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A week ago, hundreds of Lane County residents convened on the Eugene Federal Building to memorialize Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis hospital nurse killed by federal agents last month while protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in his community.
Friday, hundreds more closed businesses, walked out of school or jobs and gathered across Eugene and Springfield to voice outrage with ICE’s deportation push.
But people around town — and outside of it — aren’t talking about Eugene right now because of vigils and peaceful protests. They’re talking about the clashes between demonstrators and federal agents that followed, about the tear gas smell that drifted for blocks and whether the Eugene Police Department should have declared a riot Friday night.
The word “provocation” comes to mind.
It would be hyperbolic to say Eugene is gripped by the same level of unrest as Minneapolis. But each image of masked Department of Homeland Security officers charging and firing tear gas at protesters, and each image of masked protesters banging on doors and damaging glass windows, is a reminder that many of the same combustive ingredients that have roiled the Twin Cities are present here.
It’s nothing short of tragic that President Donald Trump uses words and actions intentionally designed to provoke a reaction from his own citizens. He has repeatedly sought to justify his administration’s deportation surge by denigrating Democratic-led cities as crime-ridden — despite evidence that violent crime fell sharply during the second half of the Biden administration, and continued to fall last year. In Eugene, reported crimes like robbery, aggravated assault and rape fell between 20% and 40% from 2021 to 2024, according to Eugene Police Department data.
But protesters shouldn’t take Trump’s bait and meet verbal provocation with physical provocation. Doing so only muddies the story about what is being protested: the detention and deportation of immigrants with no criminal records, and the death of Americans Pretti and Renee Good.
Kicking windows is not peaceful protesting. Standing in front of someone and yelling in their face isn’t exactly peaceful protesting, either.
To be sure, we’re not talking about the vast majority of people who have come downtown to join protests and express their feelings of disgust with the federal government.
But for those few people whose entire point seems to be provoking confrontation, consider this: If you wanted the federal government to come out of this looking like the bad guy, what would make more sense? Staging a sit-in on the plaza outside of the federal building doors, not being violent, but refusing to move? Or pounding on the windows and yelling obscenities? Which of these scenarios do you think Trump would rather see on cable news coming out of a liberal city in a liberal state?
We acknowledge what a difficult situation this is for our community. The federal government is being purposely provocative while pushing the most restrictive immigration policy in a century. Immigrant laborers, health care workers, parents are being pulled from their homes by ICE agents deploying police state tactics and equipment.
Fortunately, there’s evidence Trump has overstepped in his deportation push. Recent polls show falling public support for his immigration policies and growing support for reforms like bans on federal immigration officers using face coverings. And the U.S. Senate on Friday passed a series of bills that funded most federal agencies until September, but provided just two weeks of Homeland Security funding in order to give Democrats and Republicans time to negotiate ICE reforms.
Now is the time to keep up the pressure.
Lane County residents can play a part by bearing witness to what’s happening in the country and refusing to be silent about it. But we’ll all accomplish more if the many people who want to peacefully, but forcefully, bear witness and refuse to associate with the few people who want to provoke.
That might mean physically separating from them. Or encouraging people not to cheer on others who feed off the adrenaline of a kick to a window or a volley of tear gas. If you join a protest at the federal building, be proud to stand for something you believe in, but remember that you can support an idea without supporting all of the action around you.