Tension swept through the Petersen Barn Community Center on Jan 25. as speaker Pablo Alvarez, Beyond Toxics’ environmental justice community organizer, declared, “We cannot continue to have an 18-year less life expectancy than the rest of Eugene.” Beyond Toxics, a local nonprofit organization, believes that it is the right of the community to know what…
Eric Richardson, the Executive Director of Lane County’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, performed a one-man show at the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History on Jan. 23. There, about 50 people crowded into the museum’s lecture hall to hear his speech, double-bass playing, and recitation…
State politicians, faculty members, and students stood beneath the dilapidated “17” on the steps of the weathered building of the same name on Lane’s main campus on Jan. 21. Among them were Lane President Dr. Margaret Hamilton, Springfield Mayor Christine Lundberg, and Oregon State Representative Marty Wilde. They were gathered to gain support for a…
Eugene’s own Eastern European non-profit ArtLinks hosted the 2020 Father Frost Winter Festival on Jan. 18 – 19. ArtLinks, a nearly two-year-old non-profit, held its all-day multicultural winter celebration at the Wheeler Pavillion. The primary focus of the non-profit is outreach: educate locals on customs, practices and languages of Eastern European cultures from the Caucasus…
Close to 500 people showed up on Jan. 20 to celebrate Eugene’s 34th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. March. “We have members in the audience who helped bring forth that first march in 1984,” explained Eric Richardson, the Executive Director of the Lane County NAACP chapter. The hour-long march started at Autzen Stadium, traveled through…
“I didn’t come here to be a speaker to entertain…” On Jan. 15, Lane Community College warmly welcomed LaTosha Brown, the keynote speaker for the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, for her first visit to Oregon. Brown is a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter campaign, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government,…
Emma Mitchem, 28, paused mid-sentence to glance toward the door of Starbucks every time a new patron came inside. There was an air of caution in this tactical gesture and it served as a constant reminder that she was not necessarily in friendly territory. “Liberals don’t have to worry about losing friends when they blast…
