Problem: White Power in Eagle Point, Oregon

Earlier this month, I went to a meeting organized by some local residents. One of my students tipped me off to it - knowing my politics and involvement with youth, he thought it might be something I would take an interest in. He hadn't seen my rather jarring venture into discourse on bigotry several weeks back on Blue Oregon.

The quick upshot on the new situation is Eagle Point is having some ongoing issues with White Power folks and some of the other locals are getting fed up. The latest meeting was spurred by a youth wearing a swastika with the red circle/slash superimposed - "no Nazis" - and getting harassed, threatened, and physically attacked. That event and a followup event have inspired the group I met to start a flyer and sticker campaign to raise awareness of racism in Eagle Point / White City (no really - that is the place's name - used to be a military facility "Camp White"). Their hearts are very much in the right place and they have some good ideas of what they want to do next.

I am not sure exactly what all will happen next, but I have agreed to offer what limited advice and wisdom I might have - I have agreed to try to be a voice of advocacy to what people I know - and I have agreed to relay their efforts via this site, as progress is or isn't made.

One of their first efforts is to call attention to the chronic nature of the problem. The players involved in the recent events are some of the same people catalogued in this series of stories from about two years ago, starting in late January of '03 here & here, and moving on through that year (Feb, Feb, Oct, Nov, Nov). The new activists constructed a flyer from the headlines of these seven articles asking "How many headlines will it take?" Based on what has happened recently, I suspect the answer will be, "More than it should..." but mean time, we work to raise awareness however we can.

One thing I was particularly struck by in reading over the old articles is that something repeats itself here that we saw in Arizona immediately after 9/11 - a hatred so blinding that people target ethnicities mistakenly...not only are they going out to hurt or kill someone because of who they are, they are so ill-informed that they are hurting and killing for who they aren't but might be if someone is too ignorant to know better.