Legalize Survival praises faith communities, recaps local responses to ICE

Presenter: Legalize Survival, sharing news and notices Wednesdays at 7. To recap some of last week’s Nov. 12 program, here are producers Jana Thrift and Julie Lambert:

[00:00:11] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): I’m curious what you know about the workshops going on for Thanksgiving?

[00:00:19] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): Oh, yes. That’s for people that are going to be with their relatives on Thanksgiving. And there’s always going to be someone there that does not agree with you and it can be really uncomfortable.

[00:00:35] And so what’s going to be happening here is on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 6 p.m., there’s going to be a free public workshop. It’s called ‘Politics, Families, and Friends.’

[00:00:48] It’s a skill-building workshop so that you can, when things come up, you know how to pivot and you can speak more effectively. And they’re going to have strategies for pausing or leaving the conversation and still not losing the relationship.

[00:01:07] And this is being publicized by Braver Angels of the Southern Willamette Valley Alliance. And they can be found on Facebook. And there’s more information as well as where to register for that. 

It’s going to be at the Santa Clara Church and I do believe that the registration would be important to do. So I would advise people to go to that Facebook page and the name of their page is Braver Angels, Southern Willamette Valley Alliance, Thursday, Nov. 20 at 6 p.m. 

[00:01:44] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): Nice. The Santa Clara Church is located at 175 Santa Clara Avenue in Eugene, Oregon. 

[00:01:56] I just learned so much about the faith community and how amazing a faith community there is in this town during the Occupy movement. (Mm-hmm.) It was just incredible to me to see all the different churches have their spaces open and try to make themselves available for different things. 

[00:02:16] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): I was recently able to go to a training by the Portland Immigrants Rights Coalition to find out how to empower our local community and I really appreciate that they made the space available and they often do that for various things because they’re incredible advocates for folks.

[00:02:40] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): So many wonderful groups and community members we have. We’re so lucky. It’s one of the things that makes me hopeful and happy to live where I live in the world right now.

[00:02:53] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): There’s going to be a City Council meeting coming up on Nov. 24. And so let me run by these topics. On Monday, officials and residents, they debated several key issues, including automated license plate readers and a rumored Amazon facility near the airport and new housing affordability initiatives. And the Mayor addressed a growing public concern over recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Lane County calling the reported detentions alarming and unacceptable.

[00:03:34] Mayor Kaarin Knudson (Nov. 10): With regards to activity of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement in Lane County, I have a lot to say, but I will begin and succinctly offer that I want to underscore that everyone in our community has the right to personal safety and protection under the law. Everyone has access to due process as given by our Constitution.

[00:03:54] I stand with our immigrant and migrant and Spanish-speaking communities. And last week I joined elected leaders serving at the federal state and local level, indeed, many of our City Council members, in opposing the violent detention of our neighbors and the denial of due process to members of our community by U.S. Customs and Immigration enforcement.

[00:04:13] This situation is not news to us, but it is nonetheless alarming and unacceptable to learn of reported actions carried out by ICE in Lane County, which include the violent detention of several Oregonians and ongoing reports of individuals not receiving their constitutionally protected rights.

[00:04:31] These engagements were shared widely across social media and created fear and outrage across our community, and that secondary harm feels quite intentional, as does the first.

[00:04:41] But our city remains committed to the rule of law and also to the members of this community and our neighbors. We will stand together in this work. We will protect our most valuable resource, and we will refuse all efforts to dehumanize one another and do everything we can to protect our rights.

[00:04:59] Presenter: For Legalize Survival, Julie Lambert: 

[00:05:02] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): And City Manager Sarah Medary also updated the council on the Technical Advisory Committee’s Study, which is expected to conclude by January.

[00:05:16] Sarah Medary (Eugene, city manager): I committed to give you an update every Monday that I was here about what’s happening with the technical advisory group. So they had their eighth meeting today. This is a group that is giving an hour and a half of their time every single week to be in the meetings, not to mention the amount of time they’re spending doing homework. And I’m going to try to find a way to document that because it’s pretty impressive work.

[00:05:38] In that time, they have taken what we’ve called a deep dive. They’ve been educated a lot on our property tax system, revenues. So operations, expenditures, we asked them to learn about that, and then they’ve been generating some ideas about that. We asked them to learn about economic development and what we’re doing, and they’re generating ideas about that, and along with revenue.

[00:05:59] So there’s a lot going on. They only have two more meetings before I’ll be here on December 8th, presenting the draft recommendations. We don’t anticipate they’ll actually have a final report until January. That’ll require more context around what they learned and how they did it.

[00:06:14] But in terms of recommendations, I felt it was important to do that before the end of the year. I’m hoping a couple of them will join me and be here in the room so if you have questions, they can fill in. But it’s really impressive work, really energetic, engaged group, and a group that I think we’ll stay engaged with over time.

[00:06:35] Presenter: From Legalize Survival, Julie Lambert:

[00:06:38] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): And our public comment drew 49 speakers, with many urging the council to permanently remove the ALPRs (the license plate readers) before Medary’s retirement in December. Right now they’re paused, but they said a pause is not a stop.

