This report back was shared with us anonymously. NAC did not organize this action. This is a follow up to an earlier report back on the Eugene A15 action.
On April 15th–tax day–5 dozen protestors occupied a stretch of Interstate 5 in Eugene in protest of the U.S. government funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza using taxpayer dollars. Eugene joined hundreds of activists in more than 82 cities around the U.S. and the world to Shut It Down for Palestine.
At the time, it had been over six months since Israel began its brutal genocidal assault on Gaza, which by April had left 33,800 Palestinians dead, 85 percent of Gazans displaced, and the entire population of Gaza – 50% being children – struggling to survive. This is due to the near constant fall of U.S.-made-bombs and a targeted starvation campaign that’s created famine conditions as Israeli forces violently block humanitarian aid. Since October 2023, people of conscience, in Eugene and around the world, have been calling for an end to this colonial violence and demanding that the U.S. end all military support to Israel.
When testimonies at City Council meetings, thousands of phone calls and letters to elected officials, and months of marching through the streets of Eugene fail to move politicians to conscientious action, then we must do more. This is why protesters stepped onto the I-5 that day.
It has been over four months since then, and the horrors in Gaza are markedly worse. While the official death count stands at nearly 41,000, a recent study by The Lancet reports that the actual death toll could exceed 186,000. An astounding 90% of Gaza’s population is now internally displaced. Families are forced to take shelter in refugee camps or schools, which are in turn targeted by Israel occupation forces– like when Israel bombed the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in central Gaza 63 times, killing at least 91 Palestinians and injuring 251 others. These intensified attacks have also destroyed over half of Gaza’s structures including nearly all of the city’s hospitals. A dire sanitation situation is now emerging as the mass destruction has left the city with no water and no running sewage system.
The need for conscientious action is as, if not more, urgent today as it was on April 15th. We believe it is every U.S. citizen’s obligation to oppose the use of our tax dollars to facilitate war crimes. U.S. laws, too, prohibit military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity. And in June 2024, the International Court of Justice found that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. It is clear that the U.S. legal system picks and chooses what laws to enforce when it comes to Palestine, prosecuting protestors domestically while aiding and abetting genocide abroad. But legality alone does not determine what is right. Our moral compass demands that the conditions that the people of Gaza are subjected to must end.
So, we followed the example of a long line of those who took to the highway in protest of the Vietnam War and South African Apartheid. In 1970, just five hours north of us, the first anti-war freeway protest took place in Seattle, the day after four Kent State demonstrators were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. As is the case with the Vietnam War and South African Apartheid, history will absolve our so-called “crime.” We ask, who is more criminally culpable– those who perpetuate genocide or those who will go to such lengths to end it?
Over 127 law enforcement officers from six agencies were deployed to I-5, with one witness saying, “it was the most police presence I have ever seen at a protest.” Despite the 2-to-1 ratio of officers to protesters, officers were violent in their arrests, deploying pepper balls at close range into a group of protesters attempting to disperse and no longer on the freeway. Upon release from jail, many defendants were offered plea deals by the District Attorney who promised diversion upon pleading guilty and completing 6-12 months of probation. One of our co-defendants who was not offered a diversion deal is a Palestinian teenager. A deal that is offered to some but not all, despite identical charges, is no deal at all. Today and everyday we stand in solidarity with our comrades and all of our Palestinian siblings suffering under Israel’s violence.
The resources that Lane County has funneled into prosecuting our cases so far are immense and a gross misuse of public funds; funds that should instead go to needed social and public services such as affordable housing, a hospital, bike lanes, or fixing our crumbling roadways. This repression of protest is part of the uptick of suppression across several political issues in Lane County; like when a few months ago housing justice advocates were charged with trespassing while they assisted unhoused neighbors during sweeps of their long-established encampment. Like those comrades, we refuse to be intimidated into silence when confronting state violence. The millions of dollars that go into “sweeps,” prosecuting protestors, and genocide could be much better spent on desperately needed social services.
The City of Eugene perpetuates similar forms of state violence that even liberals and moderates have condemned in Gaza. Hundreds of our neighbors have been displaced by way of sweeps in recent months, and the technology used to surveil the unhoused across town was first developed by the Israeli company Celibrite. The EPD contracts with a company called Mobile Pro Systems that manufactures the Guardian Trailers that have been installed around Eugene and Springfield since the onset of the Covid pandemic, when the local housing crisis reached a critical point. Our local police force is taking a page out of Israel’s playbook. These abuses of power, misappropriation of taxpayer dollars, and mass surveillance and dispossession are unconscionable both here and abroad.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It is no wonder, then, why community members felt compelled to act on A15 and why we continue to resist the State’s prosecution. After a summer of attempted and failed negotiations between defendants and the district attorney’s office, 19 of the 52 individuals arrested on April 15th are set to go to trial in protest of the DA’s refusal to treat all defendants fairly and of the state’s ongoing complicity in genocide at large.
On this day, nearly a week out from the first trial date among the nineteen remaining defendants, we call on the DA to drop all charges against those who protest against the genocide of Palestinians. We demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire and end to the occupation. Above all, we demand Palestinian liberation.
If you want to support the cause of Palestinian liberation, you can send funds to UNRWA (https://www.unrwa.org/), operation olive branch (https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch), or the curated go-fund-me’s at Gazafunds (https://gazafunds.com/). If you want to support jail support here in Eugene, Venmo (@EugeneBailFund).
Free Palestine!