By Sean Cruz
Prior to hearing the invited and public testimony on the proposed ordnance renaming 39th Avenue, the Council heard comments from City staff members and various parties with their fingerprints on the “process”, and voted on accepting the report of the Planning Commission (which did no actual planning and no research on its own).
There was a consistent thread through these “process” comments that suggested the inevitability of renaming a street—just about any street—was a foregone conclusion…it was a matter of honing down three streets chosen at random to determine the actual “winner”.
Highlights from this portion of the agenda included:
A panel of mutually-congratulatory white folks describing their contributions to the “process” of selecting a street to sacrifice on the Altar of Empty Gestures….
Among them a project manager, blissfully unaware of how badly managed this project has been, enthusiastically offered up a slide show of empty patches of asphalt along 39th Avenue…you had to be there….
A consultant hired to mediate who appears to have spent far more time on assembling her self-congratulatory remarks than on any actual mediation….
A Historian Panel that lacked a single real historian, focused on the history of Portland street naming and renaming, completely overlooked the history of the man being “honored”….
A Planning Commission that did no actual planning throughout the entire process, presented a report to City Council that summed Cesar Chavez up in a single word: “Latino.”
Note to the Planning Commission: “Latino” refers to people whose Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking ancestors began arriving in the Americas in the 16th century, murdering and enslaving its inhabitants throughout the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and across two continents, including the area that is now known as the American Southwest. It is not a pretty story…you should try reading a book now and then….
2nd Note to the Planning Commission: There is a presumption that renaming 39th Avenue will increase pedestrian and vehicular traffic along the street, but having conducted no traffic impact study (see project manager comment above), no one in the neighborhoods knows what to expect or how issues of safety, noise and air quality will be mitigated….
The months-long work of City staff, conducted completely within a Portland bubble, the clueless project manager, the Historian Panel Without Historians, the mediator who did not mediate and the Planning Commission that did not plan, produced two documents for the Council’s consideration, but not a single photograph of Cesar Chavez or farmworkers was in evidence…even the Committee Once Bent on Renaming Interstate failed to bring a photograph of Cesar Chavez to the hearing….
What could possibly be wrong with a process and an outcome like this?
The City’s process has stirred up a storm of anger directed at immigrants and farmworkers in general, and against Mexican and Mexican American people in particular, and yet the Office of Human Relations and the Human Rights Commission has let it all flow unchallenged and unanswered….
For Oregon farmworkers, perhaps the most important City staff failure was the absence of any input or activity from the Office of Human Relations or the Human Rights Commission to counter the racist rhetoric, and the fact that this Portland obsession drained the life out of any hope for meaningful reforms that would improve their living and working conditions within the next two years.
While the Director of the Office of Human Relations, Maria Lisa Johnson, was seen skulking in the Council Chamber recesses and in and out of various Commissioners’ offices prior to and during the hearing, she had nothing to say about the bigoted and racist comments the street-renaming obsession has generated.
The fact that she has been in the bag for renaming a street, beginning with Interstate Avenue, from the beginning, and was as quick as anyone else to accuse opponents of renaming Interstate as bigots, prior to her appointment to “lead” the City’s Office of Human Relations, points directly to the problem with this office.
If nothing else, you have to credit the City’s street-renaming “process” with being consistent: consistently ad hoc, consistently contrived, consistently faulty and consistently driven by City Hall insiders, insiders who are completely consistent in their desires to remain anonymous, at least until the street-renaming parade takes place along 39th Avenue….
More comments on the Council hearing coming soon, in Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, pt 4….
Sean Cruz writes BlogoliticalSean at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, pt 2
Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon, pt 2
By Sean Cruz
I was invited to speak before the Portland City Council last night, who were conducting their own search for Cesar Chavez….
I want to thank Mayor Adams and the Council for providing the opportunity, very sincerely.
I provided written testimony to the Council, but decided to speak without referring to notes.
Unfortunately, I ran out of speaking time before the call to action part….
The sad fact of the evening was that the discussion was so frozen into the question of renaming a street, that no one would have heard the call, not even in the People’s Republic of Multnomah.
Supporters of renaming a street dream of cruising up and down 39th Avenue….
It will make them feel good about themselves, feel like they are actually doing something to benefit farmworkers they will never meet and causes they will never join….
…cruise to the North, cruise to the South…
…convenient shopping either way…
--------------
Searching for Cesar, pt 3 “Reflections on the City Council hearing” coming soon
The search continues….
Testimony for Portland City Council
June 23, 2009
My name is Sean Cruz; I am a resident of NE Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Mexican American, a US citizen with Mexican roots; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Chicano. I found my own Chicano identity through Cesar Chavez, through the National Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
Throughout this long Portland argument, Cesar Chavez has been variously described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano.
None of these terms are synonyms, yet in Portland they are used interchangeably to describe very different—even profoundly different—cultures. Where is the honor in that?
In 1954, in Brown vs Board of Education, the school desegregation case, African Americans gained protection under the 14th Amendment.
Mexican Americans did not gain the same protection until 1970, in Cisneros vs Corpus Christi School District, where Mexican Americans were finally recognized in US courts as a unique, distinct ethnicity, as a People.
Is it any wonder that our children, our families suffer the highest high school dropout rates?
Portland, overwhelmingly white, is just about 40 years behind.... Mexicans, Mexican Americans have not yet gained recognition here in Portland as a People.
For all of the talk in respect to diversity, throughout the many pages of the documents before you in items 860-1 and 860-2 there is but a single reference to Cesar Chavez’ race, culture and ethnicity, and that is the word “Latino.” Where is the honor in that?
I recognize that two years ago, Mayor Potter and the Council very sincerely wanted to express respect for the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez in a significant, permanent public way, but frankly the Council was in receipt of some very bad advice, which brings us to where we are this evening.
With all due respect, where is the honor in accepting these document from five well-meaning-but-poorly-informed white people who cannot tell us apart?
I hope that you, Mayor Adams and members of the Council, will use this time to obtain a far better understanding of precisely who you are talking about when the subject is “Cesar Chavez” or “farmworkers” or “Cesar Chavez’ people” and why it is far too early to celebrate, not while farmworkers across the entire USA continue to suffer unjust and even inhumane living and working conditions.
This street-renaming obsession, focused entirely within the City of Portland, where there is little actual farm work, has cost farmworker advocates working to remove the injustices written into Oregon state law the entire past two years.
Had this street-renaming effort been focused on making a difference in real lives, we might have accomplished something real and we might have had something real to celebrate tonight….
The only wage earners in Oregon who have no right to overtime pay for working beyond 40 hours a week are our farmworkers, our mostly-Mexican farmworkers.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
“Hispanic” and “Latino” refer to cultures that originated in Europe and mixed here one way or another, beginning in the 16th century.
Before there was an Oregon, before there was a USA, before there was a Mexico, before there were continents named after a Portuguese sailor, our ancestors were here and we were a People. We were many Peoples.
Chicanos, like Cesar Chavez, identify with our aboriginal roots rather than the European. Our ancestors did not cross the Atlantic ocean to come to America.
All Chicanos are Mexican Americans, but not all Mexican Americans are Chicanos. You cannot tell us apart by looking at us.
These facts explain in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
The problems
The first problem, going back to the beginning of this mess, was the failure to recognize that there is no monolithic Hispanic or Latino community.
Racially and ethnically, culturally and by nationality, we are the most diverse people on earth, and we are each equally proud of who we are.
The second major problem is that this discussion ended as soon as it began, focused from the start on street-renaming as the only permissible way to honor Hispanic Latino American Cesar Chavez in the City of Portland, with every other idea frozen out.
The third problem was the failure to educate the public as to the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez, and as to the living and working conditions of farmworkers both then and now, which is related to the fourth problem.
The fourth problem (and I’m not referring to the specifics of the City’s legion of process problems) was the fact that the City’s process opened the door to the anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant insults and bigotry, and then stood aside and let the inflammatory rhetoric flow.
The City’s own Office of Human Relations and Human Rights Commission simply vanished. Their work appears to be built around collecting their paychecks.
The fifth problem is that if the same amount of energy had been expended on educating the public to the living and working conditions of Cesar Chavez’s people in the present day we might have had an opportunity to make meaningful change in the 2009 legislative session.
The Oregon legislature is about to end its 2009 session without addressing the issue, which means that Oregon farmworkers cannot possibly win the right to overtime pay for overtime work until the 2011 session.
That is a lot of hours of unpaid overtime, but here’s a nice stretch of asphalt, and a whole big pile of animosity to help you forget your troubles….
The sixth problem (and this is not near the end of the long list of problems) now facing Oregon farmworker advocates is how to develop forward momentum in the face of an almost totally white legislature that lacks any champions for farmworkers.
It was Cesar’s Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the balcony, in the Mexican section of a movie theater, this U.S. Navy veteran.
In a town and in an era where signs saying “No Mexicans allowed” were commonplace, where the US farm labor force was mostly made up of Mexican men, women and children, whole families, grandparents, even pregnant women, enduring grinding poverty and hard labor, Cesar Chavez, Mexican American Chicano Cesar Chavez, short hoe in hand, began to organize the farmworkers, in fields like these….
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those insults are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me. Papers or no papers, people can be very specific about who they do not like.
One would think that the City would have charged its own Office of Human Relations or its Human Rights Commission to mediate the conflict, to follow its own mission statement, to work to reduce the expression of bigotry and anti-Mexican discrimination that the City’s own highly-dysfunctional and mostly ad hoc street-renaming process set in motion, but that did not happen.
The reason that did not happen is because the Director of the Office of Human Relations has been in the bag for renaming a street from the very beginning.
Our Mexican American experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
As we meet today, the New York State Senate is preparing to vote on a bill that would remove from state statute the race-based exclusionary laws that deny farmworkers the right to a day off from work, that deny farmworkers and no other workers the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
The state of New York is home to a large duck liver pate industry, where farm workers are required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, force-feeding ducks.
Worse, a characteristic of the duck liver industry is that each worker is assigned the same several hundred ducks to force-feed three times a day each for 22 consecutive days. They cannot have another worker substitute so someone can get a day off “because it upsets the ducks.”
The Call to Action
I ask you today to choose to make more than a symbolic gesture, to make instead a real difference in the lives of farmworkers, sending a message of support to the farm workers of New York state.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the courage of Cesar Chavez by calling for a City-wide boycott of duck liver products until the laws excluding farmworkers from the rights and protections that all other workers enjoy are removed from statute.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the sacrifice of Cesar Chavez by calling on the Oregon Legislature to remove the provisions in Oregon statute that exclude farmworkers from the right to overtime pay for overtime work.
Thank you.
Sean Cruz
June 23, 2009
Testimony for Portland City Council
By Sean Cruz
I was invited to speak before the Portland City Council last night, who were conducting their own search for Cesar Chavez….
I want to thank Mayor Adams and the Council for providing the opportunity, very sincerely.
I provided written testimony to the Council, but decided to speak without referring to notes.
Unfortunately, I ran out of speaking time before the call to action part….
The sad fact of the evening was that the discussion was so frozen into the question of renaming a street, that no one would have heard the call, not even in the People’s Republic of Multnomah.
Supporters of renaming a street dream of cruising up and down 39th Avenue….
It will make them feel good about themselves, feel like they are actually doing something to benefit farmworkers they will never meet and causes they will never join….
…cruise to the North, cruise to the South…
…convenient shopping either way…
--------------
Searching for Cesar, pt 3 “Reflections on the City Council hearing” coming soon
The search continues….
Testimony for Portland City Council
June 23, 2009
My name is Sean Cruz; I am a resident of NE Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Mexican American, a US citizen with Mexican roots; like Cesar Chavez, I am a Chicano. I found my own Chicano identity through Cesar Chavez, through the National Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
Throughout this long Portland argument, Cesar Chavez has been variously described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano.
None of these terms are synonyms, yet in Portland they are used interchangeably to describe very different—even profoundly different—cultures. Where is the honor in that?
In 1954, in Brown vs Board of Education, the school desegregation case, African Americans gained protection under the 14th Amendment.
Mexican Americans did not gain the same protection until 1970, in Cisneros vs Corpus Christi School District, where Mexican Americans were finally recognized in US courts as a unique, distinct ethnicity, as a People.
Is it any wonder that our children, our families suffer the highest high school dropout rates?
Portland, overwhelmingly white, is just about 40 years behind.... Mexicans, Mexican Americans have not yet gained recognition here in Portland as a People.
For all of the talk in respect to diversity, throughout the many pages of the documents before you in items 860-1 and 860-2 there is but a single reference to Cesar Chavez’ race, culture and ethnicity, and that is the word “Latino.” Where is the honor in that?
I recognize that two years ago, Mayor Potter and the Council very sincerely wanted to express respect for the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez in a significant, permanent public way, but frankly the Council was in receipt of some very bad advice, which brings us to where we are this evening.
With all due respect, where is the honor in accepting these document from five well-meaning-but-poorly-informed white people who cannot tell us apart?
I hope that you, Mayor Adams and members of the Council, will use this time to obtain a far better understanding of precisely who you are talking about when the subject is “Cesar Chavez” or “farmworkers” or “Cesar Chavez’ people” and why it is far too early to celebrate, not while farmworkers across the entire USA continue to suffer unjust and even inhumane living and working conditions.
This street-renaming obsession, focused entirely within the City of Portland, where there is little actual farm work, has cost farmworker advocates working to remove the injustices written into Oregon state law the entire past two years.
Had this street-renaming effort been focused on making a difference in real lives, we might have accomplished something real and we might have had something real to celebrate tonight….
The only wage earners in Oregon who have no right to overtime pay for working beyond 40 hours a week are our farmworkers, our mostly-Mexican farmworkers.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
“Hispanic” and “Latino” refer to cultures that originated in Europe and mixed here one way or another, beginning in the 16th century.
Before there was an Oregon, before there was a USA, before there was a Mexico, before there were continents named after a Portuguese sailor, our ancestors were here and we were a People. We were many Peoples.
Chicanos, like Cesar Chavez, identify with our aboriginal roots rather than the European. Our ancestors did not cross the Atlantic ocean to come to America.
All Chicanos are Mexican Americans, but not all Mexican Americans are Chicanos. You cannot tell us apart by looking at us.
These facts explain in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
The problems
The first problem, going back to the beginning of this mess, was the failure to recognize that there is no monolithic Hispanic or Latino community.
Racially and ethnically, culturally and by nationality, we are the most diverse people on earth, and we are each equally proud of who we are.
The second major problem is that this discussion ended as soon as it began, focused from the start on street-renaming as the only permissible way to honor Hispanic Latino American Cesar Chavez in the City of Portland, with every other idea frozen out.
The third problem was the failure to educate the public as to the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez, and as to the living and working conditions of farmworkers both then and now, which is related to the fourth problem.
The fourth problem (and I’m not referring to the specifics of the City’s legion of process problems) was the fact that the City’s process opened the door to the anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant insults and bigotry, and then stood aside and let the inflammatory rhetoric flow.
