Americans and their culture, but an event at UO Oct. 10 is moving that message in a different direction. Indigenous Solidarity Day is a "take back the day" event. Indigenous peoples at UO and around the world will be celebrating the survival and continuation of the native cultures that bore the brunt of centuries of colonization. The theme "Conscious Unity for Our Common Survival" alludes to the idea that this isn't just about American Indians, but displaced and marginalized native peoples everywhere. "It's an event to raise awareness of issues happening in indigenous communities both locally and globally. It's really about gaining support," says Maria Cortez, assistant co-director of the UO Multicultural Center, The event is being hosted by the UO Ethnic Studies Department, the UO Multicultural Center, Native American Student Union and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. The entertainment at this free event starts at 10 am as live indigenous musicians take the UO Amphitheater stage. Tom Lightningbolt, revered flutist new to the Eugene area, will perform, as will conscious Native hip-hop artist Mighty Mike Martinez. At 3 pm community speakers take the stage, including professor Chuck Hunt of the Sociology Department. But the highlight of the day is the duo of featured speakers, John Trudell and Wilma Mankiller, being brought in for the late afternoon Public Leadership Conversation in the EMU Ballroom.
Born of mixed tribal blood, Trudell is known as a champion of indigenous issues. He spent 18 months on Alcatraz Island during the Native American occupation of the out-of-use prison, where he first met Mankiller. Trudell is a writer, musician, activist, spoken-word poet, public speaker, Vietnam veteran, film actor and the former chairman of the American Indian Movement. He declines to pigeonhole his activism into any particular category. "I'm just me. Yes, I do different things. It's just who I am," Trudell says. "I try to be careful about labeling myself." Bob Dylan called Trudell's second album AKA Graffiti Man the best album of 1986, and Trudell acted in the films Thunderheart, On Deadly Ground and Smoke Signals. Not to mention a documentary of his life premiered at this year's Sundance to solid reviews. Trudell will always be known for fighting for the livelihood of his people. But he says violence is not the answer. "I advocate utilizing our intelligence clearly and coherently. If we react emotionally, we won't solve the problem. It's about trying to stimulate some thinking," he says. Mankiller is the first woman in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe. In 1985 she took over as principal chief of the Cherokee nation, the second largest tribe in U.S., and initially endured opposition mainly because of her gender. But she was re-elected in a landslide victory in 1987; then again in 1991. Her memoir Mankiller: A Chief and Her People was a national bestseller. Mankiller, whose name might have been given to an ancestor charged with protecting native Cherokee lands in Oklahoma, is arguably the most celebrated Cherokee, male or female, of the 20th century. Mankiller is in residence at the UO Ethnic Studies Program from Sept. 26 through Nov. 30 and will be teaching and giving public lectures (see www.morsechair.uoregon.edu). "She represents to me the true definition of a warrior. It's more than going out and fighting. It's about going out and serving your people," says Trudell. The Indigenous Solidarity Day's mixture of festivity and education goes on all day Monday, Oct.10, at the UO Amphitheater. Music and art will begin at 10 am, community speakers at 3 pm, Trudell's poetry at 5:30 pm and the Public Leadership Conversation with Trudell and Mankiller in the EMU Ballroom at 7 pm. It's all free.
