No Kings raises funds for Rapid Response Lane County, SAfER

John Q: The No Kings movement organized a day of action Saturday and KEPW’s Nancy Forrest was there.

Nancy Forrest: This is Nancy coming to you on behalf of KEPW 97.3 FM, community radio. Today I’m at the Ferry Street Bridge in Eugene, Oregon, about to go down to the No Kings rally at City Hall Plaza. I just wanted you to get some sense of the sound up here on Ferry Street Bridge, where there’s a lot of protestors this morning. (Honking)

Those are your fellow citizens speaking, folks—too busy to stop for the rally, but out and about for their day.

John Q: Nancy Forrest also reported from the rally at City Hall, with speakers being introduced by No Kings MC Debbie Williamson-Smith.

Samba Ja: (music)

Debbie Williamson-Smith: Samba Ja!  So lucky to live here. Like, dang! Dang, friends. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m here. I’m not sure why people keep giving me the microphone, but it is such an honor to stand in community with all of you. Dancing ballot boxes—come on! Way to find the joy in the resistance.

I made my very first political speech in February, 2025. It seems like a lifetime ago. My first speech was about fighting white supremacy culture. Yeah, ask me how that’s going. (laughter) It’s not good. It’s not, not good, friends.

But I want to keep talking about it because there is, the reminder I have is that racism will end when white people end it.

As a white person, I work really hard to do that, and I had kind of a life-changing philosophy. I just want to share with you, I used to work really hard to make sure that Black people knew I was safe to be around, and then I stopped worrying about that and started making sure that racist know I’m not safe to be around. (cheers)

And it’s scary and it’s hard, and you have to say the hard thing at the hard time to someone’s face. But if all of us keep practicing and all of us keep doing it, we can make white supremacy culture go bye-bye. Yeah.

So since that speech, I have tried to use my voice to inspire you to participate, to do more, to not wallow, because hope comes from action. And action leads to community and voting is action (Yeah!) and not only do we need to participate, we need to make sure everyone has the opportunity to vote.

And to tell us more about voting early, from Indivisible Eugene Springfield, please welcome Stan Taylor.

Stan Taylor (Indivisible, Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield, Community Action Network): Really great to see you all here. Before we really get into what we’re going to talk about today, I want to take a minute to acknowledge the tragedy that happened at Silver Rail School—Elementary School in Bend. When we talk about voting, you should be looking at candidates that will vote for gun safety.

So why are we here today? We are here today to build a social movement. If you look at the No Kings Coalition at the national level, its intent is to build a social movement for change. They’re not talking about just an election. They’re talking about movements that will stay intact and build the world we want to see.

So I want to acknowledge the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield (ACES) that put on the ‘Feed, Fund, and Defend’ rally over in Alton Baker Park this morning, and this rally was organized by a new network of organizations that includes Indivisible, the NAACP, United for Immigrant Justice, Friends Organizing for Racial Justice, the League of Women Voters, 350 Eugene, and Third Act Eugene.

It’s a new network, expect to see us doing more in the future.

You know, when you build movements, it’s not only about voting and protesting, a lot of movement building is about supporting your neighbors—mutual aid, supporting organizations that take care of our neighbors.

And there are two organizations that we are raising money for today: Rapid Response Lane County, that intercepts and provides links to legal services for immigrants that are potentially detained.

If an immigrant is able to meet with Rapid Response Lane County, they will connect them with a lawyer and that lawyer will file a petition of habeas corpus, a writ of habeas corpus, and if it’s filed before they leave the state, that person is likely to be released.

Rapid Response Lane County also engages in MIGRA Watch. So you know, when you think about what happened in Minnesota and people in the streets watching and recording what ICE agents are doing, this is part of the work that’s being done as well.

On the ground, we’re organizing for another organization, the Springfield Alliance For Equity and Respect (SAfER).

This group organizes in both Springfield and Eugene with the immigrant communities providing different types of support, petitioning politicians in Springfield and Eugene to pay attention, and to help people who are immigrants in their community.

So I’ve got a donation bucket. There are going to be some donation buckets being passed down the aisles. Go ahead and start them down the rows, please. And as they come down the rows, please fill the buckets with donations.

You might also see that there’s a QR code on the side of the buckets. You can contribute through the QR code to Indivisible and everything that comes into Indivisible Eugene Springfield in the next three days will go into the donations for these two groups. Please give.

So, you know, this predicament that we find ourselves in today is not a new kind of predicament for our country. If you think back, it seems like every 50 or 60 years there’s some attempt at despotism taking hold… the average man once more confronts the problem faced by the minuteman.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations is given much; of other generations, much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. So here we are, another round of despotism, another time for our generations to meet this destiny before us. Thank you very much.

