Ethos Magazine Summer 2022

SUMMER 2022 | VOLUME 14 | ISSUE 4

In Shock Three months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Oregon’s Slavic community continues to send aid to Ukrainians while feeling the emotional impacts of the conflict at home.

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 1

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thos has blossomed this year.

We’ve created a heightened sense of camaraderie within our newsroom, laughed with each other during some really frustrating and confusing times and worked hard to do what we know Ethos has always done best: represent our communities and experiences through quality storytelling.

And we’ve worked to humanize ourselves in the process.

Journalism is a conversation rooted in understanding and listening to one another. We’ve started an Ethos podcast to be transparent in our journalistic methods and to follow up with stories that we’ve already told.

This year we’ve also rebranded our print magazine to reflect what we think Ethos truly stands for.

We are a publication based on empathy, emphasizing complex issues, challenges and events, with our most vulnerable communities at the forefront and center of it all.

We’ve come a long way in just one year.

And in this final edition of Ethos, we continue to tell stories that carry our mission. These stories serve as reminders that in times of chaos or uncertainty, people still step up to help communities in need.

In Caleb Barber’s cover story, “In Shock,” we see how Oregon’s Slavic community continues to send aid to Ukrainians affected by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and how they are being emotionally impacted even from nearly 6000 miles away. While physically distant from conflict, Ukrainian-born Oregonians feel the weight of it all through family and friends.

And at the University of Oregon, students are working fervently to preserve a beloved campus location. Maris Toalson’s “Actively Ignored: The Fight for the Urban Farm” highlights the ongoing resistance against the UO’s plan to develop sections of the Urban Farm, a communal gardening space that students cherish.

Downtown, at the Eugene Public Library, a group of protestors meets for one hour every Saturday.

The group has been meeting since 2001 to advocate for peace, create bonds with one another and put positive energy into the world. Kendall Porter’s “Protesting for Peace” shows us how dedication to a cause can create lifelong friendships and empowerment in moments of fear and uncertainty.

We’ve had the opportunity to build a publication that I hope leaves a lasting impression on the people in it, the people who read it and the people who write it.

Joining Ethos is the best decision I’ve ever made, and I am honored and saddened to leave this publication behind. This year, we’ve done so much to push Ethos’ content and create a stronger community. I know that it will only get better from here. There is so much more storytelling to come.

Thank you for reading. Please continue to see yourself in Ethos.

Ethos Editor-in-Chief Anna Mattson 2 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

Vlad Bilan, a third-year University of Oregon Student who immigrated to the U.S. from Dnipro, Ukraine, when he was a young child, looks out of the window of his apartment. His father, who is also a musician, has been making music videos with family and friends by singing original songs and translating other songs into Ukrainian to create an “uplifting, hopeful message.”

Email editor@ethosmagonline.com with comments, questions

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and story ideas. You can find our past issues at issuu.com/ethosma

and more stories, including multimedia cont

ent, at ethosmagonline.com.

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 3

Spinning Up Self-Expression | 6

DJs at KWVA 88.1 are using radio to share music with the larger Eugene community.

“Actively Ignored”: The Fight for Urban Farm | 12

Plans to develop the Knight Campus threaten the Urban Farm, but students are organizing to protect it.

In Shock | 20

Three months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Oregon’s Slavic community continues to send aid to Ukrainians while feeling the emotional impacts of the conflict at home.

The Other Side of the Pole| 28

Despite the stigma and danger that surround the industry, sex workers in Eugene still find empowerment and confidence through their jobs.

When Art Meets Activism| 34

How Kundai Kapurura stepped into her identity as an artist to give back to her community.

Protesting for Peace| 42

Year after year, a group of old friends gathers each week for peace in downtown Eugene.

