To feed ourselves

Linda McMahan’s question (letter, “Who will feed us?” May 12) is one that many people in the Gorge are also concerned and asking about.

Gorge Grown Food Network is a citizen’s initiative begun in 2006 to address this very question. The GGFN has been diligently exploring how we can increase local food growing, production, distribution and consumption throughout the Gorge.

Our mission is to build an economically and environmentally sound regional food system that engages, educates and improves the health and well-being of our community.

The Gorge Grown Farmers’ Market (at the Hood River Middle School) will have a plant sale on May 24 and then the full market will resume June 14. Come meet your local farmers and food producers and enjoy the bounty of the Gorge.

If you too are concerned about food safety, food security, and desire to see an increase in locally grown foods—please join with us at Gorge Grown Food Network (www.gorgegrown.com).

The success of GGFN means the answer to Linda’s question is that we will feed ourselves by growing it in the Gorge!

Remember Law Day

How can one teach their children to respect the Rule of Law and yet support those who have illegally entered our country and obtained work by using fraudulent documents? May 1 in the United States is “Law Day,” a day first established by President Eisenhower in 1958 and codified into law in 1961 at the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s administration.

The purpose of Law Day is to give all Americans an opportunity to reflect on our legal heritage, and by statute, encourages “the cultivation of the respect for law that is so vital to the democratic way of life.”

So, May Day was a peculiar choice for those who demonstrated in Hood River demanding not only amnesty but also the end to immigration raids and an end to deportations. Maybe it is time we ask “who should really be protesting?”

What about the millions of legal residents who followed the long, drawn-out process to secure a visa to enter the United States legally? Maybe they should be protesting. Or, what about the seven-figure backlog at the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency of people who are following the rules? Should they demonstrate?

What about all of our fellow Americans who are being marginalized by the massive importation of illegal, low-cost and mostly uneducated labor into this country? Perhaps those citizens should take to the streets. And what about the more than 250 million Americans who make up our middle class and those who aspire to it whose wages have stagnated and who are paying for the social, medical and economic costs of immigration? That’s a big march.

If the illegals and their supporters who marched on May 1 are serious about their deep desire for American citizenship, why don’t we hear any of them clearly say they’re willing to give up dual citizenship, learn English and surrender demands for bilingual education, and declare English as our official national language?

Why don’t we hear them say they would be willing to return home and stand in line to return legally?

On May 1, 2008, all legal citizens should get together at the Overlook fountain. Now, wouldn’t that be a change … real Americans who respect the rule of law, work for a living, pay taxes, vote and who love their country coming together to show everyone that disrespect for our laws is not acceptable.

Approve SDCs

Pro-development forces are quick to tout the advantage to the local communities and governments of new residential subdivisions as welcome additions to the local tax base.

All of these new developments will require services such as fire and police, schools, roads, sewers and water. Cost of community services studies nation-wide show that farm, forest and open lands more than pay for the governmental services they use while residential uses, on average, fail to pay their own way.

Here in Oregon, local governments are also unable, by law, to assess Systems Development Charges to builders and developers to offset the costs of additional schools, roads, etc., that are inevitably required by new development. This is a major concern to me as a taxpayer in Hood River County, and I believe it is an issue that we should all learn more about.

Approximately one half of the two billion acres of land in the United States is working agricultural land. It takes thousands of years to create the fertile soils that produce our nation’s food and fiber.

Across the country we are losing about two acres of agricultural lands to development every minute of every day. Each and every one of us has a personal stake in this loss.

As we import more and more of our food we are ever more vulnerable to interruptions in supply and unscrupulous production practices.