Eugene Weekly

Crisis workers in Eugene say they are still seeing repeat cases of severely mentally ill people being discharged back to the community by the jail and PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center University District’s emergency room, despite a 2015 Oregon bill that changed the language describing how people can be committed to a state mental institution. That’s because House Bill 3347 didn’t really usher in any new legislation, according to Andrea Williams, one of two civil commitment investigators for Lane County Behavioral Health Services. Continue reading →

MRG Foundation, once known as the McKenzie River Gathering, began on the banks on the river for which the foundation was named, says the group’s communications manager Alison Wandschneider.  Founders Leslie Brocklebank and her husband Charles Gray came into an inheritance of about $500,000, Wandschneider says, and brought a group of activists and philanthropists together to figure out how the money could have the deepest impact on the root causes of social inequity and environmental degradation. Continue reading →