4 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

Editorial

Photography

Editor-in-Chief

Photo Editor

Managing Editor

Photographers

Anna Mattson Sam Nguyen

Associate Editors Ella Hutcherson Abby Sourwine

Fact-Checking Editor Lauren Brown

Web Editor Rikiya Klasen

Writers

Caleb Barber Nika Bartoo-Smith Bentley Freeman Maris Toalson

Collin Bell

Skyler Beard Elizabeth Donovan Samantha Joh Isabel Lemus Kristensen Natalie Myking Ilka Sankari Liam Sherry

Design Design Editor Jessie Dunn

Designers Kira Chan Liz Blodgett

Socials

Whitney Conaghan Maggie Delaney

Fact-Checkers Cori Caplinger McKenzie Day Lily Fjeldheim Kate Jacques Prentice Jasmine Lewin Kendall Porter Maili Smith

Illustration Art Director Sophie Barlow

Illustrators Maya Merrill Lynette Slape

Cartographer Ian Freeman

Multimedia Podcast Producer Kate Jacques Prentice

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 5

Spinning up

Self-Express

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p

Jake Beck is a fourth-year University of Oregon student, KWVA DJ director and DJ. “When I was hired as the DJ director, I did not have a show at the time, so I figured I might as well do one so I know how to train DJs more effectively,” Beck says.

sion DJs at KWVA 88.1 are using radio to share music with the larger Eugene community.

Written by Bentley Freeman | Photographed by Samantha Joh

A

fter organizing a stack of vinyl and logging into Spinitron, the station’s DJ system for cataloging the music they play, Jake Beck flipped a coin. It landed on jazz.

“I brought a bigger eclectic assortment of vinyl today, ranging from country to jazz to bossa nova,” Beck explains.

Then he begins his 10 a.m. radio show. “Morning, Eugene.

Thanks for tuning in to KWVA Eugene 88.1 FM here on this rather disgusting Monday morning. My name is DJ Bean and Cheese, and we’re here live in-studio with another rendition of ‘No Problem.’”

Beck, both a DJ and the current programming director for KWVA, always tries to ease into the mood of his show by starting with some slower songs. His DJ name comes from his favorite kind of taco: a bean and cheese taco, a specialty from his hometown of San Antonio, Texas.

After transitioning into the country section of his show, Beck says he wants to end things slow.

“I hope each of you cowboys has a great rest of your Monday,” he says to his listeners. “To end this country train, we’re gonna go back to where it started: with George Strait. And I dedicate this to all the women who have ever wronged me.

This is ‘All my Exes Live in Texas.’ I hope you have a great day out there.”

During his show, Beck transitioned through four different genres. Currently, the station plays around 16 genres and is trying to expand into every facet of music.

But music is not all that goes on at the station. KWVA Eugene 88.1 FM is the independent campus radio station for the University of Oregon, located in the Erb Memorial Union, and is a part of a nationwide network of college stations that feature everything from sports to news to music. Students started the station in 1993, the peak era of independent college radio, to give students a public and independent voice.

KWVA 88.1 has been on the air for 29 years. Charlotte Allen, KWVA’s General Manager, says that this station exists thanks to a group of dedicated students in the 1990s.

“They managed to acquire a station and go through all the federal and university processes to get that station on the air,” says Allen. She has been with KWVA for 16 years and is in the early stages of planning the 30th anniversary of the station’s first broadcast.

Music has largely turned to streaming platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music. College radio is no longer in its SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 7

heyday. Its main benefit of being a way to discover and share indie music has been replaced by the algorithms of streaming services. According to the Infinite Dial, a national survey on digital media consumption in America, only 9% of people aged 12-24 use AM/FM radio to keep up to date with music.

Because of how much streaming has eaten away at its audiences, colleges have been selling off their radio broadcasting licenses for over a decade. Even still, KWVA carries on.

Currently, KWVA has approximately 70 DJs volunteering.

These DJs are alumni, local Eugene members and University of Oregon students. Every DJ has a two-hour time slot throughout the week to play any music they please. DJs like Beck, Kayla Krueger and Isaac Waggoner all use radio as a medium to express themselves.

“My show is so weird,” Waggoner says. He has been with the station since January of 2022 and likes to get creative with his show.

“I originally called it Good Morning America. I pull such random comedic bits. One day I committed to making my show all about cyber security,” he says. “It made no sense, but I thought it was really funny.”

