Salem Creative Network -- Pop Up Shop

Five days of Holiday Cheer are coming your way at Pop Up in Salem Center, December 10-14 next to Ross Dress for Less on Center St NE. Our favorite Mid-Valley Makers will be serving up local art, music, food and drink from 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily. Plenty of holiday gift ideas and libations will be on tap to make your shopping easier and more fun. Santiam Brewing, Salem Ale Works, Vivacity Spirits, 2 Towns Cider House, Lewman Vineyards and surprise guests are pouring. A Salem Creative Network creation.

Elevate People, Not Boondoggles!

ELEVATE PEOPLE, NOT BOONDOGGLES!

As consultants and construction contractors in the Chamber of the 1% salivate over the prospect of spending further millions of your money to lay the groundwork to grab hundreds of millions more, it’s time for the people of Salem to send a clear message to every elected official within 100 miles:

It’s an obscenity to pour money down the planning rathole for a project that backers are trying to sell with an ever-changing rationale but will never be built, in a city that is so apathetic to the actual residents’ needs that it doesn’t even provide weekend bus service.

We’re against blowing four to eight hundred million dollars on an enormous elevated boondoggle. 

What are we for instead? It’s simple: we are for ELEVATING what’s right, not what’s wrong.

·      We support elevating people, not pork-barrel bridges.

·      We support elevating transit in Salem above the level of a third-world country.

·      We support elevating transparency over the backroom, backscratching maneuvers by politicians conspiring with their campaign funders, the maneuvers that produced this camel pretending to be a racehorse.

·      We support elevating honest government instead of the profits of the CH2M-Hills and the others sucking at the teat of a giant pork project.

·      We support elevating health for people by spending on projects that support biking and pedestrians, not just drivers.

·      We support elevating downtown Salem businesses, not the ones in Keizer and beyond West Salem.

·      We support elevating the needs of the “bridgehead” neighborhoods over the profits of the contractors who want to destroy those neighborhoods.

For all those reasons and more, that is why we support elevating the “Salem River Crossing” just enough to drop it in the trash can and move on to more important things.

George Orwell knew the Salem Statesman-Journal well

The new drive-by corporate boss dropped into Salem briefly haz a sad.  Some of the rabble have noticed that it's hard to do journalism about folks you only approach on bended knees.  So Newguy recycles the old tropes about "conspiracy theorists" imagining phone calls to tell the paper what to print.

Well, anyone paying attention knows that nothing could be further from the truth than any suggestion that it requires a phonecall from the Chamber of the 1% to tell the Statesman-Journal what to cover, who to favor and who to marginalize. After all, as George Orwell observed years ago,

Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip. -- George Orwell

Gardeners Wanted I: New Community Garden Leadership Team Meeting

Marion-Polk Food Share is helping coordinate launch of a new, as-yet-unnamed community garden in Northeast Salem, not too far from the Safeway at Center St.

The plan is to convert a small abandoned lot on which a house burned down some years ago and where the newer zoning laws make rebuilding difficult or impossible.  The landowner is eager to see a garden go in and has offered use of the property for essentially nothing.

Best of all, there is water already available to the lot, it's graded flat, and it gets abundant sunshine!  The local neighborhood association (Northeast Neighbors) is enthusiastic, and MPFS is trying to organize other groups as well, to ensure that there is a solid core of supporters to help keep the project going smoothly.

If you want to get in on the ground floor -- to plant the first seeds, if you will -- and help bring about this small bit of rejuvenation in the city, some to the Straub Environmental Learning Center this coming Thursday, January 9, at 5:30 p.m.  Come join with your neighbors in doing well by doing good.  Map showing SELC (marked with the big red A) below.  The garden spot is also somewhere on the map too -- want to know where?  Come and help Thursday night!

Great letter re: Bridgeasaurus Boondogglus

 If the Bridgeasaurus Boondogglus "Oversight Team" weren't doing so much dealing from the bottom of the deck, these kinds of comments would not be necessary, but thank goodness someone submitted them. The "Oversight Team" should be focused on ensuring that the "Edifice Complex" doesn't result in a gargantuan waste of resources in the name of a passing auto-dominated era, instead of being focused on how to package and sell a still-evolving proposal that's typical of the worst thinking of that era. But the Oversight Team was and remains stacked with unabashed Bridgasaurus boosters, pols who are firmly committed to a retrograde vision of more auto infrastructure (more is better).

