Reposted from the Eugene Weekly’s 9/21/24 Guest Viewpoint

An Open Letter to the Whiteaker Community Council and all neighbors in the Whit

Recently, a letter has been circulating from the Whiteaker Community Council to the city of Eugene and its Parks department requesting that they “revoke any permits for daily group feeding activities in Washington Jefferson Park(WJ).”

Listed among the reasons for this request are things such as theft, trash, drugs, threats and harassment of city staff.

Reading this was disheartening and disturbing. It charts a dark path for our community toward a world bleaker than most of us have seen. In this world, we and our neighbors deepen a culture of distrust, unmet needs and a narrative that our safety and best interest will always be in opposition to another’s.

Consider this letter a supplication of the most heartfelt and desperately hopeful degree, to understand that all of our fates are bound together. This is an appeal to both your empathy and your pragmatism.

Individual health and collective health are inextricably tied. The more unmet needs that exist in a community, the less safe every person is. As the housing crisis and inflation are soaring, and being financially stable is becoming less accessible to people, more people are living outside and relying on social services to make their lives liveable. The contradictions and the economic conditions are getting worse, and there is no sign of that stopping.

Every time a necessary resource is taken from a person, their humanity is degraded. This is not only a matter of dignity; it has very material affects and consequences. Low blood sugar will make a person cranky — if they continue in that state, and it becomes more severe, their ability to self-regulate becomes exponentially more difficult, and their need becomes urgent, even desperate. What do desperate people do?

Removing access to vital resources puts those who have the least power and the most vulnerability in an impossible situation.

Every time a person, a politician, a group, or a neighborhood makes a free service or resource unavailable, everyone becomes less safe. The needs don’t go away; people still need to get their needs met, but the places they were going to get it are gone. This means that the places they go to get it are less safe, and probably less legal.

If you’re looking for a culpable party, blame the politicians that are feigning helplessness in the face of these issues, the property owners who are buying multiple houses and complexes to leverage them for wealth, and making it impossible for working-class people and families to buy or rent here. Blame property developers, who have made the city more and more inaccessible to people without wealth to afford basic expenses.

The needs begin to stack and stack, and the weight on the community-minded and the helpers becomes heavier. On the West Coast — and in Lane County and Eugene, specifically —, we are seeing a disproportionate amount of individuals living outside, because communities in many other cities throughout the country have made conditions absolutely unsurvivable, through hostile architecture, severe criminalization, lack of social services, etc.

Every single city that turns its back on the poor places a greater burden on other communities to meet the needs. The feedings at Washington Jefferson park are a perfect example of this. Until a few months ago, the group that feeds people in the park would serve a hundred meals at most, and only on pancake day. Since the massive rounds of sweeps that displaced long-standing communities on the railroad tracks this spring and summer, those numbers have doubled. Every serving day, upward of 200 people, 40 percent of which are housed and struggling to get by, come to WJ to get a meal.

This cycle, if it continues to build momentum, paints an ugly picture for all of us in which we build walls around houses, place locks on every door, fence and dumpster, and only the wealthy can protect themselves from the desperation of those who are given little choice but to take.

And each one of us must reconcile with the glaring question that follows:

How long until I’m the one with the unmet need?

Tragedy, disaster, addiction or just the stacking straws of burden placed on us by an unrelenting system of law and labor — at any moment one of us could be left with a deficit of resources, and will have a need for community care. We must, WE MUST, build these networks of community care, for the sake of our neighbors, our families and ourselves.

We have to decide what kind of people we will be. We have to decide if we are going to be people that take care of one another, that do the hard and tedious work of building relationships with our neighbors so that there is a net of care that can catch whoever happens to fall next, or if we will buy into the lie that there isn’t enough for everyone.

If you’re feeling angry, or afraid, or even desperate in the face of the unmet needs that are at your doorstep, don’t take it out on the people trying to help, and don’t take it out on the people who have found themselves in enough of a needs deficit that they have to live on a sidewalk.

And if you need help, let’s work together. Reach out to the local mutual aid groups — there are so many of us. We can organize park clean-ups, medical and sanitary supplies to keep people healthier and needles off the ground, open up spaces for relationship-building, and so much more.

I’ve reached out to each of these groups and they have given explicit permission be resources to the Whiteaker neighborhood and community members.

• Neighborhood Anarchist Collective: NAC has many projects and community organizers, and is willing to be reached out to for support with issues at WH. Reach out through their website: https://neighborhoodanarchists.org/
• Housing and Neighborhood Defense: HAND organizes working class people in Eugene and Springfield to collectively combat exploitation by landlords, developers, and other class enemies. For more about  public meetings and events:  eugeneHAND.org or their Instagram @eug.HAND to get involved.
• Community Alliance of Lane County: CALC collaborates with orgs and groups to enact positive social change. They have a lot of resources and could help with specific support requests.

A few of the other  orgs that support this letter(each has an Instagram):

• Jewish Voices for Peace Eugene
• Springfield Eugene Anti-Imperialist Coalition
• Food not Bombs Eugene
• Eugene Community Fridge

Other local resources for those in crisis:

Call 541-682-5111 to request CAHOOTS, a mobile crisis unit that is available 24/7 and can send a team directly to your location.

Call the White Bird Crisis line at 541-687-4000 to speak with a counselor that can support someone through a crisis over the phone or direct them to relevant resources.

For anyone who is seeking help with substance recovery, Willamette Family Downtown Treatment Center takes walk-ins.

Buckley Detox Center (605 West 4th Avenue) also accepts walk-ins for sobering services, daily 5 pm to 5 am.

This list is not comprehensive; it is just a sample of the care this community has to offer if we work together.

Collective care is always the antidote.

Jesselyn Perkins is a community organizer.