Rex for Metro

My name is Jackie Dingfelder. I’m a State Senator and former board member of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters.  I want to tell you why I’m supporting Rex Burkholder for Metro President.

My friend Rex has a 30 year record of protecting the environment.  He helped pass the largest bond measure in Oregon history to protect wildlife habitat and open space critical to our air and water quality.  Rex also worked to secure funding to protect over ten thousand acres of natural areas, and to fund investments for local parks and recreation areas.

As our next Metro President, Rex will:

- Invest in mass transportation choices, expanding light rail to every part of our region. This will make it easier for people to get around without use of a car and will also promote smart growth – building up instead of out.

- Help businesses become more energy-efficient. Not only will this save companies money for economic growth and job creation, it will also reduce our impact on the environment.

- Work to foster our green economy. As we put our region back to work, Rex is the only candidate that understands how to promote industries that will protect our environment, supporting green building and renewable energy.

Rex knows exactly what it takes to preserve and protect our neighborhoods and our environment.  I know Rex will expand the environmental movement, bringing people from across the region together to protect this place we love.

Join me today to support Rex Burkholder and our environment.  Please, however small or large, make a contribution today.

All the best,

- Jackie Dingfelder

Do you like to eat? What a question! Eating, cooking, growing food is part of being human, a way we relate to each other and to the earth.

Tuesday night, I gathered a group, including farmers, restaurateurs, food activists and people who like to eat and are concerned about where their food comes from to discuss issues of food security, quality and the future of farming in the Metro region. My goal was to develop a regional agenda to ensure that everyone has access to good quality food and to support family farmers.

Here are some of their thoughts (paraphrasing from my notes):

Deborah Kane of Plate and Pitchfork and Food-Hub: What we have isn’t a food desert, but a food mirage. The good food is here—in farmers markets and on the shelves of stores like New Seasons—but many people don’t have the money or the knowledge of how to use unprocessed food. We need education and ways to lower the cost of good food.

Laura Masterson, farmer, 47th Street Farm: In this country we heavily subsidize commodity crops like corn and soybeans that are used in processed foods. Why can’t we subsidize organic farmers? Our costs are higher because we don’t ask the public to bear the costs of soil depletion, pollution of rivers with pesticides and fertilizers or low wages for farm workers.

David West, owner of Nostrana: When I have family over to eat, I say, “these beets came from Laura, and this lamb is from Bob’s farm” and they say do you know where all your food comes from? And I ask them, don’t you?

Nancy Becker, dietician and healthy food activist: What is really missing is education. Many families have grown up on fast or processed food, which is full of fats and sugars and not healthy, but is easy to prepare. We need to have home economics back in our schools and education through a renewed Extension Service focusing on healthy eating and growing of food.

Tom Maddox, Food Front Co-op: we truly live in a Garden of Eden, with an abundance of fresh foods and farmers and consumers committed to good food. But, this love of food isn’t driving policy. When we talk about urban growth boundary expansions, where are the foodies? They should be fighting to preserve farmland.

The group also talked about supporting farmers markets as community gathering spaces, using small, urban farms as teaching places for our children, the potential for food co-operatives to get affordable, good food in lower income neighborhoods (new co-ops are starting in Montavilla and Lents), having schools buy locally and thinking more about using the food we have more wisely and wasting less, in particular increasing support of the Oregon Food Bank and other organizations that keep food out of the landfill.

Thanks to all who came and shared their great ideas about how we can support our local farms and all become more conscious and healthier eaters. Now, chow down on some fresh veggies!

A Ride with Rex: Leg 1 – The Rose Quarter.

What’s it really like to ride with Rex? Late last summer, we decided to find out. So we grabbed a camera, strapped a lawn chair to the back of bicycle cargo trailer, and spent an afternoon tooling around with our favorite candidate for Metro President. Along the way, as we stopped at a handful of the many places he’s helped to make better, Rex talked with surprising candor about what he stands for and why, from his strategy to achieve a thriving green economy to the kind of world he wants to leave his two sons.

So over the next couple of weeks, get to know our next Metro President for yourself, one on one. It’s an honest look at a man who’s spent his entire public life making a difference, spread across seven snapshot episodes — each four minutes or less.

And if you like it, please share this video – and support Rex!