*Comments to Oversight Team on the Salem Alternative for the Salem River Crossing *
 
I urge the Oversight Team to keep in mind the Purpose and Need for the DEIS that you have developed.In summary, the project will attempt to reduce congestion levels at the existing bridgeheads and remediate safety and operational deficiencies in the existing bridges and in the
study area (DEIS, ES-2). The federal regulations point out that the focus of the alternatives analysis in the EIS is "to serve as the means of assessing the environmental impact of proposed agency actions, rather than justifying decisions already made" (40 CRF Sec. 1502.2(g)). The purpose of this expensive study process is NOT to justify building a new bridge over the river on the outskirts of Salem.As the Federal Highway Administration points out:

"The decision-making process should first consider those alternatives which meet the purpose and need for the project at an acceptable cost and level of environmental impact relative to the benefits which will be derived from the project" (U.S. FHWA memorandum, 9/18/90).

Please consider the following comments and observations as you continue to review the alternatives in the Salem River Crossing DEIS:

*1.**The Oversight Team must do a thorough traffic comparison of the Salem Alternative with all of the other alternatives in the DEIS.*

The information available to date on the new Salem Alternative does not adequately compare the new hybrid alternative with other reasonable alternatives in the DEIS. The information available from the Oversight Team's October meeting compares the Salem alternative only with alternative 4D and a "no build" alternative. That is not consistent with NEPA requirements.

The Salem Alternative was proposed by the Salem City Council as an alternative to Alternative 4D, which was recommended by the Oversight Committee.Alternative 4D was never selected as the"preferred alternative." That process requires the concurrence of the cities of Salem and Keizer, Polk and Marion Counties, SKATS MPO and ODOT.Then FHWA ultimately selects the preferred alternative.That process has not yet happened.

Therefore, in order to determine if the Salem Alternative is truly the best alternative, it must go through the same process as the other alternatives in the DEIS. The alternatives analysis is the heart of the environmental impact statement.It should present the environmental impacts of the proposal and the alternatives in comparative form, thus sharply defining the issues and providing a clear basis for choice among options by the decision maker and the public (40 CFR, Sec. 1502.14).

The Oversight Team is required to "rigorously explore and objectively evaluate all reasonable alternatives, and for alternatives which were eliminated from detailed study, briefly discuss the reasons for their having been eliminated."

Before you make a new recommendation to the decision makers,the Salem Alternative must go through the same analysis as the prior recommendation did.If the other alternatives are being discarded, you should explain why.For example, the hand out from the November Oversight
Team Meeting contained traffic comparisons of the Salem Alternative with Alternative 4D and the No Build Alternative but none of the other alternatives...

...It is clear that the biggest impact of the Salem Alternative is the increase in congestion for several intersections in north Salem. Liberty and Pine, Liberty and Hickoryand Commercial and Pine do not benefit from the Salem Alternative.(The numbers for Commercial St. and Hickory Street are somewhat of an anomaly it appears.)Traffic between downtown Salem and Keizer would suffer. In addition, for the most part the Salem Alternative increases congestion at the Commercial/ Marion and Marion/Liberty Street intersections as compared to Alternative 2A.

2.***The Oversight Team should be sure that the traffic study done for the Salem Alternative uses the same assumptions that were usedto analyze all of the DEIS alternatives.*

The traffic analysis for all of the alternatives needs to take into account current data reflecting travel behaviors.Traffic levels are already well below the estimate in the DEIS.Studies find that Americans
continue to drive less than they did several years ago, and it is not related to the recession.(See Statesman Journal article, December 5, 2013.)

3.*The Salem Alternative is clearly not designed to be an "expressway" as was anticipated by the Keizer city council.*
 
Expressways do not have bicycle/pedestrian facilities, and the v/c ratio for Salem should be .85 or less, according to the Oregon Highway Plan. Keizer's interest in a free-flowing thoroughfare from I-5 and Keizer Station to Polk County would be thwarted by the number of on-grade intersections proposed in the Salem Alternative.From what I can tell from the drawings and description, twonew intersections on the east side of the river and six on the west side would slow traffic considerably. At
least some of those intersections presumably would have traffic lights.The Oversight Team must compare the travel times of the Salem Alternative with the other alternatives, as done in Table 3.1- 35 in the DEIS.

4.***The true cost of the Salem Alternative should take into account the cost of a new interchange on Highway 22.*

The proposed Salem Alternative eliminates the west bound access to Rosemont in West Salem.That traffic is supposed to use Wallace Road or Edgewater, decreasing the usefulness of the new facility for those residents headed for the west end of West Salem. The Salem Alternative requires another new, expensive project to fix that access problem, and kicks the can down the road for many West Salem residents.

5.***The Salem Alternative will require goal exceptions on the west side, and maybe an extension of the urban growth boundary.*

Those exceptions will be difficult to justify when some of the alternatives, particularly 2A, are reasonable and do not require any exceptions.Any analysis needs to evaluate minor revisions to 2A that do not require exceptions.There may be refinements to 2A that would reduce congestion (such as the full extension of Marine Drive,further reduction of private access onto Wallace Road[1] , and signage to channel traffic into the correct lanes before getting on the bridge from the east.) Other refinements would include retro-fitting to make the existing bridges more earthquake proof; and emergency vehicle access to the bicycle/pedestrian bridge from the west.
 
