Relay For Life®, the American Cancer Society’s signature event, is a fun-filled overnight experience designed to bring together those who have been touched by cancer. At Relay, people from within the community gather to celebrate survivors, remember those lost to cancer, and to fight back against this disease. Relay participants help raise money and awareness to support the American Cancer Society in its lifesaving mission to eliminate cancer as a major health issue.

The Bus Project team needs your help! Donate today on their team page to give them the encouragement they need to complete the 24 hour relay!

The event starts at noon on Friday and goes until noon on Saturday at LCC.

For more details please check out the Eugene/Springfield Relay for Life homepage.

Stay tuned for photos and results!

I’ve been following the budget crisis stories as we report them, but recently I saw first hand how hard it is for someone in need to get help.

Last week a man and woman in their late 40s came to my door asking if they could do some yard work for me (my yard is a complete wreck) so they could earn $20 to afford some propane so they wouldn’t be cold overnight in their trailer. His name was Dan and was a really kind and genuine guy, although I could tell he had lived a very hard life. It was getting dark, so I told him to just take $20, get his propane problem solved and if he could come back another day, that would be fine. They were overwhelmed with appreciation and he went on to tell me their entire story.

Both are recovering heroin addicts trying to get their lives back together. They have been accepted into a treatment program, have sponsors, and a job offer waiting after that is completed. Dan can’t read or write. I felt really bad because I could tell he really wanted to turn over a new leaf and save their own lives. I told him it was great to hear that they were taking those steps and that if he could come pull a few weeds in exchange for the money, he could do so whenever. Dan is about 100 pounds and frail with back problems, so I didn’t even want to force him to do the work at that point.

The next day, Dan was back on my doorstep, I thought to do some yard work. But really, he was just looking for more help. He showed me a letter his wife had written explaining that she had terrible cellulitis in her legs and a 104 degree fever. He was so upset and with no where to turn was asking me, a stranger if I knew any way to help.

Whitebird wouldn’t help them. Buckley House wouldn’t help them. They ER wouldn’t help them. They had a person able to give her a ride, but no place to go. They have both been accepted to the Oregon Health Plan in a lottery, which was a miracle that they both got picked, but it hadn’t started yet. I could tell he was worried that she might not even make it. I had no idea what to do other than wondering if Portland had any resources for them.

You can’t place blame on these local services. They are staffed with good hearted people who are just trying to stretch their resources as thin as possible for as many people as possible.

It is hard to say sometimes when someone is giving you a tragic story just to get something out of you. I didn’t want them to, but those thoughts about whether he was just looking for more cash to get drugs crept into my mind. I knew that there wasn’t much I could do about helping his wife. Throwing money at a problem that serious wasn’t going to help. Dan went desperate on his way and I don’t know what happened. I hope that she got some medical attention and I hope that leads them on to their plans to get healthy and on track.

It was hard to see someone with absolutely no recourse in a possible life or death situation. Are they at fault for getting to that stage in life? Yes. Should the community and society be there to help them out of that hole? Yes.

I expect I will see Dan again. Probably no closer to the treatment program in Portland they are seeking, without any money to afford the basic necessities in life. I would happily pay more taxes to know that these types of stories didn’t exist in our community, but unfortunately not everyone feels the same.

Folks, this isn’t a Bus Project event, but my good buddy and incredible advocate Martin Rafferty is asking those who care about what young residents in Lane County have to say to join them for the Youth Empowerment Summit. His words below:

It’s time to come together to support the youth of our community. If you support or work in the youth service field you should come to see this elaborate event. Fully created and lead by youth and funded by multiple organizations this will be a great opportunity for networking and community building. If you can’t make it May 9th pass this letter along to someone who can!

Say YES!

Youth know what is happening in our community and have fresh ideas to address social issues. Eight groups of youth allied with community organizations have prepared presentations on solutions to social issues in our community.

Please come take part in this unique opportunity to hear from proactive young leaders. The Youth Empowerment Summit (YES) is an opportunity for youth to create change by presenting to community decision makers on youth identified community issues.

YES is a youth led event which is designed to stimulate awareness by giving voice to youth as they speak about issues of oppression and create positive community solutions.

Where: The Shedd Institute for the Arts
868 High St. (Use High St. Entrance), Eugene

When: Friday, May 9th 2008
12:00 – 7:00pm (breakout sessions from 1:40pm to 4:30pm)
Lunch will be provided at noon.

Schedule for the day:
12:00 – Lunch
12:30-1:30 – Opening Presentation
1:40-3:00 – First Breakout Session
Juventud FACETA
Youth Council
LGBTQ Issues
Sexual Health

3:10-4:30 – Second Breakout Session
Communities Empowering Youth (CEY)
Oregon Family Support Network (OFSN) And MindFreedom International
ACT-SO
Student Peace Alliance

4:30-5:00 – Closing Presentation
5:00-7:00 – Networking Opportunity and Open Mic Celebration

Please RSVP to Cheryl Bondy by May 2nd
682-2331 or cheryl.bondy@co.lane.or.us

If you need a translator, sign language interpreter, large print material, or other accommodations, please call or email Cheryl Bondy.

