'Community Writer' brings a global perspective

A little over three years ago, when I was just getting started as Sunday Opinion editor, I launched a Community Writers program that was designed to give voice to ordinary citizens and their concerns. I thought it would be a good complement to the professionally crafted editorials and columns cranked out members of The Oregonian's editorial board -- and I was right.

The program was well received by the public, and the writers -- 12 in the first group, 15 in the second -- took the opportunity and ran with it, weighing in each week for 12 weeks on a variety of issues that mattered to them as teachers, students, retirees, lawyers, ministers or whatever line of work they came from.

One of the unexpected benefits is that I formed solid friendships with a few of the writers, not the least of which was with a Beaverton woman named Lakshmi Jagannathan. Originally from India, she described herself to readers as a wearer of many hats -- "agricultural scientist, homemaker, school volunteer, PIFF (Portland International Film Festival) enthusiast, creative writer (and) Mom." She said she hoped that as "an immigrant and an avid traveler, I expect to bring a global perspective to my writing."

And true to her word, she provided exactly that in an op-ed essay that ran Tuesday on The Oregonian's Opinion blog: "Safety is in the eye of the beholder."

Pyramids of Giza

She and her family recently traveled to Egypt and were struck by the contrast in how safe they felt compared to the United States. While they were abroad, they learned of the shootings in Tucson.

"As I watched the news on TV sets at the airport, I wondered what the Egyptians must have thought," she writes. "'America is a dangerous place,'" some nervous mother might now say to her child. "'You could get killed in a grocery store.'"