6.***The Oversight Team should urge that Salem move forward with the construction of Marine Drive, which is already in the Salem Area TSP.*

That project can be built independently of any alternative in the DEIS.Marine Drive would take a considerable amount of pressure off of Wallace Road, which would greatly relieve the back up onto Marion Street Bridge.Salem could re-evaluate the congestion at the bridge heads after
the new Marine Drive is built to see if a new, expensive bridge can still be justified.

Thank you for your consideration.

Kathy Lincoln

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [1]  I recently counted 8 private approaches on to Wallace Road on *each *side of the road,between Edgewater and Glen Creek. Many businesses have more than one driveway to Wallace Road and also have alternative access to the side or rear of the property. Closing those accesses would go a long way toward alleviating congestion on Wallace Road.

November Best Bet - "A Fierce Green Fire" - Salem Progressive Film Series, Nov. 14 7 p.m.

Thursday, November 14, 2013   7 p.m.   Grand Theatre

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle for a Living Planet is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement – grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. 

Directed and written by Mark Kitchell, Academy Award-nominated director of Berkeley in the Sixties, and narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende and Meryl Streep, the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2012, has won acclaim at festivals around the world, and in 2013 begins theatrical release as well as educational distribution and use by environmental groups and grassroots activists.

Inspired by the book of the same name by Philip Shabecoff and informed by advisors like Edward O. Wilson, A FIERCE GREEN FIRE chronicles the largest movement of the 20th century and one of the keys to the 21st. It brings together all the major parts of environmentalism and connects them. It focuses on activism, people fighting to save their homes, their lives, the future – and succeeding against all odds.
The film unfolds in five acts, each with a central story and character:

1. David Brower and the Sierra Club’s battle to halt dams in the Grand Canyon
   
2. Lois Gibbs and Love Canal residents’ struggle against 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals
   
3. Paul Watson and Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals
   
4. Chico Mendes and Brazilian rubbertappers’ fight to save the Amazon rainforest
   
5. Bill McKibben and the 25-year effort to address the impossible issue – climate change

Surrounding these main stories are strands like environmental justice, going back to the land, and movements of the global south such as Chipko in India and Wangari Maathai in Kenya. Vivid archival film brings it all back and insightful interviews shed light on the events and what they mean. The film offers a deeper view of environmentalism as civilizational change, bringing our industrial society into sustainable balance with nature.
• Website

Speakers
	Mark Kitchell | Producer, Writer, Director Mark Kitchell is best known for Berkeley in the Sixties, which won the Sundance Audience Award in 1990, was nominated for an Academy Award, and won other top honors. It has become a well-loved classic, one of the defining documentaries about the protest movements of the 1960s. Kitchell went to NYU film school, where he made The Godfather Comes to Sixth St., a cinema verite look at his neighbors caught up in filming The Godfather II - for which he received another (student) Academy Award nomination.
	Laura Stevens | Organizing Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign Laura Stevens, Organizing Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign in Oregon and Southwest Washington, works with concerned citizens to stop coal export projects and towards a coal-free northwest. Laura, a native Oregonian, obtained her B.A. from DePauw University, and has spent the past six years organizing for a number of environmental, human rights, and labor groups. After Laura launched and led the Sierra Club Campuses Beyond Coal campaign at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UNC made a commitment to move their on- campus coal-fired power plant off of mountain-top removal mined coal immediately, and set a date to move the plant off of coal entirely. For more information on how you can help stop coal exports in Oregon, contact Laura at laura.stevens@sierraclub.org or visit www.coalfreeoregon.org.

Crucial & free film at Salem Public Library -- on the American Gulag -- 8/21, 6:30 p.m.

The House I Live In

The Partnership for Safety and Justice proudly invites you to a free film screening of "The House I Live In." This documentary has received critical recognition for the scope it provides in America's failed war on drugs.

The film takes a comprehensive look at drug abuse as public health matter while investigating public policies, law enforcement and individual lives affected by the so-called "War on Drugs."

You can watch the film trailer online by clicking here.

We hope you can take a summer evening to join PSJ staff, members and supporters to watch this documentary with us. Seats are limited, so please let me know by phone or email if you can join us to one of the following film screenings:

Wed., Aug. 21st: 6:30 pm @ Louck's Auditorium located at Salem Public Library. 585 Liberty Ave., Salem, OR

I'm looking forward to seeing you there,

Cassandra Villanueva
Director of Organizing and Advocacy
Office: (503) 335-8449
www.safetyandjustice.org


PSJ is a membership organization. We rely on the support of our members so we can advocate for programs and policies that create community safety without sacrificing justice. Please make a contribution today to renew your membership.

The Downtown Rubik's Cube

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When it comes to finding an answer for the downtown parking meter question, the biggest mistake Salem can make is trying to answer the parking meter question.  
 

