Ethos | Fall 2022

KEEPERS OF THE SANCTUARY STATE

Oregon locals are fighting for safe and legal abortions in the post-Roe world.

Letter From the Editor,

Our community is resilient.

In the last few years, the Eugene area has felt hardships from illness to fire to economic struggle, but our light has never dimmed.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case on June 24, 2022, our community got to work to protect reproductive healthcare. Megan McEntee’s story “Keepers of the Sanctuary State” shows us those who hoped in turbulent times.

For the story, Megan spoke with Carlene Ostedgaard of Cascades Abortion Support Collective (CASC). Ostedgaard, putting resilience in a sentence, says, “The overwhelm of the decision, it feels like CASC is Sisyphus – and we’re just gonna push that damn rock up the hill.”

Despite decades of car-centered infrastructure and a global pandemic moving life back home, Lane Transit District still gets residents where they need to be. Elena Kato, an Ethos illustrator, introduces us to the riders and providers in the story, “Inside the Bus System.”

When the University of Oregon’s beloved neighbor, 13th Avenue shops, were forced to move, one barber shop kept its doors open, even though those doors were 16 blocks away. Maili Smith’s story, “Making the Cut,” highlights the change in this business landscape.

Ethos Magazine is run entirely by UO students who dedicate their time and passion to finding stories of those who push forward. The stories that highlight a community’s lifeblood.

Whether it be through healthcare advocacy, bus rides or haircuts, I hope you see yourself in this edition of Ethos.

Ethos Editor-in-Chief

Abby Sourwine

Our Mission:

Ethos is a nationally recognized, award-winning independent student publication. Our mission is to elevate the voices of marginalized people who are underrepresented in the media landscape and to write in-depth, human-focused stories about the issues affecting them. We also strive to support our diverse stu dent staff and to help them find future success.

Ethos is part of Emerald Media Group, a non-profit organization that’s fully independent of the University of Oregon. Students maintain complete editorial control over Ethos and work tirelessly to produce the magazine.

Cole Kleckner, a sophomore at Lane Community College, takes a swing at a fastball early in the game versus the Corvallis Knights.

Email editor@ethosmagonline.com with comments, questions

and story ideas. You can find our past issues at issuu.com/ethosmag and more stories, including multimedia content, at ethosmagonline.com.

Table of Contents

Making The Cut | 5

New development has displaced Red Rooster Barber shop and other small businesses on 13th Avenue, leaving the future landscape of the street uncertain.

Home Run | 11

A new summer collegiate baseball team brings excitement and opportunity to Springfield’s youth.

Keepers of the Sanctuary State | 17

Oregon locals are fighting for safe and legal abortions in the post-Roe world.

Inside the Bus System | 25

In a sprawling city, it’s difficult to meet every accessibility need that people desire in public transportation. Riders of LTD say it’s not perfect, but still enjoy the service it currently offers.

Feeding Lane County | 29

Food pantry volunteers strive to curb food insecurity and serve their communities.

A Plant for All | 33

Since opening up their doors, the owners of Stingray Botanicals have always put their customers first.

Through their business Stingray Botani cal’s customer service and interior design, owners Luna Snowe and Adrian Mendoza prioritize creating a welcoming and safe

Editorial

Editor-in-Chief Abby Sourwine

Managing Editor

Ella Hutcherson

Writing

Associate Editors

Maris Toalson

Kendall Porter

Writers

Megan McEntee

Caleb Barber

Emerson Brady

Lizzy Solorzano

Olivia Bennett

Daniel Friis

Elena Kato

Maili Smith

Photography

Photo Editor

Ilka Sankari

Photographers

Samantha Joh Feddy Torres

Elizabeth Donovan Samantha Karambelas

Ayla Rivera Derek Heath Megan McEntee

Design

Design Editor

Savannah Zerbel

Designers

Lynette Slape

Liz Blodgett

Esther Szeto

Socials

Social Media Manager

Whitney Conaghan

Social Media Specialist

Maggie Delaney

Fact-Checking

Fact-Checking Editor

Bentley Freeman

Fact Checkers

Elizabeth Weltzien

Cori Caplinger

Alexa Brown Olivia Morris

Illustration

Art Director

Maya Merrill

Illustrators

Jordan Scott Elena Kato

Kaitlyn Cafarelli

Multimedia Audio Producer

Kate Jaques-Prentice

Making the Cut

New development has displaced Red Rooster Barber shop and other small businesses

Kand resurgence of men’s hair trends, from shag cuts to mullets to Justin Bieber moptops to fades and back to mullets among the college crowd. She has also seen businesses change.

Shields is used to a continuous flow of customers at Red Rooster Barber Shop. Two years ago, when her shop was tucked on the corner of Kincaid Street and 13th Avenue, college students were the heart of her business. Sometimes, five freshmen would walk in right at her 5 p.m. closing time and she wouldn’t leave until 6 p.m. Shields says. But she didn’t mind. Shields loved working with a young demographic and the excitement of being on 13th Avenue, the block directly next to the University of Oregon campus.

Now, Red Rooster sits listless. Shields sees few young faces these days. When a client finally walks in, it is an older gentleman rather than a college student that Shields greets. “Should I cut your eyebrows too?” Shields asks him.

When he leaves, Shields jokes that’s why she misses the college kids. “That’s the difference between the young kids and the old guys — With the old guys, I have to do ear hairs and eyebrows. And I don’t get to do fun haircuts.”

Shields misses her college customer base for more than just the fun haircuts. She also misses their business. Previously, college students comprised 90% of clients at Red Rooster Barber Shop, Shields estimates.

However, after more than four decades, Red Rooster Barber Shop was forced to move from its spot across from the UO Duck Store to a spot 16 blocks west of the original location, near 13th Avenue and Willamette Street. Unfortunately for business, the college clientele has not moved with.

This story of translocation is just one of many on 13th Avenue. In recent months, longstanding businesses including Glenwood Restaurant, Caspian Mediterranean Cafe, Candy Mountain Cafe and Rainbow Optics have left 13th Avenue. Now, the street

Jolan Hill chats with a customer as she cuts his hair. She began working with Shields at the beginning of the pan demic, after Shields lost a lot of her previous workers.

“I miss the old days where there were mom-and-pop shops and there was a fun community vibe,”

is lined with vacancies, predominantly where local mom-andpop stores used to be.

Espresso Roma employee Ricardo Gomez has worked on 13th Avenue for 15 years and says he has witnessed a drastic change in the composition of businesses on the street.

“I think we finally hit the peak, a major change where it’s like, you don’t have your family-oriented businesses as frequently, which I think is what made this street, specifically, the campus street,” Gomez says.

Long-standing family businesses have been pushed out, in part, to accommodate a series of student housing developments planned for East 13th.

A 12-story apartment complex will take the place of the 7-Eleven lot and Glenwood Restaurant property, which was purchased by Alum Eugene LLC for $3 million in late June 2021. In a separate project down the block, the UO Duck Store plans to renovate its space to accommodate retail on the ground floor and four levels of student housing on top, according to a press release from February 2022.

Webfoot Bar and Grill is the physical cutoff for the properties owned by the Duck Store. Employees there have seen many

local businesses leave, like Caspian Mediterranean Cafe next door. Austin Lee, a bar back who has worked door security at Webfoot since 2016, says it’s been “a weird change.” He feels the absence of Webfoot’s neighbor, Caspian Cafe, which he says still receives a lot of foot traffic from students who have not yet realized it is gone. He laments the loss of Glenwood Restaurant down the block, another popular spot for the college crowd.

“Who didn’t go to the Glenwood after partying on a Friday or Saturday night and sit there in the morning, nursing a hangover?” Lee says. “Going there was a rite of passage if you were a student.”

The Glenwood property was purchased by a development company managed by Eran Fields, who went on to purchase the complex where Red Rooster Barber Shop used to have a lease. This building complex on 13th and Kincaid was previously owned by the family that operated Taylor’s Bar and Grill.

