Local groups to rally April 5, tell Trump administration ‘Hands Off’

Presenter: Lane County residents get a chance to tell the Trump administration: ‘Hands Off!’ Sixteen groups are asking you to join them at Eugene City Hall Saturday, April 5, from noon to 3 p.m. From one of the organizing groups, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Sam Cook:

Sam Cook (PSL Eugene): The tagline is Hands Off — Hands Off Medicaid, Hands Off Social Security. It’s really focused on the need for a broad, independent, fight-back movement against Trump and Elon and their attacks on especially our social services.

[00:00:36] Anybody who’s angry at the completely mask-off oligarchy that is emerging should come. And our big ask is asking people to get involved in any one of the organizations that is helping host / put on the event. There’s a lot of options. All of the organizations will have tables with their information.

[00:00:57] Presenter: Stan Taylor speaks for another of the host organizations, Indivisible Eugene Springfield, which he says is growing rapidly.

[00:01:05] Stan Taylor (Indivisible Eugene Springfield): Our story here in Eugene is pretty interesting. We started four months ago. There were three people, not me, but three people who had the inclination to start a new chapter, and they contacted the regional director for Indivisible, and she sent 20 names down. So we started with 20 people. And, last I looked was 380.

[00:01:30] You can go to Indivisible Eugene Springfield’s website. It’s Indivisible-Eug-Spr.org. And if you open up events, you’ll find there’s a link there to register.

[00:01:49] This rally is part of a nationwide mobilization that’s been called for by Indivisible at the national level and 50501 to be a national day of mobilization, national day of action.

[00:02:07] So this is one of many, many rallies that are going to be taking place across the United States on April 5 to show the degree of opposition to the Trump policies and the level of solidarity among those in opposition. We’re not only gathering to protest, but also to celebrate the creation of solidarity across differences.

[00:02:36] We put a call out to activist organizations in the community to join together in a new coalition, which is being called the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield (ACES). And this event is being collectively organized by ACES, and we have 16 different organizations that are part of the coalition at this point.

[00:03:03] And it’s fabulous, it’s fabulous working with other activists. When you get activists together that are involved with the leadership of their organizations, they’re people who have skills and they have the inclination to make things happen. It’s amazing.

[00:03:21] Presenter: Describing the meetings where local groups co-organize the Hands Off! event, Sam Cook:

[00:03:27] Sam Cook (PSL Eugene): The room is filled with usually around 20 people, from all types of different organizations. And there’s a lot of really great communication and collaborative mindset. The attitude right now correctly is recognizing we’ve got so much bigger fish to fry, can we get serious about what needs to be done?

[00:03:46] I’ve received a lot of thanks for my contributions, because a lot of these folks haven’t really been involved in activism before, which is a testament to how serious the moment is. It really means that people’s contributions, they’re super valuable, but having that experience in the room is super important too.

[00:04:06] We’re trying to really unite these things locally where we have a lot of aligned interest in trying to build these coalitions to actually resist what’s going on.

[00:04:19] Presenter: The Trump administration could withhold federal rent assistance, which Lane County’s public housing agency estimated at about $2 million a month. From PSL Eugene, Rob Fisette:

[00:04:31] Rob Fisette (PSL Eugene): Yeah, around the housing issue particularly, there’s like $2 million in their budget going to 700 local landlords. So suppose it goes away, okay? Then the people can’t afford their house anymore. So then what? Is the plan to throw them out and they just all leave quietly and now they’re homeless and then the buildings just stand empty, like, forever…?

[00:04:52] So I think we can understand what the Trump administration is trying to cause, this level of pain. But then how do we actually respond to it in our community when that happens? Do we just let 10,000 people suddenly become homeless? Is there some kind of response?

[00:05:08] That’s something we’ve been thinking about a lot, you know, all the actions that the administration is taking: How do we respond to it?

[00:05:13] Presenter: Stan Taylor:

[00:05:15] Stan Taylor (Indivisible Eugene Springfield): These policies are undermining the structures that were set up in the aftermath of World War II to provide for the social welfare of people in the United States. You know, government began to support education. It started with the programs to get people into houses, for veterans to be able to make the transition. All of that became public services and part of the public realm, and all of that’s being taken away now, privatized, really, that’s what’s going on.

[00:05:48] It’s a kind of grift, convincing people that they were going to make America great again. But what they’re really doing is using the Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation to hollow out public services of all kinds, and privatize it either by tax breaks to the very wealthy, the upper 1%, or to literally privatize all the services that government used to provide as public services: health care and education and prisons, even our national parks are being seen as resources to be exploited instead of resources to be protected. It’s a giant con to transfer wealth and to basically create a power structure.

