Activist Alert 4-30-2015

• The Lane Peace Center’s free eighth annual Peace Symposium is Thursday, April 30. Two indigenous activists are keynote speakers. Suzan Shown Harjo is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator and policy advocate. Dennis Martinez is founder of the Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network. The morning session will be from 10 am to 12:30 pm in the LCC Longhouse. The evening session will be from 7 to 9:30 pm in the Center for Meeting & Learning on the LCC main campus. For more information visit lanecc.edu or email taylors@lanecc.edu or call 463-5820.

• The Cottage Grove Blackberry Pie Society will host a public forum on South Lane School District Board candidates from 6 to 8 pm Thursday, April 30, at Bohemia Elementary School, 721 S. R Street in Cottage Grove. Call 521-2887 or email blackberrypie@gmail.com. 

• April 30 is the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and one local event is the “Seed Walk” April 30 through May 3. Volunteers will place 58,183 sunflower seeds along an 11-mile route between south Eugene and Coburg. Each seed represents one of the 58,183 Americans killed in the Vietnam War. The event kicks off at 10:30 am Thursday, April 30, at the corner of Pearl Street and 11th Avenue. See wkly.ws/209 or call Bruce A. Hindrichs at 214-4797. “To include Vietnamese killed in the war, the trail would extend to the Canadian border,” Hindrichs says.

• The annual Women of Color Conference titled “Intertwined” will be May 1-3 on the UO campus. Find a schedule and a list of speakers and workshops at wkly.ws/20j or call the UO Multicultural Center at 346-4321.

• A film showing of A Bold Peace, a documentary about Costa Rica co-directed by UO sociology professor Michael Dreiling of Eugene, will be at 1 pm Saturday, May 2, at the Bijou Art Cinemas on West 13th Avenue. The film looks at Costa Rica and its disbanding of its military to focus on education, health and the environment.

• The 15th annual Global Marijuana March will begin at 11 am Saturday, May 2, at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza at 8th and Oak, and end at noon at the old Federal Building Plaza, 7th and Pearl. Speakers include Allan Erickson, Brian Michaels, Cheryl Smith, Andrew Nonnenmacher and Dan Koozer. The march will also happen in Salem and Portland the same day. 

• A hearing for a bill titled the Health Care for All Oregon Act will be at 3 pm Monday, May 4, at Hearing Room A in the Capitol in Salem. SB 631 outlines a plan to provide publicly funded universal health care for all Oregon residents. Washington’s Legislature had a hearing on a similar bill on Feb. 20. The bill would create the Washington Health Security Trust and establish universal health care for all Washington residents.

• A public “listening session” on revisions to the Forest Plan for the Willamette National Forest will be from 5:30 to 7:30 pm Monday, May 4, at Pleasant Hill High School, 84455 N. Enterprise Road. The original Forest Plan dates to 1990.

• A film showing of Pride, a documentary about the gay and lesbian support for striking mineworkers in England in 1984, will be at 7 pm Wednesday, May 6, at 601 W. 13th Ave. Sponsored by the Lane County chapter of Industrial Workers of the World. 

Kathleen Dean Moore and Rachelle McCabe are presenting a words-and-music program on “Variations on a Theme of Extinction: A Call to Life” at 7:30 pm Thursday, May 7, at First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street. Free, but donations will be accepted.