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The FBI has handed out at least two subpoenas for local activists to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the March 30 Romania car dealership arson. Activists complain that the subpoenas to testify June 20 are the latest in a police campaign of politically motivated harassment. Phil Weaver of Eugene CopWatch says police showed up at the door of two local gardeners early Monday morning, April 30 with a search warrant to seize the gardeners' work truck. When the two went to pick up the truck at the state police lab two days later, they were given subpoenas for the grand jury. "This definitely is an example of harassment," Weaver says. "It's really intimidating." Federal Public Defender Bryan Lessley says he's been contacted by two people who have been subpoenaed. If they refuse to testify, they could be jailed until they agree to talk, he says. Grand jury witnesses must testify behind closed doors without a lawyer present, Lessley says. Grand jury testimony can be used against the witness or others at a later criminal trial. Witnesses can take the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination, but usually only if the federal prosecutor identifies the person as a subject of the investigation facing possible charges. Lessley declined to name the two activists subpoenaed or say whether the prosecutor had identified them as witnesses or suspects in the arson investigation. A grand jury "is used by the federal government to break up political movements -- as a political witch hunt," says Henry Hutto. Hutto, 47, spent 45 days in jail in 1990 for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the 1986 release of cats, rabbits and other animals from a UO research lab. Hutto says he took the 5th Amendment, but prosecutors used a grant of limited immunity to try to compel him to testify. Hutto says he never talked, but the government had to release him from jail anyway after the 180-day term of the grand jury expired. Hutto says grand jury subpoenas usually mean "they don't have a whole lot of evidence" in their investigation. "They're trying to create some way of identifying people whether they're guilty or not." "The grand jury process itself is pretty intimidating and it's designed to be that way," Hutto says. He advises activists to stick together, get good lawyers and "don't be intimidated. You have certain constitutional rights." In addition to the subpoenas, several activists complained that they believe the FBI is using surveillance and wiretaps against local activists and reading their mail. The activists cite bizarre beeps, clicks and interruptions on their phones. One activist says a snatch of a phone conversation she had several months earlier was left as a voice mail message. Another activist, a student and single-mother of a toddler, says a friend told her that she saw police officers looking in the windows of her house. She says the vent door to the crawl space under her house had been tampered with and someone had left a crawling track under the house. She says she's found opened mail in her mailbox and never received some letters sent to her. The activist says she's been followed by cars when she's driving. Once, a man in a parked white car with dealer plates sat in front of her house from 6:30 am to 3:30 pm. "I'm not a paranoid person, but when someone sits in their car for that long looking at your house..." There is solid evidence that the FBI and local police in Oregon have escalated their efforts against local political activists that they consider "terrorists." Last fall, the FBI formed a "Joint Terrorism Task Force" composed of seven FBI agents, two IRS agents, eight Portland police officers and six other part-time officers from around the state including a Eugene police detective, according to a written agreement with the Portland police. The local FBI agent assigned to the task force, John Ferreira, declined to comment. Portland city commissioners objected to the vague definition of the mission of the task force "to identify and target for prosecution those individuals or groups who are responsible for Right Wing and/or Left Wing movements, as well as the acts of the anti-abortion movement and the Animal Liberation Front/Earth Liberation Front." "It sounds like something out of the Nixon administration," said City Commissioner Charlie Hales. "According to a lot of people in this state, this City Council would qualify as a left wing organization." He added, "Ralph Nader would qualify." The commissioners revised the language of the agreement to indicate that prosecuting criminal rather than political activity should be the mission of the task force. FBI supervisor Kevin Favreau told commissioners that the task force would respect the First Amendment. "If we can show that two or more people are involved in criminal activity where they utilize force or violence to try to enhance political or social change, that is our definition of terrorism," he said. He added that "advocating violence of some type" would also be investigated. But Portland CopWatch members testified that it remained unclear how the task force would define criminal terrorism. "What is 'criminal activity'?" asked Dan Handelman. "Is
it jaywalking? Is it standing in the middle of the street when a police officer tells
you not to?" Handelman called the terrorism task force's political focus a "pseudo
fascist" throwback to the McCarthy era.
