Do Better on Balling
The “Balling on a Budget” article is a disappointing read. As a craft beer enthusiast, business owner [A Beer Club] and longtime Eugene resident, I find it embarrassing. The writer, Eve Weston, shows little understanding or respect for a thriving industry that’s central to Eugene’s culture. Confusing bitterness with sourness in IPAs, or describing a porter as “buttery,” signals a lack of basic beer knowledge.
The editor should not have let this piece go to print. Rather than showcasing the depth and diversity of our local scene, it reads like a narrow, careless snapshot. Almost “a day in the life” of a penniless drunk. Visiting one taphouse, two breweries, a restaurant and a couple of convenience stores is not research — it’s neglect. Craft beer is rooted in community and quality and neither is meaningfully represented here.
We live in a fermentation hub, in a true golden age of beer, wine, cider and spirits. Award-winning local producers and world-class establishments define this region, many fostering inclusive, welcoming spaces. Releasing this issue on the same day as the Oregon Beer Awards only underscores the missed opportunity. Including results from one of the most competitive beer events in the world would have added relevance and credibility to the Cap and Cork issue.
Local businesses work tirelessly to bring exceptional products to market, and this article glosses over those efforts. If the goal was a cheap, generic take with little connection to Eugene, it succeeded.
Do better, EW.
George Keim
Eugene
Editor’s Note: We included the local Oregon Beer Award event, but could not include the awards as they came out more than 24 hours after the issue was published. Sorry, signed the non-beer expert editor and her reporter who did the cheap beer crawl story in question.
Trump and We the People
For decades, my family and I have been grateful for the Weekly’s political coverage, especially during trying times. Today, we are experiencing the very worst in my lifetime.
Our president bullies like a deeply insecure teenage boy. His adolescent name-calling and his desperate need to emblazon his name on multiple sites are cause for national embarrassment. I fear that our younger generation will regard this kind of disrespectful, narcissistic and virtually unprecedented dialogue as normal in our democracy.
As death and destruction increase each day through his aimless war-making, “we the people” need to exert control over our bone-spurs president. That requires our Legislature to stand up. Perhaps we need to enact a national service requirement so that our legislators, fearing that their children (or grandchildren) may be drafted, will decide to act and not continue to simply ignore all the working-class boots on the ground.
Michael Rooke-Ley, professor of law emeritus
Eugene
Watersheds Bill of Rights
We make our nest in the branches, valleys, plains and waters of nature and we grant ourselves the legal right to overwhelm nature. Balance is needed in that relationship. An important measure, the Watersheds Bill of Rights, will be on the May 19 Lane County election ballot which would move us towards that balance.
Martha & Peter Dragovich
Eugene
As University of Oregon Students, We are Devastated
Elizabeth Cardenas Figueroa and Erik Munene Njue should be sitting in lecture halls, laughing with friends and planning their lives after college. Instead, their futures were cut short because Eugene’s streets failed to keep them safe.
Figueroa was 21 years old when she was killed at a crosswalk on Hilyard Avenue. Njue, a 30-year-old doctoral student, was killed in a bicycle crash at 22nd and Patterson. They had full lives ahead of them — contributions to the world that will now never be realized.
For many, especially international students, cycling is a necessity. As of 2023, 56 percent of UO students rely on non-motorized transportation. Yet every day, students cross the same streets where our peers were killed, knowing that one mistake — often not our own — can be fatal.
In the past five years, the city of Eugene has added more bike lanes and protected bike spaces. Yet there remains a great need, especially on roads that lack appropriate safety measures. “Vision Zero” — a commitment to zero pedestrian deaths in Eugene — rings hollow when cyclist deaths continue to occur.
Eugene must place greater emphasis on protecting cyclists. We urge community members who care about the safety of cyclists to contact the mayor, city council members and city planners at mayorcouncilandcitymanager@eugene-or.gov and ask them to evaluate Patterson’s traffic pattern and plan how to increase safety on that road.
Our peers’ lives should not have ended on streets that were supposed to keep them safe.
Annie Chenoweth, Charlie Wennerstrom, Easton Brandt, Emma Bahr, Harini Sachidhanand, Vaani Bindal and Valerie Owusu-Hienno
Students for Global Health
University of Oregon
Cowardly Feds
Has there ever been more cowardly law enforcement officers than those employed by the Department of Homeland Security?
Operating under the color of the law, they still feel the need to hide their faces, names and badge numbers from the public they serve.
In January, a Border Patrol Tactical Unit squad was sent from Portland to Eugene. I watched one day as over a dozen heavily armored members of this elite squad burst out of the building into the courtyard as if facing a dangerous felon. Instead, it was clear they had a specific target, a trans woman who was dancing in the courtyard. She had no armor, no firearm, no bulletproof vest.
They pepper sprayed her and others then carried two of them into the building, doing enough harm that an ambulance was called. This show of force and violence against unarmed, nonviolent women was the most cowardly act I have ever witnessed.
Now they claim to be under so much duress that they need a fence to protect them and plan to cut off most of the block in order to avoid hearing or seeing our disapproval of their actions.
It appears that the city of Eugene may choose to allow them to hide from our First Amendment protected protests by permitting this fence.
Please speak up and tell the city to not permit the fence. If they do anyway, then I invite you to join me at my new protest site — Eugene City Hall. I’ll be bringing my bullhorn, chalk and signs. Join me!
