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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 2014
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Help wanted exploring our Community Vitality BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
COOS BAY — What kind of program do you think can revitalize Coos Bay and North Bend? Now is the time to share your ideas or get behind those of other community members. A process has been going on for several years that has laid the foundation for a potential South Coast resurgence. Now it is time, participants say, for everyone in the Bay Area to get involved.
For more than 10 years, the Ford Institute for Community Building has been offering assistance to aid rural Oregon communities in building community vitality. Their primary method has been through a series of training classes, first offered in 2003, called the Ford Institute Leadership Program. According to the organization’s website, “the program is based on the belief that vital rural communities develop from a broad base of knowledgeable, skilled and motivated leaders, a diversity of effective
organizations, and productive collaborations among organizations.” For the Coos Bay area, that effort has culminated with the arrival of Ford’s Pathways to Community Vitality program. After being accepted into the program, local leaders held a forum last year to get the ball rolling. “Instead of it being like the Leadership program, where it is heavy into the learning process — and process, process, process — this is action,” says local Ford Family Community Fellow Suzanne Adams.
Adams, along with Char Luther, is also a Community Ambassador/Trainer for the Ford Institute for Community Building. The two of them are now in full recruiting mode; looking for “action-oriented” community members to attend a May 1 forum and help decide on a plan of action for the community. The forum is the second step in this latest effort. The first step was a recently completed Community Vitality Inventory, which was basically a communitywide survey.
“They are asking us,” Luther said recently, “what we want to do. How do we want to focus as we move forward as a community?” It is hoped that the results of that survey, or inventory, will spark some lively conversation at the forum.But, for that to happen, they need some lively people to attend. “We are especially invested in hearing from youth,” added Luther. Adams says that their overall goal is to get as much cross-section SEE VITALITY | A8
Obama visits Oso mudslide survivors
Watching the clouds roll by
BY DARLENE SUPERVILLE The Associated Press
stand. The measures will be up for a vote May 20. The county campaigns cut across some political fault lines, one farmer opposed to genetically modified crops told the Grants Pass Daily Courier. “People say it’s just a bunch of hippie organic farmers, but it’s not,” said Jared Watters, who describes himself as conservative and grows more than 1,000 acres of alfalfa and other crops in the Medford-White City area. “We’re conventional farmers.” He said he started growing Roundup-resistant alfalfa, but plowed it up when it didn’t meet expectations. He said he’s dismayed by the hundreds of thousands of dollars that agribusiness giants such as Monsanto and Syngenta are pouring into fighting the bans. Six major agribusiness contributors had given $380,000 to the
OSO, Wash. — Swooping over a landscape of unspeakable sadness and death, President Barack Obama took an aerial tour Tuesday of the place where more than three dozen people perished in a mudslide last month. He pledged a nation’s solidarity with those who are enduring “unimaginable pain and difficulty” in the aftermath of the destruction. “We’re going to be strong right alongside you,” Obama promised the people whose lives were upended when a wall of mud and water swept away the hillside March 22, and took with it at least 41 lives and dozens of homes. Obama first boarded a helicopter to survey the awful scene. Evidence of the mudslide’s power was everywhere: trees ripped from the ground, a highway paved with mud and debris, a river’s course altered. And in the midst of the awful tableau, an American flag flying at half-staff. Even as the president flew overhead, the search for bodies continued below. Two people were still listed as missing. Back on the ground, the president gathered at a community chapel in the small town of Oso, about an hour northeast of Seattle, to mourn with families of the victims. He met separately with emergency responders before speaking in a small brick firehouse about all he had seen and heard on a clear, sunny afternoon. “The families that I met with showed incredible strength and grace through unimaginable pain and difficulty,” Obama said. Then he offered them a promise. “The whole country’s thinking about you, and we’re going to make sure that we’re there every step of the way as we go through the grieving, the mourning, the recovery,” he said. Obama said few Americans had heard of the tightknit community of Oso before the tragedy but in the past month “we’ve all been inspired by the incredible way that the community has come together.” Firefighter coats hung on the firehouse walls as Obama spoke, with homemade signs above them reading: “We (Heart) Oso.” “Thank you Oso.” “Oso Proud.” Brande Taylor, whose boyfriend volunteered to work on the
SEE GMO | A8
SEE OSO | A8
By Lou Sennick, The World
Clouds, blue skies and occasional showers moved over Coos Bay on Tuesday in what is expected to be a cloudy and wet week in the Bay Area. For a short time-lapse video of the moving clouds, see www.theworldlink.com/video.
INSIDE
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears to be highly skeptical of laws that try to police false statements during political campaigns, raising doubts about the viability of such laws in more than 15 states. Justices expressed those concerns early and often Tuesday during arguments in a case challenging an Ohio law that bars people from recklessly making false statements about candidates seeking elective office. The case has attracted widespread attention, with both liberal and conservative groups saying the law tramples on the timehonored, if dubious, tradition of political mudslinging. Critics say free speech demands wide-open debate during political campaigns, including protection for negative speech that may sometimes twist the facts. The high court is not expected
Police reports . . . . A2 What’s Up. . . . . . . . A3 South Coast. . . . . . A3 Opinion. . . . . . . . . . A4
to rule directly on the constitutional issue because the current question before the justices is only a preliminary one: Can you challenge the law right away, or do you have to wait until the state finds you guilty of lying? But the justices couldn’t resist going after the law itself, pointing out that the mere prospect of being hauled in front of state officials to explain comments made in the heat of an election has a chilling effect on speech. “What’s the harm?” Justice Stephen Breyer asked Eric Murphy, attorney for the state of Ohio. “I can’t speak, that’s the harm.” Justice Anthony Kennedy said First “a serious there’s Amendment concern with a state law that requires you to come before a commission to justify what you are going to say.” The case began during the 2010 election when a national SEE COURT | A8
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DEATHS
BY SAM HANANEL The Associated Press
GRANTS PASS (AP) — Southern Oregon farmers are choosing sides in a pair of local campaigns to ban genetically modified crops. Ban supporters say pollen from fields of genetically modified organisms can contaminate organic farms, and they are worried about use of the herbicide Roundup, which GMO plants are designed to resist. But opponents say the modified crops aren’t much different from strains developed by cross-breeding over the centuries and that they shouldn’t be told what to grow. Last year, the Legislature prohibited county-level bans on genetically modified crops but made an exception in Jackson County, where a measure had already qualified for the ballot. Since then, a similar measure got on the ballot in neighboring Josephine County after a petition drive. Its backers say that if it passes, they will ask the courts to rule that the Legislature acted illegally and that the county ban should
Mark Hixson, North Bend Janet Barnes, North Bend Ellis Foster, Bandon Howard Cantrell Sr., Coos Bay Edith Evans, Coos Bay Diana Pearson, Reedsport
FORECAST
Court critical of Farmers divided campaign lies law on GMO bans
Norman Sparkman, Reedsport Imogene Moore, Coos Bay Daniel Hoffmann, Coos Bay
Obituaries | A5
Rain 55/53 Weather | A8
Eat like a King! - Reader contest. You’ll have a chance to win gift cards from select participating restaurants featured in the Cuisine Guide. How to win: Enter at any participating restaurant, submit a ballot and enter! Winner will be selected at random.
Watch for Cuisine Guide in The World Newspaper on Saturday, May 3 for a list of participating restaurants and ballot locations!
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