The City’s own Office of Human Relations and Human Rights Commission simply vanished. Their work appears to be built around collecting their paychecks.
The fifth problem is that if the same amount of energy had been expended on educating the public to the living and working conditions of Cesar Chavez’s people in the present day we might have had an opportunity to make meaningful change in the 2009 legislative session.
The Oregon legislature is about to end its 2009 session without addressing the issue, which means that Oregon farmworkers cannot possibly win the right to overtime pay for overtime work until the 2011 session.
That is a lot of hours of unpaid overtime, but here’s a nice stretch of asphalt, and a whole big pile of animosity to help you forget your troubles….
The sixth problem (and this is not near the end of the long list of problems) now facing Oregon farmworker advocates is how to develop forward momentum in the face of an almost totally white legislature that lacks any champions for farmworkers.
It was Cesar’s Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the balcony, in the Mexican section of a movie theater, this U.S. Navy veteran.
In a town and in an era where signs saying “No Mexicans allowed” were commonplace, where the US farm labor force was mostly made up of Mexican men, women and children, whole families, grandparents, even pregnant women, enduring grinding poverty and hard labor, Cesar Chavez, Mexican American Chicano Cesar Chavez, short hoe in hand, began to organize the farmworkers, in fields like these….
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those insults are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me. Papers or no papers, people can be very specific about who they do not like.
One would think that the City would have charged its own Office of Human Relations or its Human Rights Commission to mediate the conflict, to follow its own mission statement, to work to reduce the expression of bigotry and anti-Mexican discrimination that the City’s own highly-dysfunctional and mostly ad hoc street-renaming process set in motion, but that did not happen.
The reason that did not happen is because the Director of the Office of Human Relations has been in the bag for renaming a street from the very beginning.
Our Mexican American experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
As we meet today, the New York State Senate is preparing to vote on a bill that would remove from state statute the race-based exclusionary laws that deny farmworkers the right to a day off from work, that deny farmworkers and no other workers the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
The state of New York is home to a large duck liver pate industry, where farm workers are required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, force-feeding ducks.
Worse, a characteristic of the duck liver industry is that each worker is assigned the same several hundred ducks to force-feed three times a day each for 22 consecutive days. They cannot have another worker substitute so someone can get a day off “because it upsets the ducks.”
The Call to Action
I ask you today to choose to make more than a symbolic gesture, to make instead a real difference in the lives of farmworkers, sending a message of support to the farm workers of New York state.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the courage of Cesar Chavez by calling for a City-wide boycott of duck liver products until the laws excluding farmworkers from the rights and protections that all other workers enjoy are removed from statute.
I ask the Portland City Council to honor the sacrifice of Cesar Chavez by calling on the Oregon Legislature to remove the provisions in Oregon statute that exclude farmworkers from the right to overtime pay for overtime work.
Thank you.
Sean Cruz
June 23, 2009
Testimony for Portland City Council
Monday, June 22, 2009
Breaking News: Portland Chavez Boulevard Committee vanishes!
By Sean Cruz
In a stunning new development, only hours before the long-anticipated hearing before Portland City Council on the question of renaming 39th Avenue, the entire membership of the Chavez Boulevard Renaming Committee has vanished, apparently leaving only its two co-chairs to soldier forward.
All photographs that might identify the Committee membership suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the Committee’s website, leaving only speculation as to who the brave souls were who once demanded that the City rename Interstate Boulevard.
The Chavez Committee has never posted the names of its membership, and has held no public meetings, so these photographs were all that gave a clue as to who its members might be during the whole of the past two years.
Among the photographs that once graced the Committee website were those of Maria Lisa Johnson, Director of the City of Portland’s Office of Human Relations, and of Martin Gonzalez, a member of the Portland School Board, both demanding that Interstate Avenue be renamed.
One hopes that these disappearances are not related to reported UFO sightings during a recent electrical storm.
Since so many of the Boulevard Renaming Committee members work inside City Hall, there is considerable concern that their absences might impact the City’s business during the current economic and budget crises.
The Boulevard Committee posted several historic photographs of Cesar Chavez on their website, and it is good to see them there, even if they are uncaptioned and hard to find; follow this link:
http://www.cesarechavezboulevard.com/CesarEChavez/index.html
The photos would probably have more impact if the Committee had found the time to spell his name correctly:
Hint: ”Cesare E. Chavez” is the wrong spelling; try again!
The Boulevard Renaming Committee apparently could not find the time to identify Cesar Chavez accurately, either, misidentifying him thusly:
“Who Was Cesar E. Chavez? A true American hero, Cesar was a civil rights, Latino, farm worker, and labor leader….”
Further research shows that the City of Portland’s entire Office of Human Relations and its Human Rights Commission have vanished as well, allowing anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican invective, bigotry and inflammatory rhetoric to flood the city unchallenged and unanswered.
From the City of Portland website:
“On March 19, 2008, City Council passed resolution 36571 which approved the creation of an Office of Human Relations (OHR) and a Human Rights Commission.
“Guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the mission of the Office of Human Relations is to work toward: Eliminating discrimination and bigotry, Strengthen inter-group relationships, and Foster greater understanding, inclusion and justice for those who live, work, study, worship, travel and play in Portland.
“The Office of Human Relations will provide leadership on civil and human rights issues through the coordination advocacy, education, research, and intervention services. It will house the Human Rights Commission, comprised of 11-15 volunteer commissioners, who are charged with setting the strategic priorities of the office.”
Since the Office of Human Relations and the Human Rights Commission have been completely absent during the entire street-renaming debacle, it is unclear how long they have been missing, other than to draw their paychecks, which might be direct deposit….
More on this disturbing story to come….
http://www.humanrightsportland.org/aboutus.html
Sean Cruz writes BlogoliticalSean at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
In a stunning new development, only hours before the long-anticipated hearing before Portland City Council on the question of renaming 39th Avenue, the entire membership of the Chavez Boulevard Renaming Committee has vanished, apparently leaving only its two co-chairs to soldier forward.
All photographs that might identify the Committee membership suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the Committee’s website, leaving only speculation as to who the brave souls were who once demanded that the City rename Interstate Boulevard.
The Chavez Committee has never posted the names of its membership, and has held no public meetings, so these photographs were all that gave a clue as to who its members might be during the whole of the past two years.
Among the photographs that once graced the Committee website were those of Maria Lisa Johnson, Director of the City of Portland’s Office of Human Relations, and of Martin Gonzalez, a member of the Portland School Board, both demanding that Interstate Avenue be renamed.
One hopes that these disappearances are not related to reported UFO sightings during a recent electrical storm.
Since so many of the Boulevard Renaming Committee members work inside City Hall, there is considerable concern that their absences might impact the City’s business during the current economic and budget crises.
The Boulevard Committee posted several historic photographs of Cesar Chavez on their website, and it is good to see them there, even if they are uncaptioned and hard to find; follow this link:
http://www.cesarechavezboulevard.com/CesarEChavez/index.html
The photos would probably have more impact if the Committee had found the time to spell his name correctly:
Hint: ”Cesare E. Chavez” is the wrong spelling; try again!
The Boulevard Renaming Committee apparently could not find the time to identify Cesar Chavez accurately, either, misidentifying him thusly:
“Who Was Cesar E. Chavez? A true American hero, Cesar was a civil rights, Latino, farm worker, and labor leader….”
Further research shows that the City of Portland’s entire Office of Human Relations and its Human Rights Commission have vanished as well, allowing anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican invective, bigotry and inflammatory rhetoric to flood the city unchallenged and unanswered.
From the City of Portland website:
“On March 19, 2008, City Council passed resolution 36571 which approved the creation of an Office of Human Relations (OHR) and a Human Rights Commission.
“Guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the mission of the Office of Human Relations is to work toward: Eliminating discrimination and bigotry, Strengthen inter-group relationships, and Foster greater understanding, inclusion and justice for those who live, work, study, worship, travel and play in Portland.
“The Office of Human Relations will provide leadership on civil and human rights issues through the coordination advocacy, education, research, and intervention services. It will house the Human Rights Commission, comprised of 11-15 volunteer commissioners, who are charged with setting the strategic priorities of the office.”
Since the Office of Human Relations and the Human Rights Commission have been completely absent during the entire street-renaming debacle, it is unclear how long they have been missing, other than to draw their paychecks, which might be direct deposit….
More on this disturbing story to come….
http://www.humanrightsportland.org/aboutus.html
Sean Cruz writes BlogoliticalSean at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon
By Sean Cruz
I am searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon.
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican American farm worker, son and grandson of Mexican farm workers, and a Chicano, like myself.
Cesar Chavez, the spirit of Cesar Chavez, ought to be easy to find…if you know what you are looking for…I found my own Chicano identity, you see, through Cesar Chavez, through the Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
The Cesar Chavez they are talking about renaming a street for in Portland must be a different person than the one I know.
In this long Portland discussion, Cesar Chavez has been described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano, not even by the people who claim to own the Chavez-honoring franchise.
It was his Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the theater balcony, in the Mexican section, and nothing else.
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those bigoted comments are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me.
Portland State University has a Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, where “Emphasis is on the experience of the Chicano and other Latinos as residents and citizens in the United States…Graduates with a certificate in Chicano/Latino studies will have…gained important insight into a very different culture within U.S. borders.”
This fact explains in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
In two years of kicking the street-renaming can-of-worms through town, what insights have been gained?
Most Portlanders in this street-renaming fiasco, completely ignorant of the fact that Hispanic and Latino cultures are not all the same, use these terms interchangeably to describe significantly different cultures, as if they are synonyms. There is no honor in that.
Chicanos are the warrior class. Not everyone likes to hear that. Cesar Chavez was a Chicano.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Our experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
In Portland, Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows, and the City Council and the Boulevard Renaming Committee have done nothing to bring about change where it matters.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
When the City Council meets on Tuesday, there may be farmworkers in the audience. What will they have gained at the end of the day? The right to overtime pay? Protection for the sexual harassment that these mostly-Mexican women farmworkers suffer in the fields and orchards? Any meaningful change to their living and working conditions?
The City of Portland offers them a stretch of asphalt instead, a victory only for the handful of City Hall insiders who are keeping their heads down until after the Council makes its decision.
Important note: The Boulevard Renaming Committee recently took down all of the photos from its website that might identify who its members are, all those City Hall insiders failing in the courage department, too.
Renaming a street against the will of the people who live there while failing to address the living and working conditions of farmworkers with anything more than rhetoric conveys no honor to Cesar Chavez.
Renaming a street without a single Mexican business or architectural feature, and with no Mexican food along its entire length is no way to honor Cesar Chavez.
It's not much better than the Boulevard Committee's boneheaded choice of Interstate Avenue for "honoring" Cesar Chavez, where the only sources of Mexican food was Taco Bell and Taco Time, two corporate franchises.
Until recently, Taco Bell was the subject of a lengthy, bitter boycott because of it's opposition to a 1-cent pay increase for farmworkers. That information never made it into the Portland "honoring" discussion.
The Chavez Boulevard Committee, which mostly consists of City Hall insiders and people without a drop of Mexican blood flowing in their veins, demanded that Interstate Avenue be renamed, which would have been fine for Taco Bell, but an insult to Mexican people.
The Boulevard Committee made the claim that failing to rename a Portland street would be an insult to Latinos and Hispanics, and the City Council bought it
Most people are simply indifferent to the living and working conditions of farmworkers.
Cesar Chavez recognized that in order to overcome that indifference, that American indifference, he had to educate the public.
So far, I’m not seeing much in Portland that gives a clue to Cesar Chavez, but I’m going to keep searching….
I am searching for Cesar Chavez in Portland, Oregon.
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican American farm worker, son and grandson of Mexican farm workers, and a Chicano, like myself.
Cesar Chavez, the spirit of Cesar Chavez, ought to be easy to find…if you know what you are looking for…I found my own Chicano identity, you see, through Cesar Chavez, through the Chicano Movement in California in the 1960’s.
The Cesar Chavez they are talking about renaming a street for in Portland must be a different person than the one I know.
In this long Portland discussion, Cesar Chavez has been described as a "Latino", as a "Hispanic", as a "not Hispanic, but an American", as an "American" and as a "Latino American", but never as a Mexican American or a Chicano, not even by the people who claim to own the Chavez-honoring franchise.
It was his Mexican face that got him arrested for refusing to sit in the theater balcony, in the Mexican section, and nothing else.
Cesar Chavez’s struggle and his campaigns were defined by his life experience as a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American migrant farmworker, a person who far too many Americans would categorize even today as a wetback, and they do….
We’ve all seen and heard the bigoted comments that this street-renaming fiasco has generated.
The only persons that those bigoted comments are directed towards are Mexican people, Mexican-American people, like Cesar Chavez, like me.
Portland State University has a Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, where “Emphasis is on the experience of the Chicano and other Latinos as residents and citizens in the United States…Graduates with a certificate in Chicano/Latino studies will have…gained important insight into a very different culture within U.S. borders.”
This fact explains in part why the Portland Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has been completely silent on the street-renaming issue over the entire past two years. There are no Chicanos over there, and no farmworkers either.
In two years of kicking the street-renaming can-of-worms through town, what insights have been gained?
Most Portlanders in this street-renaming fiasco, completely ignorant of the fact that Hispanic and Latino cultures are not all the same, use these terms interchangeably to describe significantly different cultures, as if they are synonyms. There is no honor in that.
Chicanos are the warrior class. Not everyone likes to hear that. Cesar Chavez was a Chicano.
Farm labor in the USA is not a “Latino” experience, or a “Hispanic” experience and not necessarily an “immigrant” experience.
Historically and to the present day, farm labor is by a wide margin a Mexican experience, a Mexican-American experience, and in California, where Cesar Chavez family and my family worked the fields, a Chicano experience, and it is 100% an experience of deep, abject poverty and injustice, conditions that continue to exist today.
There is no honor in being told “you people all look alike.”
Our experience is unique to us, and Cesar Chavez brought that experience out of the shadows, brought us out of the shadows, Mexican people, Mexican Americans, Chicanos.
In Portland, Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain in the shadows, and the City Council and the Boulevard Renaming Committee have done nothing to bring about change where it matters.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers remain the state’s only population that is prohibited by law from the right to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.
Oregon’s mostly-Mexican farmworkers won the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday only five years ago, the only population in the state denied that fundamental right.
When the City Council meets on Tuesday, there may be farmworkers in the audience. What will they have gained at the end of the day? The right to overtime pay? Protection for the sexual harassment that these mostly-Mexican women farmworkers suffer in the fields and orchards? Any meaningful change to their living and working conditions?
The City of Portland offers them a stretch of asphalt instead, a victory only for the handful of City Hall insiders who are keeping their heads down until after the Council makes its decision.
Important note: The Boulevard Renaming Committee recently took down all of the photos from its website that might identify who its members are, all those City Hall insiders failing in the courage department, too.
Renaming a street against the will of the people who live there while failing to address the living and working conditions of farmworkers with anything more than rhetoric conveys no honor to Cesar Chavez.
