From Black Thistle Street Aid
On June 26 at Whirled Pies, Black Thistle Street Aid celebrated our five-year anniversary with a beautiful evening of fundraising, reflection and connection. Thanks to Eugene Weekly for spreading the word, and to everyone near and far who showed up in support. Together, we raised nearly $12,000!
We are deeply humbled and filled with gratitude by the support. Every dollar is a boomerang: coming in from the community and going right back out to those who need it most. These funds will help us provide medical respite hotel stays for people discharged from the hospital without a safe place to heal, prescription assistance, transportation to and from care, prenatal and postpartum support, survival gear, wound care supplies for our street outreach and pop-up clinic and so much more.
As a small volunteer team with very little grant funding, it’s the community support that has kept us going. You’ve helped us show up week after week, year after year, to offer care rooted in dignity, compassion, and harm reduction and we could not have done this work the past five years without you.
In a time when so many systems are failing the most vulnerable among us, and the futures of community programs are more uncertain than ever, we ask that you continue to show up for one another. Give each other some patience, compassion and understanding. Let’s keep working toward a better world where no one is forgotten, and where care is not a privilege, but a shared value.
Bridgette Butler
Eugene
Time for Revised Tactics
I was very glad that EW ran two articles that, I gather, have been getting a lot of comments. The first, of course, was the news story about transgender people having chosen to arm themselves as a result of the government inspired hate campaign against trans people that has been raging (EW, 6/19).
The second, of course, was Doyle Srader’s column questioning whether large marches were useful as a way of opposing the current administration, or whether it would increase polarization (EW, 6/26).
For what it is worth, given the current political environment, I think it is perfectly logical for a trans person to choose to arm themself. However, I think the current ideological divide is too hardened for an additional march to have any impact one way or the other.
However, both articles were honest attempts to grapple with our current political situation and implicitly acknowledged that we live in a different country than we did last year. And a different reality calls for revised tactics.
Art Bollmann
Springfield
We Must Do Something
I’m sure Doyle Srader is correct that the solution to autocratic sentiment requires solving the problems of the people who are fed up with democracy (EW, 6/26).
The solutions I can imagine for giving dissatisfied citizens more security and dignity involve getting authoritarians out of office before they enforce total fascism, and then getting democratic (small d) politicians and administrators to pass legislation and implement policies that will make the tax system more progressive, tracking of immigrants more robust and accurate, and services more stable.
I know some ways to do that short of dictatorship: joining mass marches that demonstrate political power and electing representatives who support my views. Does Srader have a proposal for how to participate in the “wrenching hard work of . . . Inventing solutions that foster hope”? Let’s hear it. Otherwise, his is a vacuous prescription for doing nothing.
Talbot Bielefeldt
Eugene
Doubling Down
I was very disappointed to see that the Weekly doubled down on “guns are good” (EW, 6/19) last week [in Slant]. Do you really believe this would be a better world if everyone with a beef about something had an assault rifle handy?
Or are these “guns are good” articles intended to influence the public to view trans women as tough manly gun enthusiasts that we should all be afraid of?
Nancy Nichols
Deadwood
Back to Srader for a Moment
A couple thoughts for the “Srader haters” who’ve flooded EW’s mailbox (EW, 6/26).
First, street protests are already well-received and supported by the Democrats you’ve elected to run our state. Their views and yours are the same and some of them have even condoned riots.
Accordingly, protests/riots against “the establishment” in Oregon are of very limited value. Those in power know from experience that they will be re-elected time after time no matter what they do.
But if you want to win national elections, maybe it’s time to stop being on the losing side of hot button issues such as open borders, mass illegal immigration, biological males in women’s sports and locker rooms, coddling of criminals, pronoun insanity and violent, destructive riots, among others. I know these are sacred cows to some, perhaps many of you.
Those sacred cows of the left got butchered on Nov. 5, 2024. Rather than having learned anything from that defeat, it has become clear that the Democrat party has moved even farther left. That will play well on both coasts, but I think and hope not so well elsewhere.
Instead of simply despising President Donald Trump, yelling in the streets and opposing everything he does, come up with credible, coherent and specific ideas to address the issues that got him elected.
Jerry Ritter
Springfield
Editor’s Note: Read (many) more responses to Doyle Srader’s viewpoint at EugeneWeekly.com and in next week’s issue in print.
