“After last year’s issues with aggressive hate groups during the rally, we applied for and received a Downtown Program Fund grant from the City of Eugene to support the event with fencing, gated entry and the ability to better control an environment where tensions can quickly escalate. Our intention was to host a street fair with stage programming, including activist speakers and entertainment,” the Eugene Pride Team said in a statement.
“Pride was told on Monday by a liaison with [the Eugene Police Department] that should we not file a parade permit, EPD may not direct resources to support the march, and that if anything happened, it would be on us. They stated that any of our volunteers that were in the street could be viewed by EPD as engaging in disorderly conduct. This, despite the fact that EPD has provided traffic control for at least four unpermitted marches in Eugene this year, including a Charlie Kirk rally and march.”
Collectively… I wish we could come up with a way to determine if a department taking tax money should even be paid if it’s not going to do its job. It would be beautiful if we could just completely fucking cut the cops out of taking taxpayer funds.
“We”? This is happening in a dictatorship. Unless you’re the dictator, you don’t get to be the we.