Renaming a street without a single Mexican business or architectural feature, and with no Mexican food along its entire length is no way to honor Cesar Chavez.
It's not much better than the Boulevard Committee's boneheaded choice of Interstate Avenue for "honoring" Cesar Chavez, where the only sources of Mexican food was Taco Bell and Taco Time, two corporate franchises.
Until recently, Taco Bell was the subject of a lengthy, bitter boycott because of it's opposition to a 1-cent pay increase for farmworkers. That information never made it into the Portland "honoring" discussion.
The Chavez Boulevard Committee, which mostly consists of City Hall insiders and people without a drop of Mexican blood flowing in their veins, demanded that Interstate Avenue be renamed, which would have been fine for Taco Bell, but an insult to Mexican people.
The Boulevard Committee made the claim that failing to rename a Portland street would be an insult to Latinos and Hispanics, and the City Council bought it
Most people are simply indifferent to the living and working conditions of farmworkers.
Cesar Chavez recognized that in order to overcome that indifference, that American indifference, he had to educate the public.
So far, I’m not seeing much in Portland that gives a clue to Cesar Chavez, but I’m going to keep searching….
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Some parents express their sickness by kidnapping their own children
By Sean Cruz
Susan Nielson's column in The Oregonian on the tragedy at Sellwood Bridge prompted me to post the following comments:
Some parents express their sickness in dramatic ways, by committing murder, by throwing their children off bridges, by drowning them like unwanted kittens.
Some parents express their sickness through neglect, with horrific results.
These cases command a great deal of attention, of public discussion, because they speak so directly to who we are as human beings, as parents ourselves.
The issues are clear, direct, and most of all, visible.
Other parents express their sickness in ways that are not so visible, not so easily understood, the legal issues may be cloudy, and with little physical evidence of the damage done to the child(ren).
These parents kidnap their own children and disappear, leaving nothing visible behind, no corpse, nothing for the media or the public to discuss, to care about.
My four children disappeared from Oregon 14 years ago in a kidnapping organized by Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot and an employee of Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver; the crime noted in The Oregonian’s August 1996 editorial “Say Yes for Kids.”
My son Aaron died in 2005, essentially from long-term medical neglect, heartbreak and abandonment, alone in an empty house in Payson, Utah, where his mother had taken him and then left him behind.
The Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) in 2005, shortly after I buried my son, his arms covered with the scars of self-inflicted knife wounds, cuts he made in the months following the abduction, when he was largely under the control of Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot carrying out an old-fashioned Mormon shunning.
Aaron’s Law is a landmark bill, first-in-the-nation legislation, providing both victims and Oregon courts more tools to resolve and prevent child abduction, recognizing the emotional and psychological harm that child victims suffer when kidnapped by persons they love and trust.
One of Aaron’s Law’s most important clauses authorizes the court to order counseling sessions directed at educating the parents to the harm that their conduct is inflicting on their own children.
Most parents understand the difference between what is harmful and what is not and can be fairly objective about it, but every now and then something like the Sellwood case surfaces and we are reminded that this fundamental essence of our humanity cannot be completely taken for granted.
It is far more common for a parent to kidnap a child than to commit murder, but both actions have permanent consequences.
On the day that this mother expressed her sickness by throwing her two small children off of the Sellwood bridge, I discovered a photograph posted on the internet that illustrates the sickness of a parent that kidnaps her own children:
The photograph is of a toddler, 18-24 months old is my guess. No name is posted.
The photograph tells me that somewhere in this world, I have a grandchild.
My grandchild’s very existence is a secret, the photograph confirming that this child will be raised in a web of lies.
Somewhere, a parent expresses her sickness through her grandchild, through my grandchild, and on to a second generation of victims.
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf/2009/05/the_tragedy_on_sellwood_bridge.html
Susan Nielson's column in The Oregonian on the tragedy at Sellwood Bridge prompted me to post the following comments:
Some parents express their sickness in dramatic ways, by committing murder, by throwing their children off bridges, by drowning them like unwanted kittens.
Some parents express their sickness through neglect, with horrific results.
These cases command a great deal of attention, of public discussion, because they speak so directly to who we are as human beings, as parents ourselves.
The issues are clear, direct, and most of all, visible.
Other parents express their sickness in ways that are not so visible, not so easily understood, the legal issues may be cloudy, and with little physical evidence of the damage done to the child(ren).
These parents kidnap their own children and disappear, leaving nothing visible behind, no corpse, nothing for the media or the public to discuss, to care about.
My four children disappeared from Oregon 14 years ago in a kidnapping organized by Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot and an employee of Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver; the crime noted in The Oregonian’s August 1996 editorial “Say Yes for Kids.”
My son Aaron died in 2005, essentially from long-term medical neglect, heartbreak and abandonment, alone in an empty house in Payson, Utah, where his mother had taken him and then left him behind.
The Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) in 2005, shortly after I buried my son, his arms covered with the scars of self-inflicted knife wounds, cuts he made in the months following the abduction, when he was largely under the control of Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot carrying out an old-fashioned Mormon shunning.
Aaron’s Law is a landmark bill, first-in-the-nation legislation, providing both victims and Oregon courts more tools to resolve and prevent child abduction, recognizing the emotional and psychological harm that child victims suffer when kidnapped by persons they love and trust.
One of Aaron’s Law’s most important clauses authorizes the court to order counseling sessions directed at educating the parents to the harm that their conduct is inflicting on their own children.
Most parents understand the difference between what is harmful and what is not and can be fairly objective about it, but every now and then something like the Sellwood case surfaces and we are reminded that this fundamental essence of our humanity cannot be completely taken for granted.
It is far more common for a parent to kidnap a child than to commit murder, but both actions have permanent consequences.
On the day that this mother expressed her sickness by throwing her two small children off of the Sellwood bridge, I discovered a photograph posted on the internet that illustrates the sickness of a parent that kidnaps her own children:
The photograph is of a toddler, 18-24 months old is my guess. No name is posted.
The photograph tells me that somewhere in this world, I have a grandchild.
My grandchild’s very existence is a secret, the photograph confirming that this child will be raised in a web of lies.
Somewhere, a parent expresses her sickness through her grandchild, through my grandchild, and on to a second generation of victims.
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf/2009/05/the_tragedy_on_sellwood_bridge.html
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Cesar Chavez, a hollow memorial and the New York State of Shame
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon--
For more than two years now, an effort to rename a Portland street—just about any street—has imposed a purely arbitrary burden of stress and potential financial cost on a growing list of mostly unwilling neighborhoods.
The City is attempting to follow a “process” that has never been followed before, is still essentially ad hoc, and which defies logic and human comprehension.
If street renaming catches on in Portland, then the list of potential candidates and honorees is long indeed, enough to guarantee many decades of purposeless conflict and can-kicking through town.
The City of Portland “Planning” Commission, deciding that its role in the street-renaming “process” is to deliver bad-tasting medicine, chose to sacrifice a randomly-selected street on the Altar of Empty Gestures.
City officials, needing to weigh the political costs of renaming or not renaming 39th Avenue, are trying to figure out which way will cost the least votes, severely handicapped by the fact that they have been getting really bad advice all along.
The “honor” that some want to bestow on Cesar Chavez by renaming a street (almost any street) against the will of its residents is more like a gravestone in another form than it is anything else.
The entire citywide discussion over these past two years has referenced Cesar Chavez only in the most abstract of terms: He was a civil rights leader something something; farmworker something something; grape boycott; something about lettuce; something something….
The Portland discussion centers on the past, and a shrunken understanding of the past at that; nothing about the present living and working conditions of farmworkers; nothing about the future living and working conditions of farmworkers; nothing about what needs to happen if you really want to honor Cesar Chavez, amigo….
The Portland discussion boils down to creating a grave marker in the form of a series of street signs unconnected to any thing or any one or any idea that is related to either Cesar Chavez or the human rights abuses and discrimination issues for which he sacrificed his health and shortened his life.
These issues persist today, as Bob Herbert’s “New York State of Shame” commentary appearing in the New York Times makes clear, and yet in Portland the public discussion regarding farmworker issues does not go beyond renaming a stretch of asphalt.
The state of New York is home to a large duck liver pate industry, where farm workers are required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, force-feeding ducks. By statute, farm workers in the state of New York are specifically excluded from the rights to a day off or to overtime pay for overtime work.
Worse, a characteristic of the duck liver industry is that each worker is assigned the same several hundred ducks to force-feed for 22 consecutive days. They cannot have another worker substitute so someone can get a day off “because it upsets the ducks.”
Read the full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09herbert.html?emc=eta1
Farmworkers across the country remain mostly invisible. They and their families endure unthinkable living and working conditions that the rest of us are protected from in our respective state statutes.
In the state of Oregon, farmworkers are specifically excluded from the right to overtime pay for overtime work, same as New York. In Oregon, farmworkers have only had the right to meal and rest breaks since 2004.
Opponents to granting the right to meal and rest breaks in Oregon claimed that their mostly Mexican farmworkers didn’t want the breaks; they wanted to work right on through, make more money, the same claim that those opposed to granting the right to a day off in New York claim: “This notion that they need to rest is completely futile. They don’t like to rest. They want to work seven days.”
No discussion of these issues has taken place anywhere in Oregon during the past two years, or before that for that matter, and yet there is talk of “honoring” Cesar Chavez in the City of Portland....
Unless the Portland City Council can connect the public discussion to the real world of farm workers and take some kind of affirmative step, this entire ordeal is about little more than erecting a grave marker, and a hollow memorial at that.
New York State of Shame
By Bob Herbert, New York Times
The building housing the ducks in this lush region of the Catskills in upstate Sullivan County was huge, a cross between a gigantic Quonset hut and an airplane hangar. The ducks, tens of thousands of them ready to be slaughtered for foie gras, were stuffed and listless in their pens. It was a very weird scene. Genetically unable to quack, the ducks moved very little and made hardly any noise.
Animal-rights advocates have made a big deal about the way the ducks are force-fed to produce the enormously swollen livers from which the foie gras is made. But I’ve been looking at the plight of the underpaid, overworked and often gruesomely exploited farmworkers who feed and otherwise care for the ducks.
Their lives are hard.
Each feeder, for example, is responsible for feeding 200 to 300 (or more) ducks — individually — three times a day. The feeder holds a duck between his or her knees, inserts a tube down the duck’s throat, and uses a motorized funnel to force the feed into the bird. Then on to the next duck, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.
The routine is brutal and not very sanitary. Each feeding takes about four hours and once the birds are assigned a feeder, no one else can be substituted during the 22-day force-feeding period that leads up to the slaughter. Substituting a feeder would upset the ducks, according to the owners of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which operates the farm.
Not only do the feeders get no days off during that long stretch, and no overtime for any of the long hours, but they get very little time even to sleep each day. The feeding schedule for the ducks must be rigidly observed.
When I asked one of the owners, Izzy Yanay, about the lack of a day of rest, he said of the workers: “This notion that they need to rest is completely futile. They don’t like to rest. They want to work seven days.”
Covering this story has been like stepping back in time. Farmworkers in New York do not have the same legal rights and protections that other workers have, and the state’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry has taken full advantage of that. The workers have no right to a day off or overtime pay. They don’t get any paid vacation or sick days. When I asked one worker if he knew of anyone who had a retirement plan, he laughed and laughed.
To understand how it’s possible to treat farmworkers in New York this way you have to look back to the 1930s when President Franklin Roosevelt was trying to get Congress to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act to provide basic wage and hour protections for workers. Among the opponents were segregationist congressmen and senators who were outraged that the protections would apply to blacks as well as whites.
Most agricultural and domestic workers were black, and the legislation was not passed until those two categories of workers were excluded. New York State lawmakers, under heavy and sustained pressure from the agriculture lobby, have similarly exempted farmworkers (the vast majority of whom are now Latino) from most state labor law protections.
There was a good chance — right up until Monday, when the State Senate went through a sudden and cataclysmic change from Democratic to Republican control — that something might be done about this legislatively. On Monday evening, the Assembly passed (and Gov. David Paterson has promised to sign) a bill extending much-needed labor protections to farmworkers, including the right to at least one day of rest per week and, more important, the right to bargain collectively.
Republican senators were split on the bill, however, and the New York Farm Bureau, the lead lobbying agency for the agriculture industry, is furiously opposed to passage. With the upheaval in the Senate, the fate of the bill, called the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, is unknown.
A major supporter of the bill, the Rev. Richard Witt, executive director of the Rural and Migrant Ministry of New York, said the Senate shift would have no effect on the campaign for passage of the bill. Another supporter, Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, also said she will continue to push hard for passage.
“It’s shocking that these conditions could exist in New York State,” Ms. Kennedy said. “We talked to a worker who had not had a day off in 10 years.”
That is not an argument that carries much weight with the Farm Bureau.
Sounding like an echo of Mr. Yanay, the bureau’s spokesman, Peter Gregg said, “They don’t want days off. The farmworkers want to work. They came here to make money.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09herbert.html?emc=eta1
Portland, Oregon--
For more than two years now, an effort to rename a Portland street—just about any street—has imposed a purely arbitrary burden of stress and potential financial cost on a growing list of mostly unwilling neighborhoods.
The City is attempting to follow a “process” that has never been followed before, is still essentially ad hoc, and which defies logic and human comprehension.
If street renaming catches on in Portland, then the list of potential candidates and honorees is long indeed, enough to guarantee many decades of purposeless conflict and can-kicking through town.
The City of Portland “Planning” Commission, deciding that its role in the street-renaming “process” is to deliver bad-tasting medicine, chose to sacrifice a randomly-selected street on the Altar of Empty Gestures.
City officials, needing to weigh the political costs of renaming or not renaming 39th Avenue, are trying to figure out which way will cost the least votes, severely handicapped by the fact that they have been getting really bad advice all along.
The “honor” that some want to bestow on Cesar Chavez by renaming a street (almost any street) against the will of its residents is more like a gravestone in another form than it is anything else.
The entire citywide discussion over these past two years has referenced Cesar Chavez only in the most abstract of terms: He was a civil rights leader something something; farmworker something something; grape boycott; something about lettuce; something something….
The Portland discussion centers on the past, and a shrunken understanding of the past at that; nothing about the present living and working conditions of farmworkers; nothing about the future living and working conditions of farmworkers; nothing about what needs to happen if you really want to honor Cesar Chavez, amigo….
The Portland discussion boils down to creating a grave marker in the form of a series of street signs unconnected to any thing or any one or any idea that is related to either Cesar Chavez or the human rights abuses and discrimination issues for which he sacrificed his health and shortened his life.
These issues persist today, as Bob Herbert’s “New York State of Shame” commentary appearing in the New York Times makes clear, and yet in Portland the public discussion regarding farmworker issues does not go beyond renaming a stretch of asphalt.
The state of New York is home to a large duck liver pate industry, where farm workers are required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, force-feeding ducks. By statute, farm workers in the state of New York are specifically excluded from the rights to a day off or to overtime pay for overtime work.