That’s because Salem doesn’t have a problem for which parking meters are a solution.  Indeed, because we have for so long refused to grapple with our real problem, parking meters are very likely only to aggravate and accelerate downtown’s decline.

The best metaphor for Salem’s downtown and our approach to it is a Rubik’s Cube, that maddening three-dimensional puzzle where the challenge is to twist and rotate the small multi-colored cubes into one larger cube with six, one-color faces.  You can’t solve a Rubik’s Cube by attacking one color at a time. The puzzle forces you to keep all six sides in mind as you make a move, and you must often be willing to misalign several faces temporarily to move the whole puzzle towards a solution. Impatient attempts to attack each side as an isolated problem always produce greater frustration later, if not complete defeat.

If we want to solve Salem’s downtown conundrum and re-create an attractive, thriving city that again offers the benefits that urban places provide for residents and those in surrounding areas, we have to stop trying to address Salem’s problems in isolation.  We need to realize our problems are as connected as the faces of a Rubik’s Cube, and that we will not make progress unless we are willing to think about the puzzle as a whole. 

And thinking about the puzzle as a whole starts with recognizing the main issue:  Why did Salem change from a thriving and attractive small urban center to one that seems to present nothing but insoluble problems, problems that regularly defeat the best efforts of well-intended people and investments of millions of dollars?

I submit that the main cause of Salem’s decline is that, to a very great extent, we stopped planning and building in Salem as a place for people, and started concentrating all our efforts on serving only a particular kind of people: people in cars.

The differences between a place built for people and a place built for cars are both profound and pervasive, showing up in ways big and small, far and wide. In Salem’s downtown, our focus on cars first has almost entirely displaced and depleted the graceful social capital that was built up and built into Salem before the post-WWII era of auto-mobility. And our failure to come to grips with the way that people—even people who arrive in cars—dislike and avoid places built to privilege cars is an important reason that so much of what we try to do for or to downtown Salem is fruitless wheel-spinning.

Like a Rubik’s Cube, our challenge has six faces and a hub, around which the faces revolve.  The hub of Salem’s downtown puzzle is putting people first, not just people in cars. That is the central hub because that’s what connects all of the six faces, none of which can safely be ignored.

Around that hub, imagine a cube with four sides, a top, and a bottom.   

• One side is market-sector economic goods and services, which are normally allocated by ability to pay;
   
• a second face is public-sector goods, like buses, streets, bridges, roads, schools, libraries, and parks, which are very often allocated by other means;
   
• a third face is public health and safety, which is usually seen as a cost only, and is often an unrecognized victim of choices in other areas;
   
• and the fourth face is our natural capital: the renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, including places for pollution to “go,” and which provides the real basis for our wealth and well-being.

The bottom of the box, which is supposed to support the sides firmly and evenly, is our method for deciding the relationship between the sides of the box: what we will provide for Salem via the market sector, what the public sector should do, how much weight we will give to public health and safety concerns, and how much of our finite stock of natural capital we will spend, and how much we should leave for the people who will follow us.  

And the top of the box, which might be thought of as the lid, or the opening that lets us access what’s inside, is our time horizon: are we patient, willing to study a problem long enough to consider how it looks from each of the four sides, or are we impatient, petulantly demanding on aligning the green squares on one side, no matter what that does to the rest?

Until Salem recognizes the central hub of our downtown dilemma—overindulgence of the automobile at the expense of the habitability and livability of downtown—and the way in which premature, single-focus solutions to one problem just creates bigger problems to deal with elsewhere, we are doomed to spin and twist at our little cube, while downtown suffers and the last remnants of the once-thriving city dwindle away.

Solar Works in Salem!

As of 2 p.m. today, June 2, 2013, LOVESalem HQ has generated 10 MegaWatt-Hours (since December 10, 2010).

Nice job on why "We're Not Buying It!" -- the $700 million Consultant's Alternative

PowToon : Traffic Relief w/o 3rd Bridge

Outstanding Encore for Salem Progressive Film Series Season: David Cay Johnston and "American Winter"

Like many a great performance, Salem Progressive Film Series saves the very best for an encore round, and the 2012-13 SPFS season is no different.

They are bringing the outstanding journalist and author David Cay Johnston to Salem along with the powerful, penetrating film "American Winter," a visual "How the Other Half Lives" for the 21st Century.

THURSDAY, June 13, 7 pm,
at Salem's outstanding community venue, the Grand Theatre, 191 High St NE.

Nice looking free intro to permaculture talk ----> @ 6 p.m. Wed 1/23 @ Lifesource Community Room

Two beautiful posts from 1000 Friends of Oregon

The group that the Sprawl Lobby likes to call "1000 Fiends" has two fantastic pieces on their website -- one about the bogus growth projections that are being used to sell a gigantic "Bridgeasaurus Boondogglus" for Salem (top), and then another great piece on the underlying issue, how sprawl costs everybody money and demands a constant feeding of new money, depriving us in every other area of life (bottom).