His show is now called “Good Morning Eugene,” and it focuses on playing current jazz, rock and old 1960s French pop.

Waggoner says he enjoys being as creative and out-there as possible for the medium. In the beginning, he adopted an “awkward” persona, purposefully telling jokes and then fumbling to the punchline. Over time, he added more of himself into his on-air personality.

He says he enjoys sharing things with people and that KWVA is perfect for that. He was introduced to the station by a friend who had a show and immediately fell in love. Waggoner says it looked right up his alley because he could just be himself without putting himself in front of a camera. He says he has continued to run with his weird and exaggerated yet honest radio personality.

“I think, to a degree, it’s a form of self-expression. I also love music and being able to share that with people.” For Waggoner, KWVA has become a source of community where he can connect with others through his sense of humor and music.

Krueger fell in love with the station for similar reasons. Her show “The Road to Nowhere” focuses on playing classic and psychedelic rock, funk and mo-town. She was walking by the station in 2021, during her freshman year and remembered that some KWVA alumni have recommended checking it out.

She says she loves how she can play whatever she wants.

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Krueger is a huge fan of Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground and everything else psychedelic rock. One time Krueger played “Echoes,” a 23-minute long epic of a song

by Pink Floyd.

“I think it’s great to inflict your music upon your listeners,” Krueger says.

After a year of working with the station, she says that she’s learned that being a DJ comes with some challenges. She tried to have perfect sets while also utilizing all the different equipment but found it almost insurmountable.

“It’s stressful at first, and I definitely had my fair share of nervous breakdowns and sweating,” says Krueger.

But Krueger has learned never to take it seriously and to just ease into the flow of queuing up songs and doing some bits of trivia about the music she plays between them.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Nobody really cares,” Krueger says.

She says that she finds it liberating and exciting to create a persona that she can broadcast to the campus community.

Krueger goes by “Penny Lame” during her 10:00 a.m. show every week on Tuesday. Her friends called her the Penny Lane of Eugene, a reference to the 2000 movie “Almost Famous.”

KWVA has two studios dedicated to DJing, with each wall lined with a storied collection of musical memorabilia dating back to the 1950s. Beck says that DJs have contributed to the collection of knickknacks piled on a desk resting on the wall opposite the door.

Each wall in the main office is plastered with its own collection of posters and old vinyl covers from the last century. Beck says that independent bands and labels send in CDs of their latest releases, which coalesce into three stacks of about 15 unorganized CDs each in the main office, waiting to be sorted into their already extensive music catalog.

Beck says that this helps connect local and small bands with would-be listeners. DJs are required to play at least one song from each album sent in. He says he wants their collection to continue growing so they can play as many different songs and artists as possible, even after the entire room has been filled with a catalog of vinyl, CDs and cassettes.

Beck visits the office almost every day and loves it because of how warm and inviting it is. He particularly treasures an unreleased Shaquille O’Neal demo vinyl because it represents how diverse and eclectic the studio itself can be.

“Our mantra here is ‘Music you can’t hear everywhere else,’” Beck says.

A vinyl record by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, one of Beck’s all-time favorite jazz groups, sits on a KWVA record player. “This LP, in particular, has them doing jazz renditions of music from West Side Story, which is a movie I love,” Beck says.

“Our mantra here is ‘Music you can’t hear everywhere else.’”

-Jake Beck

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Kayla Krueger is a second-year UO student, a KWVA DJ and is set to become the next DJ director. Krueger hosts her show under her DJ name, “Penny Lame.”

Krueger says KWVA is the most welcoming community she’s been a part of on campus. Next year, Krueger will be taking over Beck’s position as programming director, and she is excited to be more involved with the station.

And Kruger is excited to keep doing what she’s doing, which includes DJing music and handling ticket giveaways.

During one of Krueger’s shows, a call came into the show asking her about a ticket giveaway for a Cream cover band coming to Eugene, and she excitedly picked up. She thanked the caller, gave him the ticket info, spoke about the band Cream for a bit with her caller and then dove right back into queuing up songs on her computer and the two turntables behind her. Krueger says she likes that she can be someone who interacts with strangers over their shared interest in music.

