PSL to share demands at ‘Rally Against EPD’ May 30

from the Party for Socialism and Liberation

Kamryn Stringfield: Hi, my name is Kamryn Stringfield, and I’m with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

You’ve probably seen the viral video of the former EPD officer, Martin Siller, released first by Tim Lewis, local documentarian, and then later by the EPD chief in the wake of it trying to save his rear end.

And so in this video, of course, Martin Siller says very racist things about Black people, very classic tropes about Black people. They uphold domestic violence on the call, talking about officers that weren’t hired to departments that should have been because they beat their wives or beat their ex-wives’ new husbands or whatever have you.

They said racist things about the Somali and Latino communities, a lot of just heinous stuff that was obviously so unacceptable that even the city of Eugene and the chief of police came out against it.

But what we have recognized and what many community members have recognized since then is that this is not just an incident of one single officer of the Eugene Police Department just being racist one day out of the blue. This is indicative of a larger culture of racism and misogyny and just power-driven violence by the Eugene Police Department that we really need to address now.

Martin Siller was with the Eugene Police Department for seven years, starting in 2019, I believe, and had served for 20 years in a Utah police department before that. And on this video, he’s talking to a Utah officer that he probably used to work with. So we don’t believe that he spent seven years on the Eugene Police Force and never made a racist or sexist comment until this January.

And we also recognize that Chief Skinner has been chief of police of Eugene for eight years since. So just a little bit longer than Martin Siller.

And during those eight years, we’ve seen countless cases of sexual assault by Eugene police officers, either of their female co-workers or victims or people in their lives, their partners. We’ve seen countless murders in our community, officer-involved shootings. There was the 2019 murder of Eliborio Rodrigues, in which the officer Samuel Tykol got off by the city and is now promoted to sergeant and supposedly hires and trains new officers.

And so and this is a constant thing year after year. We see violence against our homeless community as they’re hassled and have all of their things thrown away in these awful sweeps. This is just a constant issue in our community.

And it’s honestly the elephant in the room that we need to start addressing.

The core demands—and I’d like to share those demands with you—so the main one that you’ll see a lot right now is for (1) Chris Skinner to resign or to be fired.

Now, there’s some complications with the firing part that would be really difficult to get the city to do. The city manager has that ability but you know, in reality, whether or not she would actually fire a police chief, she can be pressured to do so, but it would be a very uphill battle.

But even if Skinner resigned, this would be a victory for our local movement, especially in the face of what happened with this racist rhetoric that was used by Martin Siller. So that’s the main demand is for Chief Skinner basically to be booted out of the Eugene Police Department.

The other ones that we have are designed to address the problem in Eugene of our overspending on police and not on better services, as well as the lack of accountability when it comes to the Eugene Police Department.

So one of our demands is (2) the city of Eugene reallocate funds from the police budget to projects and services that address homelessness, poverty, and mental health.

Last year, we lost CAHOOTS, which was a nationally recognized service that helped to divert calls from the Eugene Police Department on simple things like mental health issues or just things involving being homeless, being overly stressed out on the streets of this capitalist country.

CAHOOTS was there and was a major help in our community and was even a major help to EPD taking all of those calls out of their hands. And we’ve been in this very nightmarish scenario for over a year without CAHOOTS.

So we need to stop funding things like Bearcats and Flock cameras and start funding things like social workers and programs that can actually uplift people out of this homelessness and this poverty.

Another one that we have is (3) the city of Eugene expands civilian oversight of EPD. We have bodies right now—like the Police Commission, the Civilian Review Board, and the independent police auditor—but all of them simply investigate these things and then give recommendations to the City Council or to the police chief.

And ultimately, the police chief can kind of just, on a whim, decide whether or not he agrees with that and can just decide whether or not he wants to hold an officer accountable and to what extent.

And a lot of the times when even the independent police auditors came forward with sustained allegations, the chief just goes, ‘Well, I don’t see it that way,’ and nobody’s held accountable.

So we want to see bodies like Police Commission and Civilian Review Board actually have teeth to make these decisions when it comes to how to hold these officers accountable and make some binding decisions on the Eugene Police Department so that there’s actual real accountability that’s not just unilaterally held by the police chief.

We have a couple more demands. (4) One is that the city of Eugene implement the policy recommendations outlined in the 2021 Ad Hoc Committee on Police Policy, which anybody can go look up.

That was a few years ago in the wake of the George Floyd epidemic. They came up with a few things that the police department hasn’t implemented in the last few years. So we wanted to bring that back to people’s attention.

Also, (5) that the city of Eugene end all EPD cooperation with or support of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, we’ve seen in the last couple months how even though they’re not technically breaking sanctuary law, and there may even be potential that they have in the last year, like with the Flock cameras.