Take a gander at these great pieces, and then think about joining Friends of Marion County (see below -- FOMC is not very websavvy -- could you help with that?) and making gifts to support 1000 Friends.

Remember, all that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.  Don't sit idly by and let the Sprawl Lobby rob you and your family of hundreds of millions that you'd rather spend on yourself or on providing a better community.

Click on each picture to take you to the actual page, both of which have good links from there:

Friends of Marion County generally meets at 7:00 p.m. on the second Wednesday of the month in the Salem Public Library Anderson Room. Board meetings are held the first Wednesday of the month. If you are interested in helping the Friends of Marion County, please E-mail: rkaye@OregonVOS.net. The Friends of Marion County does not share its mailing list with other organizations or individuals.

Our mailing address is:

Friends of Marion County

P.O. Box 3274

Salem, OR 97302

The annual dues are:

Friend $35

Family Friend $50

Hall of Fame Friend $100

Corporate Friend $250

Other Friend $________

Board of Directors

Roger Kaye, President
mailto: rkaye@oregonVOS.net
Joe Kuehn, Vice-President
mailto: kuehn20@comcast.net

Richard van Pelt, Secretary

mailto: rvanpelt@comcast.net

Susan Watkins, Treasurer
mailto: susanwat@open.org
Board Members are the above officers plus:

Linda Peterson

mailto: joylin@open.org

JoAn Power

mailto: jobilp@aol.com

Kasia Quillinan

mailto: qe2@open.org

Carla Mikkelson
mailto: carlamikke@yahoo.com
Laurel Hines
mailto: laurelhines@att.net

Another Valentine's Week Do Not Miss: Joel Salatin (Free)

Joel Salatin holds a hen during a tour of Polyface Farm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Willamette University is making tremendous strides.  The prior President sat on the board of directors for Portland General Electric (PGE), primary owner of the single biggest source of world-wrecking CO2 in Oregon, the Boardman power plant (also a prodigious source of toxic Mercury, which lowers IQ all over the world) and was never heard to utter a word about coal.  

Since then, he has been replaced by a NASA veteran, someone who probably gets that the world is running very short of time to avert climate catastrophe.  Last year's Dempsey Lecture was by Dr. James Hansen of NASA, who spoke about his creative plan for carbon taxes with 100% rebates to citizens.  

This year, Joel Salatin will speak; since industrial agriculture is responsible for a huge share of climate-wrecking pollution, Joel's determinedly place-based model of agriculture is important ... and vital for the Willamette Valley.  

 America’s most famous sustainable farmer to deliver Dempsey Lecture

Farmer Joel Salatin believes our country’s food system is in a state of crisis — from nutrient deficiency to pollution to animal abuse to rural economic decay — and that all of these issues can be solved by one thing: local food.

It’s not a surprising statement from the self-described “lunatic farmer” whose roles in Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and the film, “Food, Inc.,” have turned him into one of the most prominent spokespeople for the local and sustainable food movements.
Salatin will bring his ideas to Willamette University Feb. 12 when he delivers the 2013 Dempsey Lecture. Titled “Local Food to the Rescue,” the lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. in Hudson Hall at the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Salatin’s family-run Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley uses alternative practices — including chicken tractors and pasture-fed “salad bar beef” — that have become a model for sustainable farmers across the country. Polyface serves more than 10 retail outlets, 3,000 families and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs.

“Most of the things that I do or say are considered lunacy by the conventional agriculture community,” Salatin says. “We’re a nation which is well-fed but undernourished. We lead the world in obesity, cancer, Type 2 diabetes and a host of other chronic maladies. Clearly it’s not just a matter of bins and bushels and volume, it’s a matter of nutrient density and food quality. Those are things our conventional system doesn’t even consider.”

Even regions like the Willamette Valley, known for its thriving sustainable and local agriculture communities, have room for improvement, Salatin says.

“I haven’t been any place in the U.S. where 95% of the food produced there isn’t exported first and then reimported,” he says. “We should be growing it here, processing it here and eating it here. That is ultimately a far more secure food system.”

In addition to farming, Salatin is a prolific writer and sought-after conference speaker whose humorous and conviction-based speeches are akin to theatrical performances.
“If you think the current food system — 1,500 miles between farmer and plate, gluten intolerance, factory farming, reduced aquifers, manure waste pollution and a host of other maladies — if you think all of that is just wonderful, then don’t come to my lecture,” he says. “But if you care about any of that, and that’s not the kind of world you want your children to inherit, then I want you to come.”

This event is sponsored by the Dempsey Foundation and Willamette University’s Center for Sustainable Communities.  Info: Joe Bowersox, 503-370-6220.