Reverse
Robin Hood Lane County governments have come up with a solution to how to fund the huge increase in cops and jails they want — stick it to the poor and give the rich a tax break. Ten out of 12 of the local governments taking part in a county task force committee backed a massive $60 million per year sales tax last week to about double county spending on jails, prosecutors and cops. The proposal also includes a proposal to reduce property taxes that will largely benefit big business and the rich. The sales tax will fall hardest on the poor. The county's own consultant reported last month, "Sales taxes are inherently regressive: households with less income usually will pay a greater percentage of their income for taxes." Economists have found this is so because poor people spend almost all their income, and often more, on things they need to subsist. But more wealthy people have the luxury of saving and investing large parts of their income, and are more likely to travel and shop outside the county. Nationwide, the average state sales tax takes about 7 percent of the income of the poor, while it takes only about 1 percent of the income of the wealthiest taxpayers, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a national fair tax group, reported. The county could exempt some basic items to lessen the burden, such as groceries and medicine. But that would only have a small impact on the basic unfair regressivity of the tax, economists have found. The Oregon Center for Public Policy, an advocacy group for the poor, has reported, "Exempting food sales and other necessities makes a sales tax less regressive, but only to a small degree. Most of the state and local tax systems that place the highest tax burden on low-income households have sales taxes that exempt sales of food and other necessities, such as prescription drugs." Washington state's sales tax, for example, "takes 4.7 percent of the income of low-income households and only 0.8 percent of the income of the richest one percent of households, despite the fact that Washington does not tax sales of food." The county's sales tax would be made even more unfair by the inclusion of a proposal to use about half of the sales tax revenue to reduce county property taxes. Research shows this tax shift would be a windfall for the rich and big businesses at the expense of the poor. Property taxes hit the poor relatively less hard than sales taxes. Nationally, the state sales tax burden on the poor is about three times higher than the property tax burden, according to an ITEP report. For the rich, sales taxes and property taxes take about an equal percentage of their high incomes. Businesses pay about half of all property taxes and out of state shareholders will get a big windfall from the property tax reduction while largely not paying the retail sales tax. The proposal would reduce property taxes by about $1 per $1,000 of assessed value. That property tax cut will save the Hynix Corporation about $571,000 a year, Weyerhaeuser $374,000 and Qwest $244,000 a year, based on assessed values. The roughly half of Lane County residents who rent, including most of the county's poor people, won't get any of the property tax break. It's unlikely landlords will pass on the property tax break windfall to their tenants. Most of the tax money would go to fund more jail beds, cops and prosecutors. Only about 11 percent of the money would go towards crime prevention and treatment programs, which are popular with Eugene voters because they are proven to save millions on expensive cops and jails. Under the measure Eugene residents will pay more taxes to subsidize $1.6 million in rural deputies in communities that in the past have refused to pay higher taxes for the service. Eugene taxpayers may also have to subsidize the Springfield jail under the measure. After Springfield representatives issued an ultimatum that they wouldn't support the measure without it, nine of the task force members voted to include an additional $2 million for the Springfield facility. It's unclear that all the extra law enforcement muscle is even needed. Despite years of dire warnings from the county that law enforcement is severely underfunded, local serious crime rates have been holding about level or declining for the past decade. Besides prisons, cops and prosecutors, a sixth or more of the county measure would go to pad the county's general fund and "sustain county service levels." Hidden in the measure is also a provision that would allow the county to spend untold millions more on new offices using the months of "lapse" — the time between when it starts to collect the taxes and actually starts providing the services. The sales tax proposal would likely go down in flames at the polls. State sales tax measures have failed by wide margins nine times in Oregon. A county survey this year found only 45 percent support for a sales tax, even with the property tax reduction component. Recognizing this, the county proposal would impose the tax without a public vote. Voters could refer the tax to the ballot, but would have to gather more than 7,000 signatures in less than 90 days. Another option would be to pursue a less regressive tax. A proposal for a business gross receipts tax (GRT) was supported by 8 of the 12 local governments on the task force. A GRT imposed on a percentage of business sales would be fairer than a sales tax in that businesses would help with the tax burden. But a GRT could also have a similar regressive impact on consumers if it's passed through to local retail sales prices for groceries and other necessities, according to ITEP. Of course, many consumers of local business products are also outside the county. A GRT on revenue rather than profits would have the advantage of not allowing businesses to dodge it with accounting schemes that reduced profits on paper. But it also could have an unfair impact on businesses with small profit margins on large sales volumes. The county could make the GRT more fair by exempting smaller businesses. Businesses with more than $1 million per year in revenues represent about 95 percent of gross receipts. Although a GRT could be set at a low rate, it would have the problem of pyramiding. For example, salsa sold in a local grocery could be hit four times by the tax as it passes from farmer, to manufacturer, to wholesaler to retailer. A more direct way to get to a fair tax would be an income tax on the rich and on corporations. An income tax surcharge of 14 percent piggy backed on the state income tax liability for tax returns over $100,000 would raise about $19 million, based on EW analysis of county data. A corporate tax of about 2 percent would generate about $6 million more. Corporations and the wealthy could easily afford the tax, which would be levied on only the richest 6 percent of county residents.
