Eugene Weekly : Views : 3.15.07

Viewpoint:
A Misinformed Public
Corporate media vs. democracy
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Below are selected comments on media made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the UO March 1. He and Vandana Shiva were keynote speakers opening the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.

Barry Goldwater said corporations are designed to plunder, and if we let them anywhere near our government, they are going to plunder the American people. [Read More]

 

Viewpoint:
Suing Alters Behavior
But don’t expect apologies
BY ELDEN ROSENTHAL

Elden Rosenthal is a Portland civil rights lawyer well known and respected in Lane County courtrooms. He recently advocated for several of the women abused by Eugene police officers Lara and Magaña. In Portland his most famous recent client was Brandon Mayfield, falsely accused and jailed for the Madrid bombings. That’s the level of lawyering that moved the ACLU Foundation of Oregon to give Rosenthal one of Oregon’s most prestigious honors, the E.B. MacNaughton Civil Liberties Award, on March 3 in Portland. EW is proud to bring our readers the text of his remarks at the award dinner. We believe civil liberties in this America need the fiercest advocacy that Elden Rosenthal, the American Civil Liberties Union and the rest of us can muster.

I decided I wanted to become a lawyer when I was a junior in high school. I took my first constitutional law class as an undergrad at UCLA and found it fascinating. I decided I wanted to try cases and joined a plaintiff’s personal injury firm here in Portland. My first civil rights case came almost immediately. I represented an Hispanic NGO that was trying to enforce new government regulations designed to keep school age Hispanic children in school and out of the fields. But it was strawberry season, and as I quickly learned, Oregonians at that time, the early ’70s, believed that picking strawberries was a time honored ritual for school age children and that school was not as important as picking strawberries. The case was argued before a three-judge federal panel in Portland, and, although we won, procedural delay gave the farmers one last season of underage cheap labor. [Read More]

 

Living Out:
Rally, I Do
Chant for equal rights
BY SALLY SHEKLOW

One, two, three, four, we won’t take it anymore! Five, six, seven, eight, the state should not discriminate!

Hundreds of pro-equality demonstrators rallied on Oregon’s Capitol steps March 7 to call for what now seems the very likely passage of — at long freaking last — nondiscrimination and civil unions laws. Not exactly your angry torch-and-pitchfork mob, but our rainbow gathering of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people and fabulous allies made our presence known. [Read More]