Solidarity News

Content Warning: Guns, Fascist violence

Syndicated with Solidarity News About two dozen folks took over the UO Law center lounge on Friday Sept. 9 to escape the wildfire haze descending on Eugene and hear Nevada give a talk on their book Abolition of Law. The Abolition of Law event, hosted by UO’s Radical Organizing and Activist Resource (ROAR) center, was originally planned to take place at the Urban Farm, but chaotic climate conditions forced local organizers to occupy whatever indoor public space they could raid.

Surveillance of Students Integrated Across Dozens of Administration offices and UOPD ----Original Message---- From: Rick Haught <rickh@uoregon.edu> Sent: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 12:22 PM To: Tina Haynes <thaynes@uoregon.edu> Cc: Krista Dillon <kristam@uoregon.edu>; Paul Timmins <ptimmins@uoregon.edu> Subject: UO Statement on Freedom of Speech “Hi Tina, Welcome to the messy world of Freedom of Expression.” The UO Demonstration Team is a quiet circle of administration employees and University of Oregon Police who work together to surveil social media and spy on community protests.

In a unanimous vote, workers at the 29th & Willamette Starbucks store officially won a union Wednesday afternoon. There were 17 yes votes, zero no votes, and no contested ballots. The bargaining unit contains 28 people in total for the new union. Workers and supporters gathered at the GTFF office to watch the ballot count over Zoom. The process was very deliberate, with a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) employee opening the return envelope.

Wednesday afternoon April 6th students and community members rallied in front of the EMU to demand the University of Oregon move off fracked gas and electrify its infrastructure. They also continued to call on the City of Eugene to ban the use of so-called “natural gas” in newly constructed buildings, and transition to the use of electricity for all buildings. The event was organized by UO Climate Justice League’s Fossil Free UO campaign.

The last few months there has been an outstanding amount of labor activity from workers going on strike, winning new contracts, to seeking to form new unions. It is hard to keep up, even for a seasoned unionist. It has been invigorating, but there have also been losses. In mid-December, City of Eugene workers a part of AFSCME Local 1724 won a new contract. It includes a 6% cost of living adjustment (COLA) wage increases for the first year of the contract which starts retroactively on July 1, 2021.

On January 6, workers at the Starbucks store on 29th and Willamette in Eugene filed for a union election, the first store to do so in Oregon. They joined Starbucks Workers United which has organized 100 shops across the country. This fast growing movement was sparked by workers in Buffalo, New York; that formed the first ever Starbucks union on December 9th. Workers at three more local Starbucks stores at, 7th &Washington, Oakway Mall, and Franklin & Villard, joined in by filing for union elections at the end of January.

In November of last year, CIA recruiters made a visit to the University of Oregon campus. In our December issue we wrote about their visit and the counterprotest that was organized against it. We had one lingering question: “who arranged for the CIA to recruit on campus, and why?” Since then, we have obtained public records that shine light on how the visit was arranged and the response that the University of Oregon had to protestors.