• An indoor games issue inauguration week? Well, kids, sometimes folks need a distraction. Enjoy the Weekly’s foray into Dungeons & Dragons. Not everyone has the chance to be distracted — especially not those most affected by Donald J. Trump’s policies. Eugene Weekly is planning a know-your-rights and survival guide issue in the near future. Are you a lawyer, activist or advocate with advice to give? Let us know, Editor@EugeneWeekly.com.
• The events of the 2025 presidential inauguration have been tumultuous. Now-former President Joe Biden commuted the sentence of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who will be spending the rest of his life in home confinement. Peltier, 80, who is Turtle Mountain Chippewa and was a member of Indigenous rights group the American Indian Movement, was part of a group of Native American men who traded gunfire with and killed two FBI special agents at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in June 1975. Peltier has maintained he did not shoot them, and two other men were found not guilty on self-defense grounds. Supporters greeted the news as a step toward reconciliation for Native communities.
Meanwhile, Trump granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including those who assaulted police officers and committed seditious conspiracy. Right-wing extremists and white supremacists were thrilled.
He also signed an executive order declaring the U.S. would recognize only two sexes: male and female. Not that he’d care, but that’s not even scientifically correct, let alone morally.
We’re not even going to get into the TikTok thing.
• Whoops! In last week’s issue a stray paragraph from the Palestine viewpoint snuck into the viewpoint on the Mims Houses. We apologize, and the online version was correct! But as long as we are talking about the Mimses, we had a caller who let us know she feels that Annie Mims doesn’t get enough credit when it comes to the tremendous legacy that C.B. and Annie Mims left in Eugene and to the Black community. She also expressed a desire that the Gordon Hotel’s C.B. Mims Sanctuary Room also recognizes Annie Mims’ work.
• “Homelessness, taxes, transportation, health care and environmental protections” are a few of the things the Oregon Legislature will address in the 2025 session that kicked off Jan. 21. The state Legislature is dominated by Democrats, but sparks fly no matter what party has a majority. City Club of Eugene brings together Rep. Julie Fahey, the Democratic speaker of the House, and Rep. Lucetta Elmer, deputy leader of the Republican Caucus, to discuss their goals and priorities for the session ahead noon Friday, Jan. 24, at WOW Hall, 291 West 8th Avenue.
• On Jan. 16, after months of protest from local residents and environmental advocates, the city of Eugene denied a zoning application for a biofuel transfer station in Eugene’s Trainsong Neighborhood. Lisa Arkin of Beyond Toxics, which has led the charge on the issue, tells EW, “It’s a wonderful example of community and nonprofit organization partnership.” Read the story at EugeneWeekly.com. Trainsong still faces challenges — Arkin says there are plans for Union Pacific to lease local rail yards and tracks to Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad, raising concerns over rail yard operations and maintenance, and a loss of union jobs. There is a community meeting 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 26, at River Road Community Center Multipurpose Room, 1400 Lake Drive.