I always love learning about my state from a newspaper that isn’t based in my state. Or in my country.

The BBC has an article about the state of our state’s health care system as a case study of the absurd solutions states are going to because of a health care system in shambles. We are covering a “lucky” 10,000 out of 600,000 in Oregon without health care, and out of an eligible 90,000.

We had a chance to insure all children in Oregon — and that was measure 50. That’s 104,000 children. That’s Autzen filled up twice — full of kids. That was Measure 50 where a sales tax on cigarettes would have accomplished this — and had the side effect of reducing rates of smoking, especially smoking of those under 18. And the cigarette companies put $12 million dollars into Oregon, in violation of the Master Settlement Agreement, and used their high-paid marketing power to convince Oregonians with any possible argument that they tested and knew would work.

Exciting times for health care reform in Oregon — at least, we hope so!

With the passage of SB 329 in 2007, the Oregon Health Fund Board began developing their plan to insure Oregonians through a system of “accountable health plans” who were obligated to serve Oregonians holding an “Oregon Health Card”. The bill itself sets a goal to provide essential health services (as defined by the governing boards) to ALL Oregon residents. While this sounds very exciting, we also know the Federal government does not support universal health care, and with the AARP’s position that seniors should be able to access similar benefits from Medicare nationwide, some aspects of this bill are not currently feasible practically or politically.

The most important work going on now is the implementation, which the Oregon Health Fund Board will develop through their committee work. One interesting aspect is that the committees are assuming a certain package of supporting health related bills must go through the legislature (as soon as 2009). One such policy would require all Oregonians to maintain health insurance (an aspect of Massachusetts’ health care reform package).

I’m particularly happy to see that the Northwest Health Foundation has undertaken health policy advocacy work, as demonstrated by their new blog about health care reform. Now so far there is just one post, inviting others to comment, and a few have stopped in to post their excitement for the possibilities. Rumor has it that NW Health Foundation is changing their grantmaking focus to support health policy reform work (after several years of funding community based action research, a grassroots approach to making change).

Let’s continue to generate some chatter from down here in Lane County! Comment here and on the health reform blog about what YOU think Oregon needs to change about our health care system.

Although not a Lane County issue presently, I thought I’d bring up an issue that deals with many of the same equal rights/environment problems that arise in the Eugene area.  Up here in Albany, an entrepreneur, Mark Davis, recently bought a historic home with the intention of fixing it up to code and leasing it to an organization called the Oxford House.  The Oxford House provides a sober living situation of people recovering from addictions.  The Oxford house has stated that it will place 8 residents in the facility.  See the local news story.

What’s not to love?  After all, we desperately need more sober living facilities, and Oxford House claims a low rate of police response to their facilities.  Well, all is not happy in Whoville. Albany recently rejected an attempt by a contractor for the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) to place a group home for the guilty but insane in a different neighborhood.  The neighbors complain that this residence was recently a notorious meth house. A neighbor complained to me that she would routinely watch her former neighbor come out on the front porch with a gun in the middle of the night and shoot out the street light so that he could do drug deals there.  The city finally had to put a bulletproof glass shield around the light.

Further, the house sits right across the street from a preschool and right next to a bed and breakfast.  The neighborhood already has 5 other Oxford Houses, compared to 2 for all of Corvallis, a city with a larger population.  The Oxford House justified this by saying property values are better in Albany. The neighbors replied, “See what happens to Corvallis property values if you put six rehab facilities (plus two homeless shelters) in the same neighborhood.” Benton County seems to have low crime rates largely because it pushes low income people out with high housing prices.)  The Oxford House countered (truthfully) that federal law prohibits discrimination against recovering drug and alcohol addicts.  The neighbors replied that it does not prevent restrictions on housing for parolees, and that this is not a rehab facility, but rather an unsupervised halfway house for criminals.

So who’s right?  It’s hard to say.  The downtown neighbors have a point – concentration of all the facilities in the same place creates urban decay, as evidenced by some of Eugene’s neighborhoods.  Oxford House does not have an unblemished record in Albany, as its other facilities tend to be eyesores and the residents tend to engage in mildly antisocial behavior.  On the other hand, the decision to deny a group home for PSRB inmates was probably not reasonable, since that particular neighborhood has few facilities and would not be unduly injured by pulling its weight in social services.  The Oxford House refuses to distinguish between recovering addicts who voluntarily seek treatment and those who are mandated by the criminal justice system. This is not a distinction without a difference.  People tend to get sober when they commit themselves to it, not when they’re forced into it.  A far better solution would have been to start an Oxford House in a neighborhood with a lower concentration of the same sort of services.