According to project proposals from Works Progress Architecture LLP, the plan is to construct a space for a restaurant and retail on the three bottom levels and then upscale condos on floors four through 13.

- Austin Lee

Shields (right) and her new business partner Hill (left) stand outside of Red Rooster’s new location. They pose in the bright red shirts that Shields once gave away to freshmen who came in for their first cut.

Many businesses on 13th Avenue have disappeared since Shields’ father first opened Red Rooster Barber Shop in 1968. The barber shop was one of the first of its kind in Eugene, Shields says. Shortly after, her father opened Man’s World, the barber shop in which Shields would grow up and eventually begin her own barber career at the age of 21. Shield’s father sold Red Rooster in 1972, but when the opportunity presented itself, he decided to buy it back for his daughter in 2014.

Shields was excited to work on East 13th Avenue, a place she had loved growing up.

“It was a wonderful environment,” Shields says. “In high school, we skipped school to drive that street. It was just a cool place to be — ‘Oh, let’s see if we see any track stars today.’ And I didn’t look back once I got down there. Kept you young.”

When she inherited the business, Red Rooster focused on an older client base on an appointment-only basis. Shields and her father remodeled and changed the barber shop to exclusively walk-ins and catered to a younger market. That’s when Red Rooster adopted a new marketing strategy: T-shirts for all college freshmen, or rather, any new student that hadn’t been in before.

The T-shirts were a hit, according to Shields. “If I got them as freshmen, they always came back. The fraternity boys, they got all their buddies. It snowballed from there.”

Business thrived under Shields’ new ownership, and Shields enjoyed her newfound relationships with college students. One student invited Shields to his high school graduation. A couple others convinced Shields to hire them to paint her house to fundraise for a trip. Because of school schedules, the project took them a couple weeks to finish. Shields’ house sat half-painted during finals week, but she didn’t mind.

Shields says things started to change when Taylor’s Bar and Grill lost its liquor license in February 2020. The Taylor family owned the entire complex where Red Rooster had a lease, but the bar was their big moneymaker. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Shields says her landlord switched to month-to-month leases for her and other tenants.

This decision was reassuring for Shields, as she worried about paying rent for a year when she had no source of income.

Following an executive order from the Oregon governor, businesses were forced to shut down for two months, from late March until May 2020.

“I was scared because I had to pay rent down there,” Shields says. “No matter what, I paid. I paid for everything. I paid my rent from my personal savings account.”

When Red Rooster was allowed to reopen, Shields says business was still down 75% of its usual traffic. But haircuts slow down in the summer anyway, so Shields says she hoped to get by and recoup her losses in the fall. However, seven days into fall term 2021, the state issued another executive order to shut down.

Shields held on, knowing the flurry of at-home haircuts gone wrong would drive people back to barber shops as soon as restrictions were lifted.

But on Sept. 15, 2022, Shields received notice that she would have to vacate the space in 30 days. She was told to leave her keys at a disclosed location, and unless she received written notice by

A sign that hung inside of the original Red Rooster Barber Shop now sits on a shelf at the new location.

the new owners to stay, she must be fully cleared out. Shields tried to contact the new owners but was unable to get in touch with them.

The N.E.S.T., a vintage clothing store opened by two UO students in 2020, also rented the complex along with Red Rooster Barber Shop. Unlike Red Rooster, the N.E.S.T was able to receive an extension from the new owners to occupy the space that was previously part of Taylor’s Bar and Grill. The store will be allowed to stay until the building gets torn down, but it remains unclear when this will be, says N.E.S.T co-founder and owner Harrison Stevens.

Once construction is complete, the N.E.S.T. hopes to move back in.

“I think it’s in the best interest of the community to still maintain some of these businesses on the ground floor, especially if people are familiar with them,” Stevens says. “They’re going to bring natural foot traffic.”

Eric Breiteinstein, marketing director of the Duck Store, says its mixed-use development project will serve the UO community and introduce new foot traffic that will support local businesses.

“It was a wonderful enviroment”

- Karyn Shields

“We really want there to continue to have the vibrant business mix on the block,” he says.

Breiteinstien acknowledges there will be growing pains. In order to make room for new construction, local businesses have had to move out. Like Red Rooster, other businesses on 13th Avenue fear that if they have to move out to accommodate construction, they may not be able to come back.

Shields would love to be back in the same spot, tucked on the corner of East 13th.

However, she is concerned the new ownership means rent will no longer be affordable for small businesses like hers. Shields says when her dad first moved Red Rooster onto 13th in the 60s, the street was lined with individually owned momand-pop stores. Now, she says, chains and apartments are increasingly dominating the street because they’re the only ones who can afford it.

Gomez worries for the future of Espresso Roma. He believes new development on 13th comes with a cost.

“The trade-off is that you lose diversity in the little campus ecosystem,” Gomez says. “This is a cafe owned by a bunch of Latinos.”

If Espresso Roma were to be replaced by a chain restaurant, Gomez says, it would mean sacrificing an experience rich in culture and character. The staff at Espresso Roma have spent years forging connections with the Eugene community. Because of these relationships, Gomez says he’s been able to teach people words in Spanish and let customers off the hook when they forget their wallets, because they’re regulars that he knows will come back. These interactions are personal and personable, not strict business exchanges.

A couple doors down, at Webfoot Bar and Grill, Lee mourns the loss of individuality as a part of a larger transformation Eugene is undertaking.

“I miss the old days where there were mom-and-pop shops and there was a fun community vibe,” Lee says. “And that was what Eugene always stood for — this kind of weird quirky town where kids came from bigger cities and they got to see this meld of country and urban living. Now it’s turning into glass and steel.”

The now-closed Glenwood Restaurant is fenced off, awaiting demolition so that new housing can be built in its place.

Isaiah Thomas slides into a play at third base after a hit to the opposite side of the field by a teammate put Thomas in position to score.

Home Run

Written by Daniel Friis | Photographed by Derek Heath

On a warm and dry summer Oregon night, a lefthanded Portland Pickles batter steps up to the plate. Hamlin Sports Complex, the Springfield Drifters renovated stadium, is decked out with fans covered head-to-toe in blue and white baseball merchandise, ready to cheer on anything that goes their way.

The Pickles batter fouls one off to the left, over the concourse and over Jamie Christopher’s head. Suddenly, an onslaught of young footsteps stampede the silence in a pursuit to find the foul ball. Comments like “be careful” and “walk, don’t run” emerge from the parents in the crowd. But for Christopher, the general manager of the Drifters, all he could do was crack a warm smile.

A new summer collegiate baseball team brings excitement and opportunity to Springfield’s youth

“That’s what this type of baseball is about,” Christopher says. “It was really where I settled in, and said ‘we’ve arrived’ and where we turned a corner.”

The Drifters are a summer baseball team made up of strictly collegiate talent. They play in Springfield, but they can recruit from schools all over the country. Aside from providing the community with high-caliber baseball, the Drifters are just a slice of the grand effort to improve sports in the community.

“This is really the first time in my life that I’ve ever gotten to wear a jersey with the words ‘Springfield’ across the front,” says Cade Crist, a catcher for the Drifters and Tacoma Community College who was born and raised in Springfield. “Everything in this area always says ‘Eugene,’ but this is different. It makes me proud.”

Several years ago, things were different. The Drifters, whose goal is to encourage kids to play baseball, weren’t around. The Springfield/Eugene area lacked widely accessible fields that also encouraged sports and physical activity. In terms of local youth, the impact this can have is drastic.

Two local business leaders, Ike Olsson and Kelly Richardson, saw this issue as an opportunity. Olsson, the president of Olsson Industrial Electric, and Richardson, the president and CEO of Richardson Sports, created a financial plan in 2019 to launch a complex at Hamlin Middle School in Springfield. They hoped that complex would become a hub for baseball from the middle school to the college level.

They created the Springfield Baseball Project, a foundation to broaden access to and participation in youth baseball. The first step was partnering with the Springfield School District to improve and establish connections, but one of the end goals was to turn Hamlin’s field into a stadium. This project also included the Drifters as a “forum to build a love for baseball,” Christopher says.