Debbie Williamson-Smith: There has been a nationwide surge in ICE activity, and Oregon has been impacted by that. The Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC) says that between Oct. 6 and Oct. 10—that’s not that many days, friends—50 Oregonians were arrested by ICE.

Also during that time, ICE used pepper balls and tear gas against residents. They rammed a car. They engaged in high-speed and dangerous driving on public roads.

But the worst part is ICE is engaging in unethical maneuvers, including systematic denial of access to attorneys to meet detained clients.

It is time to pay attention and we must listen to the voices most impacted by this violence. To read a statement by Latiffe, please welcome Zoey from Rapid Response Lane County.

Zoey and Latiffe (Rapid Response Lane County): A call to action: No one left behind.

Friends, neighbors, mi gente. Hint, look around. There is something so beautiful about the ways in how we show up, in the way we care for one another, in the little things: in the hands that reach for us; in the voices that call our names; in the love that makes room at the table, that saves us a plate, that asks, ¿Ya come usted? Have you eaten?’

That says, ‘I was thinking of you, I wanted to make sure you got home safe.’ And isn’t that what love is? To notice one another, to hold each other close, even when the world is trying to pull us apart. To understand that the life of someone else is just as precious as our own.

So what that means to love our neighbors, it means we don’t stay silent. Even if our voice is going to cause something, our love has to become courage.

And I hope that every single one of you can proudly say: I stood by my neighbors. I treated every life with dignity. I decided that my love was stronger than my hurt.

I also want to acknowledge a significant event that deeply impacted our community a year ago.

On Oct. 15, 2025, families in the Woodland Creek Apartments woke up to flash bangs, rifles, Bearcats (SWAT vehicles), and drones.

As first it appeared to be an FBI raid. But we learned that it was really an ICE raid, disguised under other agencies. This event was significant for various reasons.

First, it was the first time that we saw the extent to which other federal agencies were supporting ICE—the beginning of erosion of trust of other federal agencies and a trend that continued to other agencies, including U.S. Department of Agriculture a month later on Nov. 19, 2025.

Second, as a community, we got to witness the amount of violence that ICE was capable of here at home.

Since the start of the Trump administration, we have seen at least 150 people taken from our community, and this is unacceptable.

So what can you do today? First, show up for your neighbor, your block. Build relationships. Check on your neighbors and organize patrols on your block. Learn how to identify ICE vehicles, and report all suspicious vehicles to PIRC (Portland Immigration Rights Coalition).

Second: Demand that your local government declare a state of emergency and release funds to families affected by ICE.

Call your representatives. Show up to public comment. Make your elected officials work for you because they are supposed to.

Third, vote—and vote for your interest. Vote for the working families that keep this city alive. Vote for leaders who have the courage to stand up with our communities. Vote for those who will speak out for our neighbors in the halls of power and stand with us on the street.

We need leaders that understand that public service is about protecting people and not about protecting their own political careers.

After voting, go back to step one over and over and over again. Show up for your neighbors and your block. Build relationships. Check on your neighbors no matter who is in the office. Live with love, but make sure your love has a backbone.

Carry the tenderness to care for one another and the courage to confront injustice wherever you see it. Remember that our neighbors are not strangers. The struggle is not separate. Their safety is part of our safety. Their freedom is part of our freedom. Thank you so much.

Debbie Williamson-Smith: I don’t think you need to be a woman to understand that our rights are being rolled back and not just here—globally.

Please welcome Elizabeth Rust, a member of Indivisible Eugene Springfield and of Planned Parenthood Action Oregon and the lead of Red Wine and Blue, Eugene’s affiliate Lane County Women.

Elizabeth Rust (Red Wine and Blue): I’m here to talk today about why this election matters to women, to people who identify as women, and to all of those who care about them.

While it is rarely discussed, because women’s continue to be left out of the national conversation, women have a lot to gain or lose in this election, and I want to mention just a few of those reasons why. (Okay, here we go.)

In 2025, women made 84 cents to every dollar that a man made. Although it was introduced in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment introduced over a century ago and finally ratified by the 38 states that were needed for it to pass has yet to be certified and made into law because of a deadline technicality that could easily be resolved at the will of this Congress.

Next point: While women make up 51% of our population, they make up only 28% of our 119th Congress. And of the 193 member states of the United Nations, 80 have had women heads of state. The U.S., considered to be one of, if not the most powerful, is not one of them.

Next point: Violence against women in all its forms and perpetrated against all of its victims from straight to trans women is on the rise. Multiple studies from federal and other sources show that all forms of violence from online abuse and intimidation to sexual assault continue to be alarming. Yet little is done to address it.

And we have seen this all recently from cases that span from all the way across the country, all the way back to our own University of Oregon.

Let’s talk about women’s health for a minute. In 2022, the U.S. maternal mortality rate was more than double the rate of the next highest country’s rate among high-income nations. And within that statistic, Black women’s deaths in the U.S. have been significantly highest.