Worse, a characteristic of the duck liver industry is that each worker is assigned the same several hundred ducks to force-feed for 22 consecutive days. They cannot have another worker substitute so someone can get a day off “because it upsets the ducks.”
Read the full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09herbert.html?emc=eta1
Farmworkers across the country remain mostly invisible. They and their families endure unthinkable living and working conditions that the rest of us are protected from in our respective state statutes.
In the state of Oregon, farmworkers are specifically excluded from the right to overtime pay for overtime work, same as New York. In Oregon, farmworkers have only had the right to meal and rest breaks since 2004.
Opponents to granting the right to meal and rest breaks in Oregon claimed that their mostly Mexican farmworkers didn’t want the breaks; they wanted to work right on through, make more money, the same claim that those opposed to granting the right to a day off in New York claim: “This notion that they need to rest is completely futile. They don’t like to rest. They want to work seven days.”
No discussion of these issues has taken place anywhere in Oregon during the past two years, or before that for that matter, and yet there is talk of “honoring” Cesar Chavez in the City of Portland....
Unless the Portland City Council can connect the public discussion to the real world of farm workers and take some kind of affirmative step, this entire ordeal is about little more than erecting a grave marker, and a hollow memorial at that.
New York State of Shame
By Bob Herbert, New York Times
The building housing the ducks in this lush region of the Catskills in upstate Sullivan County was huge, a cross between a gigantic Quonset hut and an airplane hangar. The ducks, tens of thousands of them ready to be slaughtered for foie gras, were stuffed and listless in their pens. It was a very weird scene. Genetically unable to quack, the ducks moved very little and made hardly any noise.
Animal-rights advocates have made a big deal about the way the ducks are force-fed to produce the enormously swollen livers from which the foie gras is made. But I’ve been looking at the plight of the underpaid, overworked and often gruesomely exploited farmworkers who feed and otherwise care for the ducks.
Their lives are hard.
Each feeder, for example, is responsible for feeding 200 to 300 (or more) ducks — individually — three times a day. The feeder holds a duck between his or her knees, inserts a tube down the duck’s throat, and uses a motorized funnel to force the feed into the bird. Then on to the next duck, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.
The routine is brutal and not very sanitary. Each feeding takes about four hours and once the birds are assigned a feeder, no one else can be substituted during the 22-day force-feeding period that leads up to the slaughter. Substituting a feeder would upset the ducks, according to the owners of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which operates the farm.
Not only do the feeders get no days off during that long stretch, and no overtime for any of the long hours, but they get very little time even to sleep each day. The feeding schedule for the ducks must be rigidly observed.
When I asked one of the owners, Izzy Yanay, about the lack of a day of rest, he said of the workers: “This notion that they need to rest is completely futile. They don’t like to rest. They want to work seven days.”
Covering this story has been like stepping back in time. Farmworkers in New York do not have the same legal rights and protections that other workers have, and the state’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry has taken full advantage of that. The workers have no right to a day off or overtime pay. They don’t get any paid vacation or sick days. When I asked one worker if he knew of anyone who had a retirement plan, he laughed and laughed.
To understand how it’s possible to treat farmworkers in New York this way you have to look back to the 1930s when President Franklin Roosevelt was trying to get Congress to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act to provide basic wage and hour protections for workers. Among the opponents were segregationist congressmen and senators who were outraged that the protections would apply to blacks as well as whites.
Most agricultural and domestic workers were black, and the legislation was not passed until those two categories of workers were excluded. New York State lawmakers, under heavy and sustained pressure from the agriculture lobby, have similarly exempted farmworkers (the vast majority of whom are now Latino) from most state labor law protections.
There was a good chance — right up until Monday, when the State Senate went through a sudden and cataclysmic change from Democratic to Republican control — that something might be done about this legislatively. On Monday evening, the Assembly passed (and Gov. David Paterson has promised to sign) a bill extending much-needed labor protections to farmworkers, including the right to at least one day of rest per week and, more important, the right to bargain collectively.
Republican senators were split on the bill, however, and the New York Farm Bureau, the lead lobbying agency for the agriculture industry, is furiously opposed to passage. With the upheaval in the Senate, the fate of the bill, called the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, is unknown.
A major supporter of the bill, the Rev. Richard Witt, executive director of the Rural and Migrant Ministry of New York, said the Senate shift would have no effect on the campaign for passage of the bill. Another supporter, Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, also said she will continue to push hard for passage.
“It’s shocking that these conditions could exist in New York State,” Ms. Kennedy said. “We talked to a worker who had not had a day off in 10 years.”
That is not an argument that carries much weight with the Farm Bureau.
Sounding like an echo of Mr. Yanay, the bureau’s spokesman, Peter Gregg said, “They don’t want days off. The farmworkers want to work. They came here to make money.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09herbert.html?emc=eta1
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Some parents express their sickness in dramatic ways, by committing murder, others kidnap their own children
by Sean Cruz
Susan Nielson's column in The Oregonian on the tragedy at Sellwood Bridge prompted me to post the following comments:
Some parents express their sickness in dramatic ways, by committing murder, by throwing their children off bridges, by drowning them like unwanted kittens.
Some parents express their sickness through neglect, with horrific results.
These cases command a great deal of attention, of public discussion, because they speak so directly to who we are as human beings, as parents ourselves.
The issues are clear, direct, and most of all, visible.
Other parents express their sickness in ways that are not so visible, not so easily understood, the issues cloudy, and with little physical evidence of the damage done to the child(ren).
These parents kidnap their own children and disappear, leaving nothing visible behind, no corpse, nothing for the media or the public to discuss, to care about.
My four children disappeared from Oregon 14 years ago in a kidnapping organized by Kory Wright, an employee of Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver; the crime noted in The Oregonian’s August 1996 editorial “Say Yes for Kids.”
My son Aaron died in 2005, essentially from long-term medical neglect, heartbreak and abandonment, alone in an empty house in Payson, Utah, where his mother had taken him and then left him behind.
The Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) in 2005, shortly after I buried my son, his arms covered with the scars of self-inflicted knife wounds, cuts he made in the months following the abduction, when he was largely under the control of Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot carrying out an old-fashioned Mormon shunning.
Aaron’s Law is a landmark bill, first-in-the-nation legislation, providing both victims and Oregon courts more tools to resolve and prevent child abduction, recognizing the emotional and psychological harm that child victims suffer when kidnapped by persons they love and trust.
One of Aaron’s Law’s most important clauses authorizes the court to order counseling sessions directed at educating the parents to the harm that their conduct is inflicting on their own children.
Most parents understand the difference between what is harmful and what is not and can be fairly objective about it, but every now and then something like the Sellwood case surfaces and we are reminded that this fundamental essence of our humanity cannot be completely taken for granted.
It is far more common for a parent to kidnap a child than to commit murder, but both actions have permanent consequences.
On the day that this mother expressed her sickness by throwing her two small children off of the Sellwood bridge, I discovered a photograph posted on the internet that illustrates the sickness of a parent that kidnaps her own children:
The photograph is of a toddler, 18-24 months old is my guess. No name is posted.
The photograph tells me that somewhere in this world, I have a grandchild.
My grandchild’s very existence is a secret, the photograph confirming that this child will be raised in a web of lies.
Somewhere, a parent expresses her sickness through her grandchild, through my grandchild, and on to a second generation of victims.
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf/2009/05/the_tragedy_on_sellwood_bridge.html
Susan Nielson's column in The Oregonian on the tragedy at Sellwood Bridge prompted me to post the following comments:
Some parents express their sickness in dramatic ways, by committing murder, by throwing their children off bridges, by drowning them like unwanted kittens.
Some parents express their sickness through neglect, with horrific results.
These cases command a great deal of attention, of public discussion, because they speak so directly to who we are as human beings, as parents ourselves.
The issues are clear, direct, and most of all, visible.
Other parents express their sickness in ways that are not so visible, not so easily understood, the issues cloudy, and with little physical evidence of the damage done to the child(ren).
These parents kidnap their own children and disappear, leaving nothing visible behind, no corpse, nothing for the media or the public to discuss, to care about.
My four children disappeared from Oregon 14 years ago in a kidnapping organized by Kory Wright, an employee of Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver; the crime noted in The Oregonian’s August 1996 editorial “Say Yes for Kids.”
My son Aaron died in 2005, essentially from long-term medical neglect, heartbreak and abandonment, alone in an empty house in Payson, Utah, where his mother had taken him and then left him behind.
The Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) in 2005, shortly after I buried my son, his arms covered with the scars of self-inflicted knife wounds, cuts he made in the months following the abduction, when he was largely under the control of Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot carrying out an old-fashioned Mormon shunning.
Aaron’s Law is a landmark bill, first-in-the-nation legislation, providing both victims and Oregon courts more tools to resolve and prevent child abduction, recognizing the emotional and psychological harm that child victims suffer when kidnapped by persons they love and trust.
One of Aaron’s Law’s most important clauses authorizes the court to order counseling sessions directed at educating the parents to the harm that their conduct is inflicting on their own children.
Most parents understand the difference between what is harmful and what is not and can be fairly objective about it, but every now and then something like the Sellwood case surfaces and we are reminded that this fundamental essence of our humanity cannot be completely taken for granted.
It is far more common for a parent to kidnap a child than to commit murder, but both actions have permanent consequences.
On the day that this mother expressed her sickness by throwing her two small children off of the Sellwood bridge, I discovered a photograph posted on the internet that illustrates the sickness of a parent that kidnaps her own children:
The photograph is of a toddler, 18-24 months old is my guess. No name is posted.
The photograph tells me that somewhere in this world, I have a grandchild.
My grandchild’s very existence is a secret, the photograph confirming that this child will be raised in a web of lies.
Somewhere, a parent expresses her sickness through her grandchild, through my grandchild, and on to a second generation of victims.
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf/2009/05/the_tragedy_on_sellwood_bridge.html
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thoughts on Aaron's birthday 2009
Today, March 21, is/was/would-have-been/could-have-been my late son Aaron’s birthday.
I’m spending the day getting my vegetable garden ready for planting, thinking about my son, about how happy he was to be home here with me for those few precious months in 2003….
Turning the soil, making some new raised beds, carrots on my mind….
Aaron was the most willing of my four children to work in the garden with me; more than willing, actually....
I have dozens of photos of Aaron at different ages, in a succession of gardens, the seasons changing, so clearly happy to be working with me in the earth, with the water, caring for the growing corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers….
Like my father and I, like my father and his, extending as far back beyond memory as life itself: the corn, the tomatoes, the cactus, jalapenos, tortillas fresh with the dawn…frijoles…all the way back to the beginning…before the Spanish came ashore…there were the vegetable gardens, there was the squash….
Each of my four children were/are beautiful in their own unique ways, four original personalities, overflowing with enthusiasm, life did not get better than this…I have the photographs, the videotape, to prove it….
The kidnapping changed all of that….
Aaron was like a growing stalk of tall corn, promise in every kernel, yanked out of the open soil, crammed into a pot way too small, force-fed the Mormon Kool-Aid….
More on this later….
I’m spending the day getting my vegetable garden ready for planting, thinking about my son, about how happy he was to be home here with me for those few precious months in 2003….
Turning the soil, making some new raised beds, carrots on my mind….
Aaron was the most willing of my four children to work in the garden with me; more than willing, actually....
I have dozens of photos of Aaron at different ages, in a succession of gardens, the seasons changing, so clearly happy to be working with me in the earth, with the water, caring for the growing corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers….
Like my father and I, like my father and his, extending as far back beyond memory as life itself: the corn, the tomatoes, the cactus, jalapenos, tortillas fresh with the dawn…frijoles…all the way back to the beginning…before the Spanish came ashore…there were the vegetable gardens, there was the squash….
Each of my four children were/are beautiful in their own unique ways, four original personalities, overflowing with enthusiasm, life did not get better than this…I have the photographs, the videotape, to prove it….
The kidnapping changed all of that….
Aaron was like a growing stalk of tall corn, promise in every kernel, yanked out of the open soil, crammed into a pot way too small, force-fed the Mormon Kool-Aid….
Portland Cesar Chavez honoring effort does not need to be a dead end
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—The Oregonian’s Multnomah County columnist Anna Griffin wrote “Chavez Boulevard? Dead end street is more likely”, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/anna_griffin/index.ssf/2009/03/chavez_boulevard_dead_end_stre.html#comments
…prompting my Mexican-American, Chicano comments, here:
March 21, 2009
The Committee-Once-Bent-on-Renaming-Interstate-Avenue has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
The street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero.
Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee’s failure to describe Chavez accurately or to acknowledge that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA, has made the honoring process more complicated than it has ever needed to be.
The best they have done is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring Chavez’ legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the pig-headed arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar Chavez more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed now as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
--------------------------
Additional comment, posted later:
By Sean Cruz
Anna Griffin’s column has provoked some comments regarding the phrase “you people”, opening the door to another Teachable Moment in the City of Portland:
Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Hernandez vs State of Texas, Mexican Americans had no standing as a people under U.S. law, and no protection under the 14th Amendment.
The case arose out of the fact that no Mexican American or Spanish-surnamed citizen had served on a jury across 70 Texas counties in 25 years.
“Chief Justice Earl Warren and the rest of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Hernandez, and required he be retried with a jury composed of his peers. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or Negro, and extends to other racial groups, such as Mexican American in this case.” –source: Wikipedia, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernandez_v._Texas
The first paragraph of the 14th Amendment stated these key, fundamental rights:
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Prior to Hernandez, no Mexican American defendant could even hope for a jury of his peers in Texas and other places.
Mexican Americans were subject to the same poll taxes as African Americans, worked in those same cotton fields, were usually forced to live in neighborhoods with the most poorly-equipped schools, could not get a foothold in any union job, but—unlike any other racial or ethnic group—could be held in custody at any moment, swept up and deported, often in error, sorry about that, you sure looked illegal to me….
Prior to Hernandez, Mexican Americans were regarded as “white” for purposes of the 14th Amendment, and therefore could not suffer discrimination by other whites….
Prior to Hernandez, restaurant owners could and did post signs reading “No Mexicans, Indians or dogs” and would be guilty of discrimination only in spirit, only in their own shrunken souls….
Navy veteran Cesar Chavez was arrested for refusing to sit in the colored-only balcony of a California movie theater…you could get put in jail for not knowing your Mexican place in the USA, not that long ago….
Mexican Americans are still finding out where their Mexican places are in the USA…people didn’t complain so much when the Mexicans worked mostly in the fields, with the crops, out of sight and out of mind….
Now they are turning up in the building trades, in construction, factories and places where brown faces have historically been rarely seen in the USA, in the non-farm workplaces….
The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Hernandez, this time with a jury that included “you people….”
They found him guilty, too, but that wasn’t the point….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Today, March 21, is/was/would-have-been my late son Aaron’s birthday.
I’m spending the day getting my vegetable garden ready for planting, thinking about my son, about how happy he was to be home here with me for those few precious months in 2003….
