A Second Nomination

It's been coming for a while, but this week it's official: the Independent Party of Oregon has given us its nomination. This is the first time anyone's had both a major party nomination and the Independent nomination for Jackson County Commissioner. Oh, there's this small detail: carrying multiple nominations has only been possible in Oregon for the last couple of years, since "fusion" nominations have been authorized by Oregon law.

We're proud of this. The people who created this party are laser-focused on reducing special-interest ownership of our politics, and are working against steep odds to make that happen. I thank them for their bold work, and for this nomination.

They're stepping up purely for the good of it

Just came back from a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) outing up in the Oak Knoll subdivision on Ashland's southeast edge, 18 hours after fire destroyed eleven homes. We canvassed the neighborhood, making sure everyone was ok and looking for smoldering patches that the wind could possibly whip back up into flames.

Turned out to be a pretty uneventful canvass. And hot (104). But seeing a squad of volunteers show up to minimize chances of a second-round catastrophe, people moved purely by an urge to help and comfort -- that feels so good. Our Strength is Our Community.

Grounding a Slogan in the Real World

Our Strength is Our Community. It's our campaign slogan, and today I walked into a great nuts-and-bolts example, a meeting of the Jackson County Task Force on Homelessness. There I found about 30 dedicated people from a couple of dozen organizations, some of whom have been meeting monthly for 20 years to deal with this problem.

Think about it. Homelessness, spreading by the week at exactly the same time governments are cutting back on services, has to be near the top of the list of problems where people might throw up their hands and say "Man, it's really terrible, but there's no way we can solve it." This group of professionals and volunteer leaders somehow missed the memo that there's little or nothing that can be done. They're aiming not just to ease the worst pains of homelessness, but to eliminate it in ten years. And not by whistling a happy tune and thinking happy thoughts; check out their Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and see if it doesn't raise the bar for you on what's possible in these rough times.

Making this plan work will take a mountain of effort, of collaboration, of tenacity and letting go of turf concerns. It will also take laser-focused leadership from County Commissioners. Not easy. But this report leaves you convinced it can actually be done.

And that Our Strength is Our Community.

Who's making a difference?

I'm completely excited that Community Building Blocks is up and running, thanks to volunteer coordinator Cynthia Salbato. It describes some of the amazingly creative work people are doing every day to make this Valley stronger, healthier, more resilient, and just more enjoyable as a place to live and work. Check it out, and then if you know if any project around here that deserves more attention, help us get the word out with an email to salbatoc@gmail.com.
We're hoping this chronicle of great & generous project will outlive this election, and stir even more folks to make a difference. Thanks, Cynthia...

Fair Politics

I spent three days at the Jackson County Fair, yesterday included, talking to folks who came by the Democratic Party booth. There was a variety: some interested in hearing about candidates and campaigns, some not real friendly ("Thanks for RUINING THE COUNTRY!" one 30-something guy shouted as he passed without slowing down), most not wanting to make eye contact at all, everybody HOT and on the verge of irritable.

One interesting visit yesterday: two women with their elderly mother in a wheel chair. They were extremely agitated with a story I couldn't quite follow that had partly to do with a Medicare snarl that was keeping the mother from getting chiropractic care and partly to do with the daughters' inability to find work. We recommended that they talk to Rep Walden's office about the Medicare problem. They said they'd tried but had received no satisfaction and, knowing that he's a Republican, had stopped at the Republican Party booth just before visiting us. There, they said, they were told that since the White House and Congress are in Democratic hands, all problems with federal programs like Medicare, and all unemployment, was the work of Democrats. If you walk down this aisle a ways, the Republicans helpfully told them, you can find the Democratic booth and demand that we fix things.

They were unhappy when we didn't. Very loudly unhappy. And they couldn't have been less interested in the issues the we can do something about.

Times are hard. People are frustrated.

What a great project...

There are some projects underway in our Valley that are so good they make you blink--and then wonder why more people don't know about them. One is Rogue Valley Farm to School. All this small non-profit is doing is reconnecting children to the source of their food (earlier in the process, that is, than the supermarket shelf or the fastfood drive-thru window), spark in them the natural fascination with growing food that all of us felt as youngsters if we were lucky enough to plant and nurture a few seeds, instill an interest in self-sufficiency and the work that makes it possible, establish healthier eating habits, provide schools with healthier food (some of it grown by proud students!) and generally re-establish a long-lost link between the younger generation and our food.

That's all.

Think they deserve your support? Me too. Here they are again.

Smart move

The County Commissioners made a fine decision this week. I'd like the opportunity to make more decisions like it.

They approved $50,000 in seed money for Sustainable Valley, a well-crafted proposal from a group of progressive business people to grow a cluster of environmentally & economically viable new enterprises. The founders themselves will tell you there's still a lot to figure out, but as I look around for practical strategies for generating high-quality, stable, environmentally healthy jobs in this ferociously tough economy, it doesn't get better than this. And the model of careful, modest infusion of public dollars to leverage huge accomplishments in the private and volunteer sectors is just what we've been talking about since this campaign began.

No, there's no exact blueprint. There never is with game-changing ideas. So out come the skeptics, smelling another pointy-headed fuzzy government boondoggle. I think that's way off track, and here's why.

We need more of this.