Yet at the same time that this is happening, 41 out of our 50 states have passed some form of laws eclipsing women’s bodily autonomy.

In 2026, nearly 200 anti-abortion bills have been introduced across 29 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

It may be written in invisible ink, but women’s rights and well-being are on the ballot in 2026. Please vote and please vote early.

Debbie Williamson-Smith: Thank you so much. The next woman we’re going to talk about is my favorite woman, and that is Planet Earth. She’s having some hot flashes right now, so I’d like to welcome Aya from the Breach Collective to talk about why climate change is something important.

Aya Cockram (Breech Collective): Hello, everyone. It’s so nice to see you all out here. It is a lovely day, but it has been a worryingly hot October.

I grew up in Eugene, swimming in our stunning and freezing rivers, wandering in our forests, riding my bike through warm summer nights and rain-soaked days.

I am now raising my kids here. But their future is under threat, and they are not living in the Eugene or the Oregon of my childhood.

They’re sequestered inside for smoke days and heat domes. Our forests are burning and our snowpack is dwindling. We also see businesses shutting their doors and our neighbors kidnapped. In this political climate, with skyrocketing inflation and attacks on long-held rights and institutions, pushing back can feel overwhelming.

It’s supposed to feel that way. The increasing burdens our communities are facing are supposed to feel insurmountable. But if we unwind the intersecting crises and attacks on our democracy, we see that everything is connected, and in those connections are paths forward.

Solutions to the climate crisis are solutions to the many other issues we face as well. Making our homes more efficient through weatherization, by installing heat pumps and solar panels, cut greenhouse gas emissions, but they also cut costs on energy bills for hardworking community members. Building clean energy infrastructure like wind, solar, and geothermal can create well-paying green jobs.

Reducing pollution means cleaner air, cleaner water, and therefore healthier communities.

We can upgrade our schools and at the same time create resilience centers, protecting those most vulnerable among us. And with every solution, we must center frontline community members who bear disproportionate burdens while contributing the least pollution to the climate crisis.

While we see great potential in multi-issue solutions, we also see a common denominator in the challenges we face, whether it be climate, affordability, or foreign wars. At the heart of all is greed.

The ultra wealthy buy power, and they use that power to increase their wealth. They do this by squeezing our environment and our communities dry. Since 2019, Amazon doubled their profits and tripled their greenhouse gas emissions. Google’s carbon footprint has grown 51% since 2019, even as they promised to cut emissions by half by 2030.

As of this June, the world’s 65 biggest banks have provided $8.7 trillion in financing for fossil fuel since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

This profit and power hoarding is at the expense of our climate, it is at the expense of our communities, and those paying the highest price are our BIPOC low-income and other frontline community members.

In the last two years, we have seen hard-won progress gutted, from repealing federal emission standards to slashing pollution limits for coal and gas-fired power plants, lifting restrictions on fossil fuel emissions, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, opening our public lands to exploitation, gutting environmental justice initiatives, and undermining the Inflation Reduction Act.

Simultaneously, this administration has provided massive tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy resulting in skyrocketing profits for corporate polluters and the 1%.

No one is coming to save us, but we still have power. We must vote out the politicians that have betrayed us by taking money from AIPAC, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and fossil fuel corporations who have chosen power over the people they serve.

We must vote for people and policies that prioritize our community over profits, and we have to build power and resilience locally.

This community made history in forest defense 30 years ago with the Warner Creek Blockade and has been fighting for forests ever since.

Members from this community worked with allies to successfully stop the Jordan Cove pipeline, and we established some of the country’s most ambitious climate goals with our climate recovery ordinance.

We organized to pass the state’s first electrification ordinance, and just a few weeks ago, members of our community flooded City Council with testimony, and days later, the city manager signed an order banning confidentiality agreements with data centers.

I know what this community values and I have seen what we are capable of. This election is an opportunity to collectively call for better. We have a measure on the ballot that would make billion-dollar corporations like Amazon and Chase Bank pay their fair share to create a Eugene Clean Energy Fund.

We have candidates running who are going to fight for our future. We have to sift through the disinformation and distortions of the truth paid for by big business and vote for our interests.

A vote for climate is a vote for public health. A vote for climate is a vote for justice. A vote for climate is a vote for energy efficient, affordable housing. A vote for climate is a vote for my children or your children, and for future generations.

No kings, no billionaires, and yes for a Eugene Clean Energy Fund!

Nancy Forrest: So just to provide a bit of a bookend, (I’m) back up on Ferry Street Bridge where there are less protestors than there were an hour and a half ago. But as you can hear, the citizens driving back and forth over the bridge are continuing to show their support for the protest. (honking)

That’s a wrap, folks.

John Q: That’s KEPW’s Nancy Forrest reporting from the Oct. 17 No Kings Vote Early event at Eugene City Hall.