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Happening Person: UNION SUPPORT FOR MOTHER KALI'S Mother Kali's Books and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union will collaborate on The Black Cat Review benefit, 9 pm to midnight Friday, June 13. This benefit, celebrating the full moon and Friday the 13th, will include live music, poetry, and late night treats of champagne and chocolate. Proceeds will support both the local chapter of the union and the bookstore. IWW and Mother Kali's connected two months ago, when Mother Kali's current staff of four part-time employees and one full-time manager decided to unionize. Teri Ciacchi, manager since last December, explains that there have been "labor concerns and the [Mother Kali's] board has not addressed those concerns." Employees have run into problems such as freezes on hiring and raises, and lack of employment performance evaluations. Ciacchi also explains, "It's unusual for the manager to join the union, but it seemed the only way for the employees to have any power here." Since unionizing, Ciacchi and the four workers have agreed to do hiring and performance reviews on a collective basis. This move to unionize follows in the wake of last fall's wildcat strike, where Mother Kali's former staff refused to work during the height of the September text book rush, again because the board would not address labor concerns. Restitution for these former employees remains a concern for the newly unionized workers. According to IWW General Meeting Minutes, 5/17, "…unionization may be the opportunity to start afresh and heal the wounds of old…" Ciacchi says that this happens, where "people agree because of personal values, because of idealism" to work for nonprofits such as Mother Kali's, but that nonprofits often have an unclear understanding of administration, policies and procedures, and labor rights. "We hope," she says, "that this will get more people who work for nonprofits to ask for their labor rights to be addressed." Foolscap Books is located at 780 Blair Blvd. For more information about the benefit, contact Mother Kali's Books at 343-4864. — Bobbie Willis
FREE HEMP FESTIVAL PLANNED FOR JULY Will our area see another hemp festival this summer? The big annual for-profit celebration in Linn County discontinued after embattled cannabis activist Bill Conde exiled himself to Central America a couple of years ago, but local activists are planning a free Emerald Empire HempFest 2003 to be held July 19 at Alton Baker Park. The focus of the event will be to promote education and awareness of "hemp-based products and processes," and to "neutralize and eradicate government propaganda regarding the plant cannabis sativa," according to the group's mission statement.
Not all the key arrangements have been worked out, according to Dan Koozer, one of the organizers. Parks officials are cooperating and local businesses are supportive, he says. But local police officials are making it difficult. "The EPD and county are really down on pot," says Koozer. "They don't seem to get so excited about meth or heroin. ... They want us to hire six to 10 off-duty police officers at $60 an hour each for every hour we are open." Koozer says the festival has a $10,000 budget, but that does not include hiring cops. "We're running out of time," he says. "We can't sell vendor sites" at the last minute. "We may not have much of an event, but we'll have an event of some kind," he says. "We expect this year to be a little rough, and next year better." Organizers are meeting at 7 pm Mondays in the Umpqua Room at the EMU on campus. For more information, e-mail dankoozer@yahoo.com — TJT
Starhawk, activist and the author of The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and other books that link spirituality to activism, recently visited the Eugene area. Her schedule included a talk on "War, Peace, Terror and Global Justice — Where do we go now?" at the EMU on campus May 22. In her speech, Starhawk used an analogy of a "spell" of government and media messages being cast onto the populace regarding the U.S. economy, the WTO, the World Bank and the war in Iraq. Just as a spell in a fairy tale may put the castle inhabitants to sleep, this spell tricks people into thinking that the forces they face are too much for them, that they're the only ones who are opposed to war, for instance, and that they might as well give up — they've already lost. Starhawk outlined one aspect of the spell being cast as economic promises by the IMF and the World Bank. Their promise to the Third World is in the form of an economic blueprint for success that, she says, if followed, would lead to a "vast amount of wealth that will make everybody's life better; doesn't matter if you're in a yacht or a little leaky rowboat but a 'rising tide lifts all boats.'" This has not happened in places like Argentina, Starhawk pointed out. "In the Third World I think it has been clear for a long, long time that the [economic] promise is false and the fear is: 'You step out of line and we will smash you,' and 'We have so much power that we can do it no matter what you do or what anybody else does' and that's the real message of