‘Hot Commie Summer’ continues with town halls, direct action, study group

Presenter: ‘Hot Commie Summer’ continues, as members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation invite you to join them at events in August and September. It all starts this Saturday with a group study of the book, Black Belt Thesis: A Reader. For the PSL, Selina Soray:

Selina Soray (PSL Eugene): Yeah, so this Saturday, Aug. 16, up at the First Christian Church, 1166 Oak Street, from noon to 2 p.m. and then again on Aug. 30, same time and location, we’ll be doing a study on the Black Belt and the history of the Black liberation struggle and the struggle for self-determination for Black people in America, what that has historically looked like, the main theorists and activists and organizers, organizing around that, what that would look like in maybe today’s setting, and why that is so important.

[00:01:03] And we’ll be doing this in honor of Black August with our fallen comrades, George Jackson and his brother. So come and check us out at the First Christian Church on Saturday. If you can’t make that one, we’ll be there again on Aug. 30, discussing what self-determination is, what a nation is, what constitutes who in this country should be fighting for that, how we can organize around that.

[00:01:31] Presenter: There are also multiple opportunities for speaking at town halls, through the rest of August and early September. For the PSL, here’s Nikolai:

[00:01:40] Nikolai (PSL Eugene): On Aug. 20, Rep. Val Hoyle has a Eugene town hall, so it’s 6 p.m. at South Eugene High School. So kind of going on there and speaking on the Flock campaign.

[00:01:51] On Aug. 23, there’s a joint town hall with state reps and senators, at 11 a.m. in the Springfield City Hall.

[00:01:59] On Aug. 27, there is the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network (LCIDN) organizing meeting, 6 p.m. at the First Christian Church.

[00:02:06] In September: On Sept. 2 we’re going to be trying to pack the Springfield City Council meeting. That’s 7 p.m. at Springfield City Hall. So we’re going to try and get a big turnout for that. 

[00:02:14] On Sept. 6 we’re going to try and get a rally against mass surveillance. We’re still figuring out an exact time and place on that, but definitely want to have some big turnout for that and show them that mass surveillance does not belong in Eugene.

[00:02:26] And on Sept. 8, we’re going to pack the Eugene City Council meeting. And that’ll be 7 p.m. Eugene City Hall on Sept. 8.

[00:02:34] Presenter: With a look back at PSL activities in July, Kamryn Stringfield:

[00:02:38] Kamryn Stringfield (PSL Eugene): It was a busy month, I think a really good month of escalation and action for PSL and for the community in general with the broad activist community.

[00:02:48] Right off the bat, on July 1, we had the sickout day. It was a national day of action for calling out sick over the violence that ICE has been carrying out across the country. We also had people mobilized to go to the ICE field office for the first time to directly confront ICE on a day where we knew that there were going to be detentions there on Tuesdays. It was a really popular day for detentions.

[00:03:14] This was really a good chance to exercise the muscles of people to get them out there doing this kind of action, to really expose them to ICE in person and get them to think; These are forces that are in Eugene operating downtown, two blocks from the Saturday Market and that we needed to oppose them there ’cause there were immigrants that were coming for regular check-ins, trying to obtain legal citizenship, that were being detained by ICE at their appointments and not allowed access to their lawyers, which is unconstitutional. It violates the Sixth Amendment.

[00:03:52] And so with July 1, we were really trying to prevent the transport, sort of delay and stop them as much as possible. There was a pretty viral incident of one ICE car being blocked by protestors. That ICE car actually drove into the protestors and EPD didn’t do anything. It went over and like connected with EPD for a second, and then after that went and facilitated transports of immigrants that are being detained and I assume went up to Tacoma, Washington.

[00:04:24] So there were four immigrants that day that were detained and transported out of our community.

[00:04:31] So the next Tuesday, July 8, we went out again, and did the same thing, the same sort of picketing around the building, trying to get people mobilized against ICE and try to stop detentions. There just weren’t any detentions that day that we knew of. There definitely weren’t any transports, and so we had called off that action.

[00:04:54] But then because of what happened on July 1 with EPD’s presence around the Federal Building, connecting with ICE and like basically looking like they were going to intervene against protestors in defense of these federal immigration agencies, we went to the Police Commission to directly confront EPD about that. And we really didn’t get any answers about it from them. They just took our feedback.

[00:05:19] There were a lot of people at that Police Commission meeting as well that came to talk about the Flock cameras.

[00:05:24] But I will say that there are investigations that were launched into EPD’s actions that day—state and local police auditor investigations, as well as informal people’s investigations. A lot of FOIAs (Freedom of Information Act requests) have been sent out by a lot of activists trying to get their call logs, and a lot of other information that they have from that date to figure out just what was the presence of EPD all about on that day. And so that’s an ongoing thing that we’ll be learning more and more about.

[00:05:54] And we mobilized on July 29, the last Tuesday of the month, because we knew that there was going to be a lot of detentions that day. And I believe there were no transports on that day either. So that shows that our mobilizing towards the ICE field office made them change tactics, made them detain less people, and ultimately I think stopped some deportations.

[00:06:19] So that’s been one part of our work and we’re going to continue in that regard. There’s a lot of activists in the community that are really pumped up about opposing ICE here at the field office.

[00:06:31] And I should say too, that we went to the Eugene City Council in their last meeting to pressure them about this and go, ‘Why have you not spoke up about these unconstitutional kidnappings in your community? Why has Mayor (Kaarin) Knudson and the City Manager Sarah Medary, and all of the council people not condemned this outright? This is an unconstitutional thing that’s happening in your community that ICE is doing downtown.’

[00:06:58] And Ward 7—actually (Councilor) Lyndsie Leech’s ward—and none of them have actually condemned that and we would still like to see a direct condemnation of ICE’s unconstitutional activity here.

[00:07:10] But one good thing that did come out of that meeting is that Lyndsie Leech did condemn Avelo Airlines, with us being successful in getting Avelo Airlines out of Eugene. I think that the protests across the country and the boycotts made an economic impact and thus caused them to make that decision. So we take it as a victory.

[00:07:29] We did have a Palestine benefits show with some punk artists at the First Christian Church, which I think generated over $100 in donations, so that was really great. And on July 4, there was a ‘Children of Gaza’ event, where they wrote very, very many names of Palestinian children martyred by the Israeli occupation forces onto the bricks at Kesey Square. And that was really successful as well.

[00:07:59] Presenter: The Lane County Immigrant Defense Network (LCIDN) also continues to meet. Kamryn Stringfield:

[00:08:05] Kamryn Stringfield (PSL Eugene): We had our LCIDN organizing meeting for July where we formed some working groups on government accountability, mobilization, outreach. We had Rapid Response of Lane County there. We had a lot of people that had been galvanized by the July 1 and July 8 events. And I think we really got people hyped up for some more action there.

[00:08:28] And then also we went to the Lane County Fair and protested. My sign actually got featured on Rachel Maddow, funny enough. The Republicans had their Alligator Alcatraz merchandise there, really racist stuff that is honestly unsurprising, and so we mobilized against that as well and were able to pass out a lot of LCIDN quarter sheets and whatnot, and really have some good conversations with people about what they were doing there.

‘Hot Commie Summer’ has still been going on.

[00:08:56] Presenter: Local activists chalk up a win as Avelo Airlines leaves Eugene. The PSL and allies invite you to join upcoming actions against genocide, ICE, concentration camps, the Flock AI surveillance system, and the continued silence of our local public officials.

For the latest protests and direct actions, see the Eugene Weekly activist calendar, and the PSL Eugene social media sites on Instagram and Facebook.