Healing
Our Wounds
Ruth Koenig grew up in Scotia, New York and came to Eugene in 1966. Now retired, she has worked in Eugene as a teacher, community education coordinator and developer of the Eugene Stream Team. She is involved with a variety of local organizations, including Central Presbyterian Church and a range of community health, environmental and multi-cultural groups. What's your history with the civil rights movement? The critical point for me was the Birmingham bombing of September '63, when four little girls died because someone put a bomb in their church. I thought, How can someone willfully do that? That's what propelled me to join the Mississippi Freedom Summer in July of '64, when I was 23. It wasn't that I thought I was going to make a difference or be in any kind of leadership position. I just wanted to understand better and help in any way I could. What happened during the Mississippi Freedom Summer? Young black folks were the organizers, and there were three prongs to their idea: Freedom Schools to help kids of color understand their history and culture, voter registration drives and community centers. It was really questionable as to whether or not they were going to encourage whites to participate in this massive effort at voter registration. They made the decision to bring whites in because they felt that until and unless Northern whites truly understood what was going on in the South, they couldn't expect substantial change. There's something to be said for reaching out to people who wouldn't necessarily care about injustice until it touches their lives directly. Exactly. That's where we get to reparations. When will we ever acknowledge what we did in Vietnam? Ask how many people died in Vietnam and people will go "Uh, 58,000." Americans. How many people died? Several million. And children are still being born with brains outside their skulls because of what we did there. Was there complete solidarity between the whites and blacks involved in Freedom Summer, or was it tense? The only people we could trust that summer were local black people. Any time I've talked about the Freedom Summer, I've said that white people think it's a really neat thing that we did. But the people who took the greatest risk were those black folks in Mississippi who were risking their lives all the time. They were shot at, arrested, beaten. If they rented a place, they could be kicked out. If they owned a place, it could be burned down. If they had a job, they could lose it. And they could be killed. But when you stood with other people involved in this project, and you crossed arms and stood in stifling heat with everyone perspiring profusely, and you sang "We Shall Overcome," there was something there that was far greater than the individuals involved, and I never quite felt that way again. How does your faith play into your commitment to civil rights? When I was a very little child in Sunday school, an image was presented to me of the life of Christ and what that meant: that people should be with and for one another throughout the world. That faith has driven my work for social justice in the United States, Nicaragua and South Africa. What are your hopes and concerns for the social justice movement today? Every age calls for examination and discernment. Today, we're talking about reparations. How does healing happen? If you have a wound that heals over with an infection in there, that infection will probably get worse. There has to be some way in which we acknowledge our history and lay it open, some concrete form of apology, and then some sort of reparation. An apology alone can be a hollow thing, and it doesn't address all of the problems that have occurred in the wake of history. What kinds of reparations do you envision? I wouldn't be the person to have that vision, but I can tell you what I've read and heard. I know there are folks who feel that money should be given to individuals. In 1988, Congress gave Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II $20,000 each. How do you ever say that that compensated people for what was taken from them, whether it was their homes, businesses or dignity? With regard to the African American community, if you want to see some truth about our history, watch the film Rosewood. It's about a massacre in Florida in 1923. A white woman accused a black man of rape, and the white population of that small community just erupted and burned and hung and mutilated the African American folks. Seventy years later, reparations were paid to victims still living and relatives of those killed. What are some non-monetary forms of reparations? I've read about reparations to provide access to educational, cultural and economic opportunities, health care services and loans for housing, land and preservation of sacred sites. Reparations might also include acknowledgments, apologies and "truth and reconciliation" sessions. Some local activities are interesting examples. At Lane Community College there is a program, "Rites of Passage Summer Academy," for African American, Asian American, Latino and Native American students in grades 6 through 12. The various culture clubs offered within schools, local cultural centers and festivals could receive support through reparations. Another local example is the Northwest Indian Language Institute, based in Eugene. It seems particularly appropriate that government funds be provided for this, since it was government policies that took Native children from their families and forbade the use of Native languages in the boarding schools. It seems to me that if the U.S. government were to offer reparations, it would have to offer them to just about every citizen of color in the nation. Would that be possible, given the current debt and the money we're pouring into bombs? That's exactly where I'd go. If we have money to go to the moon, if we have money to go and kill hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, but we don't have money to right the wrongs of our history, what do we stand for as a people?
