Jan 8, 2010
Content Warning: Racism, Misogyny
Regular Forum attendees for the most part seem to have no idea what they are talking about. This lady showed us that the Sieg Heil is just a hand sign and couldn’t think of any reason why this could be understood as offensive.
Katie, a UO senior, is surrounded by several of her supporters as she tried to explain to Valdas Anelauskas that rape is not a trivial matter. Pacifica Forum speaker, Anelauskas had previously described a local member of the community as “too ugly to rape.”
Katie was just one of many who came out to demonstrate against the hateful ideas promoted through the Pacifica Forum. In addition to trivializing rape, members of the forum also regularly express various anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic ideas.
Members generally have no idea what they are talking about.
Other protesters in attendance accused Anelauskas and the Pacifica Forum as a whole of being neo-Nazis. Anelauskas denied this allegation, but why argue semantics, whether he adopts the name or not he is still a terrible person.
UO policy allows ex-professors to rent rooms for community events. When Etter originally founded the group in 1994 it had a left leaning bias, but perhaps as Orval lost his hearing he stopped understanding the hateful ideas that are now being promoted at a forum originally started to “provide information and points of view” on “war and peace, militarism and pacifism, violence and non-violence.”
The forum today was a cluster fuck. Regular attendees of the Pacifica Forum were feeding off the high emotions in the room and didn’t seem to care what was said. Like misbehaving children they just seemed happy to be getting some attention.
Luckily for us, the spotlight on the group brought by the Black Tea Society caught ASUO President Emma Callaway’s eye. During the meeting she asked that Forum meet someplace else because the student union is supposed to be a place where all students feel welcome.
The general consensus of the room was that the Pacifica Forum’s hateful message is not welcome at the University of Oregon.