Turning the soil, making some new raised beds, carrots on my mind….
Aaron was the most willing of my four children to work in the garden with me, and I have dozens of photos of Aaron at different ages, in a succession of gardens, the seasons changing, so clearly happy to be working with me in the earth, with the water, caring for the growing corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers….
Like my father and I, like my father and his, extending as far back beyond memory as life itself: the corn, the tomatoes, the cactus, jalapenos, tortillas fresh with the dawn…frijoles…all the way back to the beginning…before the Spanish came ashore…there were the vegetable gardens….
Each of my four children were/are beautiful in their own unique ways, four original personalities, overflowing with enthusiasm, life did not get better than this…I have the photographs, the videotape, to prove it….
The kidnapping changed all of that….
Aaron was like a growing stalk of corn, promise in every kernel, yanked out of the open soil, crammed into a pot way too small, force-fed the Mormon Kool-Aid….
More on this later….
---------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Portland, Oregon—The Oregonian’s Multnomah County columnist Anna Griffin wrote “Chavez Boulevard? Dead end street is more likely”, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/anna_griffin/index.ssf/2009/03/chavez_boulevard_dead_end_stre.html#comments
…prompting my Mexican-American, Chicano comments, here:
March 21, 2009
The Committee-Once-Bent-on-Renaming-Interstate-Avenue has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
The street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero.
Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee’s failure to describe Chavez accurately or to acknowledge that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA, has made the honoring process more complicated than it has ever needed to be.
The best they have done is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring Chavez’ legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the pig-headed arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar Chavez more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed now as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
--------------------------
Additional comment, posted later:
By Sean Cruz
Anna Griffin’s column has provoked some comments regarding the phrase “you people”, opening the door to another Teachable Moment in the City of Portland:
Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Hernandez vs State of Texas, Mexican Americans had no standing as a people under U.S. law, and no protection under the 14th Amendment.
The case arose out of the fact that no Mexican American or Spanish-surnamed citizen had served on a jury across 70 Texas counties in 25 years.
“Chief Justice Earl Warren and the rest of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Hernandez, and required he be retried with a jury composed of his peers. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or Negro, and extends to other racial groups, such as Mexican American in this case.” –source: Wikipedia, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernandez_v._Texas
The first paragraph of the 14th Amendment stated these key, fundamental rights:
“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Prior to Hernandez, no Mexican American defendant could even hope for a jury of his peers in Texas and other places.
Mexican Americans were subject to the same poll taxes as African Americans, worked in those same cotton fields, were usually forced to live in neighborhoods with the most poorly-equipped schools, could not get a foothold in any union job, but—unlike any other racial or ethnic group—could be held in custody at any moment, swept up and deported, often in error, sorry about that, you sure looked illegal to me….
Prior to Hernandez, Mexican Americans were regarded as “white” for purposes of the 14th Amendment, and therefore could not suffer discrimination by other whites….
Prior to Hernandez, restaurant owners could and did post signs reading “No Mexicans, Indians or dogs” and would be guilty of discrimination only in spirit, only in their own shrunken souls….
Navy veteran Cesar Chavez was arrested for refusing to sit in the colored-only balcony of a California movie theater…you could get put in jail for not knowing your Mexican place in the USA, not that long ago….
Mexican Americans are still finding out where their Mexican places are in the USA…people didn’t complain so much when the Mexicans worked mostly in the fields, with the crops, out of sight and out of mind….
Now they are turning up in the building trades, in construction, factories and places where brown faces have historically been rarely seen in the USA, in the non-farm workplaces….
The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Hernandez, this time with a jury that included “you people….”
They found him guilty, too, but that wasn’t the point….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Today, March 21, is/was/would-have-been my late son Aaron’s birthday.
I’m spending the day getting my vegetable garden ready for planting, thinking about my son, about how happy he was to be home here with me for those few precious months in 2003….
Turning the soil, making some new raised beds, carrots on my mind….
Aaron was the most willing of my four children to work in the garden with me, and I have dozens of photos of Aaron at different ages, in a succession of gardens, the seasons changing, so clearly happy to be working with me in the earth, with the water, caring for the growing corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers….
Like my father and I, like my father and his, extending as far back beyond memory as life itself: the corn, the tomatoes, the cactus, jalapenos, tortillas fresh with the dawn…frijoles…all the way back to the beginning…before the Spanish came ashore…there were the vegetable gardens….
Each of my four children were/are beautiful in their own unique ways, four original personalities, overflowing with enthusiasm, life did not get better than this…I have the photographs, the videotape, to prove it….
The kidnapping changed all of that….
Aaron was like a growing stalk of corn, promise in every kernel, yanked out of the open soil, crammed into a pot way too small, force-fed the Mormon Kool-Aid….
---------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Thursday, March 05, 2009
The Oregonian makes the Oregon-Cesar Chavez connection!
by Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregonian--The Oregonian recently printed author Randy Shaw's comments describing Cesar Chavez’ activities in Oregon on behalf of farm workers, settling the issue (one would hope) as to whether the Mexican-American civil rights leader ever had a direct relationship with state politics.
This short piece is all the more welcome because it reveals more information about who Cesar Chavez was than the Committee-Formerly-Bent-On-Renaming-Interstate Avenue has managed to do in the entire past two years (see link to post, below).
I look forward to reading the book.
The 4 comments posted online do well to illustrate the same combination of ignorance, selfishness and racism that framed the farmworkers’ struggle, still alive, still vile.
The miserable living and working conditions that mostly Mexican farmworkers and their families endured for generations were the outward manifestations of these attitudes.
The short hoe in the hands of a stooped-over Mexican disturbed few of the millions of Americans who ate the lettuce…the USA blinked its indifference.
Didn’t we all munch his broccoli while his children played in the chemical dust? You betcha!
All was in its rightful place in America; for sure, the Mexicans were, nearly invisible, following the crops, welcome to the USA, greaser….
Then came Cesar Chavez, son of Mexican migrants, the American Gandhi, the Chicano Great Soul, both humble and fierce….
Cesar inspired and led a coalition that you can read about in Mr. Shaw’s book.
Like Cesar Chavez, I’m the son and grandson of Mexican farmworkers, a Mexican-American, a Chicano.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
Try to get the name right, if little else….
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/03/cesar_chavezs_mark_on_oregon_h.html
Portland, Oregonian--The Oregonian recently printed author Randy Shaw's comments describing Cesar Chavez’ activities in Oregon on behalf of farm workers, settling the issue (one would hope) as to whether the Mexican-American civil rights leader ever had a direct relationship with state politics.
This short piece is all the more welcome because it reveals more information about who Cesar Chavez was than the Committee-Formerly-Bent-On-Renaming-Interstate Avenue has managed to do in the entire past two years (see link to post, below).
I look forward to reading the book.
The 4 comments posted online do well to illustrate the same combination of ignorance, selfishness and racism that framed the farmworkers’ struggle, still alive, still vile.
The miserable living and working conditions that mostly Mexican farmworkers and their families endured for generations were the outward manifestations of these attitudes.
The short hoe in the hands of a stooped-over Mexican disturbed few of the millions of Americans who ate the lettuce…the USA blinked its indifference.
Didn’t we all munch his broccoli while his children played in the chemical dust? You betcha!
All was in its rightful place in America; for sure, the Mexicans were, nearly invisible, following the crops, welcome to the USA, greaser….
Then came Cesar Chavez, son of Mexican migrants, the American Gandhi, the Chicano Great Soul, both humble and fierce….
Cesar inspired and led a coalition that you can read about in Mr. Shaw’s book.
Like Cesar Chavez, I’m the son and grandson of Mexican farmworkers, a Mexican-American, a Chicano.
I’d like the people bent on renaming a Portland street to work on describing Cesar more accurately, using words like Mexican-American, migrant and Chicano once in a while; focus more on educating the community, less on making demands of other people’s time and money; more on the honoring part, less on the self-righteous part…remember that you do not own the franchise except in your own minds.
That important fact has been lost on the white politicians, salsa-dancing around the issue, just as poorly informed as when they started kicking the can of worms through town….
It would be no insult to name a school, a library, a park, a farmers’ market, a bridge for Cesar Chavez, no insult to Mexican-Americans or Chicanos at all.
Try to get the name right, if little else….
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/03/cesar_chavezs_mark_on_oregon_h.html
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Oregon House Committee hears predatory towing bill
Portland, Oregon--The Oregon House Consumer Protection Committee heard HB 2578 yesterday, February 25, sponsored by the committee's Vice Chair, Representative Chuck Riley.
Predatory patrol towers are fighting back to protect their towjacking profit margins.
Testimony by a number of witnesses indicated that the patrol towers are largely ignoring the regulations imposed on them by new state laws, still the same packs of junkyard dogs roving around the state.
First speakers up were the Mayor and Chief of Police of the City of Fairview, the first municipality in the state to take action against predatory patrol towing, and they described how 100% of the problem incidents regarding predatory towing went away overnight, with the passage of the citywide ban.
Every city and every county government in the state has the power to do exactly what Fairview has done, simply enact the ordinance.
Now it's up to you, to urge your city and county officials to take action, and to support Representative Riley's bill.
Here's the link to the audio record of the hearing:
http://www.leg.state.or.us/listn/
Select the date feb 25 2009
The towing bill discussion begins about at the 14:00 mark. My testimony starts at about 1:12:10.
Isubmitted the following written testimony (slightly edited for clarity):
Vice Chair Riley and Members of the Committee:
My name is Sean Cruz. I am a resident of Parkrose neighborhood in NE Portland. I served as Senator Avel Gordly’s Legislative Aide and Chief of Staff, representing Senate District 23 throughout the 2003, 2005 and 2007 legislative sessions. I also claim the distinction of having “Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story”, which I write about on my blog.
I led Senator Gordly’s Senate Bill 431 workgroup on patrol towing reforms and I represented her office in the Attorney General’s Senate Bill 116 workgroup, led by Eva Novick. Senate Bill 116 incorporates several of Senator Gordly’s legislative concepts.
Both bills passed the House and Senate with unanimous votes in committee and on the floor, but fell just short of Senator Gordly’s goal, which was to model California’s statute, requiring the property owner or manager to be present at the time of the tow and sign the invoice, in order to promote the safety and wellbeing of members of the general pubic. California’s law also held the advantage of having been recently upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prior to the 2007 legislative session, Oregon’s patrol towing industry was largely unregulated, and there was a lack of clarity in Oregon statutes as to whether the state and local governments had the authority to regulate businesses built around the involuntary towing of citizen’s private vehicles. The Attorney General, for example, had no explicit authority to even receive complaints from the public, much less act on them.
This fact was enormously frustrating to many Oregon citizens, who often found that the local police were also stymied, with no power over the towing disputes they were often called into other than to allow a tow truck driver to take a citizen’s property away.
There was a widespread assumption that federal law regarding interstate commerce pre-empted state and local governments, and on this basis patrol towing metastasized over several decades, seemingly untouchable, answerable to no authority. It was literally the Wild West, here in Oregon, the only state on the West coast that has not banned patrol towing.
The first thing we had to do in 2007 was to establish that authority.
Thanks to the research of a constituent, Tim Barrett, whose car was patrol-towed less than five minutes after his arrival to visit his son in a Fairview apartment, we found what was needed:
In 2005, in Tillotson vs the City of San Diego, the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals found that California’s law curbing patrol towing was designed to promote the safety of the general public, who might be stranded or whose family might be stranded in unsafe circumstances, and of the tow drivers themselves and is therefore exempted from the federal pre-emption.
Testimony from a number of citizens during the tow bill hearings demonstrated that this was happening frequently, including separating drivers from prescription medications and leaving people in wheelchairs stranded on the sidewalk. You will shortly hear Mr. Michael Meiers describe his experience….
This regulatory authority, in the language used by the federal court, comprises Section 1 of Senate Bill 116, clarifying the exemption regarding the regulation of involuntary towing, including the price thereof.
Paragraph 2 (a) states: “The Legislative Assembly declares that…statutes that assist members of the public in avoiding involuntary loss of use of motor vehicles and in expediting recovery of motor vehicles and the personal property in the motor vehicles promote the safety and welfare of members of the public.”
I want to applaud the City of Fairview, the first municipality in the state to take action under Senate Bill 116, passed on a unanimous vote by this Committee.
Speaking on behalf of Senator Gordly and thousands of aggrieved Oregonians, I want to thank Vice Chair Riley and the Committee for taking this issue on with HB 2578. I wish you great success!
It was not my personal predatory patrol towing horror story that brought Senator Gordly to see a need for legislative action, although when the towers broke my transmission that Saturday morning, they sidelined the vehicle that I used to drive the office carpool to the Capitol every day. We had to switch to Senator Gordly’s Executive Assistant Denise Pederson’s vehicle for the remainder of the session.
I would like to note for the record that 100% of the many dozens of complaints that Senator Gordly’s office received regarding predatory or wrongful towing practices involved patrol towing. None were a result of the legitimate practices and operations of tow companies that do not patrol tow.
Senator Gordly’s legislative concepts came about from what we learned about how the industry has operated unregulated in Oregon, from what we learned directly from interviews with many dozens of Oregonians, from the tow companies’ practices and business model, from the attitudes of its employees, and from the tow company’s own invoices.
Burden placed on public resources
All of these citizens called the police when their vehicles were taken. Unlike any other commercial activity in Oregon, patrol towing creates a direct burden on local police resources, paid for entirely by the taxpaying general population.
This burden begins when the tow driver calls the police to report that he is towing a certain vehicle. Then there is the second call to the police, coming either when the vehicle owner finds her vehicle gone and is reporting it stolen, or when the vehicle owner returns to her vehicle and finds some surly stranger with a tow truck hooking it up. This driver is fully aware that either money changes hands at this moment, or he is wasting his time, about to drive off with an empty wallet.
The third burden on police resources comes when at least one officer is called to the scene, and then anything can happen or might have already happened.
Beyond this lies the burden on the court system that can follow, all at public expense, and all of this hubbub began—with members of the public left stranded in every sort of circumstance—with a decision made by a tow truck driver working on commission, generally in the dead of night, underpaid and under great pressure.
They’re stealing parking….
In the 2007 legislative workgroup discussions, the patrol towers stated that they regarded all of their tows to be lawful and righteous, that they always dealt with every mistaken tow incident swiftly and properly…we disputed that.
In those same discussions, the patrol towers stated their opinion that the people whose vehicles they towed were “stealing” parking. They were thieves.
In their own minds, a small number of patrol towing companies had created a crime called theft of parking, and through a mass of agreements with individual property owners, carved out a niche for themselves as a quasi-police force, with sole authority to make and enforce the law, to act as judge, jury and tax collector.
If your vehicle was towed, it was because you were a thief, stealing parking. And your story was a pack of lies. So when Mary Q. Public came to their tow yard to claim her vehicle, she was viewed as a thief and a liar and treated as such. This is how they described their operations….
