Thu 1 May 2008
Mia Nelson is a volunteer for Rob Handy’s campaign, a former Green Tortoise driver, and kick ass mama of two.
The upcoming election for the North Eugene county commissioner is probably the most important race many of us have ever voted in. Why? Because the heart and soul of Lane County is at stake. Commissioners Bill Fleenor and Pete Sorenson, the intellectual heavyweights on the board, are too often left spinning their wheels at the losing end of 3-2 votes on the most critical issues facing Lane County. If Rob Handy is elected on May 20 to the North Eugene seat, it will change the balance of power in a profound way. We’ve never before had this opportunity to have three progressive thinkers at the wheel. While the Eugene mayor and council races do matter, they can’t compare to the Handy-Green showdown. Nearly all the really important local decisions are made at least in part by the county commissioners.
I’ve lived here for twenty years, and this is the first time I’ve ever become involved with a political campaign.
I’ve lived here for twenty years, and this is the first time I’ve ever become involved with a political campaign. I went from near apathy to logging dozens of hours each week on Rob’s campaign. In the process, I’ve gotten to spend time with Rob and learn about his views in detail. He could not be more different from the inaccessible and unresponsive incumbent Bobby Green. Virtually every aspect of Lane County’s operations will be improved if Rob joins Commissioners Fleenor and Sorenson on the board, from land use decisions to budget problems. I encourage everyone who cares about progressive causes to pitch in and help us with this campaign. We already have 200 volunteers but need many more. We also need donations to allow us to match Bobby Green’s advertising campaign. Please stop by the campaign headquarters at 6th and Lawrence, give us a call at 484-9595, or see our website. Every single vote matters. Every single volunteer matters. Your decision to help us, or to sit on the sidelines, could mean the difference between winning and losing this critically important race.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Apparently your definition of a person’s intellectual status has something to do with whether they are viewed as liberal or conservative. That yard-stick does not work! The real intellectuals on the commission at this time are Green, Stewart, and Fleenor! So from my perspective you would prefer that Handy replace Green so that the majority of the board then would be non intellectual thinkers resulting in a lot of bad decisions’ being made. We need a majority of really smart people on the commission to figure out how to solve the problems of revenue loss that we are facing. Green, Stewart, and Fleenor fit that picture.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
From the perspective of someone who isn’t up to speed on either of these candidates, one observation I can make is that Rob Handy is definitely winning the battle of “who has the most yard signs!”
May 1st, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Mr. Phelps:
Sorenson is an attorney and Fleenor has a PhD…and this is reflected in the depth of their understanding of the issues before them. Green and Stewart are just not at their level.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I agree somewhat — while degrees do not necessarily make the man, I think I’d like to have some clever people representing us, considering that the Commissioners are expected to run the county with NO staff of their own (the department heads and county administration, of course, are staff, but they are charged with running their departments, not serving the beck and call of the commissioners.
But intellectualism isn’t why I’m voting for Rob — he seems smart enough for me, but it’s his integrity, responsiveness, and generosity that I find personally appealing. Politically speaking, he’d clearly vote differently than Green on land use and zoning (see Mary O’Brien’s commentary in this week’s Eugene Weekly — http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2008/05/01/views1.html), and would be much more likely to work with his constituents to make positive change.
The Lane County Board of Commissioners has been stagnating with an inability to work together. I don’t wholly blame any one commissioner, but I see Handy working collaboratively across political lines very often.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Glad that you have gotten involved Mia!!
June 26th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Thanks Delbert! Right on the dot!
It looks to “Mayor for all and me our “progressive” need cultural competency & racism training!
Mr. Handy’s intellect level is very impressive!
Especially when it comes to women issues!
Mr.Handy was ashamed & embarrassed to tell me; I need not to worry about women being represented on the Board of Commission. Because, Mr. intellectual whispered it in my ear at the public library!
This is the kind of person, Mia, Mike and Rose want to support, and have on the Board!!
–
Salaam. nadia
We will forget and forgive any judgment error that you make, but integrity
mistakes are forever.
– David Cottrell
I’m still in the RACE for Lane County Commissioner: Please, I need your
financial support, endorsement, VOTE. I’m running as “Write In”
www.nadiasindi.com
I’m one of the National Delegates for Sen. Barrack Obama:http://restricted.dpo.org/delegates/vp/1639.html
I am the Oregon Representative for:
www.StudentLoanJustice.Org
June 30th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Your Whiteness is Showing:
An Open Letter to Certain White Women
Who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November
By Tim Wise
June 5, 2008
This is an open letter to those white women who, despite their proclamations of progressivism, and supposedly because of their commitment to feminism, are threatening to withhold support from Barack Obama in November. You know who you are.
I know that it’s probably a bad time for this. Your disappointment at the electoral defeat of Senator Hillary Clinton is fresh, the sting is new, and the anger that animates many of you–who rightly point out that the media was often sexist in its treatment of the Senator–is raw, pure and justified.
That said, and despite the awkward timing, I need to ask you a few questions, and I hope you will take them in the spirit of solidarity with which they are genuinely intended. But before the questions, a statement if you don’t mind, or indeed, even if (as I suspect), you will mind it quite a bit.
First, for those of you threatening to actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter’s policy platform is virtually identical to Clinton’s while the former’s clearly is not), all the while claiming to be standing up for women…
For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and increase the odds of his winning (despite the fact that he once called his wife the c-word in public and is a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom and gender equity initiatives, such as comparable worth legislation), all the while claiming to be standing up for women…
For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure Barack Obama’s defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama’s sexism (examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the while claiming to be standing up for women…
Your whiteness is showing.
