Inside Out
Mary Conley
I was brought out to Eugene in October 2004 to interview for a job. That Sunday, I happened upon the local NPR station and a call-in show about development in the area. The conversation was wide and rambling... eventually touching on the Iraq War, the UN and health care. Eventually, a man called in and shouted, "We've got to close the borders! We've got to build a wall and stop them from coming in!" The host said that border walls weren't the answer to our country's immigration problem. First of all, just look at how big our borders were... at which point the caller interrupted with, "Not the US borders! We need to close the borders of Eugene! Now!"
I thought, "Wow. Can I live around people who think like that?"
I'm from a place that nobody thinks has multi-generational native families like mine: Washington, D.C. There, everyone's an immigrant. They float through for four or eight-year stints, or some period of time at a government agency. Just long enough to get something impressive-sounding on their resume and move on. They use my home town, in some cases they've ruined it, then they leave.
So I understand the anger that the locals here in the Eugene area have about people like me moving in. Yes, we bring higher home values and an appreciation of Starbucks. (Sorry, I just like their chai better. It's not so sweet.) But we also bring a demand for better jobs and a plan for a future. We come from places where the cops actually investigate home burglaries and where schools get paid for by tax dollars. Those are good things to expect from your government. I hope immigrants like me can help find ways for those things to become a priority here, too.
The weirdest thing is, I've now been here about a year and a half and in all that time, I've only met three native Oregonians - one of whom just moved back from the much-maligned California. Everybody else seems to be from someplace else. But a lot of them want to close the door behind them, lock it, and throw away the key.
That's not going to work for our country's immigration problem and I don't think it's going to work for Eugene. America's Greenest City (yesterday's prize) is indeed something worth fighting for. People do move here for the quality of life, the green spaces, and the lack of traffic. So I vow to do my part: I'm leaving my car behind now that the rains are subsiding and will learn how to bike with groceries on my back. My dog and I are becoming a therapy dog team as our volunteer work, to help our neighbors in need. And I'm working for progressive causes, trying to keep Oregon's air, land, and water clean.
If I keep up all this good behavior, I'm hoping this "Beltway Insider" will earn her pass to stay in Oregon. Wish me luck.
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connect with blueoregon
Apr 11, '06
Mary - My great-grandparents (Rueben and Minnie Smith) and my great-great grandfather (William McHenry) are buried in a cemetery just between Eugene and Springfield. Including William McHenry and to my son, six generations of my family have lived in Oregon. I have lived in Eugene full time for three years, and visited every weekend for a couple other years - I'm real familiar with your town.
When I was growing up, there were about 1 million of us in the State, there are now over 3 million.
When I was growing up, nearly every flowing stream had healthy fish that you could catch. I was able to do hikes in the wilderness, once hiking from the Columbia River to Timberline Lodge - and only seeing a few people on the trail during that multi-day hike. I remember before we built freeways, and before lots of unpleasant developments.
So, what you run into here is a romantic quest for the past. Who wouldn't like things less busy, quieter, less polluted, and overall smaller? Wouldn't you?
When people are uncomfortable, they tend to transfer blame to issues that they can grasp.
We need to continually reframe what is real in these circumstances.
When I hear concern about immigation, I hear people talking about a threat of loss of job, employment at wages too low, and fears of more crowding. I also hear some racism, and other junk thrown in. It would be best to deal with these "real" issues than to spend our time thinking about the walls.
Oh, and lastly I should note, back in 1970 during a summer job with what was then the Highway Department (sounds so much better than ODOT), we joked about taking a load of asphalt down to the summit at the California border on I-5, and droping it there to keep the Californians out. Walling out what we don't want is hardly a new concept. I give you two years before you catch yourself wishing there were less people in Eugene!
So, enjoy Eugene in the Spring - its the best time of year.
Apr 11, '06
Having grown up to the age of 32 in Eugene . Seeing all that has not gone as well as I would have hoped for the city. I moved away from eugene, to an area near Sandy, I look back at Eugene and wish it could be as it was when I was a kid there. I remember the old mayor Gus Keller, a humble man with intentions on keeping Eugene a college town, with no need to try and keep pace with the rest of the worlds economic rat race. Later the tech boom came and with it, broken and self serving politics with Jim Torrey and his cronies leading the way to rip off our nice little community. I really did leave Eugene due to seeing his deals go down and noone getting anything out of it but a few of his buddies. If Ruth Bascom is reading this please pull the plug on the money machine in that community and I would be glad to talk my wife into moving back to my first love of the communal earth, Eugene Oregon.
11:19 p.m.
Apr 11, '06
me, me! i'm a native-born Oregonian! i lived in Eugene for about 5 years, in the early 90s, and loved it. it looks like it's still got a lot of great things going on. i have grown to love Corvallis in the past 4 years. i was initially sad to leave Portland, and still am excited everytime i go back (which isn't often enough; same as for visiting Eugene: not enough).
one thing all 3 places have in common: you can actually survive pretty well without a car. sometimes it's a pain, and sometimes it's almost impossible (which is why it's good to have friends with cars, god help me). you picked a great city to live in. obviously it's not perfect, but it's got so many great things to offer. it it gets a bit much for you, Corvallis is certainly worth a try (Corvallis is, after all, the new Eugene). and whatever some people might say, Portland is one of the great places to live. find yourself a good neighborhood to move to and start exploring. you're only 90 minutes from beach of mountians, too.
my forefather Barnhart came over 300-some years ago. he and the rest of the crew didn't bother to go through any procedure other than purchasing passage; quite likely, the religious authorities were glad to red the Old Country of their kind. Puritans were a pain in the butt, so let them move to America. i think a similar logic applies in Mexico and other Latin American countries: poor people are a nuisance. the more of them who sneak off to the U.S. and work, the more money that gets sent back home (and that's what most of them are doing: making money for their families). if we really care about the I-issue, let's care about economic justice there. let's give them a reason to stay home other than fear of American "justice" (which is no fear at all, it appears). i'm the child of immigrants, and even (to a tiny degree) the child of people what got brutally pushed out of the way by those immigrants. let's find a solution that's more humane than locking up the borders (or walling off Eugene). turning our back on the source of this problem -- international povertyh -- is not worthy of our progressive, or American, heritage.
Apr 12, '06
Thanks, all you natives. I knew you were out there somewhere.
Steve: you're right. I used to think a 15 min drive was nothing. Now, that seems outrageous in Eugene and I think twice before taking one that long - so I know you're right about how I'll be in two years. My traffic tolerance in other cities now is Zero. And I agree about the immigration debate having lots of other layers that aren't being discussed. It's ridiculous. We were all immigrants to start with.
Christopher: I only hope someday to be as well versed in Eugene politics as you. I'll be keeping an eye on it.
T.A.: Portland is already my home away from home. It fills my big city jones when I get it. And I definitely have to roam the state more and see what's not Eugene. I hear we're a little different from the rest of the state down here...
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