Related Event

Willamette will host a free showing of “American Meat,” a documentary featuring Joel Salatin, on Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. in the Paulus Lecture Hall (Room 201) at the Willamette University College of Law.

The film highlights the state of the country’s livestock industry. After the showing, filmmakers and local experts in sustainable agriculture and the locavore movement will lead a roundtable discussion.

Mark your Calendars for sure! Saturday after Valentine's Day

There was an amazingly small turnout the last time Roy came through, a sad sight because if ever a town needed the gift of humor surrounding the real insights Roy provides, it's Salem!  Make a point to catch him this time.

Saturday, Feb 16 -  8 pm 
SALEM, OR
Wake Up Call tour
UU Congregation of Salem5090 Center Street NE
$18 or pay what you can

Roy Zimmerman sings satirical songs - original songs about class warfare, creationism, same-sex marriage, guns, marijuana, abstinence, Republicans (a lot of songs about Republicans), ignorance, war and greed.

There's a decidedly Lefty slant to his lyrics. "We used to have a name for Right Wing satire," he says. "We called it 'cruelty.'"

The Los Angeles Times says, "Zimmerman displays a lacerating wit and keen awareness of society's foibles that bring to mind a latter-day Tom Lehrer."

Tom Lehrer himself says, "I congratulate Roy Zimmerman on reintroducing literacy to comedy songs. And the rhymes actually rhyme, they don't just 'rhyne.'

Joni Mitchell says, "Roy's lyrics move beyond poetry and achieve perfection."

In twelve albums over twenty years and on stages, screens and airwaves across America, Roy has brought the sting of satire to the struggle for Peace and Social Justice. His songs have been heard on HBO and Showtime. He has recorded for Warner/Reprise Records. He's a featured blogger for the Huffington Post. And everywhere Zimmerman goes, the Starving Ear goes with him.

The Starving Ear is Zimmerman's homage to San Francisco's legendary nightclub the hungry i. In the late 50's and early 60's the hungry i was a flashpoint for such talents as Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Phyllis Diller, Maya Angelou, the Kingston Trio, and a melting pot of music, comedy and social message.

Zimmerman's stage show "Live From the Starving Ear" is ninety minutes of original satirical songs, many of them co-written with his wife, Melanie Harby. There are political targets, of course: a post-hypnotic suggestion to "Vote Republican," an exhuberant paean to "Real America," a love song to Citizens United. There are Social targets: a lesson in "Creation Science 101," a lambasting of the "Defenders of Marriage" who oppose same-sex unions, a "Sing-Along Second Amendment."

And there are unabashed progressive anthems. "Hope, Struggle and Change" adds one important word to Obama's slogan, and serves as a populist call to action.
"I Approve This Message" is a campaign theme song for the Occupy Movement, folding its many messages into the unifying theme of Economic Justice.

In this election year, Zimmerman has made a "campaign promise" to perform in all fifty states before the Republican National Convention. He'll be posting a new Song of the Week every week until November 6, just to savor the delicate and perishable absurdities of the political season.

Zimmerman has shared stages with George Carlin, Bill Maher, Kate Clinton, Bill Clinton, John Oliver, Dennis Miller, Sandra Tsing Loh, kd lang, Andy Borowitz and Paul Krassner. He's done several shows with The Pixies' Frank Black, swapping songs in a solo acoustic setting.

Roy's songs are often played on progressive radio by Thom Hartmann, Stephanie Miller, Bill Press and others. His up-to-the-moment topical songs are spun regularly by folk music DJ's across the country and he's a frequent guest on Sirius Radio's syndicated show "West Coast Live."

Roy's performance of his song "I'm Fired" is featured in the Showtime film "Fired!" And he sings his song "Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual" in Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary "The Trials of Ted Haggard." Mr. Haggard himself said of the song, "It's really bad -- I mean, it's poorly done -- but it's funny." "Firing the Surgeon General," Zimmerman's song full of blue euphemisms, was used in MTV's "Sex in the Nineties" documentary. In 2005, Roy wrote the opening number for the 37th Annual Writers Guild Awards show in Hollywood, a song appropriately titled, "I Wrote That."

Roy has brought The Starving Ear to YouTube where his videos have garnered nearly seven million views, and tens of thousands of comments, many of them coherent. The Starving Ear on YouTube features Roy's songs and commentary, but also "Ear to Ear" conversations, Roy's interviews with artists, authors and activists whose work engages the world and changes it for the better.

Zimmerman founded and wrote all the material for the comedy folk quartet The Foremen, who recorded four albums, two of them for Warner/Reprise Records. The Foremen toured extensively, playing the nation's major folk venues, a lot of fancy Progressive benefits, Pete Seeger's Clearwater Festival (under an overpass in the rain) and CBGB. Zimmerman wrote over five hours of satire for the group. "We never did it all at once," he reports, "but we kept it ready in case we had to filibuster."

