The Eugene Weekly announced in one of its emails that it will resume printing on February 8th after raising over $150,000. This includes its GoFundMe page, numerous fundraisers that local businesses had for them, private donations, and much more. They are not completely out of the woods. If you would like to donate, information on donations is here.
They have brought four people back on staff. They will print 5,000 fewer copies than normal. But they are back. The New York Times did a second story on the paper recently.
One set of people who are not happy with the Eugene Weekly’s return are Republicans like this one who are triggered by any mention of vaccines. From the EW’s email from January 30th:
To the EW staff and management:
for the better part of four years you and your repulsive paper gloried in the insane economic and public "health" policies that destroyed about 40% of all small businesses in this country, including a previously successful business of a dear friend of mine...no big pharma-backed government edict/mandate/ policy was too repugnant for your slavering obeisance
what goes around comes around....I dance on the grave of EW
We’re sorry if any feelings were hurt by this news. But if we are to eradicate Trumpism once and for all, it starts with supporting papers like the Eugene Weekly, which are not hidden behind paywalls and are only answerable to the people in the communities that they cover. The void created by numerous small papers closing and the rise of Trumpism are directly related.
Why do we need papers like the EW? Because of stories like this one, about a Trump loving superintendent who thinks women belong in the kitchen, not in the workplace:
As a finalist for the top job, Dey faced criticism and complaints that he used bullying tactics, especially toward female employees, while serving as a 4J administrator. Reporting by KEZI-TV at the time brought the allegations to light.
Despite the concerns about Dey, the board voted 4-3 to hire him in June 2022. 4J did not respond to a question about Dey’s salary but media reports show the previous superintendent had a base salary of $241,500 when he left in 2020.
Local elections matter just as much as the 2024 Presidential election.
Want to know why else local elections and local news sources matter? So we don’t get people like the Oregon Senate Republicans who walked out of the legislature so that there wouldn’t be a quorum and that the state couldn’t do business.
In a unanimous decision, the court rejected arguments from five Republican senators that Measure 113, a voter-approved 2022 law meant to dissuade lawmakers from walking out and shutting down the legislative process, was poorly worded and would give them another term in office. Instead, the court agreed with state attorneys, who urged justices to consider voters’ intent with the 2022 law, which bars any lawmaker with 10 or more unexcused absences from serving another term.
“Because the text is capable of supporting the secretary’s interpretation, and considering the clear import of the ballot title and explanatory statement in this case, we agree with the secretary that voters would have understood the amendment to mean that a legislator with 10 or more unexcused absences during a legislative session would be disqualified from holding legislative office during the immediate next term, rather than the term after that,” the ruling said.
They thought they were doing their part to Make America Great Again. But it turns out that they will be out of a job when their terms expire. Good riddance.
But while there are a lot of bad actors in the world, there are plenty of people who are trying to make it right. Like the artist Satoko:
Look again. These pictures, by Eugene artist Satoko Motouji, are done the old old-fashioned way: with a brush and jet-black sumi-e ink on watercolor paper.
Over the past few years Satoko — she is one of those locals known around town by a single name, such as Frog — has turned her attention to the ravages of climate change.
“I thought, ‘How can I start expressing that in my painting?’” she says in an interview at the gallery on the late January day when the show opened. “And so my reaction was more of an emotional kind of reaction to what was happening.”
There are plenty of people who are giving up hope when they read about the planet going to hell. But perhaps, if we get more people like Satoko and the people who are trying to keep the Eugene Weekly going and fewer people like the Oregon Senate Republicans or the Trump loving superintendent, we will get somewhere.
But if you want to do your part to eradicate Trumpism once and for all from this country, here is what you can do:
--Subscribe to your local newspaper.
--Support your local public radio & TV station.
--Support your local alternative weekly.
--Patronize businesses who support these news sources and tell them you saw/heard their ad. I know from first hand experience that businesses make advertising decisions based on who mentions their ads to them.
We don’t know what the future holds. This reporter went to a local mystic, KC Duggan of Indigo Crow, and did a guided reading about his future. He didn’t get all the answers, but it did help him to be more grounded about the future.
Fear of the unknown kept me from diving any deeper. Duggan says that I am entering a period of profound change in my life, and that I should embrace it.
“Our ego desires to know every detail of every step,” she writes to EW after our session concluded. “And it limits the possibilities of how we could get from here to there because it only knows what it already has knowledge of or has directly experienced.”
She next pulled out a deck of “angel cards,” similar in form and function to a deck of tarot cards, and gave me a reading.
Drawing from the deck, Duggan pulled out a bright blue called Azure, representing a desired outcome that will appear if I maintain my patience, faith and positive visualization.
The same is true about eradicating Trumpism from this country and from the world. I recently watched “Rings of Power,” about the era of Middle Earth in the Second Age following the defeat of Morgoth and the rise of Elves. When the Elvish leaders, wrongly believing that they had defeated evil once and for all (despite Galadriel’s warnings), relaxed their vigilance, that was when Sauron struck. If and when we do defeat Trumpism, we must constantly be on guard against it so that it never takes hold again.