ONLINE EXTRA LETTERS
Silence Enables Cruelty
I strongly disagree with Doyle Srader’s June 26 opinion piece, “On Protest.” His claim that protesting is a waste of time is not only wrong — it’s dangerously defeatist. When people take to the streets, it is a powerful assertion of our collective voice. Our elected officials need to see that we are united, engaged, and unwilling to accept a slide into plutocracy or authoritarianism.
Srader suggests that public protest plays into the hands of the MAGA movement. I reject that. MAGA is not some clever mastermind operation. It has thrived by spreading flat-out lies and misinformation to non-readers and non-fact-checkers, and certainly appealing to prejudice. But it cannot outmatch an informed, mobilized population committed to truth and democracy.
Bullies count on silence. They expect fear, passivity, and apathy. But the tide is turning. The power of the people is rising, and we must continue showing up — loudly, visibly and unapologetically. Let’s reclaim our flag, our democracy and our future.
We must also be vigilant in defending our elections. Peacefully monitoring polling places, supporting voters’ rights and demanding transparency are essential acts of patriotism.
So yes — keep protesting. Keep organizing. Keep speaking out. Because silence enables cruelty, and participation fuels change.
Power to the people.
Darin Henry
Eugene
I Will Protest
This is in response to Doyle Srader’s opinion in your June 26 issue.
He says, “My politics align almost perfectly with most of the protesters, but I do not waste my life on things that do not work.” Is that so?
A piece in The Atlantic (“What a Spiral of Silence Can Do to a Democracy”) notes that “[One] important, and overlooked function of protest is to prevent the dreaded ‘spiral of silence,’ which can begin when people wrongly believe that their own point of view is not widely shared. …Silence begets silence which begets further misunderstanding about what a society actually collectively believes or wants.”
So, there you have it: On the one hand, “(Y)ou can go protest again. Y’all have fun with that.” I say I will protest as often with my sisters and brothers as I can.
Michael Peterson
Eugene
Let’s Have Tea
Dear Eugene Weekly, thank you for the timely Local and Vocal piece (June 26, “professor” Doyle Srader). Prior to reading his opinion, I almost repeated my foolish acts of street protest. I now realize that in the face of a president who considers the Constitution to be an advisory paper, and who sends anonymous, fully armed, masked storm troopers to roam our streets, that the most appropriate response is “ingenious” intellectual actions.
Today’s culmination of years of Clinton/Obama neo-liberalism, military buildups and Republican forever wars on social programs must be met by armchair revolution, not shamefully wasteful, worthless street protests. Tea, anyone?
Robert Dannemiller
Eugene
Severe Penalties Await
The U.S. is collapsing. The Republicans are doing everything they can to kill people like me, by cutting the safety net that keeps us alive.
You may have enough money that they can’t touch you, but I wouldn’t count on it. Throughout history societies that don’t take care of people end up in violence. With Senate passage of Trump’s big ugly bill, we’re effectively at class war.
My only hope is that this will force people to wake the fuck up. Reality doesn’t care how people feel or what they want to believe. It just is. Like the earth’s climate. There are physical and biological laws as well as social laws that govern how societies work, laws that are not made by humans, and there are severe penalties for violating them.
Lynn Porter
Eugene
The Hitler Analogy
It is a matter of conventional wisdom that if you make a Hitler analogy, you’ve already lost the argument. Allow me to rehabilitate the Hitler analogy.
Measuring up to the massive crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis may be difficult, but the Trump regime is doing its level best to be counted amongst the worst villains in modern history. In a display of casual cruelty, Elon Musk halted USAID programs on which the survival of millions of people around the world depended. He claimed it was just “waste, fraud and abuse.” Temporarily halted by a federal judge, the GOP is currently working feverishly to reinstate those cuts.
It is estimated that 200,000 people have already died as a result of defunding USAID programs. Food for starving children ended up rotting in warehouses. A Lancet study estimated the death toll could reach 14 million, including 4.5 million children, in the next five years. Unbothered by these consequences, Musk was befuddled by the outrage focused on him: “I’ve never hurt anyone!,” he protested. I believe Adolph Eichmann made similar protestations at Nuremberg.
Domestically, Donald Trump is cutting benefits to millions of people, the impact of which will hit children hardest. Oregon is likely to be the state most affected by these cuts, made to benefit the very wealthy.
It’s hard to see the moral distinction between the cruelty of Hitler and that of Trump. It’s clear that to Trump, “waste, fraud and abuse” actually refers to people.