WAVELENGTHS

League of Women Voters of Lincoln County, Oregon March 15, 2019

“The League of Women Voters of Oregon is a grassroots, non-partisan political organization which encourages the informed and active participation of citi-zens in government in order to build better communities statewide. Visit our web page at www.lwvlincolncounty.org

LWVLC Board of Directors

Leadership Team

Carol Hall Ruth Kistler Patti Littlehales Marilyn Podesta Georgia Roelof

Secretary Maxine Demory

Communica-tions Coord.

Marta West

Treasurer/Fundraiser

Jack Kistler Georgia Roelof

Bulletin Editor Ruth Kistler

Bulletin Publish-er

Jack Kistler

Voter Services Ruth Kistler

Membership

List maint.

Carol Hall Marilyn Podesta Jack Kistler

Outreach Georgia Roelof (HS & College) Ellen Bristow (local governments)

Public Relations Patti Littlehales

Website Coord. Jack Kistler

Paul Engelmeyer Presentation at March 21 Meeting

Paul Engelmeyer, a respected coastal conservation voice, will speak about “Coastal Conser-vation issues and strategies, and the Land-Sea Connec-tion” at our March membership meeting. Paul will talk about Ore-gon’s complex marine food web and efforts to protect forage fish - the prey base for seabirds as well as the unique habitat requirements for the ESA listed Marbled Murrelet. He has managed lands for The Wetlands Conservancy located in Alsea Bay, Beaver Creek and Yaquina Bay. Landscape conservation efforts and partnership will be discussed.

He will be drawing upon his years of experience managing the Ten Mile Creek Sanctuary (located near Yachats) for the Audubon Society of Port-land and on his service on Oregon’s Ocean Policy Advisory Council (OPAC), which has developed a system of marine reserves and protected areas for Oregon’s coast. Engelmeyer’s presentation will include information about the Wetlands Con-servancy parcels in Alsea Bay, Beaver Creek and Yaquina Bay, and about the designated Globally Significant Central Coast Marbled Murrelet Im-portant Bird Area (IBA), which extends over 100,000 acres from north of Yachats basin to

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WAVE LENGTHS 2 March 15, 2019

“Getting to Know You” By Carol Hall

The League of Women Voters of Lincoln County welcomes as a new member this year, Newport resident Shirle Adams. She joined along with her husband Tom Adams in Fall 2018 and attended the December luncheon at the Sylvia Beach Ho-tel’s restaurant, the Table of Contents.

Shirle’s interest in the League of Women Voters stems from wanting to be active in national and state policies that affect her family and other citi-zens. She stated that she is pleased to have found an organization that is connected with government function that is non-partisan.

She is far from her hometown of LaCrosse, Wis-consin and lived in the Panama Canal Zone prior to World War II. Travel is one of her many inter-ests. Shirle also enjoys reading, crafts, gardening, current news and history, attending plays and con-certs, thrift-store shopping and volunteering.

There is a “maybe” connected with her being in-terested in LWVLC in various areas: newsletter, membership, publicity and website.

When Shirle is “ready,” LWVLC will be the place for her creativity. Thank you for joining, Shirle!

League of Women Voters of Lincoln County General Meeting

February 21, 2019 McEntee Room of the Newport

Public Library By Carol Hall

A fortunate thirteen LWVLC members and one guest heard and participated in a question-and-answer time with speaker Rachel Cotton, Associ-ate Planner for the City of Newport. Her theme was “Affordable Housing in Newport.” Rachel was introduced with the various tasks she per-forms printed on papers along with hats symboliz-ing the “many hats that she wears” as Planner for the city: land development, environmental protec-tion/mitigation, transportation, growth manage-ment, public facilities and housing.

Ms. Cotton gave each attendee a multi-page handout that included information in outline form about:

(1) barriers related to housing development in

Lincoln County;

(2) potential housing development tools and

incentives; and

(3) Newport housing FAQs.

Throughout her presentation, Ms. Cotton was open to questions from LWVLC members, so the meeting atmosphere was one of imparting knowledge and learning.

Refreshments were brought by Ellen Bristow and enjoyed by all (biscotti!).

south of Heceta Head, as well the Marine IBA ef-fort which includes partners from Baja to Barrow, Alaska.

His update will include the current status of Ore-gon’s five marine reserves, including the for-mation of the Oregon Marine Reserve Partnership as well as the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve and Seabird Protected Area. Engelmeyer has decades of experience working in partnership to achieve conservation goals, including the Siuslaw Forest Stewardship groups, which received the 2010 Two Chief’s Partnership Award. This award is present-ed annually to a handful of projects by the Chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to recog-nize exemplary efforts working across both public and private lands to promote conservation and for-est stewardship.

