Sen. James Manning, of Eugene SD 7, Killed ‘Defend the Guard’ SB667. He is the chair of the Senate Veterans, emergency, military committee, who has the power to kill bills unilaterally and thats what he did.
Defend the Guard, SB667 was introduced in Oregon this year by former Senator Dennis Linthicum and was carried by his wife Sen, Diane Linthicum, the newly elected senator.
In early Feb, Ibra A. Taher and Will Hobson, co-founders and directors, met with sen. Manning to discuss the bill. He showed no interest in the goal of the bill. His partisanship was very loud he did not even hide it. He claimed that the only problem we have with such unconstitutional pratice and abuse of the military power is coming from the Trump administration and there is no solution could be found in this bill.
However, this bill is non partisan and wants to stop the unconstitutional practice regardless of who is in the white house. Our governor can indeed withhold her consent at any time from the unconstitutional deployments without needing this bill, but she does not and the previous ones did not, that’s why we need it.
Regardless, Manning told us during the meeting that he “will not oppose the bill” and that he will “move it out of the committee” , exact words. but apparently his word is worthless and he chose not to honor his promise.
He stopped responding to us.
During the public hearing that was held on Feb 27th, which saw support from different political stripes, he claimed the language is inaccurate. He was wrong, but in a good faith we made the language clearer and it was sent to him as a proposed amendment.
Nevertheless, he just outright rejected it despite having the votes to pass it out of the committee.
He did not want to restrict the governor from sending our guardsmen to unlawful wars. He swore an oath to protect the constitution, he promised us on top of that, and he claimed to agree with those who testified, but at the end it was all a lie.
Our work on this bill started before the summer of last year. And more actively on daily basis since the start of this session. All of us are volunteers, we actually fund everything ourselves and we sacrifice our family time to bring peace to the world. But all of that effort was destroyed by one dishonorable politician.
We have to express our gratitude to former Senator Dennis Linthicum for championing this bill, his wife Sen. Diane Linthicum for chief sponsoring it and Sen. Kim Thatcher for also chief sponsoring it.
Here are their contacts if you would like to thank them for their effort despite the push back from the military and others:
Kim Thatcher: Sen.KimThatcher@oregonlegislature.gov
DIane Linthicum: sen.dianelinthicum@oregonlegislature.gov
Manning if you want to tell him something about the dishonorable thing he did : sen.jamesmanning@oregonlegislature.gov
Finally, Thank you to all of you. To everyone who called, emailed, donated and testified.
We will keep trying again and again, this is the least we can do.
Oregon's coalition for Peace 