What should the Lane Bus care? Eugene has many of the same challenges.  The Eugene downtown and close-in residential neighborhoods are attempting to recover from a combination of poor urban planning on the government side and commercial short-sightedness on the business side of things. Good progressives tend to react favorably to facilities like the Oxford House, without necessarily looking at the broader picture.  A family probably doesn’t have the right not to live next to a rehab facility, but it’s not unreasonable not to want to live in between two of them.  Similarly, it’s easy to support a social services facility downtown with the justification that easy access to the other services there, but there can be too much of a good thing.

Consider the current dilemma of where to site the new McKenzie-Willamette Hospital. Many of us opposed the Delta location as it tended to encourage suburban sprawl.  Fair enough.  However, as my dad pointed out, that facility would have been much more accessible to the rural residents of Western Lane County than most of the other possible sites.  The take-away from all this is that there’s no substitute for 1) electing local officials who will take a deliberate approach to planning, with due regard to equal rights for the disadvantaged and reasonable planning to encourage a positive urban environment, and 2) engaging in that process with an eye towards all the legitimate interests involved.

Marty Wilde

The vivisection of what makes news into a CNN headline.

Take a tragedy: Five people die in a car accident. And slowly massage the words. Five people die in a BMW accident. Five people die in a BMW accident off an elevated airstrip. Five Killed When BMW has Accident Off Elevated Airstrip. “5 Killed When BMW Flies Off Elevated Airstrip, Hits Top Of Tree”. That’s where the local news station took it. I can still basically understand that a tragedy took place when a car drove off an elevated airstrip.

To fit the CNN profile, we need to go further: 5 Die when BMW flies off elevated airstrip. And finally “Five die when BMW flies off runway.” How creative. CNN chooses the funny little pun about “flying off” and “runway.” Cute little word trick to capture a little more attention to a story where five people died. Trivialize the accident and get a few more readers curious if this was a flying BMW and how it would fly off a runway. The local affiliate uses a similar play on words but at least calls it an elevated airstrip so the crash makes a bit more sense in context.

And this is how we are informed from one of the main sources of news in our country. They take their solemn duty of educating our voting populous lightly. There are many less sensational stories that we need to learn more about, and that we can do something about. For example, hospital-acquired infections kill nearly 100,000 people annually in the US. On average that’s 273 dying each day — or 55 BMW accidents daily. CNN making this a priority could literally save thousands of lives a year just by cutting that number by 2%. If they replaced all Spears/Ledger stories with this, that wouldn’t be difficult; they could give it a Fox slant like “The War on Dirty Hands”.

CNN. We are listening. Choose your news wisely.

Dan Savage Confirmed For Rebooting Democracy!!!
By Matt Davis on Mon, Jan 7 at 4:00 PM

Are you excited about Rebooting Democracy starting this Friday, yet?
I am. I’m pissing myself. Right here, right now. There it goes…a little trickle of pee, down my leg, showing how excited I am. ABOUT REBOOTING DEMOCRACY. Why? Because not only is The Bus Project’s conference a weekend-long opportunity to network your socks off, featuring workshops, trainings, issue panels, big name speakers and of course, did I already mention, the chance to network your socks off? It is ALSO going to be M.C’d by The Stranger’s very own sex-ually pol-it-ic-al

SAVAGE: Show up to hear him speak, or just to oggle his pecs. Either way he’s a winner…

I’m going to be there because Mr.Savage makes me feel just a teensy bit gay. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re political at all, whether you’re new to Oregon or looking to get re-elected, you should, frankly, be here for the sake of your career. And If the $95 3-day student pass sounds pricey to you, the organizers say they’ve got lots of scholarships available to get you in. In other words, if you’re broke, call ‘em. If not, call ‘em anyway, and try pretending! I don’t care how you get there, just get there if you can. Or, just come for the

POLITIPALOOZA: IT WILL GIVE YOU AN ELECTION!!!

Once again: It’s local.
It’s everybody who’s anybody in politics. It’s a chance to get off your lazy hipster ass and get involved in 2008, a pivotal fucking year in politics not just here, but everywhere. Why the hell wouldn’t you want to come on down? You don’t know, do you?! You’ve got nothing—am I right?

So: Come.

Kids, try not to get sick if you don’t have insurance.

People need to keep their cigarette prices down.Well, at least we didn’t have to amend the Oregon Constitution…yes THAT Oregon Constitution.

“They haven’t done that since 1890!!”

Big tobacco, deceptive advertising and special interest win again. (also those flannel shirted people in their kitchen won too. I blame them the most!)

Don’t forget to Vote!
Ballots are due TOMORROW, Tuesday, at 8pm. Tell your friends, family, and neighbors! Get out the Vote.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAM!

It’s the Dudes birthday today! You know him as the creator of this badass beautiful blog. He’s dazzled us with his wise and witty words.

Cam, The bus hearts you! Thank you for creating this online space for us. You make politics crazy and fun for everyone.