the war in Iraq: We have so much power that nobody can stand against us." Starhawk encouraged people to look deeper into these issues. Comparing the war in Iraq to a mushroom, she described how a mushroom is actually just the fruiting body of the organism that primarily exists underground and can be much larger than the mushroom itself; the whole organism is that plus the mycelium threads that connect underground. She perceives the war as merely a fruiting body of the mycelium of a larger system she refers to as "global corporate capitalism." And since the global corporate capitalist system is everywhere, the opportunities to confront it are everywhere — in our pesticides and toxins in our food and in our environment. Starhawk told her audience that since a spell weaves an illusion, despair is an illusion. And just as a poison may have an antidote, a spell may have a counterspell. She said, "The counterspell is simple: Tell a different story. Pull back the curtain, expose their story for the false tale it is. Act 'as if.' Act as if we weren't doomed, as if what we did in the next weeks and months could shift the balance of fate. … Act as if we were going to win." — Paula Hoemann
PROCESS BEGINS TO REPLACE LININGER The Board of County Commissioners invites East Lane County citizens' input on possible application questions for the district's replacement commissioner. This position will become vacant Aug. 16, when current Commissioner Tom Lininger will leave to teach at the UO Law School. Lininger's resignation triggers a replacement appointment process, which will be overseen by the BCC. The replacement will serve from the time of appointment through December 2005. After the 2004 primary and general elections, an elected replacement will serve the remainder of Lininger's term of office, from January 2005 through December 2006. Applicants for the appointed position must be legal voters of the state, residents of the county for two years before taking office, and residents of the district for at least two months before taking office. In naming an appointed replacement to serve through next year, the BCC is interested in knowing what are issues and concerns of East Lane District 5 citizens. Later this month, the board will review forms used in 1989 and 1994 to appoint interim commissioners, as well as the input from citizens and commissioners. They may also set a timeline for the application and interview processes. District 5 citizens' draft questions must be received by 5 pm, Monday, June 16. They can be sent by mail to: Ethel Mashaw, County Administration, 125 E. 8th Ave., Eugene 97401, or by e-mail to ethel.c.mashaw@co.lane.or.us
The Willamette National Forest needs volunteers right away to help with an annual bird conservation study. This study has been conducted for three years; however, this year volunteers will be looking for new bird species.
In the past, the study has focused on thrushes, but this year it will focus on warblers and flycatchers. This volunteer opportunity is perfect for people who like to watch birds and camp. The study will run from early June to late July 2003. Involved in the study are the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, U.S. Forest Service, and Student Conservation Association, which have a partnership to research and protect certain forest breeding birds. This national study will investigate the relationship between habitat and breeding forest birds. For more information call Gail Morris at 822-7252.
In last week's news story, "Who Owns Your Local News Media," it was incorrectly reported that Chambers Communications owns radio station KZEL. In fact, Chambers owns KEZI TV. In our May 15 "Les Miserables" letter to the editor from Jack Radabaugh, the last sentence had a wrong year. It should have read, "Without any sense of history whatsover, the Americans of 2003 find themselves roughly in the position of the German people of 1938."
Jacoby Black and I'Esha Henderson
Churchill High students Jacoby Black, a senior, and I'Esha Henderson, a junior, will join five other local teenagers in Miami, Fla., to compete in the NAACP's Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) in July. ACT-SO is a year-long mentoring program for African-American high school students. Winners of local contests in 25 separate categories of science, humanities, performing and visual arts, and entrepreneurship will compete for gold, silver, and bronze scholarship awards of up to $500 during the annual NAACP conference. "I kind of froze up last time at nationals," admits Black, who competed in the drawing category in New Orleans as a sophomore. An experienced actor and public speaker, he is entered in dramatics this time around. "I have a good feeling about this year," he says. Next fall, Black will enter LCC or the UO to study towards a career in sports journalism. A two-time veteran of ACT-SO nationals, Henderson will compete in oratory with a reading of Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech "And Ain't I A Woman?" A basketball player since first grade, she plans to major in criminal justice on her way to a career in the WNBA. |
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