I live on the corner of 17th Avenue and Patterson Street, where the melee on Friday night occurred. I saw it in its entirety, from the time the first unmarked police car arrived to ask the crowd on the sidewalk to disperse until the cleaning crew came a few hours later. What I witnessed in between repulsed me. I have heard analogies to some of the other protests that have occurred in Eugene over the past few years. From the footage I have seen of timber sale protests and the articles I have read about the tree-sit downtown exactly five years ago, I can say that what occurred on Friday night did not resemble them — at all.
This was not a case of peaceful protest being violently broken up by overzealous cops. This was merely a drunken throng without a cause outside of blind rebellion and showing little regard for safety and dignity bringing onto itself the consequences of its own aggression. In case you have heard otherwise, it was the students who initiated the conflict. The first cop at the scene was simply calling through a loudspeaker for the crowd to disperse when a bottle was flung towards his car, smashing against a van directly in front of it, sending the first of what was to be many shards of glass cascading toward the street. Bottles were hurled continuously afterwards, too many of them landing dangerously near people at the front of the crowd. When backup arrived and the cops moved to clear the street, some of the malcontents threw bottles directly at them. That’s not protest — that’s assault.
And what was the cause at hand? Was some injustice being exposed, some oppression decried? Was there something to have been said beyond, “Fuck you, pigs,” or was this merely an excuse to give vent to baser instincts? Who were the real pigs on Friday night? Don’t get me wrong; I believe in protest. I know that cops abuse their authority and the people. My mother works as a counselor at a county jail and sees it all the time. I know that the criminal justice system is corrupt and I believe our government’s priorities are skewed, but what happened on Friday night doesn’t lend me any more faith in the people at large. And that’s a travesty that can’t be pinned on an authority, but for which we are all responsible.
D.J. Fuller is a junior political science major.