As news of the Drifters hit the Willamette Valley in early 2021, the West Coast League (WCL), which the Drifters are a part of, was expanding from 12 to 16 teams. WCL Commissioner Rob Neyer says they were looking to add another team in the Willamette Valley for a while, but they were just waiting for the right opportunity. Thankfully for him, Olsson and Richardson had already gotten the ball rolling.

The WCL is a 16-team collegiate wood bat league based in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia that features talent from all over the country. It aims to help student athletes prepare for wood bats in professional baseball, as opposed to the metal bats they use in college.

In order to ensure that the newly constructed Hamlin Sports Complex will be used to its full potential, the project also partnered with Bushnell University. The Bushnell Beacons will use the field in the winter and spring, the Drifters in the summer. The $3 million redevelopment included a newly

KJ Ruffo delivers a fastball to the plate at the Drifters’ home game versus the Corvallis Knights on July 27.. Ruffo will be a junior at the University of Portland this fall.

turfed field, dugouts, a press box and seating for 2,000 fans.

Christopher says he hopes the Drifters and the year-long play at Hamlin Sports Complex can serve as a mecca for the Willamette Valley community for decades to come.

Christopher joined the Drifters in April, 2020, six months after Olsson and Richardson had founded the team. The Drifters were in need of baseball expertise in order to get the operations flowing. Christopher, who has spent a lifetime in baseball, checked all the boxes.

When he was hired, Christopher was met with a mountain of tasks to complete, from finding players to raising money to finding host families.

“It’s an astronomical amount of work to run a ball club,” says Eric Leyba, a Drifters fan and assistant coach for Oregon State Softball. “For one person to do it, there’s just so many moving parts. I think from where Jamie has started to now, he’s built an amazing foundation.”

To make it happen, Christopher started his days at 6 am and worked until midnight.

Working and leading up to the team’s official launch on May 31, 2022, Christopher and the rest of ownership maintained one common thread through all their endeavors: community.

“The goal of our organization, first and foremost, was to create a community hub that would benefit local youth,” Christopher says. “We really want Springfield to feel like their team. Anytime I write something online I say ‘your Springfield Drifters,’ because it’s really theirs.”

The Drifters teamed up with Huddle Up, a nonprofit that donates food, clothing and resources to food banks and underserved sports communities, at the beginning of the season. The nonprofit was formed just a few years ago when Olsson got private donations to build a softball field for a school in need. Now, Christopher has joined, and he and the rest of Drifters ownership donate to the nonprofit.

Since Huddle Up’s inaugural project, Richard Schwab Field at Maple Elementary in Springfield, the nonprofit has established connections with Springfield Public Schools, Timber Products Company and Richardson Sports, both local businesses. Huddle Up aimes to increase accessibility to youth sports, similar to the

Springfield Baseball Project and the Drifters.

Aside from just donations, the relationship between the Drifters and Huddle Up is to inspire more kids to pick up a ball and bat.

According to the Novak Djokovic Foundation, sports teach kids morals and life lessons, create friendships, and build selfesteem, among other benefits. A lack of youth sports can impact a kid for much longer than just their childhood years, however. Aside from just the health cautions, a lack of sports can also deteriorate a child’s mental health, intensify academic behavior, and worsen one’s likelihood to attend college, according to Project Play. In Springfield, there were barriers to accessing these benefits.

“You think you’d see an increase of kids playing baseball with the Drifters, the Eugene Emeralds and two competitive baseball schools in Oregon and Oregon State, but unfortunately, you just don’t have enough baseball and softball people in the area,” Leyba says.

Leyba also co-owns a batting cage in Eugene called Coaches Athletic, and he says it gets customers from as far as Roseburg and Salem. As positive as this is for business, it puzzles Leyba and increases his concern for the future of the game.

While it has become the Drifters’ goal to help kids on the field, they’ve also inspired kids off the field.

Throughout the course of a game, several concession discounts and certificates are handed to kids who put their Drifters spirit on display by either dancing on the field or being the loudest fan.

“Before putting on a promotion in front of hundreds of fans, I’ve seen kids tense up and even get emotional out of fear,” says Jeremy Leung, a promotional intern for the Drifters and a UO student. “When they’re finished, and being applauded by those same hundreds of fans, the mood always changes. Seeing those kids smile makes the job 100% worth it. It’s amazing.”

The Drifters players themselves have also had a lasting impact on the youth community. While some players represent local schools like Bushnell or UO, others came in from as far as Hawaii in hopes of helping the team win a title. No matter where they’ve traveled from, players have similarly already

A young Drifters fan watches from the firstbase side of the grandstands in the Drifters’ new stadium, located inside Hamlin Sports Complex, completed in early 2022.

Michael Soper, a Sophomore at Linn-Benton Community College, gazes to the scoreboard from the on-deck circle as he awaits his time to hit.

-Jeremy Leung

Soper makes a throw to second-base on the second consecutive bunt play by the Corvallis Knights. Bunting is performed by holding the bat out and letting the ball hit it, rather than swinging at the ball. Both attempts by the Knights were successful, advancing runners in scoring position and placing pressure on the Drifters to end the inning.

found themselves to be hometown heroes for the kids.

“After a home game, our head coach’s two sons were on the field and asked me to pitch to them,” says Michael Soper, an infielder for the Drifters and Linn-Benton Community College. “As I started pitching to them, a couple other kids came and asked me to pitch to them. Then, a few more joined, and I was throwing to five to six kids at home plate. It felt cool to be the guy the kids wanted to play with because they looked up to me and came to ask me specifically to play with them.”

Like many other players, Soper stayed with a guest family all summer. Unlike anyone else on the team, however, Soper stayed with the Christophers. Over the course of the season, Soper bonded with Christopher and his son over their love for baseball, through family dinners and even country music, even though the Christophers say it’s not their favorite.

“I’ve dealt with nothing but good people and fans in my time here,” Leung says. “One of the most rewarding parts of the job is seeing the same faces reappear, sometimes with new faces each time. It makes me proud to work in such a communal

environment and proud to work for the Drifters.”

Just before the end of the season, the Drifters held a twoday baseball camp led by players and coaches. Christopher plans to run this camp every summer. He also added that “if someone doesn’t have the funds to attend, we will let anybody in.”

The Drifters missed the playoffs and finished the year just 17-37, but the season was a much larger success than their record would indicate. On-field and off-field moments have given fans, the community and Christopher something to be excited about for the foreseeable future.

In the next five years, Christopher hopes to see consistent sell outs with a steady flow of season ticket holders and repeat customers. He added that a championship will come one day, but for now he just wants the community to get involved with their team.

“A few days ago, my high school coach asked if I was going to be back with the Drifters next summer, and he hasn’t been the only one to ask,” Crist says. “I have three years of eligibility left, and I want to spend the rest of it being a Drifter if I’m allowed to. I know I can speak for others, too.”

“I’ve dealt with nothing but good people and fans in my time here”

-Jeremy Leung

Catcher Ryne Hayes, left, has a short mound visit with pitcher Ruffo, right, in order to ease Ruffo’s mind after the Knights scored two runs off him during the last play. This is common practice done by experienced catchers when they notice their pitcher needs time to collect themselves, typically after the opposing team performs well and gains momentum during the game.

Keepers of the Sanctuary State

Oregon locals are fighting for safe and legal abortions in the post-Roe world.

Written by Megan McEntee | Photographed by Megan McEntee | Illustrated by Elena Kato

On June 24, 2022, community member Bre Lynn led a march through the streets of Eugene, their good friend Monica Little by their side. When they both woke up that morning, neither of them expected to be handed a megaphone by a fellow protester. Little didn’t expect to leave work early, and Lynn didn’t expect to hear their voice ringing in the ears of a crowd. They didn’t expect to hear that countless people across the country would be turned away at their local abortion clinic that day.

They didn’t expect Roe v. Wade to fall.