[00:06:36] Presenter: One protester with Indivisible is already making signs for the April 5 event. Lisa Warnes:

[00:06:43] Lisa Warnes: I was just spray-painting the backdrop of some old signs. I’m recycling signs.

[00:06:50] Presenter: She talked about the benefits of coming together.

[00:06:53] Lisa Warnes: You know, people are really eager to step up and do something. They just need to be plugged in.

[00:07:00] People can do a number of things like one, console one another because it’s really hard to stomach this stuff. And it’s helpful when you’ve got people around you going through the same thing and keeping ourselves grounded and keeping cheerleaders out saying, ‘Hey, stay grounded, stay focused, don’t give up.’ You know, the last thing you want to do is bury yourself and don’t pay attention. You know, we need a rabble-rouser.

[00:07:27] We have to stand strong to maintain the strength that we have in numbers and in us being a sanctuary city. And I do not want that being taken away from us.

[00:07:38] Presenter: Sam Cook:

[00:07:39] Sam Cook: The attacks on Medicaid and Social Security and dissolving the Department of Education, what we are experiencing at home is just the chickens coming home to roost in operating this global imperial system.

[00:07:52] For a lot of people it’s eye-opening to then be able to point out, like, ‘You’re angry that all of these programs are being eviscerated. Good, you should be angry. Let’s treat this problem at the scale that it deserves, which is as a global scale problem.’

[00:08:11] Presenter: Rob Fisette:

[00:08:12] Rob Fisette (PSL Eugene): And as organizations, who have some view of what it takes to do something and then what it takes to do bigger and bigger things, being able to take that energy and make sure it doesn’t just get sent into the ground, but actually gets directed to activities and organizing that is actually going to help us win, is something that I’m personally excited to help participate in with (Absolutely) this group and for April 5.

[00:08:42] Presenter: From PSL Eugene, Sam Cook:

[00:08:45] Sam Cook (PSL Eugene): I see April 5 as the American working class/regular everyday people starting to stretch these atrophied muscles that have been unused for so long because of repression, because of the ideological disposition of being an American within the center of the empire, all of these things.

[00:09:03] And I think it’s a really important step right now to build these networks and gain the experience of getting a lot of people into the streets. What works and what doesn’t? How do we gain trust of people? How do we gain trust as organizers and putting together events like this, I think is really essential, and just turning it into a sustained level of political engagement.

[00:09:25] What we want is mass political participation. That’s what we need. And it’s the antidote to oligarchy. And I see the amount of energy and the passion that exists in all of these groups and the grassroots nature of these groups, and that gives me a lot of hope.

[00:09:43] Presenter: Rob Fisette:

[00:09:45] Rob Fisette (PSL Eugene): When you’re working in coalition, you’re working around some issue that is of common interest. We all still have separate groups that are doing our very specific work. That is the reason that we got together as an organization to begin with.

[00:09:56] So 350 has that, Indivisible, Planet vs Pentagon, 50501. We have that. And that work is still ongoing separately, but to the extent that that common goal remains and that collaboration continues to be valuable to advance that common goal, which in this case is that fight against the billionaire agenda that is destroying all of our social services through actually defunding them, liquefying the agencies that provide them, sending the funding overseas to be turned into bombs, dropped on other people’s children, then, I hope we can continue to build that coalition and make it strong.

[00:10:38] Presenter: And come to City Hall on April 5. Sam Cook:

[00:10:41] Sam Cook (PSL Eugene): Come out on April 5. It’ll be cool. These types of events are always super energizing you know, to see all of these people around you. And when you get together in a big space like that, your imagination starts to wander about, like, ‘Well, how could we actually make things good instead of bad? We have all these people. Surely we can do something with that.’ It’s always very inspiring.

I just highly encourage anybody who is angry right now to come out, express that anger, and start to channel it towards something productive.

[00:11:16] Presenter: Those are speakers from the PSL and Indivisible. Other organizing groups include 50501 Eugene, 350 Eugene, TransPonder, Lavender Network, Oregon Community Asylum Network, Beyond Toxics, Trans Alliance of Lane County, the Community Alliance of Lane County, Planet vs. Pentagon, Third Act, Extinction Rebellion, Church Women United, Raging Grannies Eugene, and Back House.

The April 5 protest is, ‘a mass mobilization to stand together in response to the authoritarian takeover and assault on our freedoms and our communities.’