• Anyone else freak out when they walked into a local store on Halloween to buy (last minute) scary decor and candy only to discover someone had vomited Christmas all over the shelves? Felt a little early, but hey, this week is our Winter Happenings issue, so apparently it’s never too early! And since the holiday season is the giving season, send your fav local nonprofit over to Eugene Weekly Gives to be featured in our official giving directory! EugeneWeeklyGives.org, in addition to the website there will be a print directory because like vinyl, print is cool again (or for some of us always has been).
• As the midterms elections drew closer, people were freaking out about what might happen — except maybe political scientist Rachel Bitecofer. The Lane Community College and University of Oregon alum writes on her Substack, “Eight weeks before Election Day, I named 20 House districts Democrats would flip — a call only someone who is either crazy, or crazy certain, would do.” She was accurate on all of them, and on Oct. 20 she predicted Democrats would flip both the House and Senate. Beginners luck it’s not — she predicted the 2018 “blue wave” in midterm elections earlier than other forecasters, and she also said that Trump would lose reelection in 2020. You can read more from Bitecofer at TheCycle.substack.com.
• Ballots are still being counted in Lane County and the race between incumbent Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch and garbage-hauling spokesperson Jake Pelroy is still undecided. More than 37,000 votes had been counted as of Nov. 10, and Buch leads by just over 200. The next update is Friday the 13. May the commissioner with the proven record of caring about all people win.
• Labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta died Oct. 28 at the age of 96. Known for her cry of “Sí, se puede!” she co-founded with Cesar Chavez what became the United Farm Workers. In the year before she died, she revealed that Chavez had raped her. Together they led strikes and boycotts in the ’60s and ’70s that unionized many California grape growers, and their work changed laws and improved lives for thousands of migrant laborers. Her leadership followed the nonviolent civil rights strategies of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and she was arrested 22 times, once severely beaten by a San Francisco police officer, suffering broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. That last case is one of Huerta’s ties to Eugene — longtime local attorney and former Eugene Weekly owner Art Johnson was her attorney in her successful lawsuit against SFPD. At 5:30 pm, Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the Springfield Public Library, there will be a celebration of Huerta’s life and legacy. There will be a viewing of the documentary, Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta followed by reflections of community members who worked with Huerta and by those whose lives have been impacted by her work, including remarks by Johnson’s son Derek Johnson about the late 1980s lawsuit.
• Has the city of Eugene learned a lesson from the Flock Safety camera debacle? The city says its proposed, “Intersection Safety Camera Program is exclusively focused on discouraging dangerous driving behaviors in support of Eugene’s Vision Zero goals. These cameras record when a qualifying traffic violation is picked up by radar or lidar sensors set up around the camera to assist in issuing citations.” Go to Engage.eugene-or.gov/projects to take the city’s survey, and check out the City Club of Eugene program on Vision Zero and the work to end traffic deaths noon, Friday Nov. 13 at WOW Hall, 291 West 8th.