On Thursday afternoon May 30, around 50 University of Oregon students protesting the university’s investment ties to Israel shut down the UO’s president Karl Scholz’s investiture at Matthew Knight Arena according to UO staff who were at the event. Student protesters called the action “No Rest Until We Divest” and demanded Scholz divest fully from Jasper Ridge Partners; a management service that invests the UO Foundation’s funds in companies tied to the defense industry, such as aerospace manufacturer Boeing, an investment management company Vanguard and Israel-based international military tech ..read more

Donald Trump is now the first former American president to be convicted on felony charges.   A New York jury found Trump guilty on all 34 charges of first degree falsifying of business records. During the 2016 election, Trump paid $130,000 in hush-money to porn star Stormy Daniels to silence her account of having sex with him. The jury found that Trump had faked the records to conceal the purpose of money that he used to reimburse his then-fixer, Michael Cohen. The fake records made the payments look like legal expenses. Trump is likely to appeal the verdict. The sentence calls for u ..read more

Jazz musician Kamasi Washington says Fearless Movement, his latest album, was inspired by the birth of his daughter three years ago. Kamasi’s dad, Rickey Washington, a jazz musician and flutist, will accompany his son on June 1 at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene. “Three generations,” involved in the music, Kamasi tells Eugene Weekly — that’s a beautiful thing.  Kamasi says he noticed his daughter’s elasticity and freedom of movement when she was born, and for this reason, Fearless Movement is a dance record, he says. But don’t expect big club beats or techno grooves. It’s a jazz-fusion thr ..read more

Eileen Polk Photography: 20th Century Subculture – Hippie Freaks, Rampant Punks! will be on display at Sam Bond’s Garage through June. Sam Bond’s is a music venue, not an art gallery, but that makes it perfect for Polk. Her career as a photographer began in the 1970s when as a young adult she took pictures of New York City’s punk music scene as it was unfolding. Thirty photographs will be on display and for sale. Many of them will have subjects you recognize from the ’70s and ’80s, like the Ramones, Cheech Marin, Jerry Rubin (1938 – 1994) and Timothy Leary (1920 – 1996). Into the ’90s, closer ..read more

Having been banished to artistic obsolescence for the past few decades, black and white photography is enjoying a renaissance in the art world, from the new Netflix series Ripley, shot entirely in black and white, to the appearance of high-end dedicated monochrome digital cameras for consumers. A generation ago, black and white was the gold standard for fine art photography, and most art photographers looked down their noses at color pictures. Search online and you can find pithy quotations from distinguished photographers to support this attitude, though good luck verifying any of them. “Blac ..read more

Eric Richardson moved to Eugene from St. Louis, Missouri, with his family in 1971 when he was four years old. He remembers the racism he faced in school as a young boy in Eugene in the late ’70s, pointing out that it was less than a decade since the Voting Rights Act had been passed in 1965 as well as the Housing Act and the assassination of Martin Luther King, both of which happened in 1968.  “I think a lot of times a lot of the Black folks who come here with their own life find that they either have to make it make their space for themselves or they just get really disenchanted and leav ..read more

Living in a “cooperative”? I never gave the idea much thought, and I sure didn’t think I’d join a co-op housing community. To me, a co-op sounded like a loose-knit commune where people followed certain ideals without question.  As it turns out, that’s not the case. Last December, my family and I moved into a new cooperative in Santa Clara called Peace Village, and I discovered that co-ops can have a different purpose. SquareOne Villages is a nonprofit in Lane County with the mission to develop affordable housing while maintaining a self-managed community for people to live in small homes ..read more

By Jesús Sepúlveda  The body of Christ is a bombed  strip. Mural of horror Sore hands Eternal smoke. More than 30 thousand mutilated bodies Dunes of blood and famine  between ruins and exile The sea opens and the borders  close Boys and grandparents and mothers and pregnant young women. Dark revelation Oh, Saint John of Patmos! The souls of the burned rise Chimneys. The devil  blows the fire of terror Who invokes war  who censures the dead Who revives the children? The feet of Christ dry up in the sand Jesús Sepúlveda is a Chilean poet who lives in Eugene and teac ..read more

No city has held on to the decade of tie dye and peace signs like Eugene has. It has permeated the culture through Grateful Dead cover bands and pot smoke leaving some residents perma-fried.  Kidding, kind of. People who lived it talk about Eugene in the ’70s as a utopia of arts and culture and LSD. And the people who were born too late have no choice but to live through those who saw the Grateful Dead for $3 in Veneta.  But the ’70s weren’t just about smoking pot in a circle like Eric Foreman and his friends on That ’70s Show. For some people in Eugene, the ’70s were about opportuni ..read more

On any given Saturday night in 1970-something, the fine-dining restaurant The Excelsior is filled with folks dressed to the nines (in Eugene terms); couples celebrating anniversaries, parents visiting their University of Oregon college kid and, if you’re lucky, a group of rowdy, feather boa-ed young women, pulling pranks and taking names. They’re called The Radar Angels and while they may have interrupted a couple of your date nights way back when, they probably entertained you — at the very least they entertained themselves, as Radar Angel Indi Stern says.  Stern, who was a founding memb ..read more