Furthermore, it is not only the drivers who are paid on commission. So is everyone else in the organization. So when Mary Q. Public comes to the tow yard and argues about the bill, she is talking to people who are not going to take a dollar out of their own pockets for any reason, certainly not for this lying parking thief.
“Attitude” fees and confiscation
These are the people that have been willfully charging the public “attitude” or “anger” fees in this state for decades.
And they have openly charged the public fees in amounts that are beyond anything reasonable, beyond deterrence, beyond fair recompense, beyond punitive…many of their tows result in the actual confiscation of the car.
In the last interim, Senator Gordly’s office received a call from a constituent in East Multnomah County, requesting our urgent assistance. A patrol tow company was about to auction off a vehicle that belonged to a person who was a patient in the Oregon State Hospital. The towers claimed that the owner owed them $ 2000 in storage fees, accrued since the time they had towed the vehicle from a hospital parking lot.
The young man had gone to the hospital for a medical appointment, parked his car in the lot, but suffered a psychotic episode there and was taken directly to the State Hospital, where he continued to reside. He had no intention of parking there over the limit, and hospital personnel would certainly have not made towing their first choice, if they had a role in authorizing the tow.
If the tow company auctioned off the car, the young man would emerge from the hospital with an unfair burden of debt and without the car. His only income was his disability check going into this situation.
We intervened and the tow company released the vehicle without the charge.
Apples to apples
The patrol tow industry opened this can of worms itself when Retriever Towing took my two vehicles, parked side by side on my own property in my own driveway, at the same time and under the same circumstances, but with completely different invoices and charges, providing an apples-to-apples opportunity to see how they were operating. Those invoices are in your packet as Exhibit “A”.
In March 2005, an absentee neighboring property owner, Hacienda Community Development Corporation, began employing tow companies to patrol the small parking area that serves two triplexes that it owns on a flag lot behind my home.
I park my vehicles on my own property, adjacent to the lot.
I learned about the patrol towing contract the day after the tow company posted its signs in the lot, when I woke up that Saturday morning to find both of my vehicles gone. There was no prior notification by any party to the contract, either to the neighborhood or to the tenants themselves.
I called the number posted on the signs. The tow company affirmed that they had indeed stolen my vehicles and that I could pay just under $400 to get them back that day, or I could wait until Monday if I wanted to talk to a manager. I called the property manager, who did not answer their phone. I tracked down Hacienda’s board chair, who informed me that I should either call the police or wait until Monday. I called the police.
A police officer came to my home, looked at my plat and confirmed that my parking area was my own private property. He then drove to the patrol tower’s lot to request the release of my vehicles, but the patrol towers refused to do so.
Eventually, later that day, after a number of phone calls, including more conversations with the police officer, the towers did release the vehicles. At first, they could not find one of my vehicles, although they knew that they had it.
The following Monday, as I was arriving here for work at the state Capitol, I learned that the towers had returned and taken one of the vehicles for a second time.
My absentee-landlord neighbor’s patrol towers have trespassed on my property and towed my vehicle four times—so far—and broken my transmission in the process.
In each of these incidents, to this very day, all parties to my neighbor’s patrol towing contract have disclaimed responsibility for the trespass, the theft of my vehicle, the damage to my property and for all of the trouble they put me through.
The tow company stated that they towed the vehicles according to their contract with the apartment managers, the apartment management company claimed that they told the towers not to tow my vehicles, and the property owner took the position that they knew nothing about it and that I should work it out with the tow company.
Attachment “B” in your packet is a copy of a subsequent letter from the City of Portland Towing Coordinator to the property owner’s Executive Director, and quoting Bertha Ferran the Hacienda board chair as stating “the tower probably has a contract to provide this service, not Hacienda CDC.”
The Ms Ferran knew with absolute certainty about the contract. In fact, Hacienda’s affordable housing properties generate more patrol tows than any other property owner in NE Portland, upwards of 150 tows a year for some 300 apartments.
Attachment “B” also illustrates the ongoing burden on public resources of patrol towing incidents.
The four incidents at my home involved four different drivers, two different tow companies and two different property management companies.
The only constants are the property ownership, the patrol contract, tow drivers working on commission, and the result. It is abundantly clear that none of these incidents would have occurred had HB 2578 been the law of the land, removing commission-paid drivers from decision making and requiring the property managers or owners to be present at the time of the tow.
From that weekend to the present day, these two different patrol towing companies have subjected my neighbors to the same level of intensity, towing the tenants’ legally parked vehicles, towing vehicles despite clearly displayed Hacienda parking permits, showing up and hooking up vehicles minutes after they were parked, and pulling numbers out of the air. I personally witnessed a driver attempt to extort money from one of the families living there. I went back there and broke that up myself.
Four years later, my van is still sitting in my driveway with a broken transmission, and I’ll bet they are sorry now….
Attachment “A.”
Aside from the name of the company, the two invoices are completely different. No line items on the list of charges and fees appearing on one invoice appear on the other, none are identical, and neither are the amounts.
They can’t possibly both be correct. Which, if any, is correct? The towers took the position that they were both correct.
The towing company treated each vehicle in practice differently as well.
We came to learn that the towers were exploiting a line in ORS statute that prevented regulation if the parking lot held ten or fewer spaces. The lot behind my home had parking for only seven vehicles. The City of Portland had limited authority to regulate towing, and only if a parking lot was larger than ten spaces.
Who knew that the size of a parking lot made any difference in how much an Oregon citizen could be charged, on what fees could be assessed, and in how one would be treated?
These two invoices reflected that reality. The upper invoice in Attachment “A” reflects the fees and line items permitted under the authority of the City of Portland.
The lower invoice shows how the towing company was operating absent of regulation. This also explains the enthusiasm with which the tow drivers were patrolling that seven-space parking lot. More fees and charges, higher commissions, no public authority to regulate. I have seen two tow trucks in that lot at the same time.
Under the regulated invoice, the driver took my vehicle to their tow yard only about 25 blocks from my home in outer NE Portland. The City does not permit mileage to be charged.
Under the unregulated invoice, however, the other driver took my vehicle clear across town to their lot at NW 15th and Quimby.
He charged me $110 for the tow, $16 for his mileage, driving around town, $3 for the fuel he claimed that he burned while towing my vehicle, $10 for taking a photo of the tow (which clearly identifies the trespass and theft), $35 for the dolly he used to break my transmission, and $15 for a dispatch fee. Other than the tow fee, none of these charges were permitted under City code.
And you can see there are boxes for more fees: “Retow fee”, “Retow dollies”, “recovery and winching”, “service call”, “gate fee” and “service fee.”
Note that the regulated invoice has a $ 20/day printed storage fee.
The unregulated invoice daily storage rate is not printed. Here, the driver has written in a rate of $33. Which is the correct number? The tower claimed they were both correct.
The unregulated invoice bears no printed rates or costs. In all cases, the driver alone decides what numbers to put in the boxes and which boxes to check. The form also has a blank line at the bottom of the price column where the driver or lot employee can invent things to charge, like “anger” or “attitude” fees, and write in a number he likes.
And he is paid on commission.
2007 legislation
At the start of the 2007 session, Senator Gordly filed five legislative concepts to address patrol towing, later concentrated into the two bills.
Our contributions to Senate Bill 116, sponsored by the Attorney General, were these:
Section 1 of SB 116 clarifies the authority of the state and Oregon municipal governments to regulate involuntary towing.
Senate Bill 116 also removed the language from ORS that barred regulation of parking lots if they contained ten or fewer vehicles. In the workgroup, with the assistance of Legislative Counsel, we learned that there was no record of why that line was in statute in the first place, or why the number was ten. Even the patrol towers could offer no reason, other than that they thought it was a good idea. At one point, one of the patrol company owners shouted at me that the City had no right to regulate in that parking lot behind my home. Well, they do now.
Senate Bill 116 requires tow drivers to provide vehicle owners with a printed rate sheet, in order to eliminate the practice of commission-paid drivers pulling a smorgasbord of numbers out of the air.
However, a recent patrol towing incident in Wilsonville, where a driver attempted to tow the vehicle of an injured woman fleeing an assault, indicates that the company involved is not complying with this provision of law. In the extensive media coverage that followed, no one, not the police, not even the owner of the tow company, interviewed on-camera, knew how much money his driver had charged the victim. They are clearly not complying with the provisions passed out of this Committee in 2007.
Senate Bill 431
Senate Bill 431 addressed patrol towing abuses in landlord-tenant relationships.
SB 431 prohibits towers from removing vehicles solely for having expired tags. Those tenants’ rental agreements gave them the right to park their car in the lot, and they were violating no state law as long as they kept that vehicle parked and off the street, which is where it was.
SB 431 requires landlords to provide tenants with written notice that includes the actual costs they might face if their vehicle is towed. It is not unreasonable to have a pre-printed rate sheet, but the patrol towers really howled about this one in the workgroup.
Landlords must provide this information at the time the rental or lease agreement is signed, they must update the tenants if and when any of those numbers change, and they must provide the tenants with parking permits. It is highly doubtful that any are complying with this portion of the law passed by this Committee, as none of the constituents who contacted Senator Gordly’s office in the interim and none of my neighbors have received any such notices or rate sheets or parking permits from their landlords.
Opposition to the 2007 legislation came from lobbyists for commercial property owners, who stated that they absolutely needed patrol towing, but acknowledged that they received these services for free. Their agreements with patrol towers permit the towers to load all costs, real or otherwise, and their profit expectations on the backs of their victims.
Unless landlords and property managers participate in the expense of the service and the cost of police resources they rely on….
In closing:
Despite all of the reforms instituted by the legislature in 2007 and ample fair warning to patrol towers clearly and plainly stated at that time by members of the Senate Commerce Committee and of this Committee, most memorably by Vice Chair Riley, little has changed in actual practice. The patrol towing business model itself is to blame
I would suggest that the Committee, as it works this bill, consider provisions requiring the owners of patrol towing companies that are competing for public towing contracts for any public agency or entity, to conform all of their towing operations under any other name to the standards set in the public contract.
---------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Predatory patrol towers are fighting back to protect their towjacking profit margins.
Testimony by a number of witnesses indicated that the patrol towers are largely ignoring the regulations imposed on them by new state laws, still the same packs of junkyard dogs roving around the state.
First speakers up were the Mayor and Chief of Police of the City of Fairview, the first municipality in the state to take action against predatory patrol towing, and they described how 100% of the problem incidents regarding predatory towing went away overnight, with the passage of the citywide ban.
Every city and every county government in the state has the power to do exactly what Fairview has done, simply enact the ordinance.
Now it's up to you, to urge your city and county officials to take action, and to support Representative Riley's bill.
Here's the link to the audio record of the hearing:
http://www.leg.state.or.us/listn/
Select the date feb 25 2009
The towing bill discussion begins about at the 14:00 mark. My testimony starts at about 1:12:10.
Isubmitted the following written testimony (slightly edited for clarity):
Vice Chair Riley and Members of the Committee:
My name is Sean Cruz. I am a resident of Parkrose neighborhood in NE Portland. I served as Senator Avel Gordly’s Legislative Aide and Chief of Staff, representing Senate District 23 throughout the 2003, 2005 and 2007 legislative sessions. I also claim the distinction of having “Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story”, which I write about on my blog.
I led Senator Gordly’s Senate Bill 431 workgroup on patrol towing reforms and I represented her office in the Attorney General’s Senate Bill 116 workgroup, led by Eva Novick. Senate Bill 116 incorporates several of Senator Gordly’s legislative concepts.
Both bills passed the House and Senate with unanimous votes in committee and on the floor, but fell just short of Senator Gordly’s goal, which was to model California’s statute, requiring the property owner or manager to be present at the time of the tow and sign the invoice, in order to promote the safety and wellbeing of members of the general pubic. California’s law also held the advantage of having been recently upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prior to the 2007 legislative session, Oregon’s patrol towing industry was largely unregulated, and there was a lack of clarity in Oregon statutes as to whether the state and local governments had the authority to regulate businesses built around the involuntary towing of citizen’s private vehicles. The Attorney General, for example, had no explicit authority to even receive complaints from the public, much less act on them.
This fact was enormously frustrating to many Oregon citizens, who often found that the local police were also stymied, with no power over the towing disputes they were often called into other than to allow a tow truck driver to take a citizen’s property away.
There was a widespread assumption that federal law regarding interstate commerce pre-empted state and local governments, and on this basis patrol towing metastasized over several decades, seemingly untouchable, answerable to no authority. It was literally the Wild West, here in Oregon, the only state on the West coast that has not banned patrol towing.
The first thing we had to do in 2007 was to establish that authority.
Thanks to the research of a constituent, Tim Barrett, whose car was patrol-towed less than five minutes after his arrival to visit his son in a Fairview apartment, we found what was needed:
In 2005, in Tillotson vs the City of San Diego, the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals found that California’s law curbing patrol towing was designed to promote the safety of the general public, who might be stranded or whose family might be stranded in unsafe circumstances, and of the tow drivers themselves and is therefore exempted from the federal pre-emption.
Testimony from a number of citizens during the tow bill hearings demonstrated that this was happening frequently, including separating drivers from prescription medications and leaving people in wheelchairs stranded on the sidewalk. You will shortly hear Mr. Michael Meiers describe his experience….
This regulatory authority, in the language used by the federal court, comprises Section 1 of Senate Bill 116, clarifying the exemption regarding the regulation of involuntary towing, including the price thereof.
Paragraph 2 (a) states: “The Legislative Assembly declares that…statutes that assist members of the public in avoiding involuntary loss of use of motor vehicles and in expediting recovery of motor vehicles and the personal property in the motor vehicles promote the safety and welfare of members of the public.”
I want to applaud the City of Fairview, the first municipality in the state to take action under Senate Bill 116, passed on a unanimous vote by this Committee.
Speaking on behalf of Senator Gordly and thousands of aggrieved Oregonians, I want to thank Vice Chair Riley and the Committee for taking this issue on with HB 2578. I wish you great success!
It was not my personal predatory patrol towing horror story that brought Senator Gordly to see a need for legislative action, although when the towers broke my transmission that Saturday morning, they sidelined the vehicle that I used to drive the office carpool to the Capitol every day. We had to switch to Senator Gordly’s Executive Assistant Denise Pederson’s vehicle for the remainder of the session.
I would like to note for the record that 100% of the many dozens of complaints that Senator Gordly’s office received regarding predatory or wrongful towing practices involved patrol towing. None were a result of the legitimate practices and operations of tow companies that do not patrol tow.
Senator Gordly’s legislative concepts came about from what we learned about how the industry has operated unregulated in Oregon, from what we learned directly from interviews with many dozens of Oregonians, from the tow companies’ practices and business model, from the attitudes of its employees, and from the tow company’s own invoices.
Burden placed on public resources
All of these citizens called the police when their vehicles were taken. Unlike any other commercial activity in Oregon, patrol towing creates a direct burden on local police resources, paid for entirely by the taxpaying general population.