Even despite the sanctuary laws maybe not being broken, they’re facilitating and assisting DHS with a lot of their activities here. That’s impeding rapid responders and legal observers, helping to install this hundreds of thousands of dollars of a waste of money fence around the federal building, showing up and basically assisting DHS on the nights that they’ve tear-gassed local protesters.

And other local departments have been assisting DHS and ICE, and that needs to be ended completely. We can’t talk about being a progressive city and work with a fascist police force that’s controlled by this man in office that we claim to utterly despise and reject, but are ultimately working with to carry out his agenda.

And the last demand that we have here is (6) that the city of Eugene provide full transparency around the funds received from the Eugene Police Foundation and how they’re used.

It’s very problematic that you have this financial entity, the Eugene Police Foundation, that can take donations from local businesses and then somehow that gets back to the Eugene Police Department.

It just feels very reminiscent of a time when we had Pinkertons and other private police entities that were bribed by businesses to protect their private property.

And we ultimately understand that the role of police in our modern system is to protect private property. And so we need to—the first step towards addressing that is to get full transparency around those funds.

So this is what we’re starting to announce and demand starting this Saturday. And so we’ll be at the Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse. (That’s not the old Federal Building that’s fenced off. That’s the newer one on 8th, not too far from the Saturday Farmers Market, which will be going on at that time.)

We’ll be there at 12 noon to have a rally against EPD, violence and racism, and to start raising these demands and to prepare people for what may end up being a long-drawn-out campaign at the City Council and at Police Commission and in other places to make these demands and to start standing up against the elephant in the room of Eugene, which is EPD’s violence and disproportionate funding in the face of all of our local issues.

We’ll be rolling out a volunteer form for anybody who wants to join our campaign to help with outreach. We’ll be doing canvassing as well as street outreach to talk to our neighbors about their experience with the Eugene Police Department, about what they think about the Eugene Police Department and what we could better spend our money on.

And also, I would say people can contact their city representatives. I think contacting the city manager, the mayor, and the city council is a good start. You can also call directly through to the police chief’s office and demand his resignation, which I would encourage people to do.

I think one of the beautiful things about the activist community in Eugene is that a lot of people pitch in in their own creative ways, and we’d like to see that in this campaign as well.

There’s also making the case for this, and I think that our local publications are a great battleground for this. So I would encourage people to write opinion pieces and letters to the editor to our local publications. exposing EPD’s history of violence and racism and really demanding better.

And then, of course, attending the next Eugene City Council meeting would be on June 8th and really packing that meeting and making it clear that we’re not just going to let this issue be swept under the rug again. The EPD needs to be addressed now and that this is a major hurdle to progress.

So those are just a few ways that folks can get involved. And of course, PSL and other local groups will be rolling out more ways to get involved.

We have a reading group for one of our books put out through 1804 Books, which is ‘Socialist Reconstruction,’ which talks about the government that we would like to see under a socialist government and how we would bring that to be. and sort of the differences between that and our current capitalist government. And those discussion groups happen every Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the First Christian Church.

I believe, actually, one of the chapters that’s coming up soon is about policing under a socialist government. And we can kind of examine the differences between that and policing under this capitalist government, especially in the light of what’s happening with EPD right now.

So that’s an exciting discussion group that people can go to to learn about socialism, to learn about the thing that we’re wanting to build here. You know, a lot of times in the past, Marxists have avoided making a blueprint in terms of what a socialist government would look like because they wanted to just define what they were fighting against, which is capitalism and imperialism. And that’s great.

But in the PSL, we really feel that if we’re trying to build a socialist revolution in this country, then we need to try to brainstorm what that will actually look like and give people something to fight for. And I think that it’s a really interesting and intriguing book that anybody should read. You can find it at 1804 publishers.

Our Linn-Benton unit currently has their own Flock campaign going on right now. So folks remember back last year in 2025 in Eugene, we spent months waging a campaign to get the Flock cameras taken down in Eugene, Springfield, and throughout Lane County.

And we were successful and it was a massive victory for the people’s movement in Eugene, as we got 57 cameras and 25 cameras in Eugene and Springfield removed basically simultaneously. This was something that even the chief of police had to admit defeat on, basically.

And now in Albany, there is a campaign being waged to remove the Flock cameras there. So there’s an (Albany) City Council work session coming up in Albany on Monday, June 8 at 4 p.m. They’re requesting that we go there to demand that they terminate the Flock contract.

And then the next (Albany) City Council meeting is Wednesday, June 10 at 6 p.m. at the Albany City Hall. And once again, demanding that they terminate the Flock contract. And they’re also asking people to contact their city reps in Albany and demand that they turn the Flock cameras off.

And you can find more information on this at PSL_LinnBenton on Instagram and I would encourage people to follow them on there as well.

We’re growing up in the Linn-Benton area around Corvallis and Albany and so if any of your viewers in that area want to get involved in the people struggle and stand up against Flock cameras and racist police and all of the things that are going on everywhere, definitely reach out to us and get involved.