Lynn received an abortion 23 days prior to the ruling.

“It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my whole life,” Lynn says. “And I fully believe it was the right decision.”

The timing of Lynn’s abortion and the Roe decision prompted them to take immediate action. But while leading the march on June 24, both Lynn and Little couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more they could do.

“It’s cathartic to yell and make people listen,” Little says, “but it still feels like not enough.”

Roe v. Wade was a case originally brought forth by Norma McCorvey — who chose “Jane Roe” as a legal pseudonym. McCorvey wanted an abortion, but she lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal unless the situation was life-threatening. She sued Henry Wade, her local district attorney, and the case was brought to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor, deciding that abortion was a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, which establishes a baseline “right to privacy.”

This decision voided many state and federal abortion restrictions and was a major stepping stone in the journey towards bodily autonomy for Americans who require reproductive healthcare. Abortion has always been a controversial subject and sits in a gray area for many citizens – especially those in religious communities. Roe v. Wade stirred up insurrection within these religious communities, sparking an ongoing battle between pro-life and pro-choice movements.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization officially became the case that overturned Roe on June 24, 2022 — abolishing abortion protections on a federal level. Abortion rights were not “deeply rooted in this nation’s history or tradition,” according to the Supreme Court.

Oregon sits in a unique position as a sanctuary state, meaning that despite the Supreme Court decision, Oregon lawmakers are passing bills and providing funding to protect the right to abortion within state lines. On the day that Roe fell, Governor Kate Brown signed the MultiState Commitment to Reproductive Freedom alongside the governors of Washington and California. This commitment serves to protect in-state residents’ rights to safe and accessible reproductive healthcare, as well as out-of-state citizens’ rights to asylum and treatment.

However, the term sanctuary state has a history beyond the context of reproductive rights. According to America’s Voice, an immigration reform advocacy group, the terms “sanctuary state” and “sanctuary city” have been used to define areas where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and local law enforcement are discouraged from reporting anyone’s documentation status, unless they are involved in a serious crime or investigation. Various reproductive rights movements and state legislators adopted that term in a new context, while still keeping similar themes of asylum and privacy.

Aside from the legislation, what really defines a sanctuary state is community organizing and advocacy, according to members of abortion advocacy groups. Many Oregon residents, such as Lynn and Little, are passionate about helping those who are more greatly impacted by reproductive injustice. This passion has transformed into action through protests and mutual aid fundraisers —a way to raise money in a community-oriented, symbiotic way.

“We have been running off the generosity of our communities for a long time,” says Mikaela Byers, Board Member and Travel Coordinator at the Northwest Abortion Access Fund (NWAAF).

NWAAF is a mutual aid fund with the mission to break down barriers regarding access to abortion. Spanning over four states — but helping abortion-seekers all around the country — NWAAF provides funding directly to clinics, hotels and airlines, so people can receive the healthcare they need. The fund has been around for over three decades.

“I would just love if more people knew about us,” Byers says. “If they need us, I want them to know we exist.”

According to Byers, one of the most effective forms of outreach is local, community-organized events. After their march through the streets of Eugene the day Roe was overturned, Lynn and Little decided to put together a fundraiser.

“ I had no idea the type of power that I have to make things happen. Now I’m just so inspired to do even more,”

- Monica Little

Their event, called Abort the Court, took place at the Old Whiteaker Firehouse, a popular meeting place for local activists in Eugene. They saw the importance of mutual aid and decided to raise money for NWAAF.

On July 21, a makeshift stage stood as the focal point for the fundraiser. Various speakers shared their experiences and frustrations with the crowd as they mingled with local vendors and activists.

“That event just felt very Eugene,” Byers says. “It felt a lot more Eugene than other events that aren’t put on by local community members. This one felt really genuine.”

Abort the Court raised over $8,500 for NWAAF, exceeding their original goal of $5,000. Abort the Court raised this money through donations from attendees, supporters and vendors.

“I had no idea the type of power that I have to make things happen,” Little says. “Now I’m just so inspired to do even more.”

Since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe, NWAAF has experienced a surge in both donations and calls for help. It’s a double-edged sword, Byers says, because while exposure and funding have increased immensely, so has the demand for their services.

“It’s weird to reckon with that fact,” Byers says. “It’s bittersweet that this is what it takes for people to be interested in your organization and what it does.”

One of the ways that NWAAF is increasing funding and access is by partnering with similar organizations, such as Cascades Abortion Support Collective (CASC). CASC is an organization that offers practical support to Oregonions seeking abortion services — such as transportation, contraception and aftercare – using NWAAF’s funding. According to Carlene Ostedgaard, a CASC board member, the organization began by serving the Portland metro area a few years ago, and expanded to the entire state of Oregon about a year-and-a-half ago.

In the post-Roe landscape, CASC has been working in overdrive. This includes expanding their service area beyond Portland.

“We’re doing what we’ve always done, and just doing a lot more of it. It does mean we’re going to need a larger volunteer network,” says Ostedgaard. “The overwhelm of the decision, it feels like CASC is Sisyphus – and we’re just gonna push that damn rock up the hill.”

Access to abortion and reproductive healthcare has always been an uphill battle, even before Roe was overturned. Although abortion rights were federally protected by Roe, states still had the wiggle room to put up their own barriers through written and unwritten policies. Many states had limits on how late in someone’s pregnancy they were able to get an abortion. Some states only had one or two abortion clinics, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and required extensive pre-appointment

Liberate Abortion signs are a common sight for those on the front lines. The Liberate Abortion Campaign is a coalition of over 150 organizations across the United States. They aim to “expand power, grow compassion, provide education and build a groundswell of support” for abortion access and reproductive rights, according to their official mission statement.

visits, which is often not feasible for someone without the funds for travel, room and board.

The barriers to accessible reproductive healthcare increase exponentially in communities of color, specifically Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities. Mariana Paredones Rodriguez is a fellow at Raíz, Planned Parenthood’s program dedicated to reducing stigma and providing access for Latinx individuals seeking reproductive healthcare.

According to Rodriguez, one of the largest barriers for the Latinx community is stigma. According to an article from the New Yorker, this stigma can manifest from a lack of sex education, language barriers in abortion clinics and judgement by peers and religious leaders.

“I would say this is part of the healing that needs to happen within our community,” Rodriguez says, “as it relates to regaining trust with health, healthcare and not being neglected.”

Planned Parenthood’s website states that Latinx individuals have some of the lowest uninsured rates in the country. According to Rodriguez, this is one of the financial barriers for Latinx individuals rooted in institutionalized racism, as well as a lack of access for undocumented folks.

“Reproductive justice is directly tied to the decriminalization of our bodies and bodily autonomy,” says Rodriguez. “That relates to a Latinx identity when you’re already being told that your existence and presence is illegal. I want to encompass that bodily autonomy and land sovereignty are definitely interconnected. This is something that should never be ignored.””

According to Rodriguez, the Latinx community has a lot more access in Oregon than in other states and countries. Specifically, the increased access to reproductive care for undocumented residents can be attributed to the Reproductive Health and Equities Act (RHEA). RHEA is a landmark bill that was passed in 2017 and ensures reproductive rights for every resident of Oregon, including undocumented and transgender residents. It also allocated public funding to provide reproductive care for those who can’t receive Medicaid, and codified the right to a safe and accessible abortion.

Christel Allen is the executive director of Pro-Choice Oregon, a self-described “grassroots pro-choice advocacy organization.” Pro-Choice Oregon was a vital group in the

Along a chainlink fence at Abortion Justice Field Day, flyers outlining Indigenous history wave in the wind. Rodriguez and other Planned Parenthood representatives speak to attendees just a few feet away. “It’s really important within the Latino community to unpack and address anti-Blackness and indigenous sovereignty as it relates to our issues,” says Rodriguez.

Pro-Choice Coalition of Oregon, or PCCO, which is the organized body that advocated for RHEA.

