I got an update from the Eugene Weekly this morning. There has been an outpouring of support for the paper since an alleged embezzlement by a former employee of tens of thousands of dollars brought them to their knees. This morning, they had raised $57,000+ through their GoFundMe Page. When I checked in this evening, it was up to $64,000+. This figure does not include money donated directly to the paper here, or to their foundation, Eugene Weekly TRIPS in care of the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation at the address in this link. Donations to Eugene Weekly TRIPS are tax-deductible. They are currently seeking to raise $188,000, which would help them get back on their feet again.
The story has gotten national attention. The January 2nd Washington Post, which reports that professors from the University of Oregon have offered to help, and that staff have been volunteering their time for the paper:
Journalism professors from the University of Oregon, which is in Eugene, and former employees of the Register Guard, a daily newspaper in the city, extended their services to help the publication continue its coverage.
And despite the layoffs, some Eugene Weekly staff members — including Mortensen — are still showing up to cover events as planned. Mortensen said she’s not surprised to see the staffers’ dedication to their readers and community.
The New York Times:
The Eugene Weekly, a free newspaper, was founded in 1982 and each week prints 30,000 copies, which can be found in bright red boxes in and around Eugene, one of the most populous cities in Oregon.
Commenters in the Washington Post section noted that since Nicholas Kristof, former NYT columnist, lives in Oregon and attempted to run for Governor at one point, the least he could do to burnish his credentials would be to offer his help.
Plans are for the Eugene Weekly to run some digital stories this week. From their email:
We’re going to run some digital stories this week, including an obituary for a young woman who died homeless in Eugene by Catalyst Journalism Project intern Emma J Nelson, and a look into the race to become Oregon’s next poet laureate by (former) Arts Editor Bob Keefer.
OK race might be an exaggeration, but poetry is cool.
If you have the money to do so, please help them out. Donald Trump has repeatedly declared that the media is the enemy of the people. So if you want to piss off a Republican, a good act of resistance is to support the Eugene Weekly, your local paper, your local public radio and TV stations, and post what is going on in your local community either here at Daily Kos and/or your favorite social media site(s).
Oregon used to be reliably red, but since 1988, they have become reliably blue. But if we are to eradicate Trumpism once and for all, then we have to run up the score on Donald Trump and win by a landslide similar to Roosevelt vs. Hoover in 1932, Johnson vs. Goldwater in 1964, or Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984. And if we don’t take places like Oregon seriously, and Eugene in particular, then others will.
It has not been for lack of trying on the right’s part that Oregon has turned blue in the last several election cycles. In fact, in Bend, Jacob Laskey, a white supremacist who has been repeatedly in trouble with the law, was trying to promote a black metal music festival there at the start of last year, trying to bring together some of Donald Trump’s very fine people.
Laskey is posting as @cuthean_productions on Instagram. His first posts were on June 20, 2022, which included the Sigil of Baphomet, the official insignia of the Church of Satan, and images of his family. He’s sharing photos of his past, which he refers to as his “Anti-Antifa Supremacist YouTube days.” This includes him posing with his partner, who has a Nazi swastika tattooed on her chest.
His Instagram page prominently promotes a black metal music festival called Murder Fest. The event claims to feature nine black metal bands: SwartVoud, Adeptus, Christ Desecration, Imperivum, AtlRite (which has a song called “Long Live the Patriarchy”), Asphyxia, Wehrkraft, Putrid Invokation and Hisarna. The event is said to be planned June 10 at a “secret” location in the Bend area.
The black metal scene is used to recruit youth to white supremacist causes:
Although metal and rock have long been associated with Satanism (and usually wrongfully so), the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in 1999 that the black metal scene was being used to recruit youth to white supremacy causes.
Laskey has a long history of hate crimes:
He was convicted of a 2002 hate crime against Eugene’s Temple Beth Israel, as well as for threatening to kill a witness in 2004. According to the grand jury charges, Laskey and four others conspired to threaten the Jewish community by throwing rocks engraved with Nazi swastikas and breaking windows at the temple while a service was in progress.
We have a choice before us. We can decide that all 50 states, 9,700 counties, and every city and town in this country matters and offer better lives for all. That will allow us to run up our winning margin to the point where Trump can scream about fraud, but nobody will listen. Or we can continue doing what we’re doing by leaving huge chunks of battleground. But if we do that, more people like Laskey will pop up and mesmerize our youth by telling them that it’s cool to be a white supremacist, and more places will be left with one source of news — FOX News. At best, we will win by a margin similar to 2020, and Donald Trump will continue to scream that the elections are rigged and whip up more hysteria. At worst, we will have another 2016, and we will have a much harder time getting rid of Trump than the first time.