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WAVE LENGTHS 3 March 15, 2019

Calendar of Events As of March 15, 2019

Mar 21 11:30 AM Newport Public Library General Meeting: Paul Engelmeyer on Coastal Conservation

Mar 23 Bijou Theater, Lincoln City

“Dolores Huerta” documentory – Sponsored by Cento De Ayuda

Apr 4 1 PM Lincoln City Library Board Meeting

Apr 18 11:30 AM Newport Public Library General Meeting: Consensus – Hard Rock Mining

Apr 29 Salem Day at the Legislature

May 16 11:30 AM Crestview Golf Course, Waldport

LWVLC Annual Meeting and luncheon

May 17-19

Ashland LWVOR Convention 2019

LWVLC Annual Meeting & Luncheon

Thursday, May 16, 2019, 11:30 am to 2 pm

Save the date for our annual meeting. This year we’ll meet at the Crestview Golf Course in Waldport. Lunch will be served at noon; choice of a vegetarian or non-vegetarian entrée will be available. We’ll conduct our necessary business, such as making any needed bylaws changes, electing officers, and adopting a budget. We’ll talk about this past year, and about plans for next year. More de-tails will be available next month.

LWVOR Convention 2019 “A Beacon of Democracy … for 99

Years”

This biennial LWVOR meeting will be held Fri-day-Sunday, May 17-19, 2019, at the Ashland Springs Hotel in Ashland, Oregon. It will be host-ed by the League of Women Voters of Rogue Val-ley.

Early arrivals to Convention can take part in the Friday evening dine-out. Guest speakers, work-shops, caucuses and business meetings are held all Saturday and on Sunday morning. There’s a Sat-urday buffet lunch and an evening banquet with speakers. In the business meetings, the conven-tion shall consider changes to the Bylaws; shall consider and authorize for action a program (i.e. none, one, or more new studies or study updates); shall elect the president, first vice-president, secre-tary, three directors (two-year terms), and a chair and two members of the nominating committee; shall adopt a budget for the ensuing year; and shall transact such other business as may be pre-sented.

The League of Women Voters of Lincoln County (LWVLC) is entitled to send two delegates to Convention. We can also send any number of nonvoting Observers. (Ruth will be attending the Convention as a member of the LWVOR Board of Directors, not as a delegate from LWVLC.) One of our delegates should be a member of the Lead-

ership Team; it would be good if a second delegate is one of our newer members. Our local League has budgeted money to pay our delegates’ expens-es, i.e., Convention registration fee, hotel room for May 17 and 18, Convention meals, and mileage. We encourage members to consider attending Convention, -- it’s a great opportunity to meet members from other local Leagues. We’ll talk about this at our March member meeting; our April local board meeting will decide who our del-egates will be.

WAVE LENGTHS 4 March 15, 2019

National Women’s History Month By Ruth Kistler and Nancy Campbell Mead

March is National Women’s History Month. I intended to write an article about Women’s History Month for our newsletter, but I decided that I could not write anything better than this “Viewpoint” piece by Nancy Campbell Mead that appeared in the Newport News-Times on March 1, 2019. Nancy is past president of the Central Oregon Coast NOW, and also a member of the League of Women Voters of Lincoln County. The article is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Why We Celebrate Women’s History Month Women’s History Month had its beginnings in the first celebration of International Women’s Day, March 8, 1911. At that time, there was a worldwide interest in women’s issues, especially voting rights. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the first Women’s History Week, and, in 1987, at the urging of the Na-tional Women’s History Project, Congress declared the month of March as the first Women’s History Month. In the United States, we have celebrated March as Women’s History Month ever since.

The importance of setting aside a month to recognize women’s achievements cannot be overstated. Wom-en’s contributions to history have, for the most part, gone unrecognized. Despite their many achievements, very few women have been awarded such prestigious honors as Pulitzer and Nobel prizes; there are many examples of women doing much of the work but men receiving the prizes (e.g., Lise Meitner discovered and understood nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn took credit and was awarded the Nobel Prize). More recently, we have the example of Dolores Huerta, who established the predecessor organization to the United Farm Work-ers and was every bit the leader and organizer that Cesar Chavez was, yet it is Cesar Chavez who we read and hear most about.

It is only recently that important female historical figures are starting to be featured in films (e.g., “Hidden Figures”, “On the Basis of Sex”). Prior to the last few years, it was men who were the heroes, with women shown almost exclusively in “supporting” roles.

When I was growing up, I had almost no women role models to look up to in the history books. I remember reading about Joan of Arc, who, in hindsight, may have been the first prominent feminist in history. Then there was Betsy Ross who, legend has it, sewed the first American flag; yet I leaned nothing about the hero-ism of many women at the time, such as Deborah Sampson.

I remember mention of the 19th Amendment being passed in 1920 granting women the right to vote, but I re-member nothing being mentioned of the women who fought so valiantly for many years to see its passage come to fruition, including being beaten, jailed and force-fed.

I remember reading nothing about Frances Perkins, the first woman Cabinet member and the person respon-sible for the Social Security and Fair Labor Standards Acts (not surprisingly, it was Eleanor Roosevelt who made her husband select Perkins as Secretary of Labor; he did not want her).