About 300 moms, kids and friends marched from EWEB to the Owens Rose Garden in a Mothers Day protest for gun control as part of the national Million Mom March. In 1998 firearms killed 441 people in Oregon, including 19 children, according to 1998 state data. Guns were used in 334 suicides and 94 homicides. In Lane County guns killed 27 people in suicides and 11 in homicides. Nationally, guns kill 10 children a day, according to Million Mom March organizers. The U.S. gun death rate is 35 times that of England, which has tougher gun control laws. Studies indicate that the risk of homicide triples and suicide risk quintuples in homes with guns present. Sen. Ginny Burdick (D-Portland) is pushing two bills in the Legislature to ban all guns in schools and to require safe storage of guns in homes with children. Last session, Burdick's bill to require criminal background checks at gun shows failed in the Legislature by a single vote. Burdick rewrote the bill as an initiative and passed it as Measure 5 with a 62 percent vote. -- AP
According to the measure's proponents, the billions spent each year on administration and overhead could more than offset the costs of a single-payer Canada-style medical insurance system. Health Care for ALL-Oregon (HCA-O) would establish such a system within Oregon, paying for it through a sliding-scale payroll tax on employers and a similar tax on individuals' income. Employers would pay less than they do now to insure their employees, and individuals would pay less than they do now on services and co-payments. After that, all Oregonians would have free access to any licensed, certified or registered health-care practitioner -- including vision, mental health, dental and alternative practitioners. HCA-O formed around a virtually identical measure aimed at the 2000 ballot. Their efforts were effectively stalled by anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore and the insurance industry, says Ruth Duemler of Eugene. Sizemore and the industry offered procedural challenges to the measure that, while rejected by the state Supreme Court, left activists with only two months to gather the signatures they needed. The group is back, and members hit the streets again on May 8, and have until July 2002 to get the 67,000 signatures they need to make the ballot. HCA-O will hold an informational meeting at 7:30 pm Monday, May 21, in the Middle Room of the Community Building at EWEB, 500 E. 4th Ave. For more information, contact Duemler at 484-6145 or ruthd@efn.org.-- Orna Izakson BUFORD'S
TROJAN HORSE
A greenway permit is required in the area in addition to all other building permits. Several restrictions are in place, including a caveat that any future construction would require a separate greenway permit. Thus the land is partially shielded from what conservationists term "segmentation," or the gradual breaking up of protected land beginning with small building projects. Segmentation is a key issue for opponents of the new office building. Tom Pringle compares the office's construction to a "Trojan Horse," saying once ground has been broken, it can be the beginning of citification. Why build at all? Proponents note that the park staff is losing its office space rented in the Emerald People's Utility District (EPUD) building at the end of the summer. Volunteers and staff often complain about EPUD's inconvenient location 2 1/2 miles from the arboretum, the lack of space and scant public access. The new building will have room for classes, storage of supplies, and a place for Pisgah educator Fran Rosenthall's natural history library. The park's mission statement says the park is intended to showcase "beauty" and to "promote conservation," but also "assist education." The building site is close to the parking lot, not too near the forest; however, Debra Noble, a concerned citizen, notes that the location is still unfortunate because "the Ridgeline Trail is being impinged upon." The building would rest almost directly on the trailhead. Pringle also questions legal aspects of the office building, noting that the building will be outside the urban growth boundary, and therefore have no water rights or water facilities. Pringle laments the changes the park is undergoing: "Where are we gonna draw the line? What are we gonna have left?" Palmer says the office is necessary for "managing the arboretum," and "one of my chief objectives in life is that this [park] will survive in the long run." -- Jillian Daley
The movement to educate the general public about sexual violence often suffers major setbacks as assaults frequently go unreported and survivors often never speak up. Locally, however, organizations and volunteers are committed to raising public awareness. One such organization is Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS), Eugene's volunteer-run crisis center, which, in cooperation with the ASUO Women's Center, has organized this year's Take Back The Night March, to be held Thursday, May 17. The march assembles at the EMU at 6:30 pm for sign-making and music, followed by a rally and march to 8th and Oak. The night is capped off by performances from a drumming group and from the Young Women's Theatre Collective, followed by a speak-out, which encourages survivors to express their feelings. The event occurs as part of SASS's observation of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Other SASS-sponsored events occurring this month: -- Participants can create T-shirts to be part of the Clothesline Project, which is displayed all across the country as a way of "airing out society's dirty laundry." The project is designed to show the public that sexual assault can happen to anybody, and it often does. T-shirts can be made from 10 am to 5 pm Thursday, May 17, in the Alsea Room, EMU, UO. The Clothesline Project will be displayed at the Take Back The Night march, at the Trude Kaufman Senior Center Friday at 2 pm, at the Springfield Library for the week of the 21st, and at the Cottage Grove Library May 29-31. -- A Poetry of Survival reading will be at 7 pm May 31 at Tsunami Books, where survivors and their supporters will read original and favorite poems. -- The next SASS volunteer training is from 9 am to 5 pm June 2, at Willamette Valley Cancer Center. Call 484-9791, ext. 317, for more information. -- Quail Dawning