The Foremen were featured on NPR's "All Things Considered," and many other syndicated talk radio shows. They shared the air with Al Franken on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." They got to sing Zimmerman's lampoon of Oliver North, "Ollie Ollie Off Scot Free" directly to the colonel himself on North's own syndicated show. "Friends," said North, "this is a very weird group."

Roy's satirical revues "Yup!" and "Up the Yup!" written and performed for The San Jose Repertory Company in the 1980s, became the longest-running shows in San Jose history. Later, Roy rode the Comedy Boom as a member of the duo, the Reagan Brothers. His partner, Stevie Coyle is now a major light on the folk circuit.

Steeped in musical theatre, Roy was fascinated at an early age with the ingenious economy of Irving Berlin, the witty innuendo of Cole Porter and the high-wire rhyme and reason of Stephen Sondheim. You can hear The Beatles and The Beach Boys in there, but folk influences loom large as well: Phil Ochs' unapologetic blend of humor and politics, Pete Seeger's unflagging commitment to social justice, The Roches' eccentric soulfulness.

So come in from the fog. Climb down the narrow staircase into the dimly lit brick-walled basement where the air is cool and filled with espresso and conversation. Take a seat at the tiny round table near the stage. Woody Guthrie famously emblazoned his guitar with the words, "This Machine Kills Fascists." Pete Seeger adapted the phrase for his banjo to "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender." Now, it's lights up, and a singer takes the stage in a white shirt and tie - "Bobby Kennedy meets Bobby Dylan" - strumming for all he's worth and singing, "This Machine drives neocon, jingoistic, war-mongering, xenophobic crypto-fascists from the room!"

This is Roy Zimmerman, Live from the Starving Ear!

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"Roy Zimmerman lifted the evening with his song 'Chickenhawk' ridiculing the military policies of Bush administration officials who didn't serve in the armed forces. Zimmerman's squawking and clucking conveyed his scorn with contagious irreverence."
-- The New York Times

"Zimmerman is a guy on the left skewering folks on the right with rapier-sharp lyrics ... underneath the caustic satire is a man who is surprisingly optimistic." -- Sing Out!

"It was great to hear all those old Foremen songs again, and to be reminded of your lyrical brilliance. Just excellent." -- "Weird Al" Yankovic

"...this was no ordinary man. This was Roy Zimmerman, a unique type of superhero who possesses the power to nearly coax urine from the unwilling bladders of his audience members (via laughter). He delivered some of the smartest satirical songs that I'd ever heard." -- Jeff Penalty, lead singer of The Dead Kennedys

"Roy Zimmerman has a rare gift for songwriting -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Bobby Kennedy meets Bobby Dylan"  - The Marin Independent Journal

"You're brilliant. Just brilliant!" -- Terry Jones, Monty Python

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Zimmerman lives in Northern California with his wife and frequent co-writer Melanie Harby.

The 2013 Transportation Proposal Salem DOES Need

The Oregon Passenger Rail Project is studying options for improved passenger rail service. The study area includes the segment between the Columbia River in the Portland urban area and the Eugene-Springfield urban area. This 125-mile segment is part of the federally-designated Pacific Northwest Rail Corridor. ODOT is leading an environmental review process that will inform a number of important decisions, including selection of the general rail alignment and communities where stations will be located. The project will also determine several service characteristics, such as the number of daily trips, travel time objectives, and the technologies to be used (for example, whether the trains will be powered by electric or diesel‐electric engines).

To learn more, attend one of these open houses:

Salem Open House

Jan 17, 2013 - 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Chemeketa Center for Business and Industry, 626 High Street NE, Salem, OR, 97301

Learn more:

http://www.oregonpassengerrail.org/

Short summary of arguments against Bridgasaurus

There are 800+ million reasons to oppose "Bridgasaurus Boondogglus," the fossilized relic of 1950's style auto "planning."  Here's a good, short summary of just a few of those arguments.

Stop "Bridgasaurus Boondogglus" petition building up steam!

We're building up steam, but we still need you and all your friends to sign a petition to tell the SKATS agencies to stand up to that most dangerous creature, Bridgasaurus Boondogglus, a fossil unearthed from the 1950s Highway Planning, fossil-fuel wasting mindset.

We need many signatures to tell SKATS to keep Bridgasaurus from putting an $800+ million stomp on the Highland, Grant, and West Salem neighborhoods and from destroying Wallace Marine Park ... not to mention eating up precious resources from everyone in Salem. 

The Chamber of Commerce and the Homebuilders are working day and night to push this monstrosity.  They have paid folks twisting arms in local governments.  We have the facts, logic, reason and common sense on our side, and people power.  But we only have that power if people stand up and say that we're not interested in blowing hundreds of millions on a gigantic time-warp highway dinosaur.