The road to RHEA was long and littered with obstacles, according to Allen. She points to a report from the Building Movement Project, which tells the story of RHEA through the hardships that PCCO faced. Allen came to PCCO a few months after the decision, but she says the report described the lack of diversity in the coalition before further integration and intersectionality efforts, and also the subsequent success of the bill after those integration efforts.

“If you were to look at the pro-choice movement in Oregon seven or eight years ago, it looks nothing like the type of work we do now,” says Allen. “There was definitely a need for accountability conversations, learning and growing.”

Allen says that these conversations will prove vital in creating a more equitable reproductive landscape. There are many systematic barriers in access to reproductive services for BIPOC, according to an article in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Journal. The article states that these barriers are

caused by social and structural factors, including fewer health services in historically BIPOC neighborhoods, systematically depleated wealth and education and discrimination by biased healthcare professionals.

“The reproductive justice movement has been telling us for decades that none of us are free until all of us are free,” says Allen. Pro-Choice Oregon has committed to continue intersectionality efforts in Oregon’s reproductive landscape.

A few months before the Roe decision, Allen helped to advocate for the Oregon legislature to pass a bill allocating money to the Oregon Reproductive Health Equity Fund. The fund set aside $15 million to put towards reproductive and gender-affirming care. The money was put in the hands of Seeding Justice, an organization that funds grassroots liberation movements of all kinds and is responsible for managing the fund equitably.

The Liberty Crochet Mural, curated by Jen LaMastra, aims to raise awareness in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The mural con sists of 40 squares that were assigned to crochet artists all around the country. Their ultimate goal is to create a mural for every state in America as abortion restrictions worsen.

“I’m a big believer in collective power. I want us to take all of the rage and sadness that we’re feeling and use that as fuel.”

- Christel Allen

Allen says that this kind of equitable advocacy is partner-driven.

“I’m a big believer in collective power,” she says. “I want us to take all of the rage and sadness that we’re feeling and use that as fuel.”

Allen found herself hit hard by the Roe decision, but as the representative of a large organization, she also found it important to separate her personal grief from the grief of her constituents.

Grief is a common struggle for those seeking reproductive justice, according to Martina Shabram, executive director of Sexual Assault Support Services of Lane County (SASS). And she says that “ambient trauma,” a feeling of fear and helplessness, is a result of the consistent and belligerent sexualization of people with uteruses.

Scan the code to learn more about each organization and get involved in the fight for liberation.

Parenthood booth, while others were able to share their story anonymously on small slips of paper. Rebecca Nelson, Southern Regional Field Organizer with Planned Parenthood, helped facilitate these activities at both the Eugene and the Portland event.

“It has felt amazing to connect with the community and other organizations, and just find joy where we can,” says Nelson. “We’re in this together —and we have each other’s back.”

“When the state makes reproductive decisions about a person’s body, that is a form of sexualized violence,” says Shabram. “It, in and of itself, is a violent act.”

SASS provides anonymous support to anyone who has experienced sexual violence. They have a 24-hour anonymous support line for survivors, educate in schools and provide peerled counseling. The staff are not mandatory reporters, which is a deliberate decision in order to give survivors an outlet without any legal involvement.

SASS was just one of the organizations that attended Abortion Justice Field Day in Eugene on August 14, 2022 and in Portland the following week. Both events featured booths from advocacy organizations among typical field day activities, such as tie-dye tee shirts, cornhole and a giant rainbow parachute.

A few attendees recorded video testimonials at the Planned

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon is primarily focused on legislative advocacy, grassroots organizing and educational campaigns, according to their official mission statement. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, PPAO has been working in overdrive. They immediately responded by organizing rallies on the day of the decision, according to Nelson. Having joined the team in March of 2022, Nelson’s time with PPAO has almost entirely involved responding to the fall of Roe.

“It’s been a whirlwind having to respond with very little turnaround time,” says Nelson. “It was heartbreaking. We’ve been expecting this, but the reality of actually hearing the leaked opinion and then the decision — it was devastating. I didn’t have time to process the emotion, I just needed to keep working and respond.”

Many representatives express the same sentiment as Nelson, and are now finding ways to move forward collectively.

Raíz will focus on not only access to reproductive healthcare, but access to overall healthcare for BIPOC and undocumented folks.

Lynn and Little are both passionate about inclusive language in conversations regarding reproductive rights. “This issue is not just about women, it’s about trans and nonbinary people too,” says Little. “It’s important to make sure that everybody who is affected by this feels heard and cared about.” In postRoe Oregon, using gendered terms is a practice that many individuals are shying away from.

According to Rodriguez, a primary focus the program is making sure the Oregon Health Plan is accessible for these individuals, because real change starts at the source.

Pro-Choice Oregon will continue working with the Oregon legislature to ensure that abortion access remains safe in this state. Allen says it is important to be neighborly beyond borders, and continue to fight despite ambient trauma and collective grief.

Lynn and Little will continue to do what they can as activists. They want to advise their community to not give up or become complacent, because nobody truly knows what will happen in the future, they say.

According to those on the front lines, the loss of Roe makes room for even more progressive policy, and the opportunity to fill the cracks in America’s reproductive healthcare system. They have stressed that it’s just a matter of taking action, and playing to everyone’s individual strengths.

“What happened this summer is an attack on our very democracy, and our democracy is what we make of it,” Allen says. “It doesn’t work without all of us.”

Abortion Justice Field Day fostered a friendly environment; with activities geared towards people of all ages – and their furry friends.

ETHOS PODCAST

EP. 3. Roe v. Wade

Written by Kate Jacques Prentice and Maili Smith Illustrated by Jordan Scott

UO students respond to the overturn of Roe v. Wade

Inside the Bus SystemInside the Bus System

Written by Elena Kato | Illustrated by Maya Merrill

The Eugene Station’s burgundy arches are instantly recognizable. A passage for buses covers nearly the entire block, a feature unlike the surrounding downtown shop buildings.

Around noon, several buses station themselves to their respective bays and a loud alarm alerts other passengers that a ramp is declining so a wheelchair rider can safely exit the bus. A passenger with a service dog walks out of the secondary exit door. As everyone else exits and enters the bus, the platform measures the number of passengers at the station.

Two women, Kathy Jenness and Karen, carefully exit the Route 82 bus and travel across the bay to look at the Route 66 and 67 schedules. Karen looks closely at the bus schedule while Jenness drives her electric wheelchair near her to explain something.

“Kathy is kindly instructing me on how to use the bus system here,” Karen says.

As a Lane Transit District (LTD) transit host, Jenness specializes in the assistance of people with disabilities and seniors. She also has been an avid user of LTD since converting to a wheelchair in 1994. Karen is a retired senior and has met Jenness several times a week this summer to help familiarize her with the bus system through LTD’s Travel Training Program. This program trains riders to gain confidence in their abilities to use bus transit around Eugene and Springfield with the assistance of qualified volunteers.

Data USA reports that the average car ownership in Eugene is approximately two vehicles per household. Many American cities, including Eugene, plan transportation in a way that prioritizes cars as the fastest and primary mode of transportation, as shown through car lanes and highways.

However, not everyone can use this type of private transportation, and LTD offers alternative public transportation services to benefit demographics that

depend on public transportation. According to Pat Walsh, the LTD marketing and communications director, 18,000 people have used LTD’s bus services since the onset of COVID-19. That’s only about 11% of Eugene’s population, according to the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau.

With a car, those with mobility issues often need the assistance of others to seat them in the vehicle before traveling. Public transportation, including LTD, allows disabled individuals to have more control and independence in their day, according to Joe Basey – who works as an adaptive recreation instructor for the city of Eugene to plan events for people with disabilities.

“It makes you feel better. It makes you feel more confident in your own ability to be able to do more stuff on your own,” Basey says. “When people are stuck at home, it’s hard for them to stay home all the time. A lot of people don’t like staying home and rather go out in the community. It’s also better for your mental health. It’s that simple, you know?”