"The Willamette National Forest has had a successful, intentional policy of ridding itself of roadless areas for the past 20 years," says George Sexton, watershed coordinator in American Lands Alliance's Eugene office. "What we've got in our back yard is a heavily roaded, fragmented ecosystem where 99 percent of the logging takes place in watersheds that have already been trashed." Most of the large unroaded areas in the Willamette already have designations that offer some protections, he adds. Leeanne Siart of the Oregon Natural Resources Council says the local forest has 6,400 miles of roads across it's 1.6 million acres. Approximately 9 percent of the forest, or about 144,000 acres, would fall under the roadless rule. Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland, says the Idaho ruling was not a surprise. "We hope the Bush administration abandons any attempts to implement this fatally flawed rule." ONRC's Siart is equally convinced of just the opposite: "We are confident that the judge's decision will be reversed when appealed in the Ninth Circuit" Court of Appeals. -- Orna Izakson
This year, the city is charging boot fines on a sliding scale. If you owe $40 to $60, the boot will cost you $30 to remove. The fines go up to $75 to get unbooted if you owe over $200. Of course, you also have to pay the overdue parking tickets. -- AP
Since February 1999, the Eugene Newspaper Guild has asked the R-G's owners to give union members the right to buy the paper by matching a top bid should it ever go up for sale. On April 20, the company finally answered, but its position paper didn't only say the paper wasn't for sale, it said the Guild couldn't afford to buy it. "We wonder how a union that refuses to pay its 50 percent of a meeting room, complaining of the cost, can seriously be seeking to purchase The Register-Guard," the company said in an April 20 position statement, adding that it has "no desire to place any limitation on the company in this regard." Guild representatives say the meeting room issue is over management's insistence on renting outside space, despite years of using rooms in the office after working hours. Lance Robertson, the Guild's lead negotiator, says the owners are giving out conflicting messages. "They're saying the paper isn't for sale, but we're not going to give you this because we might sell it," he says. "To say -- we don't have the money in our bank account is true, but neither did the company have $40 million in its bank account to build a new printing plant and office building on Chad Drive," Robertson adds. Like any other prospective purchaser, the Guild would have to buy the paper the old fashioned way: with a loan. The Guild also wants the contract to require any purchaser to honor agreements with the union, but management isn't interested in that kind of constraint. "They use the same argument that 'the paper isn't for sale, but if it were for sale we wouldn't agree to that,'" Roberston says. "They basically say it would hinder being able to sell the paper."-- Orna Izakson
"We hope to be able to introduce our newly hired Lane County advocate, who will work to uphold our land use laws in Lane County," says Rob Zako of FoE. The organization has been raising money in collaboration with LandWatch and 1000 Friends to open a joint office in Eugene this summer. Political commentator Russell Sadler of Ashland will be the keynote speaker at the annual meeting. He will ask, "Can we keep Oregon, Oregon? And what is Oregon Anyway?" He says, "The answer, of course, is that Oregon is a state of mind as well as a physical place. The discussion is whether we have so many newcomers who do not share our state of mind and are not interested in learning that we may be losing the consensus that made Oregon, Oregon." State Rep. Vicki Walker is expected to speak briefly about the current legislative session. State Sen. Susan Castillo will also offer her perspective if her schedule permits her to attend. The event is free and open to the public. FoE can be found on the web at http://friends.FriendsOfEugene.org -- TJT
The Center offers wellness programs for all women, including Qigong, expressive movement with Mary Seereiter, macrobiotic cooking, drumming with Jill Sager, journaling, yoga and more. To celebrate the new location, the center will host an open house from 5 to 7 pm May 23 at 1250 Charnelton. The evening will include music, food, free massage and important information, including an introduction to the library and a chance to meet the staff of the Cascade Integrated Health Center. Call Hopeline at 681-9272 for more information. -- AS
-- In our "Sale Area 132" story May 10, the "Charter" mentioned in the story is Richard Charter, marine conservation advocate for Environmental Defense. -- Two sources were misnamed in our May 10 cover story, "And Education for All." Anne Brown is the executive director of COPE and John Lehmann is special education director for District 4J.
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Scott
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