This burden begins when the tow driver calls the police to report that he is towing a certain vehicle. Then there is the second call to the police, coming either when the vehicle owner finds her vehicle gone and is reporting it stolen, or when the vehicle owner returns to her vehicle and finds some surly stranger with a tow truck hooking it up. This driver is fully aware that either money changes hands at this moment, or he is wasting his time, about to drive off with an empty wallet.
The third burden on police resources comes when at least one officer is called to the scene, and then anything can happen or might have already happened.
Beyond this lies the burden on the court system that can follow, all at public expense, and all of this hubbub began—with members of the public left stranded in every sort of circumstance—with a decision made by a tow truck driver working on commission, generally in the dead of night, underpaid and under great pressure.
They’re stealing parking….
In the 2007 legislative workgroup discussions, the patrol towers stated that they regarded all of their tows to be lawful and righteous, that they always dealt with every mistaken tow incident swiftly and properly…we disputed that.
In those same discussions, the patrol towers stated their opinion that the people whose vehicles they towed were “stealing” parking. They were thieves.
In their own minds, a small number of patrol towing companies had created a crime called theft of parking, and through a mass of agreements with individual property owners, carved out a niche for themselves as a quasi-police force, with sole authority to make and enforce the law, to act as judge, jury and tax collector.
If your vehicle was towed, it was because you were a thief, stealing parking. And your story was a pack of lies. So when Mary Q. Public came to their tow yard to claim her vehicle, she was viewed as a thief and a liar and treated as such. This is how they described their operations….
Furthermore, it is not only the drivers who are paid on commission. So is everyone else in the organization. So when Mary Q. Public comes to the tow yard and argues about the bill, she is talking to people who are not going to take a dollar out of their own pockets for any reason, certainly not for this lying parking thief.
“Attitude” fees and confiscation
These are the people that have been willfully charging the public “attitude” or “anger” fees in this state for decades.
And they have openly charged the public fees in amounts that are beyond anything reasonable, beyond deterrence, beyond fair recompense, beyond punitive…many of their tows result in the actual confiscation of the car.
In the last interim, Senator Gordly’s office received a call from a constituent in East Multnomah County, requesting our urgent assistance. A patrol tow company was about to auction off a vehicle that belonged to a person who was a patient in the Oregon State Hospital. The towers claimed that the owner owed them $ 2000 in storage fees, accrued since the time they had towed the vehicle from a hospital parking lot.
The young man had gone to the hospital for a medical appointment, parked his car in the lot, but suffered a psychotic episode there and was taken directly to the State Hospital, where he continued to reside. He had no intention of parking there over the limit, and hospital personnel would certainly have not made towing their first choice, if they had a role in authorizing the tow.
If the tow company auctioned off the car, the young man would emerge from the hospital with an unfair burden of debt and without the car. His only income was his disability check going into this situation.
We intervened and the tow company released the vehicle without the charge.
Apples to apples
The patrol tow industry opened this can of worms itself when Retriever Towing took my two vehicles, parked side by side on my own property in my own driveway, at the same time and under the same circumstances, but with completely different invoices and charges, providing an apples-to-apples opportunity to see how they were operating. Those invoices are in your packet as Exhibit “A”.
In March 2005, an absentee neighboring property owner, Hacienda Community Development Corporation, began employing tow companies to patrol the small parking area that serves two triplexes that it owns on a flag lot behind my home.
I park my vehicles on my own property, adjacent to the lot.
I learned about the patrol towing contract the day after the tow company posted its signs in the lot, when I woke up that Saturday morning to find both of my vehicles gone. There was no prior notification by any party to the contract, either to the neighborhood or to the tenants themselves.
I called the number posted on the signs. The tow company affirmed that they had indeed stolen my vehicles and that I could pay just under $400 to get them back that day, or I could wait until Monday if I wanted to talk to a manager. I called the property manager, who did not answer their phone. I tracked down Hacienda’s board chair, who informed me that I should either call the police or wait until Monday. I called the police.
A police officer came to my home, looked at my plat and confirmed that my parking area was my own private property. He then drove to the patrol tower’s lot to request the release of my vehicles, but the patrol towers refused to do so.
Eventually, later that day, after a number of phone calls, including more conversations with the police officer, the towers did release the vehicles. At first, they could not find one of my vehicles, although they knew that they had it.
The following Monday, as I was arriving here for work at the state Capitol, I learned that the towers had returned and taken one of the vehicles for a second time.
My absentee-landlord neighbor’s patrol towers have trespassed on my property and towed my vehicle four times—so far—and broken my transmission in the process.
In each of these incidents, to this very day, all parties to my neighbor’s patrol towing contract have disclaimed responsibility for the trespass, the theft of my vehicle, the damage to my property and for all of the trouble they put me through.
The tow company stated that they towed the vehicles according to their contract with the apartment managers, the apartment management company claimed that they told the towers not to tow my vehicles, and the property owner took the position that they knew nothing about it and that I should work it out with the tow company.
Attachment “B” in your packet is a copy of a subsequent letter from the City of Portland Towing Coordinator to the property owner’s Executive Director, and quoting Bertha Ferran the Hacienda board chair as stating “the tower probably has a contract to provide this service, not Hacienda CDC.”
The Ms Ferran knew with absolute certainty about the contract. In fact, Hacienda’s affordable housing properties generate more patrol tows than any other property owner in NE Portland, upwards of 150 tows a year for some 300 apartments.
Attachment “B” also illustrates the ongoing burden on public resources of patrol towing incidents.
The four incidents at my home involved four different drivers, two different tow companies and two different property management companies.
The only constants are the property ownership, the patrol contract, tow drivers working on commission, and the result. It is abundantly clear that none of these incidents would have occurred had HB 2578 been the law of the land, removing commission-paid drivers from decision making and requiring the property managers or owners to be present at the time of the tow.
From that weekend to the present day, these two different patrol towing companies have subjected my neighbors to the same level of intensity, towing the tenants’ legally parked vehicles, towing vehicles despite clearly displayed Hacienda parking permits, showing up and hooking up vehicles minutes after they were parked, and pulling numbers out of the air. I personally witnessed a driver attempt to extort money from one of the families living there. I went back there and broke that up myself.
Four years later, my van is still sitting in my driveway with a broken transmission, and I’ll bet they are sorry now….
Attachment “A.”
Aside from the name of the company, the two invoices are completely different. No line items on the list of charges and fees appearing on one invoice appear on the other, none are identical, and neither are the amounts.
They can’t possibly both be correct. Which, if any, is correct? The towers took the position that they were both correct.
The towing company treated each vehicle in practice differently as well.
We came to learn that the towers were exploiting a line in ORS statute that prevented regulation if the parking lot held ten or fewer spaces. The lot behind my home had parking for only seven vehicles. The City of Portland had limited authority to regulate towing, and only if a parking lot was larger than ten spaces.
Who knew that the size of a parking lot made any difference in how much an Oregon citizen could be charged, on what fees could be assessed, and in how one would be treated?
These two invoices reflected that reality. The upper invoice in Attachment “A” reflects the fees and line items permitted under the authority of the City of Portland.
The lower invoice shows how the towing company was operating absent of regulation. This also explains the enthusiasm with which the tow drivers were patrolling that seven-space parking lot. More fees and charges, higher commissions, no public authority to regulate. I have seen two tow trucks in that lot at the same time.
Under the regulated invoice, the driver took my vehicle to their tow yard only about 25 blocks from my home in outer NE Portland. The City does not permit mileage to be charged.
Under the unregulated invoice, however, the other driver took my vehicle clear across town to their lot at NW 15th and Quimby.
He charged me $110 for the tow, $16 for his mileage, driving around town, $3 for the fuel he claimed that he burned while towing my vehicle, $10 for taking a photo of the tow (which clearly identifies the trespass and theft), $35 for the dolly he used to break my transmission, and $15 for a dispatch fee. Other than the tow fee, none of these charges were permitted under City code.
And you can see there are boxes for more fees: “Retow fee”, “Retow dollies”, “recovery and winching”, “service call”, “gate fee” and “service fee.”
Note that the regulated invoice has a $ 20/day printed storage fee.
The unregulated invoice daily storage rate is not printed. Here, the driver has written in a rate of $33. Which is the correct number? The tower claimed they were both correct.
The unregulated invoice bears no printed rates or costs. In all cases, the driver alone decides what numbers to put in the boxes and which boxes to check. The form also has a blank line at the bottom of the price column where the driver or lot employee can invent things to charge, like “anger” or “attitude” fees, and write in a number he likes.
And he is paid on commission.
2007 legislation
At the start of the 2007 session, Senator Gordly filed five legislative concepts to address patrol towing, later concentrated into the two bills.
Our contributions to Senate Bill 116, sponsored by the Attorney General, were these:
Section 1 of SB 116 clarifies the authority of the state and Oregon municipal governments to regulate involuntary towing.
Senate Bill 116 also removed the language from ORS that barred regulation of parking lots if they contained ten or fewer vehicles. In the workgroup, with the assistance of Legislative Counsel, we learned that there was no record of why that line was in statute in the first place, or why the number was ten. Even the patrol towers could offer no reason, other than that they thought it was a good idea. At one point, one of the patrol company owners shouted at me that the City had no right to regulate in that parking lot behind my home. Well, they do now.
Senate Bill 116 requires tow drivers to provide vehicle owners with a printed rate sheet, in order to eliminate the practice of commission-paid drivers pulling a smorgasbord of numbers out of the air.
However, a recent patrol towing incident in Wilsonville, where a driver attempted to tow the vehicle of an injured woman fleeing an assault, indicates that the company involved is not complying with this provision of law. In the extensive media coverage that followed, no one, not the police, not even the owner of the tow company, interviewed on-camera, knew how much money his driver had charged the victim. They are clearly not complying with the provisions passed out of this Committee in 2007.
Senate Bill 431
Senate Bill 431 addressed patrol towing abuses in landlord-tenant relationships.
SB 431 prohibits towers from removing vehicles solely for having expired tags. Those tenants’ rental agreements gave them the right to park their car in the lot, and they were violating no state law as long as they kept that vehicle parked and off the street, which is where it was.
SB 431 requires landlords to provide tenants with written notice that includes the actual costs they might face if their vehicle is towed. It is not unreasonable to have a pre-printed rate sheet, but the patrol towers really howled about this one in the workgroup.
Landlords must provide this information at the time the rental or lease agreement is signed, they must update the tenants if and when any of those numbers change, and they must provide the tenants with parking permits. It is highly doubtful that any are complying with this portion of the law passed by this Committee, as none of the constituents who contacted Senator Gordly’s office in the interim and none of my neighbors have received any such notices or rate sheets or parking permits from their landlords.
Opposition to the 2007 legislation came from lobbyists for commercial property owners, who stated that they absolutely needed patrol towing, but acknowledged that they received these services for free. Their agreements with patrol towers permit the towers to load all costs, real or otherwise, and their profit expectations on the backs of their victims.
Unless landlords and property managers participate in the expense of the service and the cost of police resources they rely on….
In closing:
Despite all of the reforms instituted by the legislature in 2007 and ample fair warning to patrol towers clearly and plainly stated at that time by members of the Senate Commerce Committee and of this Committee, most memorably by Vice Chair Riley, little has changed in actual practice. The patrol towing business model itself is to blame
I would suggest that the Committee, as it works this bill, consider provisions requiring the owners of patrol towing companies that are competing for public towing contracts for any public agency or entity, to conform all of their towing operations under any other name to the standards set in the public contract.
---------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Monday, February 16, 2009
Cesar Chavez and the crisis of nonnegotiable demands
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon-- I have long supported recognizing the achievements and the inspiration of Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way in Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am a first-generation Mexican-American, born in the USA.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am ethnically, culturally and politically a Chicano, with ties to the Chicano Movement of the 1970s.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am unafraid to speak truth to power and I do not hide my identity behind anonymity.
More than a decade ago, as a member of the KBOO Board of Directors, it was my motion, passed on a unanimous vote, to declare Cesar Chavez’ birthday a national holiday. That same year, Texas declared his birthday a state holiday.
In 2003, I staffed Senator Avel Gordly as she and Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Dan Gardner overturned one of the last of the state’s shameful race-based laws, the statute that denied Oregon farm workers the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday. That work was done intentionally in the spirit of Cesar Chavez.
In 2005, Senator Gordly sponsored legislation at my request that would urge Congress and require the state to consider family connections in immigration law, prioritizing family unification ahead of job status. Our current laws serve to break families apart, mostly Mexican families. These bills were not heard during the session.
Also in 2005, I was on the floor when the Oregon Senate passed SR1, encouraging Oregonians to undertake a day of voluntary service to honor Cesar Chavez…and I continue to wear my Cesar Chavez 37-cent US postage stamp lapel pin on my jacket.
There are many ways to honor a person, and I strongly support recognizing Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way.
However, I am troubled by the efforts of the handful of generally well-meaning activists ever since they presented the City of Portland with an agenda of nonnegotiable demands centered on their proposal to rename Interstate Avenue, and here is why:
Right from the beginning, they claimed to represent Portland’s Latino communities, and that is simply not the case. There has been no community process to put the Chavez Committee in charge, and many Latinos wouldn’t follow them out of a burning building….
Even the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has had nothing to say about the effort.
The Avenistas’ antics and accusations in front of City Council and at Ockley Green Middle School were an embarrassment to many of us….
The Chavez Committee has also never identified who its members are, apart from the two co-chairs, not even on their website. Anonymous committees cannot possibly represent a community, and carry no weight with me.
The Committee claimed that any cost associated with renaming a street was inconsequential, and that any opposition to their demands was racially motivated, and neither statement is true. The costs are insignificant only if Other People pay the price….
The Chavez Committee claims that recognizing Cesar Chavez with any memorial other than a major street renaming is an insult to Latinos, and that also is plainly untrue. Communities across the nation have found many other tangible ways to honor Cesar Chavez, including parks and libraries and schools….
The Committee has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
This street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero. Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee claims it wants to honor Cesar Chavez, but nowhere do they acknowledge the fact that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA.
The best they can do is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring his legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Portland, Oregon-- I have long supported recognizing the achievements and the inspiration of Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way in Portland.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am the son and grandson of Mexican farm workers.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am a first-generation Mexican-American, born in the USA.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am ethnically, culturally and politically a Chicano, with ties to the Chicano Movement of the 1970s.
Like Cesar Chavez, I am unafraid to speak truth to power and I do not hide my identity behind anonymity.
More than a decade ago, as a member of the KBOO Board of Directors, it was my motion, passed on a unanimous vote, to declare Cesar Chavez’ birthday a national holiday. That same year, Texas declared his birthday a state holiday.
In 2003, I staffed Senator Avel Gordly as she and Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Dan Gardner overturned one of the last of the state’s shameful race-based laws, the statute that denied Oregon farm workers the right to meal and rest breaks during the workday. That work was done intentionally in the spirit of Cesar Chavez.
In 2005, Senator Gordly sponsored legislation at my request that would urge Congress and require the state to consider family connections in immigration law, prioritizing family unification ahead of job status. Our current laws serve to break families apart, mostly Mexican families. These bills were not heard during the session.
