Slant

WTF dog ban?

When the president of your country talks violently about women, what message does that send? That was one of the niggling questions that came out of the March 10 City Club of Eugene program on “Cruelty to Women, Here and Now.” Rachel Collins of Womenspace and Dr. Don Davies from the McKenzie River Men’s Center rolled out the cruel data: One in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes; more than nine percent of our homeless are there because of domestic violence; globally, more deaths result from domestic violence than from wars. What to do about it? The answer was “get more involved” at every level, and we would add, resist messages of violence against women from the top down.

Tomi Douglas, director of Eugene’s Cultural Services Division since 2013, announced her resignation on March 14, effective April 6. A sometimes-flamboyant thinker in the local arts scene, Douglas championed popular arts events like (sub)Urban Projections, a free music, lights and dance party in the lobby of the Hult Center, but drew fire from visual artists over the city’s declining support for the now-defunct Jacobs Gallery. She cited health reasons for her departure and is returning to Portland, where she previously worked for former Mayor Sam Adams. Stepping in as interim director is Benjamin Klipfel.

• The Eugene City Council voted March 8 to ban dogs downtown until November in an attempt to get rid of the homeless and we are flabbergasted — as apparently are the many angry Eugeneans commenting on social media. The council did not vote a proposed smoking ban into place. This leaves us with a lot of questions: What will it cost to put up signs and enforce the ban? And when you add that cost to what the city paid to install fences under the bridges in Washington Jefferson Park, you wonder again how Eugene might have used those resources towards a shelter for the homeless? Why are dogs considered more dangerous than cigarettes, which are proven to be much more lethal than dogs. When the city says that the dog ban near the UO campus was successful, is it taking into account the fact it pushed the unhoused folks on 13th Avenue downtown? When is the city going to take steps to help the unhoused instead of move them around and hope they somehow disappear?