If you want to see how absurd this project is, look at the "funding" options game --
http://salemrivercrossing.org/Funding.aspx

The projected local damage for this thing -- $30,000,000 a YEAR for 30 years -- is the exact amount that Salem-Keizer schools is projected to fall short next year (after already laying off hundreds, including every middle and elementary school librarian).  And that's with the West Salem library hours cut to 16 a week.  And NO transit service on weekends at all, in Oregon's capital city.

We've reached some signers already. But if we are going to have an impact, it's critical that more people sign our petition to Salem Keizer Area Transportation Study agencies.

Our petition is herehttp://signon.org/sign/no-bridgasaurus-in-salem --
please sign and spread it around:  http://signon.org/sign/no-bridgasaurus-in-salem
Can you please forward that link to five of your friends right now -- or to everyone in your address book who will be hammered by this thing?  With your help, we can reach our goal! 

P.S.  If you want to stay involved in the battle against Bridgasaurus, you can get on the No3rdBridge mailing list -- go here and request an invitation to join the list: 
http://groups.google.com/group/no3rdbridge?hl=en

Sign the Petition to Help Keep Bridgasaurus from Stomping Salem!

There's a petition against the Bridgasaurus that threatens to stomp treasured Salem neighborhoods, Wallace Marine Park, and our already-on-life-support transit system into oblivion!

The petition is to the governments that make up "SKATS" (the bureaucratic jargon for the Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study -- that's the "metropolitan planning organization," the committee of local governments that allocates all the federal funding for transportation projects), especially to three of the most important local governments who sit on the SKATS board:  The City of Salem, Cherriots (Salem-Keizer Mass Transit District), and Salem-Keizer School District 24J.

By their own rules, the SKATS agencies only act with unanimous agreement, so the two local governments who have been most rocked by round after round of funding shortfalls, Cherriots and SK Schools, will be fertile ground and, we hope, receptive listeners for our message, which is that Salem can't afford to repeat the mistakes of the 1950s and 1960s, bulldozing neighborhoods and businesses to make room for extravagant and wasteful gigantic elevated freeways.
 
Let your voice be heard, sign the petition to Stop Bridgasaurus!  Just follow the link.

A Scorecard for the City Council Boondoggle Worksession on Wednesday, 11/28, 5:30 pm

For reasons unclear, the City Council has moved their worksession away from Council Chambers (and the CCTV cameras) so you'll have to come out to the Anderson Room at the Salem Public Library this Wednesday, 11/28, at 5:30 p.m. to see whether the City Council intends to do its job and subject the most expensive public project proposal in Salem's history to the kind of serious, skeptical scrutiny that it deserves, or whether they just hope to let the Concrete Lobby roll by them.

Remember, this is a council that devoted HOURS and HOURS to public meetings and multiple public hearings to whether Salem residents could keep a few chickens in the yard.  This is a decision with a million times more magnitude, so this merits at least dozens of times the level of investigation.

Here's a scorecard for you for Wednesday night, so you can see which council members take their responsibilities seriously (by demanding serious, research-based answers on each issue):

How many of these critical issues does the Salem City Council address at its November 28th work session on the Third Bridge?

c     The Council discusses a plan to pay for the 3rd Bridge, acknowledging that it will involve considerable local revenue from tolls on all bridges, a property tax ballot measure, or a gas tax increase.

c     The Council discusses the fact that traffic on the existing bridges is at a 10-year low and that this trend is likely to continue with increasing gas prices and other changes in people's driving habits.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd Bridge will require purchasing 75 acres of new right-of-way that will displace over 160 homes and businesses.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd bridge will create visual and noise pollution through neighborhoods for 2.7 miles from West Salem to Highland when these residents find themselves under the longest elevated freeway in Oregon.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd Bridge will reduce the size of Wallace Marine Park and destroy the beauty and natural setting of much of the park.

c     The Council discusses the fact that planning for the 3rd Bridge is $5.5 million over its original $2 million planning budget and is four years late.

c     The Council discusses the fact that a financing package was promised in August of 2008 and that it is highly unusual to wait until a design is approved before deciding how to fund it.

c     The Council discusses the fact that after six years of meetings, the preliminary preferred alternative (4D) for the 3rd Bridge did not receive support from a majority of the Salem River Crossing Planning Task Force.

c     The Council discusses the fact that all three of the Neighborhood Associations that are in the path of the 3rd Bridge are on record as opposing it.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd Bridge will take retail business away from Salem by making it easier to get to Keizer Station and the Woodburn Outlet Mall.

c     The Council discusses the fact that plans for the 3rd Bridge plan ignore less expensive options to relieve peak hour congestion, such as off-ramps to fix the ends of the existing bridges with better traffic flow to Glen Creek Drive and Front Street north, and bike lanes and better transit to West Salem.