The importance of Women’s History Month is at least twofold: 1) It increases the knowledge and awareness of, and honors the many achievements of women that have long gone unrecognized; 2) It teaches our chil-dren that women can and do accomplish remarkable things – that any child, regardless of gender, race, reli-gion, national origin or sexual orientation, can grow up to make history.

By bringing Women’s achievements to everyone’s awareness, more women of all ages, races and identities are invited to participate and lead.

In honor of Women’s History Month, all during the month of March, Central Oregon Coast NOW (National Organization for Women) will be featuring women who made history and including them on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/CentralOregonCoastNOW). This year’s theme for Women’s History Month is “Visionary Women: Champions of Peace & Nonviolence”, and we will be focusing on women who have led in this area. We welcome suggestions of women to honor. Email: centraloregoncoastnow@gmail.com.

WAVE LENGTHS 5 March 15, 2019

Action Alert

Date: Feb 27, 2019 To: All League Members and Oregonians From: Norman Turrill, LWVOR President Marge Easley, NPV Portfolio Chair

Contact your legislators immediately to urge support of SB 870, National Popular Vote.

(Editor’s Note: As of 3/14/19, SB870 was in the Senate Committee on Rules.)

SB 870, the Senate version of the National Popular Vote Bill, was introduced on February 25 with an unprec-edented 40 sponsors and 8 chief sponsors. This is the same bill that has been blocked by Senate leadership after passage in the House four times in recent sessions. However, we are very hopeful that this year will be different.

NPV supporters have just been told that Senate President Courtney and Senator Ginny Burdick are finally willing to allow a Senate vote on the NPV bill this session. It is important that legislators hear from as many constituents as possible that support for NPV is high. Please call or email your state legislators as soon as possible to urge support for SB 870.

It is particularly important to convey to Republican legislators that NPV does not favor one party or the other or favor urban areas over rural areas. Misconceptions about NPV abound, so it is our job to counter these misconceptions with facts. The bottom line is that every voter deserves to have his/her vote count equally, no matter where that vote is cast. Here are some talking points to help:

• The Electoral College in its current form creates an unfair system and damages public trust in U.S. elections. It allows voters in some states to have more voting power than others. NPV will ensure that every vote in every state has equal weight.

• Our founding fathers chose the elector system for reasons that are no longer applicable—to en-sure that the President wasn’t selected by uneducated commoners and to appease slave states by counting slaves (3/5 of a person) in their population totals. Today’s Electoral College system is a re-sult of decades of change brought about by increasingly powerful political parties, as well as winner-take-all state laws. These changes were never envisioned by the founding fathers.

• The argument that the current Electoral College protects the interests of smaller states is not valid. In fact, the winner-take-all aspect of the Electoral College gives outsized power to 11 swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin), where the two major political parties have similar levels of voter support. The others, including Oregon, are written off as the province of one party or the other before the first primary votes are even cast and receive scant campaign attention. It is easy to see why voters in non-swing states come to believe their votes don’t really matter.

• The candidate with the most votes wins in every other election in the country. Also, the U.S. is the ONLY practicing democracy where the candidate with the most votes is not assured of being cho-sen the national leader. A 2018 CNN poll showed that two-thirds of voters prefer a popular vote for president over a continuation of the Electoral College.

• The National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact does not change the Constitution or abol-ish the Electoral College. It is an agreement among participating states to pledge their electors’ votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. It takes effect as soon as the NPV bill is enacted by states possessing enough electoral votes to reach the threshold of 270 (out of 538), the number needed to elect a President. This bill has already been enacted by 12 jurisdictions pos-sessing 172 electoral votes, and it awaits the Governor’s signature in Colorado (9 electoral votes). New Mexico (5 electoral votes) is also on track to pass it this year.

League of Women Voters of Lincoln County P. O. Box 1648 Newport, OR 97365

Membership Form

Name____________________________________ Phone___________________ E-Mail________________________ Address__________________________________________ City______________________________ Zip_________ Additional household members if new

Names:

League of Women Voters of Lincoln County

For information call Carol Anne Hall Membership Chair, 541-614-4091 depoebaycarol@gmail.com

Individual Household Student Annual Membership Dues (Circle one.) $60 $90 $5 Or Low Income Individual Household $40 $60 ___I am a new member

___I am renewing my membership The membership year begins July 1.

___I am interested in working with the League.

___Please call me.

I wish to make a contribution to LWV Lincoln County in addition to my dues $______________

Total Member Dues and contribution Make check out to: LWV of Lincoln County $______________ I wish to contribute to the LWV of Oregon to assist LWVLC’s Voter Service activities and education projects. (Separate Check Required. Make check out $______________ to “LWVOR”. ) Only contributions to LWVOR are tax deductible. Total Enclosed: $______________ Please mail to: LWVLC P. O. Box 1648, Newport, OR 97365