In addition to the Travel Training Program, LTD offers other accessible features that encourage riders to gain confidence in their independent commute. Ramps allow riders to enter the bus without others’ assistance.

LTD also offers RideSource, an ADA community transport vehicle that services directly to desired locations for those who cannot use a fixed-route bus service due to a disability, as it is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, it offers a free transit pass for K-12 students as well as eligible students and employees at the University of Oregon, Lane Community College and Pacific University.

For the time that Jenness has worked at LTD as a transit host, she also benefits from its accessible initiatives for seniors like her. She says that the bus is “such an asset to my life. It’s personalized: people are very kind, very generous in their time and their energy in helping them, whatever people need.”

In a sprawling city, it’s difficult to meet every accessibility need that people desire in public transportation. Riders of LTD say it’s not perfect, but still enjoy the service it currently offers.

Though its services towards seniors and disabled riders have accessible aspects, other riders desire further improvements. Several online forums complain that there aren’t frequent enough stops or that the intersectionality between routes is inefficient, and Basey agrees.

He often rides Route 73 to go downtown or Route 28 to go to work, both coming every thirty minutes. That means that if a person misses a 10:30 a.m. bus, they have to wait until 11:00 a.m. Before the COVID-19 pandemic caused more people to stay home, Basey says the buses used to come more often because there were more riders.

“For an average person, they just have to get up, get in the car and go out,” Basey says. In addition to his advocacy for people with disabilities, Basey also has cerebral palsy (CP), a motor disability that affects maintaining balance and posture. “But for people with disabilities, they have to get up and navigate the timing, navigate how long it takes to go to the bus stop and how long it takes to get on the bus. So we have more details and more stuff to travel with.”

LTD changes its service hours depending on the season. While some routes like Route 79x (UO/Kinsrow) do not operate while UO is not in session, Route 18, which services Mohawk and Springfield, and Route 40, which services Whiteaker and Bethel neighborhoods, made additional time slots during the weekdays to accommodate increased ridership demand.

Unfortunately, even if frequent transit on every route was possible, it’s not an effective use of resources, nor is it possible with the current city patterns, according to Marc Schlossberg, a professor of Planning, Public Policy and Management at UO. He says the land use of the city directly affects public transportation’s ability to perform its goals, whether those goals prioritize productivity or coverage.

Schlossberg says that in many American cities before the 1950s, residential areas and commercial activities, like shopping, were in the same vicinity, and often only required walking to go between the two. Since both services were in the same area, it generated a high-density city in which

many people were located in the same area. This allowed streetcars to service many riders throughout the day.

However, the post-1950s era came with the increased prevalence of cars, which resulted in a phenomenon called urban sprawl. Urban sprawl separated commercial and residential areas in cities to benefit the marketing of automobiles. Highways and large parking lots were required to accommodate car commuters.

As homes transitioned from mixed-use buildings that simultaneously had homes and shops to single-family structures, people started to live farther apart from each other. While a car allowed faster commuting from their homes, elements that prioritized it resulted in low-density regions.

Schlossberg says that it’s difficult to always strive for productivity in public transportation when population density varies depending on each area of the city.

“If we are to think of a good transit system as one where people are actively using it, you need to have density,” he says. “Because to get on or off a bus, you’re a pedestrian, and there’s a limit to how far you can move. So successful transit, in terms of ridership, needs density of buildings, density of where people live, density of where people are going.”

To adapt to the city’s varying density, LTD’s current system includes six route types based on desired goals within land boundaries that are defined as high, middle

“For an average person, they just have to get up, get in the car and go out. But for people with disabilities, they have to get up and navigate the timing, navigate how long it takes to go to the bus stop and how long it takes to get on the bus. So we have more details and more stuff to travel with.” - Joe Basey

and low density. Walsh says that because LTD desires to serve as many people as possible, not every route prioritizes high productivity.

For example, EmX’s Bus Rapid Transit is a route type that includes bus-only corridors to accommodate high ridership and frequent service, because it is near multiple activities downtown. Another route type called Community Routes such as Route 33 (Jefferson) are suburban neighborhoods that do not have high urban development compared to downtown, and the abundance of car ownership means there are fewer passengers. Community Routes don’t require frequent service, allowing route planners to allocate more buses on routes that have more ridership.

Walsh also points out that neither the routes nor times are indefinitely fixed, and LTD revises them after measuring the number of passengers detected through the infrared sensors on the bus.

“Three times a year, LTD reviews its routes and then makes changes based on ridership that we can measure,” Walsh says. “When you step onto the bus, we know somebody stepped on it. So that’s the data we’re going to look at, and we also need to look at employment trends.” He says that if more people are doing remote work, bus service may not be necessary for specific areas.

As frustrating as some riders find it, Walsh says that Lane Transit District is a system carefully calculated by employees analyzing ridership demand, and strives to serve people who are dependent on public transportation in a sprawling city.

Additionally, Walsh says LTD plans to do a random community values survey and a more targeted survey to specific communities to ensure LTD is adequately serving those that rely on public transportation.

To further respond to community input, LTD is working on a project called MovingAhead. The goal of this project is to connect homes and commercial activities with frequent service by proposing transportation investments on five key corridors. Walsh says that this project will further engage the public for feedback and will seek funding from the federal government to make further improvements on the next iteration of the corridors.

Even though it may take years for the proposal to be approved, Walsh says it’s the perfect opportunity to consider additional revisions when ridership and employment patterns have decreased since COVID. Even though its infrequent service in low-density locations is not accessible to everyone, several of LTD’s 18,000 riders enjoy the service it offers, especially those who depend on public transportation.

Belea Onorato, a high school student, has lived in Eugene for three years and says she has found her LTD commute convenient. She takes the Route 40 bus on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to go to her volunteer jobs after her summer class, and sometimes another route to check in with her supervisor.

“I like how the systems connect to each other and pass by important locations,” Onorato says. “Even though it takes a while to get to where I need to go, I still get there on time.”

Jenness also looks on the bright side, and says that riders can use their time on the bus as an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the ride.

“You can read a book, you can listen to something with your earphones, take a snooze or, you know, visit with friends on the bus,” Jenness says.

Feeding Lane County

Food pantry volunteers strive to curb food insecurity and serve their communities.

Written by Caleb Barber | Photographed by Ilka Sankari

Waste to Taste volunteer Charlie Early poses with a box of dry goods much like the ones that the organization sorts. He says that accessibility of this food pantry is something that I think is the greatest net benefit.

Avan

pulled into the parking lot of Sonrise Christian Church in Northeast Eugene and came to a stop in front of the building’s front entrance. The driver stepped out of the van and opened the loading doors. It was a hot July afternoon, and it was imperative that the perishable items in the van get unloaded quickly.

Jim Coughlin propped open the church doors and went to work hauling the crates from the van into the building. Other volunteers joined in, and in about 10 minutes the van was empty, and the driver hopped back in and took off to pick up the next haul.

The crates were filled with fruits and vegetables, meats and cheeses and cartons of milk, loaves of bread and plastic salad bowls. All of these foods were nearing their expiration dates, but most were still safe to eat.

Inside the church, Leanne Coughlin, another volunteer, sorted the produce by type, picking out and throwing away fruits and vegetables that were “too far gone.” The end result: a walk-in grocery stocked with leafy greens, ripe fruit, cartons of eggs and much more.

The Coughlins are volunteers at Waste to Taste, a food recycling program that collects soon-to-be-thrown-away produce from grocery stores, farms and restaurants. The produce, all of which is checked thoroughly by volunteers to ensure it’s still safe to eat, is stored in refrigerators and pantry spaces at Sonrise. Anyone can sign up to come to the church and pick out whatever they’d like from the pantry.

Waste to Taste’s mission addresses two key food-related issues in Lane County: reducing the amount of food waste that ends up in the landfill, and easing the effects of food insecurity for members of the community.

Nearly 46,000 tons, or 31% of Lane County’s total solid landfill waste, is made up of food waste, according to reporting done by the Register Guard this year. Jesselyn Perkins, project coordinator for the Waste to Taste program, says that Waste to Taste receives tens of thousands of pounds of recycled food.