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Waggoner likes how close-knit the station is. He says he’s always getting compliments from other DJs about his shows, and he makes aneffort to listen to other shows to learn how to be a better DJ. He likes engaging with the community as well.

“It’s cool hearing from the community, and it makes me feel proud that people enjoy what I do. I never really thought people listened to the radio, but I average around 200 listeners,” says Waggoner.

Beck says that an elderly woman from a local retirement home once requested him to play “Dancing Queen” by ABBA during his show. He did. A few days later, Beck received a thank-you letter from the home with over 50 signatures, thanking him for the music he played and how he kept the retirement home company. Beck says that even though the

The KWVA station is located on the first floor of the EMU across from the computer lab and to the left of Bartolotti’s Pizza Bistro.

request was out of the ordinary, he was more than excited to fill it for her.

“I was a little shocked by the artist request. Typically when I get requests from that caller ID, it was older tunes like Charley Pride or Elvis,” Beck says. “I was more than happy to play some disco for that lady.”

Collaborating with other DJs in the station is just one part of the community at KWVA, and Beck says that interacting with Eugene is another. During a show, it is not uncommon for the DJs to give away tickets, take calls from people and air

PSAs about anything from smoking marijuana to receiving a flu vaccine.

For the DJs at KWVA like Krueger, Beck and Waggoner, it isn’t just about getting to play good music. It’s about becoming part of a community that can share an interest and passion.

“This job has allowed me to meet dozens of people I wouldn’t have without this position,” Beck says. “I have made lasting friendships in my tenure as DJ Director, knowing that the lasting impact this job will have on me is to always seek out new friendships.”

W E ’ R E F O R T H O S E W H O R E S P E C T A L L O F O U R C O M M U N I T Y ’ S D I V E R S I T Y.

Be more.

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 11

“ACTIVELY IGNOREDFa”:rm

n a b r U e h t or f t h ig F e h T

Plans to develop the Knight Campus threaten the Urban Farm, but students are organizing to protect it.

Written by Maris Toalson | Photographed by Isabel Lemus Kristensen and Liam Sherry 12 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

Grace Youngblood, an organizer of Save the Urban Farm, has been involved with the Urban Farm for four years.

T

ucked away behind the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact on the north side of Franklin Boulevard rests the Urban Farm. A walk into the Urban Farm reveals rows of lush, green crops and an assortment of weathered wooden structures that contrast with the modern glass building of the nearby Knight Campus. An area in the northeast corner of the farm — known as the “back 40” — hosts lines of flowering fruit trees. The sounds of bird songs and buzzing insects almost overcome the distant roar of traffic.

“It’s one of the only places that I know for students to really get away from the busyness of campus, on campus still,” says Grace Youngblood, a University of Oregon student who has been involved in the Urban Farm for four years. “It provides a step into nature.”

The Urban Farm has been in operation since 1976 and is a space where “people grow food, work together, take care of the land and build community,” according to its website.

Run through the Department of Landscape Architecture, the Urban Farm is both a physical space and a program that provides hands-on learning opportunities to students across various disciplines.

However, plans to develop the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact threaten the Urban Farm. The Knight Campus currently features one building — which opened in December 2020 — and is an initiative made possible by donations from Phil and Penny Knight to promote scientific discovery and innovation, according to its website.

The plans to develop the Knight Campus — known as Phase 2 — include constructing an additional multistory, 175,000-square-foot building for bioengineering and applied science research. The building is set to break ground in January 2023 on two acres along Riverfront Research Parkway.

According to Urban Farm Director Harper Keeler, the proposed construction of the building will adversely affect the farm. He says the building’s most current design plans show a “great deal of displacement” of the farm.

This displacement includes the removal of many fruit trees in the back 40 and using the farm’s eastern edge as a “construction staging area,” according to Keeler.

Keeler has a strong connection to the Urban Farm, having been involved in the program for more than 30 years. He began his journey as a student in the Urban Farm class in 1990. He later became a team leader in 1996 and eventually became director in 2007.

