When the Legislature turns its back on Oregonians, it tacitly approves continued hardships for our next generation
Years ago – among a collage of street art and other images – Street Roots had a poster on its wall quoting a Swahili proverb. It said, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
In less poetic words, in conflicts between the powerful, it is the weak who get hurt.
It resonates so clearly today in Oregon.
The power plays in Salem have been reviewed and critiqued many times this past week. Much of it has, of course, been through the lens of politics – as well as the privilege of those who are involved in the game – people who have a voice, have always had a voice, and probably always will.
But we can’t help but see it through a different lens, the lens of people whose voices are stifled and who, over time, are discouraged from even speaking up by the kind of political hubris we’ve seen in the state Legislature of late.
They are Oregon’s next generation.
In the June 28-July 4 edition of Street Roots, we have a report on the just-released Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count National Data Book , its 30th annual edition. Oregon children rank 29th in the country for economic well-being, falling one spot from 28th last year. We’re not even at the midway point, and we’re moving in the wrong direction.
Among the data compiled in the report, Oregon saw a 24% increase in child and teen deaths between 2010 and 2017. The data book showed Oregon’s child and teen death rate (deaths per 100,000 children 1 to 19) at 26. For teens between 15 and 19, suicides were one of the biggest factors.
“Kids are coming to school with so many struggles, including housing insecurity and food insecurity,” said Nancy Haque, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon. “All of it takes a toll on people’s mental health, and even very young people can feel the effect of toxic shock.”
FURTHER READING: The complicated overlap of housing, health care and education in Oregon’s rural communities
We can’t help but compare that to what one AWOL Oregon Republican, state Sen. Tim Knopp, told CBS News: That he’s “in Idaho at a cabin by a lake.”
In addition to the figures above, the data book found that 27% of Oregon children live in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment. And despite some improvements, Oregon still has the second worse, four-year high school graduation rate in the nation.
When the state Legislature works, it can accomplish breakthrough policies to help children rise above and succeed. When it turns its back on Oregonians, it does so most tragically to the next generation by tacitly approving continued hardships ahead.
Republican lawmakers walked out to deny a vote on the cap-and-trade proposal House Bill 2020. The failure of this state to put one foot forward in the fight against climate change is a tragedy for all of us, and particularly for future generations. The economic and health impacts of global warming are already here, and will inflict greater challenges on young Oregonians in the short years to come. Saying this walkout was for their constituents is disingenuous. It’s a myopic, business-centric agenda benefiting the few in the immediate term. This short game, by repetition, has become their long game.
Let’s not forget that also in the balance is family and medical leave insurance and tax credits for low-income workers, along with budgets to hire more child welfare workers. More fundamental is the rightful expectation that lawmakers are working on our behalf to make Oregon better. We can point concretely to what’s happening right now and know they are not.
So it seems fitting, then, that it is a worker in the Child Welfare offices of the Department of Human Services to file the first formal complaint in the matter. The complaint calls for an immediate investigation into the campaign finance and ethics violations committed by the 11 walk-out Republicans.
“Every single day that these Republican senators are AWOL and grind the business of the Senate to a halt puts my clients and my district at risk,” said Andrew Kennedy-Smith, the child welfare worker behind the complaint.
This year, Street Roots will be launching a special two-year project focusing on the next generation of Oregonians. With support from the Meyer Memorial Trust, we will be covering poverty, homelessness, economic challenges, health issues and other matters Oregon youths are facing today and will continue to face moving forward. An Oregonian born today will be the third generation to grow up in the age modern-day homelessness, tracing the first generation to the early 1980s when funding for public housing and psychiatric resources were cut to the bone, and wages began to decline as compared to the cost of living. We will explore what we are doing to prevent this cycle from perpetuating and what the consequences will be if we continue along the same path.
So today, while the soap opera in Salem roils on, we think about the next generation, the generation not spending its summer sleeping in a lakeside cabin, but in a rundown car. The one that needed climate change legislation yesterday because it’s absolutely essential for its tomorrow. The one that needs strong representatives at work, listening not to corporate headquarters but to our hometowns.
This is the generation that needs protection from the fighting elephants.
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