“We may be rescuing food and making a substantial difference in the lives of the families we’re helping,” Perkins says. “But it’s just a drop in the bucket.”

The other half of Waste to Taste’s mission is addressing food insecurity, which is just as serious of a problem. A study conducted by OSU’s Oregon Policy Analysis Lab found that one in 10 Oregonians experienced food insecurity in 2021. Food insecurity is defined by the Department of Agriculture as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.”

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) kept about 119,000 Oregonians from falling below the poverty line between 2009 and 2012. But state-run food assistance programs like SNAP can only provide so much assistance to food insecure Oregonians. In a survey of SNAP benefits receivers conducted by FOOD for Lane County in

2018, 78% of respondents said their food stamps lasted for about three weeks or less, though SNAP benefits are distributed once a month.

When food stamps run out, the best place to turn for food assistance are food pantries. For many people, the food offered by food pantries acts as a buffer between SNAP benefit refills, and can be the difference between getting a healthy nutritious meal every day and going hungry, Perkins says.

It takes a team of volunteers to ensure that each food pantry is doing what it needs to serve its community. Volunteers stock shelves, help shoppers fill out paperwork, and make pick-ups from food distribution centers.

Of the handful of volunteers at Waste to Taste, Jim and Leanne Coughlin have their own motivations for helping at the pantry.

The couple moved to Eugene three years ago after Jim retired from his faculty position at Indiana University. When the Coughlins still lived in Bloomington, Indiana, Leanne founded a collective of volunteer craft artists called the Persisterhood Workshop. The proceeds the workshop earns through selling the volunteers’ crafts are donated to a rotating list of local nonprofits.

Leanne decided she wanted to take a backseat on the collective, so when the Coughlins moved to Eugene Leanne gave up some of the leadership role. Now, with more open schedules, the couple put their energy towards other volunteer pursuits. The couple pulled weeds for Friends of Hendricks Park, volunteered at a vaccine clinic during the pandemic and now stock and sort produce for Waste to Taste.

Having moved to Oregon fairly recently, the Coughlins agreed that volunteering is a way for the Coughlins to get out of the house and meet people who share their interest in helping the community.

Leanne says volunteering has become so ingrained in her life that it wasn’t a question that she and Jim needed to find a way to help the community when they moved to Eugene.

“Once you’re there for a while and they know they can count on you, you start to feel part of this community. And doesn’t everyone need community?” Leanne says.

That same day at Sonrise Christian Church, as the van pulled away, Charlie Early arrived for his shift. Another volunteer at Waste to Taste, Early was tasked with filling grocery boxes for individuals and families who can’t make it to the food pantry themselves.

Early got to work. He grabbed a box and started filling it with an assortment of ingredients. Fresh produce can be a rare find at most food pantries, Perkins says, so most of the food items prioritized for these boxes are fruits and vegetables.

Early graduated from the University of Oregon last spring with a history degree. He says he has been enjoying having time away from school and that this summer has given him an opportunity to recover from the stresses of university.

Early originally started volunteering with Waste to Taste with a friend, but over time he started coming by himself. He had

never volunteered at a food pantry before, but he found himself drawn to the low-pressure environment. Working with other volunteers, he says, is a rewarding experience, and knowing the work they’re doing is helping to reduce food waste and food insecurity is equally gratifying.

Waste to Taste is the first food pantry Early has volunteered with, but he also volunteers at the information desk at the Eugene Public Library. The Eugene Public Library, located directly across the street from Eugene Station, is often used as a hub for services and information by non-locals, and because of that, Early’s able to connect library guests with food pantries, shelters and health resources in Eugene.

“One time I was helping someone who had just gotten off the bus, had never been to Eugene before,” Early says. “He said he was really hungry, so I pulled up a directory of food pantries in Eugene where he could get something to eat. The fact that we could immediately connect him with those services was really cool.”

Lane County’s food insecurity was 13.6% of its total population in 2019; about 50,000 people struggled with hunger that year according to FOOD for Lane County.

As his shift came to a close, Early grabbed one more box to fill with produce. This box he’d take to the community fridge on 18th and Alder, a habit he has taken up since he started volunteering at Waste to Taste. With how much produce would

otherwise be thrown away, Early says he saw the community fridge as an opportunity to prolong the life of some good fruits and vegetables.

“Pretty much every time I bring food to the community fridge I see there are people taking from it,” Early says.

Refilling the community fridge is gratifying for Early, he says, because it directly positively affects the people in his community. He’s brought fresh food to the fridge and had someone take the food directly from his hands. That feeling of directly impacting people affected by hunger is what keeps Early coming back to volunteer at Waste to Taste time and time again.

Eugene and Springfield are served by a variety of pantries and free food services. People living outside of Eugene, however, may find it more challenging to make the trip into the city to pick up food.

Pantries in rural Oregon perform the same tasks as those pantries in the city, offering food to folks who are experiencing food insecurity. However, in rural localities, one food pantry may serve multiple cities, and may be the only pantry service within walking distance for miles.

In Harrisburg, Oregon, about eight families left God’s Storehouse, a food pantry and thrift store, with groceries during the afternoon on August 2. As the day got hotter, the number of people showing up to pick up groceries grew, too.

Jim and Leanna Caughlin volunteer for Waste to Taste together. They describe the other volunteers that they meet as “dedicated, earnest people.”

Kris Tapp has volunteered at God’s Storehouse for five years and has spent the last year working the front desk. At the front desk, Tapp is usually the first person a customer encounters when they enter the pantry.

One of Tapp’s main goals in working at God’s Storehouse is to make guests feel welcome and deserving of food. Tapp says there’s a stigma associated with receiving food from a food pantry, that a lot of people who come through the pantry believe that “receiving handouts” is something they ought to be ashamed of. That mindset, Tapp says, is the first thing she tries to change.

“Occasionally, someone will walk in with their head hung down,” Tapp says. “I say, ‘Don’t be like that; so many people come through here who are in the same boat.’”

Located in Harrisburg, Oregon, a town with a population of less than 4,000, God’s Storehouse is frequented by both in-town regulars and new faces from out of town. Tapp says just that day, she helped people from Brownsville, Halsey and Junction City, and it isn’t uncommon for her to see shoppers come from Eugene or Springfield.

Tapp says she takes pride in her ability to encourage God’s Storehouse customers to feel more comfortable taking what they need.

“When they’re new, I like to take them back and introduce them to the other volunteers,” Tapp says. “It makes them feel so much more at home if they get to know us. Then they don’t feel so bad.”

Tapp has been working and living in Harrisburg for 47 years and has a deep background in food service. She started working

at her father’s restaurant when she was 11 years old and packed meat at Harrisburg’s Farmer’s Helper for several years. She did a variety of odd jobs before landing a position as a hydraulics specialist at a coach bus manufacturer.

Nearly 40 years ago, Tapp sustained a head and neck injury on the job when a roll of hydraulic hose dropped on her head. After that, she received disability payments until she retired.

Tapp and most of the volunteers at God’s Storehouse are retired and live on social security benefits. These benefits are just enough where social security dependent seniors can expect a low SNAP benefit, Tapp says.

Tapp says she gets $20 from SNAP benefit food stamps. “That amount,” she says, “Feels like a kick in the face.”

From an early age, Tapp says she internalized a negative view of receiving food assistance. She says she was raised to value hard work, and accepting food stamps or food from a pantry was not something that would’ve been alright in her father’s household.

It wasn’t until Tapp was raising her children, and she noticed that some of the kids on her son’s baseball team were going home hungry, that she realized the importance of making sure everybody got something to eat, no matter where the food came from.

Tapp says that the number one way she’s been able to turn that mindset around in her customers is by cultivating a welcoming environment where people don’t feel judged for meeting their basic needs.

Tapp says, “Starting at that desk is where I get them to blossom.”