Jacob Griffin
Eugene
ONLINE EXTRA LETTERS
Climate, War and Guardrails
The recent cover story “Climate and War” (March 12) drew important parallels between the Trump administration’s assault on legal guardrails limiting the executive branch in climate regulation and military intervention. But the interconnectedness of climate change and war doesn’t stop there. Military conflict contributes huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere and the ramifications are massive, both locally for Iranians and their neighbors directly exposed to toxic pollution and globally for all of us who face the growing costs of the climate crisis. This war also reminds us of the importance of being able to produce our own energy close to home and provide for ourselves, so we are no longer forced to participate in a political and economic system that ties our ability to meet our needs with dictators and billionaires who make obscene profits off destruction and despair.
Oregon is making exciting changes and investments to support microgrids, balcony solar, and prioritizing energy-efficient electric systems in new construction, and University of Oregon, the city of Eugene and EWEB can all seize this opportunity to invest in a stronger future rather than continuing to sink money into a broken system. True resilience in a changing climate will come from electrifying, simplifying and creating stronger communities where we support our neighbors. The costs of continued fossil fuel dependence are here and climbing, and this horrific, illegal war is yet another reminder that we must choose a better way forward.
Meredith Tufts
Eugene
One Good Thing
These are difficult times — and that’s an understatement. Many of us feel hopeless, and with good reason. War, ICE, hunger…
There is one thing keeping my spirits up (apart from my dog and my garden) and it’s the quiet work being done by a small board created by the Legislature in 2023, charged with designing a publicly funded health plan covering everyone who lives in Oregon, which will provide their recommendations to the Legislature next year.
Learn more at Oregon.gov/uhpgb/about/Pages/about.aspx.
Let your friends know what an opportunity this is. Volunteer with Health Care for all Oregon (HCAO.org) to learn how you can help make this happen.
Jo Alexander
Corvallis
Substitute Teachers Deserve Fair Wages
I am a certified teacher in Eugene School District 4J, and I’m writing in support of the Eugene Association of Substitute Teachers (EAST), who are currently in contract negotiations. We already have a shortage of substitute teachers. This causes classrooms to be left without a substitute when many teachers are out sick on the same day, for example, when the flu is going around. When this happens, other teachers, counselors and instructional coaches scramble to cover those classrooms. It means those professionals cannot do their regular jobs, and our students suffer the consequences.
Being a substitute teacher is incredibly difficult. I’ve done it, and I watch others do it every day. I’m sure we all remember how our peers treated substitutes when we were kids. These hard-working professionals deserve to be paid extremely well. How can we attract qualified people to do the job without adequate pay?
I saw during the pandemic what happened when people without proper training were allowed to be substitute teachers. It was borderline unsafe.
I believe our licensed substitute teachers are absolutely essential to the function of our schools. They deserve to be paid a fair wage.
Jenny Potter
Springfield
Response to Jerry Ritter
In response to Jerry Ritter’s letter to the editor (EW, March 12) I think it’s a splendid idea for EW to afford an opportunity to David Loveall to personally set the record straight on his recorded remarks.
Mike Graves
Springfield
Dudley and the Death Penalty
I reached out to Oregon’s GOP gubernatorial candidate to inquire about his stance on Oregon’s ongoing moratorium of the death penalty. The response I received was canned and cited his campaign was seeking information from relevant stakeholders on a host of issues.
Well, Chris Dudley, as an Oregon voter, I am a stakeholder. I’ve waited long enough for a meaningful response.
I was pointed to his website for the campaign’s current stances and nowhere is there mention of the death penalty. That remains the case as of this writing.
This is a line in the sand issue for myself and many I know and we cannot have a candidate who is for the death penalty or who is too afraid to even engage the public on the subject.
Sam Parker
Eugene
Commissioner Buch
I heartily endorse every word that Milagra Taylor wrote in praise of County Commissioner Heather Buch in the March 26 EW, and it will be my great pleasure, being originally from Chicago, to vote for her in true Windy City fashion: i.e., early and often.
Mike Kopf
Eugene
Keep Eugene Safely Lit
Eugene’s city lights have become a recurring topic during public comment at City Council meetings, usually raised through a “DarkSky” lens. I respect the environmental concerns behind that advocacy, but there’s a major piece missing from the conversation: lighting is a public safety issue, and it matters for the people who actually move through this city after dark.
Most Eugene residents don’t have the option to avoid nighttime travel. We walk home from work, bike to the store, wait for the bus or navigate sidewalks that feel very different once the sun goes down. Well‑lit streets make it possible for people to feel safer simply getting around their own neighborhoods.
The traffic safety data is clear. Only a quarter of driving happens between 7 pm and 8 am, yet that window accounts for 40 percent of fatal and severe crashes. Visibility saves lives. It also deters crime. Well‑lit areas reduce the risk of robberies and assaults, cut down on vandalism and property crime and make commercial areas feel welcoming instead of abandoned.
I support responsible lighting design and the city’s shift to LEDs, which save money and reduce emissions. As an animal advocate, I turn off my own exterior lights during peak bird migration. Individual choices matter. But citywide lighting is different. It’s basic infrastructure for personal safety, traffic safety and community well‑being.