Also in 2005, I was on the floor when the Oregon Senate passed SR1, encouraging Oregonians to undertake a day of voluntary service to honor Cesar Chavez…and I continue to wear my Cesar Chavez 37-cent US postage stamp lapel pin on my jacket.
There are many ways to honor a person, and I strongly support recognizing Cesar Chavez in a permanent, physical way.
However, I am troubled by the efforts of the handful of generally well-meaning activists ever since they presented the City of Portland with an agenda of nonnegotiable demands centered on their proposal to rename Interstate Avenue, and here is why:
Right from the beginning, they claimed to represent Portland’s Latino communities, and that is simply not the case. There has been no community process to put the Chavez Committee in charge, and many Latinos wouldn’t follow them out of a burning building….
Even the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has had nothing to say about the effort.
The Avenistas’ antics and accusations in front of City Council and at Ockley Green Middle School were an embarrassment to many of us….
The Chavez Committee has also never identified who its members are, apart from the two co-chairs, not even on their website. Anonymous committees cannot possibly represent a community, and carry no weight with me.
The Committee claimed that any cost associated with renaming a street was inconsequential, and that any opposition to their demands was racially motivated, and neither statement is true. The costs are insignificant only if Other People pay the price….
The Chavez Committee claims that recognizing Cesar Chavez with any memorial other than a major street renaming is an insult to Latinos, and that also is plainly untrue. Communities across the nation have found many other tangible ways to honor Cesar Chavez, including parks and libraries and schools….
The Committee has never asked the City or the County or the State to put other possible public property naming options on the table, and Portland remains stuck in the mire largely because the White Folks in Charge at all levels of Oregon government have been so fearful of alienating a potential voting bloc.
This street-focused effort will win no awards for creativity or imagination, in part because there is no major street in Portland that is a natural fit for a Mexican American hero. Nothing underscores this point more than the fact that the Committee is equally good with Broadway, 39th, Grand or Interstate Avenue, so far….
The Committee claims it wants to honor Cesar Chavez, but nowhere do they acknowledge the fact that he was of Mexican ancestry, or that his achievements stemmed from his great courage and his experiences in a Mexican migrant farm worker family, working in the USA.
The best they can do is to state that he was an American civil rights leader.
That falls far short of honoring his legacy, and points to the core failure of the Committee co-chairs and its unknown membership, apart from the arrogance and clumsiness: education.
While there have been plenty of racist comments opposing the recognition of Cesar Chavez with a street renaming or in any other way, it is clear that even the supporters of the effort have little understanding of who he was, what he accomplished or why it is important to remember him.
Cesar Chavez softened opposition by raising public awareness of the suffering of America’s mostly Mexican migrant agricultural workforce, not by making blanket accusations and staying stuck in a rut….
The boycott of table grapes was part of a strategy to get the attention of the American public on farmworker issues, educate them and then gain their support.
The grapes themselves were not the issue. The issue was the appalling living and working conditions, including the use of the 12-inch short hoe, el cortito, that millions of families were enduring, had endured since the USA established itself in what was until the 1840s the northern part of the Republic of Mexico.
The boycott did not extend to wine grapes, but only table grapes….
Few Americans were going to stand for a bunch of Mexican farm workers messing with their wine, but it was a fairly easy sacrifice for supporters to forego table grapes during the boycott, once they were educated to the issue….
The table grapes were an economic pressure point.
One wonders where we would be now if only the Chavez Committee members had thought to engage the broader community in a discussion, asking the question: What are some appropriate ways to remember Cesar Chavez in Portland?, and working from there….
My guess is that we would have gotten it done a year ago, and it would be beautiful….
-----------------------------
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Monday, February 02, 2009
To Oregon's predatory patrol towers: The end is near!
By Sean Cruz
Portland—There will be rejoicing in the land when and if the 2009 Oregon legislature passes Representative Chuck Riley’s patrol towing reform bills.
As reported by The Oregonian’s Rick Bella, Representative Riley will finish the job begun in 2007 by Senator Avel Gordly (SB 431) and Attorney General Hardy Myers (SB116). See story, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/patrol_towing_on_the_hook_if_n.html
The City of Fairview is the first Oregon municipality to act on the authority to ban patrol towing granted to all Oregon cities as a result of the 2007 legislation.
http://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/index.ssf/2008/12/fairview_cracks_down_on_tow_tr.html
Contact your City Council, urging them to ban patrol towing in your town.
Representative Riley’s draft legislation addresses the commission-based foundation of Retriever Towing’s business model, the root cause of most patrol towing abuses, and the predators are already starting to howl.
Mr. Bella notes that the patrol towing reforms will be opposed by commercial property interests as well as by the towers themselves, the sole opposition to the 2007 bills, which passed both House and Senate on unanimous votes.
It was pressure from the commercial property interests that prevented the passage of the complete ban on patrol towing in Oregon that Senator Gordly sought in 2007, for there are big dollars at stake, and they will be back in 2009.
Retriever’s and Sergeant’s contracts with commercial property owners and managers, deferring on-the-spot decision making to drivers working on commission, is the other part of the predatory patrol towing problem.
In exchange for this authority, Sergeant’s and Retriever provide their “services” to the owners and managers for free, getting 100% of their revenue from their fleets of towjacking thugs.
The commercial property owners demand the service, and they demand it for free. They will carry that argument to the 2009 legislature, and future campaign contributions from this powerful lobby will hinge on how the votes come down.
Representative Riley gave notice during the 2007 House Consumer Protection Committee hearings that if the industry did not shape up before the 2009 session, he would take them on and seek a ban on the practice, and he is delivering on that promise.
The general public still has a role to play in this argument.
Contact your legislators and Representative Riley and voice your support, here:
www.leg.state.or.us
Stay informed on the issue. If you are able to attend any hearings, do so. Your legislators will be happy to help orient you around the Capitol.
If you are wrongfully patrol-towed, the Attorney General’s office is waiting to hear from you, ready to hear your complaint. 2007’s Senate Bill 116 and 431 empowered the AG to promulgate and enforce involuntary towing regulations on its own authority.
Register your complaint here:
http://www.doj.state.or.us/finfraud/towing.shtml
The Attorney General now has the statutory authority to promulgate and enforce regulations regarding involuntary towing, including the price thereof. Many predatory patrol towing practices are now subject to civil sanctions, including prosecution under Unfair Trade Practices statutes.
===============
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Portland—There will be rejoicing in the land when and if the 2009 Oregon legislature passes Representative Chuck Riley’s patrol towing reform bills.
As reported by The Oregonian’s Rick Bella, Representative Riley will finish the job begun in 2007 by Senator Avel Gordly (SB 431) and Attorney General Hardy Myers (SB116). See story, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/patrol_towing_on_the_hook_if_n.html
The City of Fairview is the first Oregon municipality to act on the authority to ban patrol towing granted to all Oregon cities as a result of the 2007 legislation.
http://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/index.ssf/2008/12/fairview_cracks_down_on_tow_tr.html
Contact your City Council, urging them to ban patrol towing in your town.
Representative Riley’s draft legislation addresses the commission-based foundation of Retriever Towing’s business model, the root cause of most patrol towing abuses, and the predators are already starting to howl.
Mr. Bella notes that the patrol towing reforms will be opposed by commercial property interests as well as by the towers themselves, the sole opposition to the 2007 bills, which passed both House and Senate on unanimous votes.
It was pressure from the commercial property interests that prevented the passage of the complete ban on patrol towing in Oregon that Senator Gordly sought in 2007, for there are big dollars at stake, and they will be back in 2009.
Retriever’s and Sergeant’s contracts with commercial property owners and managers, deferring on-the-spot decision making to drivers working on commission, is the other part of the predatory patrol towing problem.
In exchange for this authority, Sergeant’s and Retriever provide their “services” to the owners and managers for free, getting 100% of their revenue from their fleets of towjacking thugs.
The commercial property owners demand the service, and they demand it for free. They will carry that argument to the 2009 legislature, and future campaign contributions from this powerful lobby will hinge on how the votes come down.
Representative Riley gave notice during the 2007 House Consumer Protection Committee hearings that if the industry did not shape up before the 2009 session, he would take them on and seek a ban on the practice, and he is delivering on that promise.
The general public still has a role to play in this argument.
Contact your legislators and Representative Riley and voice your support, here:
www.leg.state.or.us
Stay informed on the issue. If you are able to attend any hearings, do so. Your legislators will be happy to help orient you around the Capitol.
If you are wrongfully patrol-towed, the Attorney General’s office is waiting to hear from you, ready to hear your complaint. 2007’s Senate Bill 116 and 431 empowered the AG to promulgate and enforce involuntary towing regulations on its own authority.
Register your complaint here:
http://www.doj.state.or.us/finfraud/towing.shtml
The Attorney General now has the statutory authority to promulgate and enforce regulations regarding involuntary towing, including the price thereof. Many predatory patrol towing practices are now subject to civil sanctions, including prosecution under Unfair Trade Practices statutes.
===============
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Oregonian notes Portland's smorgasbord of diversity (not!)
By Sean Cruz
The Oregonian’s January 18 story on Portland’s lack of diversity drew a smorgasbord of comments from mostly irate, mostly white folks, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/in_a_changing_world_portland_r.html
Some attacked the content of Betsy Hammond’s story; even more lambasted The Oregonian for placing the information on the front page, or for printing it at all.
Some felt personally insulted by the data; for others, racial and ethnic insults rolled off the tongue with unsurprising ease.
I was moved to make the following comment:
Posted by seancruz on 01/18/09 at 11:22AM
I want to thank The Oregonian and Betsy Hammond for bringing this issue forward.
The appallingly ignorant comments posted by so many "readers" demonstrate that it is difficult to argue successfully with those who believe that history is irrelevant to the present, who have probably never read a history book, and who are offended by facts.
The one area that the article missed is the demographics of Native Americans; that is, the remnants of the non-white people that the white settlers didn't slaughter as completely as they would have liked.
As an openly Mexican-American former candidate for public office, I recognize the bias in the comments. I've heard them my entire life.
Regardless of one's qualifications, a racial or ethnic minority candidate can never win a vote from these people, and that is a fact of life.
Less than ten years ago, Oregon voters overwhelmingly voted to remove the last of the racial exclusionary language from the Oregon constitution, but 300,000 voted to keep the references in, providing a quick count of the number of actual racists living in the state.
The demographics are real, and they do make a difference in our everyday lives.
See this earlier posting for more information on the subject:
White tide--not blue--sweeps the Oregon House! The Senate is next!
http://blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/2008/11/white-tide-not-blue-sweeps-oregon-house.html
The Oregonian article noted that Oregon public policy is controlled from a white point of view at every level: city, county, state, and in special districts like Metro.
This is a simple statement of fact, an absolute fact, across the state.
Measure 37 offered a clear picture of how race affects public policy. Its proponents intentionally wanted to turn the clock back to a time when only white people could buy property in Oregon, but not so far back as to include Native Oregonians.
Every Measure 37 hearing was packed with white people. No diversity at all was present. I wrote about this issue previously here:
Measure 37 and the case for affirmative action
http://blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/2007/10/measure-37-and-case-for-affirmative.html
As President Barack Obama takes office, The Nation becomes achingly aware that our national capitol was built with Black slave labor, a really inconvenient truth.
Some want to believe that the United States had a virgin birth, Oregon an Immaculate Conception. They become angry when the facts of history are raised, when the issues that mattered then are placed in the historical context of now, and some of them commented on The Oregonian’s story in that spirit.
Race and the history of race is a fundamental issue in every nation, in every community, in every population everywhere in the world. It is fundamental to the human condition.
The Oregonian did well to bring the issue forward, and to put it where it belongs, on the front page of Oregon’s largest news organization, above the fold.
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
The Oregonian’s January 18 story on Portland’s lack of diversity drew a smorgasbord of comments from mostly irate, mostly white folks, here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/in_a_changing_world_portland_r.html
Some attacked the content of Betsy Hammond’s story; even more lambasted The Oregonian for placing the information on the front page, or for printing it at all.
Some felt personally insulted by the data; for others, racial and ethnic insults rolled off the tongue with unsurprising ease.
I was moved to make the following comment:
Posted by seancruz on 01/18/09 at 11:22AM
I want to thank The Oregonian and Betsy Hammond for bringing this issue forward.
The appallingly ignorant comments posted by so many "readers" demonstrate that it is difficult to argue successfully with those who believe that history is irrelevant to the present, who have probably never read a history book, and who are offended by facts.
The one area that the article missed is the demographics of Native Americans; that is, the remnants of the non-white people that the white settlers didn't slaughter as completely as they would have liked.
As an openly Mexican-American former candidate for public office, I recognize the bias in the comments. I've heard them my entire life.
Regardless of one's qualifications, a racial or ethnic minority candidate can never win a vote from these people, and that is a fact of life.
Less than ten years ago, Oregon voters overwhelmingly voted to remove the last of the racial exclusionary language from the Oregon constitution, but 300,000 voted to keep the references in, providing a quick count of the number of actual racists living in the state.
The demographics are real, and they do make a difference in our everyday lives.
See this earlier posting for more information on the subject:
White tide--not blue--sweeps the Oregon House! The Senate is next!
http://blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/2008/11/white-tide-not-blue-sweeps-oregon-house.html
The Oregonian article noted that Oregon public policy is controlled from a white point of view at every level: city, county, state, and in special districts like Metro.
This is a simple statement of fact, an absolute fact, across the state.
Measure 37 offered a clear picture of how race affects public policy. Its proponents intentionally wanted to turn the clock back to a time when only white people could buy property in Oregon, but not so far back as to include Native Oregonians.
Every Measure 37 hearing was packed with white people. No diversity at all was present. I wrote about this issue previously here:
Measure 37 and the case for affirmative action
http://blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com/2007/10/measure-37-and-case-for-affirmative.html
As President Barack Obama takes office, The Nation becomes achingly aware that our national capitol was built with Black slave labor, a really inconvenient truth.
Some want to believe that the United States had a virgin birth, Oregon an Immaculate Conception. They become angry when the facts of history are raised, when the issues that mattered then are placed in the historical context of now, and some of them commented on The Oregonian’s story in that spirit.
Race and the history of race is a fundamental issue in every nation, in every community, in every population everywhere in the world. It is fundamental to the human condition.
The Oregonian did well to bring the issue forward, and to put it where it belongs, on the front page of Oregon’s largest news organization, above the fold.
Sean Cruz writes:
Blogolitical Sean, political commentary here:
www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com
Aaron’s Law, regarding child abduction prevention and resolution here:
www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com
Jim Pepper House, dedicated to the legacy of the late, great Jim Pepper here:
www.jimpepperhouse.blogspot.com
Portland’s #1 Predatory Towing Horror Story, regarding predatory patrol towing practices here:
www.patroltowing.blogspot.com
Chicano Hero Cesar Chavez, dedicated to the Mexican-American giant, here.
http://chicanoherocesarchavez.blogspot.com/
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