And then another group of residents, they were wearing ‘Say No to Amazon’ pins. They spoke about a rumored Amazon distribution center near the Eugene airport, and they were concerned about things ranging from automation to worker treatment to traffic impacts.

[00:07:18] And then the housing advocates, they pressed the council to adopt the state’s new moderate income revolving loan program, which was created under Senate bill 1537, which offers no interest loans to support affordable housing projects, and I’m very hopeful about that. And Councilors Mike Clark and Randy Groves requested further discussion on that.

[00:07:45] So the next meeting is going to be on Nov. 24. So if you’re concerned about any of those topics, please, please come because our voices are so important right now. and come early so you can sign up if you would like to speak.

[00:08:03] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): Yeah, and City Hall is at 500 E. 4th Ave., right there by the river where EWEB used to be.

[00:08:12] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): So Utah is planning to build a 1,300-bed ‘Accountability Center.’ And it’s part of the Trump’s era’s push to criminalize homelessness and then move away from the Housing First policies, and this is backed by their governor and Republican leaders. It costs $75 million. It will combine involuntary treatment, court-ordered housing and ‘work conditioning’ programs.

[00:08:44] So these programs are going to be for people experiencing homelessness, and they’re not going to have a choice in it.

[00:08:49] The officials say that it’s going to address addiction and mental illness while promoting ‘human dignity,’ but critics warn that it could function as a detention camp that enforces Trump’s executive order called ‘Ending crime and disorder on America’s streets.’ The chair of the Utah Homeless Services Board said the center will not allow residents to come in and out.

[00:09:20] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): What, wait, wait, they’re not going to allow residents to come in and out?

[00:09:27] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): No, it’s part of the deal. And they’re going to have police ‘rescue teams’ who are going to direct the homeless people there as an alternative to jail.

[00:09:39] And so they’re really blurring the line between care and incarceration, raising fears of forced labor, civil rights violations, and legal experts are questioning whether their broad use of involuntary commitment even complies with state law.

[00:09:58] But the supporters, including the conservative Cicero Institute, which is where they get a lot of their ideas, they call it a national model, which is scary. Service providers, legal groups, and local residents see this as an alarming shift away from social support to containment, warning that this experiment could redefine homelessness policy across the United States.

[00:10:25] And it’s really important to mention that this is for profit. They do claim that they’re going to have services on site, but here’s the problem: They’re eight miles out of town. There’s no bus line there. So if folks want to look for housing, get themselves housed, or look for addiction treatment that they choose, or if they even want to get a job, they’re not going to be able to. They’ve made them unable. This is, to me, the scariest part of all.

[00:10:55] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): Right. And plus, they’re not allowed to leave anyway.

[00:10:58] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): I can only imagine what these for-profit facilities are going to consider what’s appropriate for housing because the last time I checked on the situation it was going to be a soft-sided structure and we all know what that means.

[00:11:14] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): I don’t understand the difference between court-ordered housing and a prison. And this memoranda that we had shared that was made on Sept. 25, that definitely puts such a wide blanket on what it means to be targeted by this administration, like the way they mention the possibilities of who they would go after.

[00:11:46] I mean, it even includes people who fund something that they see as a dissension kind of organization. You know, if you’re a nonprofit that is, you know, not wanting to roll back your DEI or whatever you’re instantly, part of this memoranda, being basically accused of being a domestic terrorist or an organized political violence, which is interesting because yeah, the memorandum is called ‘Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.’

[00:12:26] But the parts of it that describe who they’re going for is like, it literally says, ‘a new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies, including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources and predicate actions behind them.’

[00:12:51] Organized campaigns that are about targeted intimidation, radicalization threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes. Okay, change or direct policy outcomes. This is all the different ways that you could be guilty here. And they say that organized campaigns or an effort to change or direct policy outcomes. 

[00:13:29] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): I mean, technically, if you help plan one of these marches because you’re against the policy, well, technically you meet that definition. It’s horrifying. 

[00:13:39] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): Or just donate to it, right? (Right. Donors). If you’re a funding source that donates to No Kings, which you’d think since, you know, the beginning of America, the idea was we didn’t want a king. (Mm-hmm.) You’d think ‘No Kings’ would be a fair thing to say, but yet somehow you can be labeled a terrorist and targeted through this memorandum by our own government. 

[00:14:06] Julie Lambert (Legalize Survival): Yeah, to me, that’s absolutely stunning. I mean, I thought things were bad during Occupy Eugene, and this is, you know, it’s just some next-level stuff. I mean, the stuff we’ve been reporting on lately have been some of the most difficult things to report on that I’ve ever done.

[00:14:25] Jana Thrift (Legalize Survival): We’re watching our democracy crumble.   

[00:14:28] Presenter: The Politics, Families, and Friends workshop will be held Nov. 20 and the Eugene City Council will meet Nov. 24. You can join Julie Lambert and Jana Thrift Wednesday evenings at 7. Legalize Survival on KEPW 97.3, your Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.