When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point–the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny–you couldn’t be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point. But on the first part of the above equation–the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity–you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what’s worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not abo! ut gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.
If it were gender solidarity you sought, you would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are threatening to vote not like other women–you know, the ones who aren’t white like you and most of your friends–but rather, like white men! Needless to say it is high irony, bordering on the outright farcical, to believe that electorally bonding with white men, so as to elect McCain, is a rational strategy for promoting feminism and challenging patriarchy. You are not thinking and acting as women, but as white people. So here’s the first question: What the hell is that about?
And you wonder why women of color have, for so long, thought (by and large) that white so-called feminists were phony as hell? Sister please…
Your threats are not about standing up for women. They are only about standing up for the feelings of white women, and more to the point, the aspirations of one white woman. So don’t kid yourself. If you wanted to make a statement about the importance of supporting a woman, you wouldn’t need to vote for John McCain, or stay home, thereby producing the same likely result–a defeat for Obama. You could always have said you were going to go out and vote for Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is a woman, running with the Green Party, and she’s progressive, and she’s a feminist. But that isn’t your threat is it? No. You’re not threatening to vote for the woman, or even the feminist woman. Rather, you are threatening to vote for the white man, and to reject not only the black man who you feel stole Clinton’s birthright, but even the black woman in the race. And I wonder why? Could it be…?
See, I told you your whiteness was showing.
And now for a third question, and this is the biggie, so please take your time with it: How is it that you have managed to hold your nose all these years, just like a lot of us on the left, and vote for Democrats who we knew were horribly inadequate–Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, right on down the uninspiring line–and yet, apparently can’t bring yourself to vote for Barack Obama? A man who, for all of his shortcomings (and there are several, as with all candidates put up by either of the two major corporate parties) is surely more progressive than any of those just mentioned. And how are we to understand that refusal–this sudden line in the proverbial sand–other than as a racist slap at a black man? You will vote for white men year after year after year–and are threatening to vote for another one just to make a point–but can’t bring yourself to vote for a black man, whose political views come much closer to your own, in all likelihood, than do the views of ! any of the white men you’ve supported before. How, other than as an act of racism, or perhaps as evidence of political insanity, is one to interpret such a thing?
See, black folks would have sucked it up, like they’ve had to do forever, and voted for Clinton had it come down to that. Indeed, they were on board the Hillary train early on, convinced that Obama had no chance to win and hoping for change, any change, from the reactionary agenda that has been so prevalent for so long in this culture. They would have supported the white woman–hell, for many black folks, before Obama showed his mettle they were downright excited to do so–but you won’t support the black man. And yet you have the audacity to insist that it is you who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and the one before whom Party leaders should bow down, and whose feet must be kissed?
Your whiteness is showing.
Look, I couldn’t care less about the Party personally. I left the Democrats twenty years ago when they told me that my activism in the Central America solidarity and South African anti-apartheid movements made me a security risk, and that I wouldn’t be able to get clearance to be in some parade with Governor Dukakis. Yeah, seriously. But for you to act as though you are the indispensible voters, the most important, the ones whose views should be pandered to, whose every whim should be the basis for Party policy, is not only absurd, it is also racist in that it, a) ignores and treats as irrelevant the much more loyal constituency of black folks, without whom no Democrat would have won anything in the past twenty years (and indeed the racial gap favoring the Democrats among blacks is about six times larger than the gender gap favoring them among white women, relative to white men); and b) demonstrates the mentality of entitlement and superiority that has been long ! ingrained in us as white folks–so that we believe we have the right to dictate the terms of political engagement, and to determine the outcome, and to get our way, simply because for so long we have done just that.
But that day is done, whether you like it or not, and you are now left with two, and only two choices, so consider them carefully: the first is to stand now in solidarity with your black brothers and sisters and welcome the new day, and help to push it in a truly progressive and feminist and antiracist direction, while the second is to team up with white men to try and block the new day from dawning. Feel free to choose the latter. But if you do, please don’t insult your own intelligence, or ours, by insisting that you’ve done so as a radical political act.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I have to agree with Mr. Phelps regarding your measurement of someone’s intellect. You say, “Sorenson is an attorney and Fleenor has a PhD…and this is reflected in the depth of their understanding of the issues before them. . . ” Following your logic, anyone who is an attorney or who has a PHd must be more qualified than anyone who is not. What? So let’s use your logic. What is Rob Handy’s “intellectual” level? Is his expertise in landscaping what we ought to use to judge his abilities? There is so much more to being a good commissioner, and it is sad you don’t understand that. Rigidly adhering to a particular political interest, be it called “progressive”, “survivalist” “libertarian”, “conservative” or anything else, just doesn’t cut it when it comes to leadership.
Comm. Green has proven his leadership abilities time and again.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Since some of you dispute my contention that Green isn’t the brightest bulb in the pack, I refer you to this hilarious video on the Green watchdog site “Bobbywatch” regarding the income tax vote last year.
http://www.bobbywatch.com/webpages/commissioner-bobby-green-taxes.html
In the video, we see Sorenson and Fleenor making eloquent pleas for not imposing the income tax (such as, the voters will just vote it down, which is exactly what happened). Their arguments are careful, reasoned, detailed. Green’s response was crude and illogical - he said the only way he wouldn’t impose the tax is if Sorenson agreed to be “laid off”. Right. I don’t believe the law allows county commissioners to be laid off. It’s this kind of thing that turned me against Green. I want somebody willing to think things through. Rob Handy will do that. I have watched him do it many times here at the campaign office. Rob takes it all very seriously. So do I. That’s why I volunteer for this campaign.