Eugene Weekly

• Oregon’s minimum wage goes up 15 cents an hour to $9.25 in January, thanks to a ballot measure in 2002 that tied the minimum wage to inflation. But of course an extra $26 a month in pay won’t bring Oregon’s estimated 72,000 working-poor households out of poverty. Seven out of 10 poverty-level families have at least one parent who is employed, often full-time at minimum wage or above. The Oregon Legislature in 2015 is expected to try to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and Republican die-hards will object, saying thousands of jobs will be lost. Continue reading →

• Our Give Guide has expanded from less than a page in years past to the multiple pages you see this week. Eugene is home to hundreds of nonprofits doing exceptional work locally and around the world, so our list is far from complete. Why are we such a thriving center for nonprofits, much more so than other communities our size? Continue reading →

• Parting is such sweet sorrow: Since Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota won the Heisman last week — and won it decisively — he ceased to be just another great UO athlete. If he wasn’t already, Mariota is now a national celebrity, evidenced by his immediate appearance on network television  Dec. 15 when he read the Top Ten list on “Late Night with David Letterman.” Letterman introduced Mariota as “a good-looking kid” from “your University of Oregon Ducks,” and he wasn’t talking to us, Eugene. Continue reading →

• Congrats to all players for ending the GTFF strike on the UO campus. We’re even pleased that we can stop honking our horns in solidarity with the picketing graduate teaching fellows marching for hours on end. Hopefully, this conflict will not be a forerunner for broader labor disputes at the university, now that the faculty is unionized. It should not be. The UO has a long history of working peacefully with unions, the SEIU, for instance, and the GTFF until this fall. Continue reading →

• The Graduate Teaching Fellows’ strike on the UO campus is still on as we go to press this week. Our sympathies have been with the GTF Federation since negotiations began, and we are baffled by the UO administration’s response, considering interim President Scott Coltrane’s background. Coltrane is described in a recent New York Times article as a sociologist who has done extensive research on issues central to these negotiations. He should have led the way in giving the GTFs two weeks of paid sick  and parental leave and a pay raise. Continue reading →

• As Tom Wolf once wrote, “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.” But apparently a grand jury won’t indict a cop. On Nov. 24, a grand jury in Missouri did not indict police officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man. As riots erupt in Ferguson again and across the country, we support both the anger of the protesters and the calls for peace. Continue reading →

• The fundraising effort to save historic Civic Stadium as a community center for kids’ sports, soccer and other activities is close to a Dec. 1 deadline and we urge everyone to contribute financially or volunteer to help raise money. USL Pro and W-League soccer at Civic would be a big economic boost for Eugene and Lane County. Soccer is popular across the economic divide, filling stadiums in the Northwest, and Eugene could be next. Continue reading →

• What happens if the kicker kicks next year? Our news brief this week talks about how the Constitution-mandated tax rebate could be a big problem for the state budget. What we hear through the English ivy vine (Eugene’s equivalent to the grapevine) is that Phil Knight might be holding back on giving the UO big challenge bucks this year because it could trigger the kicker and the state could lose up to $300 million in the next biennium, hurting education. Crazy scenario. Continue reading →

• It was ugly out there across America Tuesday night, but let’s give a cheer for Oregon, Washington and California, the left bank. Our state voted for legalized marijuana, for equal rights for women and against top-two primaries. We made some mistakes such as voting against increased student financial aid and denying legal driving to immigrants. We held the Democratic Legislature and supported reasonable people like Phil Barnhart, Peter DeFazio, Jeff Merkley and John Kitzhaber. Continue reading →