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Camilla Mortensen is the longtime local editor of Eugene Weekly, the area’s alternative newspaper. The paper, which has been in print since 1982 (originally as What’s Happening) continues to print more than 27,000 copies a week in addition to its popular email newsletters and website. Camilla has a masters degree in folklore and mythology from UCLA and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. She has been a reporter and editor at EW since 2007 and teaches journalism at the UO in the mornings before heading to the Weekly’s office. She also teaches newswriting at Lane Community College and advises The Torch student newspaper.
Protesters take over Franklin Boulevard. The Cascadia Forest Defenders, Deep Green Resistance and other groups held an "action against extraction" on Sunday, March 3, following the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, to call attention to global-warming inducing tar sands pipelines, fracking, coal exports and other damaging fossil-fuel projects. More in this week's EW. Continue reading
Earth: Too big to fail. That’s the theme of this year’s Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) Feb. 28 through March 3 at the University of Oregon. But perhaps we should be asking the question: Are we failing the Earth? Continue reading
Twelve-year-old Jared Harrison testified about his experiences being shut in a seclusion room at his 4J school before the Legislature’s House Committee on Education in Salem on Feb. 22. “I think people have it in their minds that kids that are exposed to this kind of treatment are some kind of monsters,” Jared’s mother, Jennifer Harrison, says. “They are not thinking about a kid who can speak at length publicly.” Continue reading
Eugene-based Beyond Toxics wants the city’s public parks and public lands to go pesticide free, but the group says it’s still having trouble finding out just what toxins are being sprayed in the city and what public money is being spent on them. A public records request to the city of Eugene for the information was met with a fee estimate of more than $7,000. Continue reading
Fritz, an Australian shepherd mix and the beloved pet of John Beere and Cindy Corder, died on Jan. 20 while out for a walk at the Salmon River Fish Hatchery near Otis, Ore. The dog was strangled by an 8-inch conibear trap set to kill river otters that had been eating rainbow trout out of the hatchery’s ponds. Continue reading
“We are screwed in all kinds of senses if we keep doing what we’re doing and don’t change course,” says Thomas Linzey, executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Linzey, an attorney, says that he had to be persuaded to come give a keynote talk at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) because “we don’t see lawyers as change agents.” He adds, “I let them know up front that my talk would be based on why environmental law has failed.” Continue reading
Biofuels, wildlife preserves, a community’s access to clean water: These are the kinds of issues we think of as social and environmental positives, but these same seemingly good things can be wielded like clubs and injure Africa’s indigenous populations, who are often forced off their ancestral lands by governments and multinational corporations. Continue reading
Insect control made awesome. Continue reading
Lane County plans an animal services update at its Tuesday Feb. 26 meeting: Continue reading
The Social Justice Real Justice conference at the UO Feb. 14-17 and the culminating rally against fossil fuels on the last day of the gathering opened the doors to people who may not have thought in the past that they had a seat at the table, says Caleen Sisk, chief of the Winnemum Wintu and a speaker at the SJRJ conference. The conference brought local activists and those new to activism together with internationally recognized thinkers and activists such as Cornell West and Winona LaDuke as well as well known voices of the alternative media. Continue reading