Focus on Bike Safety, not Homeless Harassment
On Feb. 18, the Eugene City Council voted 5-2 against a proposed ordinance to criminalize passing money from a car to homeless people. Only councilors Randy Groves and Matt Keating voted for it, so put them on your political shit list.
Groves kept claiming that this is a safety issue when everyone knows it’s about getting the homeless out of the sight of the respectable folks. Keating is the council windbag.
Councilor Alan Zelenka said this is not a safety issue and there is no data that shows it’s a problem.
Councilor Lyndsie Leech agreed and said they should be focusing on the real issue of pedestrian and bike safety.
Councilor Eliza Kashinsky said the ordinance would not change behavior and would not be a good use of city resources to enforce it. She said we have plenty of data on what causes most traffic deaths and that’s where we should put our resources.
Mayor Kaarin Knudson said there is a lack of Eugene Police Department focus on driving and a need to redesign streets for safety. We need to support homeless services and prioritize police services so they are used most effectively.
Councilor Jennifer Yeh said the police don’t have time for this.
I’m glad to see the council finally drive a stake through the heart of this very bad idea. They need to stop harassing the homeless and do a lot more to help them.
Lynn Porter
Eugene
Council Chose the Wrong Side of Safety
The Eugene City Council keeps saying it cares about traffic safety, but its vote against the roadway safety ordinance tells a different story. This was the smallest possible step toward reducing risk in busy intersections. It asked drivers to stop handing things out of car windows in moving traffic. That is not controversial. It is basic harm reduction.
Instead of taking that step, several councilors leaned on the idea that there is no data. That argument ignores what both Chief Chris Skinner and Councilor Randy Groves explained clearly. The data does not exist because the reporting system does not track whether someone was panhandling. Pretending that a lack of data means a lack of danger is not responsible policymaking. It is avoidance.
Mike Clark’s vote was especially surprising. He talks constantly about traffic safety and personal responsibility, yet he ignores the judgment of both the former fire chief and the police chief. When people who have spent decades responding to collisions say this would reduce risk, that should matter.
Eugene deserves a council that can recognize a simple safety improvement when it sees one. This was not a sweeping policy. It was not an attack on people who panhandle. It was a small, practical fix that would have made our streets a little safer. Council chose not to take it and that was the wrong call.
Curtis Taylor
Eugene
Morally Equivalent?
Kim Leval is obviously right that breaking a window is not morally equivalent to killing or injuring a human being, but she is just as obviously wrong in suggesting that those who raise concerns about protest tactics are too “quick to side with the real violent agitators — ICE and other federal police.” (“Polite?” EW Feb. 12). This is an insult to many who care about this crisis, no less than Leval does. I’m sure it’s exhilarating to shatter windows, but it’s a stupid thing to do. It results only in new windows and footage for mass media, which hurts the cause.
Great advances in civil rights were earned last century not by acts of vandalism but by the courage and commitment to nonviolence on the part of young black (and some white) protesters, who endured, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, bloody beatings, fire-hosing, tear-gassing and long jail time in their pursuit of justice. They practiced good trouble, to borrow John Lewis’s phrase. It’s not about being too polite. It’s about moral strength and pragmatic strategy. There are many ways to protest nonviolently, as Leval suggests. If those aren’t enough for you, don’t throw rocks. Look to the civil rights leaders. Make it mean something when you go to jail.
John Daniel
Elmira
PeaceHealth Emergency Outsourcing Proposal
No! No! No! No! No!
PeaceHealth seeking a corporation to run our emergency department is so wrong headed. Can’t people see that the corporatization of our entire health care system is a large part of what is wrong with it today? Corporations have shareholders and shareholders expect profits. Personally, I don’t believe that there should be profit making from health care. It should not be treated like a commodity.
Corporations have dictated the cost of drugs and the time your doctor can spend with you as well as what he/she can order to diagnose or how to treat you.
And corporate run insurance companies with their “managed care” because the bottom dollar is the most important thing to them, are also at fault — rejecting or questioning good claims and giving clients such a run-around that they give up their appeal in frustration.
Kathy Tiger
Eugene
Solar Panels
I am delighted to see more affordable housing units planned, as long as they are not plain, flat concrete boxes but have some three-dimensional aspect to them and are not black.
But more important than that — I have been disturbed that so many new buildings have been constructed in Eugene, tall enough to have perfect exposure to sunlight and not one has solar panels on the roof — at least not that I can see. The Eugene building code should require this, as solar installations are less costly during construction than when installed later — if at all.
I hope that this issue will be considered during the next council meeting and that the result of the discussion will be published.
Heidi Sachet
Eugene
ONLINE EXTRA LETTERS
Stop Animal Suffering
Just about everyone has heard that CS Beef Packers in Kuna recalled nearly 23,000 pounds of potentially contaminated ground beef products that were shipped throughout Idaho, California and Oregon. However, relatively few humans have thought about all the animals who were killed to make the meat. We mustn’t overlook their needless deaths.
When cows are very young, they’re often branded with hot irons, their horns are cut or burned off and males are castrated — all without painkillers. At the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside-down, their throats are slit and they are skinned and gutted. Some remain conscious through the entire process. It’s no wonder these gentle giants go to great lengths to escape from slaughterhouses. They value their lives, just as humans value ours.
The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service typically warns consumers to cook beef to a minimum of 160 degrees Fahrenheit to kill bacteria, but it’s best to avoid animal-derived foods if you want to live healthily, stop animal suffering and combat the climate catastrophe. For more information and a free vegan starter kit, see PETA.org.