Riding
High It's safe to say that Aaron Olson has a more exciting career than most of his 1996 South Eugene High School graduating class. Olson, now a 27-year-old professional cyclist on track to fame and fortune, has already lived in Europe on two separate occasions, traveled Asia with a cycling team and has pretty much worked his own hours since he was 18.
"Some guys go to college and get girlfriends, get married and have kids," he says. "And other people decide that there are things that they want to do more." For Olson, that thing was riding his bike. Specifically, it was riding his bike faster and more often than almost anyone in the world. "I was just kind of driven as a kid to do something that I felt was productive and cycling gave me something to do to stay out of trouble," he says. "I trained hard and started getting good at it. Anything you get good at you just want to do more." With his extremely demanding training came success. And with that success came even more vigorous training. "He really has a tremendous work ethic," says his father, Ron. "It's nothing for him to go out and ride four, five hours a day with no one pushing him at all." "I remember one time we were out riding and it was a cold winder day," says his high school friend Ashley Smith. "We probably did 50 or 60 miles in the rain. I'm getting ready to peel off and go home and he's getting ready to go out and do another 20 mile loop. That was just the typical Olson." His continual rise through the cycling ranks led to his most recent contract signing — two years with Spain's Saunier Duval-Prodir, one of the top 10 racing teams in the world. In December he'll move to Spain and begin training with his new 25-person team, nine of whom will compete in the 2006 Tour de France. "It's the highest level of cycling you can do in the world," he says. "I have all the best equipment in the world. For that reason I just have to do my job, represent my sponsors and see how far I can go from there." Olson's first taste of Europe came when he was just 17 after qualifying for the U.S. Junior National Team. He loved the idea of seeing the world through cycling and quickly came to embrace the European lifestyle. "I knew a lot of kids on the team who hated Europe because they didn't have conveniences like washers and dryers, but that didn't bother me because I think about it a little more," he says. "I like it over there." "I think it really helped him," said his mother, Sharon, regarding his first trip to Europe. "I don't know if it was a worldview but I could tell a big difference when he left home with the national guys." Two years later he qualified for the U.S. National Team and traveled to Okinawa, Japan. There he met his current girlfriend, Kim Anderson, who was a member of the U.S. Women's National Team at the time. "He's probably one of the nicest cyclists and nicest people out there," says Anderson. "Every teammate he's ever had has nothing but great things to say about him. Just on and off the bike he's just really a genuine person." It's not just his girlfriend who will attest to Olson's character either. Smith says he's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. His dad says that fairness has always been one of his most virtuous traits. His mom just shrugs off similar compliments, saying "you always hope that your kids are really polite." The last two years have been particularly successful for Olson. He signed a pro contract with Colavita/ Bolla in 2004 and his continually strong finishes carried over to 2005. He's still getting better and he believes that his maturity has caught up with his talent and that he's ready to take the next step. "I'm really happy," he says. "I wanted to go (to Europe) and felt like I was ready two years ago but now I'm really ready physically and mentally. The level is so hard over there — the speed and training. I'm looking forward to that and I want to make the most of it."
JONI DAWNING
"I've seen around 400 kids born in the Eugene area," says midwife Joni Dawning, who announced a sabbatical at her 50th birthday party in September. "I'm taking time to go outside pager range." Dawning gave birth to her own first child, Megan, in Pittsburg, Kan., in 1975. "It was a perfect hospital birth," she recalls. "I wound up feeling spiritually adrift." She began to study birthing practices, and soon was called to help with a home birth when the midwife was delayed. Later, she worked with pregnant women at a shelter as a VISTA volunteer, then had two more children, Quail and Breeze, at home, as a hippie homesteader in southern Oregon. "Their birth focused my interest on the couple's experience of giving birth together," says Dawning, who moved to Eugene in 1985 to study midwifery, but didn't pursue certification. "I prefer to think of myself as a lay midwife." She counts five ongoing play groups among her clients and stays in contact with several hundred people. "They call me for advice about canning or chickens," she says. "I help people create community." In the photo, Dawning poses with her fourth child, 8-year-old Amelina. -by Paul Neevel
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