Recently, Eugene lost one of its finest in Eric Jackson, who gave up everything he had to come to Eugene in 2018 for the sole purpose of advocating for the homeless there.
Jackson was an entrepreneur, a marijuana enthusiast, a single father of two and a fearless advocate for people experiencing homelessness, partially because he’d been such a person himself. Beginning in 2018, he lived in tents throughout Lane County, campaigning against city and police abuse of Eugene’s homeless and working tirelessly to include their voices in political decision-making.
His various protest camps became the stuff of legend, and he even filed a federal lawsuit against the city over its treatment of the unhoused. He was like a modern-day Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who used his bare-bones lifestyle as a vehicle to condemn the institutions of what he saw as a corrupt and unjust society.
He had always been eccentric in his own way and even when he was a successful entrepreneur in New Jersey, he would always give away pizza to people who were in need. After he came to Eugene, he racked up $12,000 in fines camping with the homeless there, raising hell at city council meetings, and filing a massive lawsuit against the city and the county for actively criminalizing homelessness.
In June 2020, Jackson and about a dozen other plaintiffs from the protest camps filed a federal lawsuit against the Eugene police, the city of Eugene and Lane County, among other people individually named, claiming that the city violated his constitutional rights by continually criminalizing Jackson’s way of life and the way of life for thousands of unhoused Eugeneans.
Rest in power, Eric. You were an inspiration to many.
You want to win elections? First of all, stop freaking acting like Republicans. If we are not on the side of the homeless, then what are we doing here? If we are not on the side of the people over the powerful, then what are we doing here? If we are not working to make life better for all, then what are we doing here? There are plenty of people in this country who would be more than delighted to vote for Democrats and eradicate this country of Trumpism once and for all. But first, we have to act like it. And if we are scared to do the right thing because we’re afraid of mean attack ads on TV or mean tweets from Donald Trump, then what are we doing here?
And on top of that, we have to advocate policies that help get people off the streets:
--Stop fighting the War on Drugs and treat it as a public health problem, not a crime.
--Pay people a basic income so at the very least, they can get a square meal three times a day.
--Make housing a basic human right. Build low income housing across the country.
--Bring back the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. That way, we can give everyone who wants work a job.
Our first priority has to be to elect Democrats to office. Our next priority has to be to elect better Democrats. When we do that, we will eradicate Trumpism once and for all from this country. And we have to prioritize local elections just as much as we do national elections. The decisions to criminalize homelessness in Eugene and other supposedly liberal havens are coming from the local level, not just the national level.