Waste to Taste processes a range of foods with the help of volunteers. Early says that some volunteers are there every week to help, and that he’s seen a lot of new faces come to work in the last few months.

A Plant for

Written by Olivia Bennett | Photographed by Ayla Rivera | Illustrated by Jordan Scott

Stingray

Botanicals has a distinct smell that fills the whole atmosphere. It’s the kind of smell that draws in gardeners, the kind that gives a sense of relief and invites a deep breath, the kind that leaves all worries outside the door.

“It smells like Earth,” says Adrian Mendoza, one of two owners of the small houseplant shop on Willamette Street.

There’s a rainbow sticker on the front window of the shop that says, “You belong here,” and a pride flag hangs from the ceiling inside. The color green is everywhere. Plants of all shapes and sizes fill the aisles, ready for a new home. A variety of colorful pots line the shelves on the back walls.

Over the tall greenery, Mendoza and Luna Snowe, the other owner of the shop, are ready to assist customers with their variety of plant needs as soon as they walk in. The couple has been doing this since their opening day.

On Aug. 15, 2020, Stingray Botanicals opened its doors to the Eugene community. It is the first houseplant boutique to be a registered and certified Benefit Company in the state of Oregon. A Benefit Company is a business that earns a profit while advocating for the greater good. The store donates to and partners with different organizations to show their support for causes — especially LGBTQ+ issues — that are important to them. The owners have worked with organizations like Point of Pride, TransPonder and Trans Lifeline. These three nonprofits provide resources and support for trans and gender-diverse people.

Out of the 30 million businesses in the U.S., only 1.4 million of them — less than 5% — are reported to be queer-owned.

“I think you hear a lot of stories around town, unfortunately, of people who go into businesses and feel uncomfortable,” Snowe says. “Maybe they’re a person of color and they get followed around the store. Maybe they’re a queer person who gets looked at the wrong way or gets told to use a different bathroom that doesn’t

identify with their gender idenity. We need more safe spaces for people like us.”

Stingray Botanicals, a queer and Latino-owned houseplant shop, set its sights on becoming a safe space for everyone.

“Our job is community driven,” Snowe says. “For us it’s about being here for the queer community 365.”

Since Snowe was a kid, plants have always been a part of their life. Their passion blossomed after watching the Pixar animation film “Wall-E” in their early teen years. Snowe loved the idea of humans coming back to Earth and reembracing their roots.

“You pass by plants everyday, but you see them so often that sometimes it just doesn’t register in your head that this is a living, literally breathing organism that sustains humanity,” Snowe says.

After watching the movie, their passion for vegetable and fruit gardening moved past the movie screens and into something therapeutic for them.

“As a young queer person in the South, growing up around a lot of homophobia, transphobia, it was really kind of an escape from that,” Snowe says.

Before meeting their partner, Snowe was really into palm trees, ferns, mosses and other fruiting plants. Snowe met their partner, Mendoza, at the beginning of their plant journey and introduced them to more tropical varieties — like philodendrons and monsteras — which allowed Snowe to expand their knowledge of botanicals. “We both have expertise in different types,” Snowe says.

When the couple isn’t spending time in the store working on orders or giving tips on how to properly take care of herbs, the two take care of their almost 200 plants at home.

“We take care of plants together here. We go home and take care of our plants at home,” Snowe says. “We have days that we just spend gardening at home together.”

Since opening up their doors, the owners of Stingray Botanicals have always put their customers first.

While living in Portland in 2017, Snowe and Mendoza struggled with their respective careers and wanted to start something for themselves. Their apartment had a wall filled head to toe with all sorts of shrubbery. The pair was buying plants and began to propagate some of them, which led to selling them.

For several years, Snowe dreamed of opening up their own business, so they attended Portland State University in preparation to becoming a business owner. Snowe was finishing their Masters in Business Administration when the two thought of opening up a shop of their own. With botanicals playing such a major part in both of their lives, opening a houseplant store outside their apartment walls was the only type of shop that made sense.

“We just set our sights on trying to do something better for ourselves,” Snowe says.

The store name comes from the plant stingray alocasia, an aroid houseplant with two large lobes and a long, pointed tail, which resembles the sea animal. Snowe has a love for anything having to do with the sea, and with Mendoza’s love of aroid plants, the name just made sense.

“We wanted to do something that was unique to us and had meaning to us,” Snowe says. “It’s our plant.”

While Snowe and Mendoza both loved Portland, they felt like the city was oversaturated with plant shops. In finding a home for their own shop, the couple looked all the way from

Bellingham, Washington, to Sacramento, California. That’s when they remembered Eugene.

At the time, Eugene didn’t have any houseplant-specific boutiques. Snowe and Mendoza felt that not a lot of small businesses were starting in Eugene and the handful of queer spaces was not nearly enough. They put down the deposit for a space and moved down to open their store.

“We thought we would be a good fit for the culture of Eugene,” Snowe says. “To do something a little bit different, to do something in a more progressive fashion with our business while also bringing the community something beautiful.”

The two had already signed the lease before COVID-19 shut everything down. Opening up Stingray Botanicals during a pandemic had its fair share of struggles. While they weren’t sure what business would be like during a pandemic, Snowe says houseplants became pretty popular.

“I think a lot of people are spending more time at home, building home offices, working from home, and they’re looking for a way to spruce up their space,” Snowe says. “That was kind of a weird thing to experience, that maybe the pandemic was the right time to launch a houseplant business.”

With Stingray Botanicals up and running, the pair began building a store that would make everyone feel accepted.

Luna Snowe (left) and Adrian Mendoza (right) are passionate about sharing their love for plants with the community be cause they hope that others find the same joy in plants that they do.

Upon entering Stingray Botanicals, customers are greeted by some of the largest plants in the store. It is hard not to be impressed by their size and vibrance.

And Snowe and Mendoza’s customers see firsthand how they are fulfilling that goal. Since its opening day, Mayra Pardo has been a consistent customer who has seen the store change and grow over the years, yet she says their customer service has always been helpful, informative and friendly.

“From day one, they’ve really had the same customer service that they have to this day,” Pardo says.

Customers come in with all sorts of questions, and Snowe and Mendoza are always there to help. Mendoza says a woman once came into the store with the leaf of her plant wrapped in paper towels to show one of the owners. After having the plant for a long time, she was unsure why the plant was suddenly getting sick and felt silly bringing it in, but she asked him what to do. Immediately, Mendoza was able to give her the advice and reassurance she needed.

“I’m always welcomed, immediately, even if they don’t recognize me right away,” Pardo says. “It always just makes you feel like you are walking into a friend’s place.”

From day one, Snowe says, Stingray Botanicals has been a “values business,” which fits in with their work as a Benefit Company. While the pair hope to still make a profit and sell their products, the values Snowe and Mendoza hold are a big part of their decision-making within their business.

Snowe says that while they hope the customer service they provide or fundraisers they run bring in customers, profit isn’t always the first thought on their minds. Their customers and the planet come first.

“We don’t do it because we want to bring in business,” Snowe says. “We do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Snowe and Mendoza’s business is driven by “social values for queer people, social justice for people of color and for reproductive freedom.” They take these values into consideration when they partner with other companies. The pots they sell are sustainably made, and the wooden stands use reclaimed wood.

“If we have potential vendors who don’t support these values or haven’t thought about what their values are, then we will choose not to work with them,” Snowe says.

Snowe and Mendoza don’t plan on opening up any more locations, but they hope to continue to be of service to the Eugene community. Due to a slower summer and inflation rates, the pair currently run the store by themselves, but hope they can go back to working with a full staff soon.

Even after a slower summer, the pair continue to work hard and provide for their community. Their customers see all that they do and continue to come back and tell others about the store. Stingray Botanicals is Snowe and Mendoza’s dreams becoming a reality.

“This is our home,” Snowe says. “Working here, starting this business together, I think gave both of us a sense of meaning in life.”

Mendoza holds the plant that the store was named after, an Alocasia macrorrhiza ‘Stingray,’ named for its stingray shaped leaves.