history

Art by Rosie NATURE, as a concept, is near impossible to define. The word itself evokes multiple meanings that are dependent on your cultural background, your place of origin, your religious beliefs - but now, more than ever, “nature” is being defined as a finite place of resources or a commodity that you can choose to participate in or not. When questioning and examining where the prevailing beliefs about nature and its value come from in the Western World, it is absolutely critical to look at the historical context that predates our current mess of rising temperatures and oil spills and examine the cultural attitudes and mindsets that European settlers brought into the Americas— mindsets that are still prevalent today.

Content Warning: Racism

Art by @audreytyleart Thomas Sankara was a Pan-Africanist Marxist-Leninist and former president of Burkina Faso, formerly known as Upper Volta. Sankara is oftentimes compared to the Argentine born revolutionary, Che Guevara. Many of his radical actions, ideas, and planning were inspired by Che Guevara. Born in 1949, Thomas Sankara was one of ten children to two Roman Catholic parents. Although his parents wanted him to go down a religious career path, he instead chose to join the military in his late teens.

At the end of 2021, I took on the task of organizing the archives of our previous publications. We had copies of issues for almost every single year going all the way back to the inception of the paper in 1988. While organizing these archives, I inevitably became pulled in by the radical history and scanned the contents of almost every issue within the boxes we had shoved into the back corners of the ROAR office to be forgotten.

See the original report in its entirety INTRODUCTION: The Whiteaker neighborhood is sometimes called Eugene’s “oldest and poorest neighborhood.” There is a high concentration of tenants and people living in poverty living here, and the numbers continue to increase each year as wages fall and costs rise. However, the trend will eventually reverse, not because working class people are becoming homeowners or gaining wealth, but because the working class are being displaced and replaced– unless something is done to stop it.