Since Keeler’s role as director began in 2007, the Urban Farm program has grown in size and popularity. The Urban Farm class fills within the first days of registration and hosts over 100 students a term. According to Keeler, construction of Phase 2 will limit the program’s ability to operate at full capacity due to its displacement of the space.

To protect the Urban Farm from displacement, UO students and community members formed a coalition called Save the Urban Farm. The coalition began earlier this year in response to Phase 2 of the Knight Campus. Its initial goal was to obtain information about Phase 2 and share this information with the UO community, according to Youngblood, an organizer of Save the Urban Farm.

Youngblood says the coalition had difficulty obtaining information about Phase 2. The most current design plans for Phase 2 were released in February 2022. Formal design plans were scheduled to be available following a UO Campus Planning Committee meeting on April 29, 2022.

However, discussion about Phase 2 was removed from the meeting agenda.

Madison Sanders — another organizer of Save the Urban Farm and UO student who sits on the Campus Planning Committee — says Phase 2 could have been removed from the meeting agenda due to a variety of reasons, such as scheduling conflicts or the design team needing more time to finalize plans. Still, she says obtaining clear answers remains a challenge.

Despite the challenge of obtaining information, Save the Urban Farm advocates for the inclusion of students’ voices in decisions regarding the farm. The coalition has been collecting testimonials from students and community members. These testimonials speak to the value of the Urban Farm. Youngblood says the coalition has received over 90 so far.

Some students and community members shared their testimonials at an event Save the Urban Farm hosted in partnership with ASUO on May 6. The event took place at the farm and featured community activities and a presentation about the impacts of Phase 2.

Advocates who are part of the Save the Urban Farm coalition are not opposed to Phase 2 of the Knight Campus, according to Youngblood and Sanders, but aim to protect the Urban Farm in the space and to the extent it currently operates.

The most current design plans do not align with this aim, according to Sanders, because the use of the farm’s eastern edge as a construction

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 13

staging area will produce permanent damage. She says the use of the farm as a construction staging area will destroy its soil — which has taken years to cultivate –– and expose it to pollutants.

A study conducted by Samara State University demonstrates that soil in construction sites is destroyed due to machinery and materials, which produce waste, pollution and erosion.

Sanders also says construction will disrupt classes, and the building could cast shadows that limit food production. Phase 2 construction could be an opportunity for collaboration between campus planners, students and community members, she says, but this hasn’t been the case.

“From the perspective of me and the people I’m working with,” Sanders says. “They’re planning to operate around the Urban Farm in a way that keeps it existing in some way but is not allowing it to thrive.”

Additionally, the most current design plans might not align with the UO’s Campus Plan — a document outlining the university’s campus planning policies and procedures and featuring 12 principles that apply to all campus construction projects. The document is also legally binding, according to University Policy IV.07.07.

Principle 12: Design Area Special Conditions of the Campus Plan names the Urban Farm and recommends “the Urban Farm Outdoor Classroom should be preserved.” The principle also states that “proposals should carefully consider impacts to Urban Farm activities currently occurring outside of the designated Outdoor Classroom and consider replacing any displaced uses to support this unique and important academic program.”

The proposed use of the Urban Farm as a construction staging area would impact the back 40. According to the Urban Farm’s website, the back 40 is not a part of the designated outdoor classroom, and therefore, is considered a “build-able space.”

However, Principle 12 still calls for campus construction projects to “carefully consider” impacts on the area.

Another principle related to the Urban Farm is Principle 5: Replacement of Displaced Uses. This principle reads: “All university uses are important to the university. A new use must not benefit at the expense of an existing use. All plans for new construction (buildings or remodeling projects) shall keep existing uses intact by developing and funding plans for their replacement.”

According to Keeler, the Urban Farm has not officially been provided plans for its replacement — which Principle 5 calls for

— to mitigate the impacts of Phase 2. Yet, since the back 40 is not a part of the designated outdoor classroom, the university does not have to adhere to Principle 5, Keeler says.

“To date, the Knight Campus hasn’t indicated that they are necessarily going to provide funding for Urban Farm enhancement,” Keeler says. “I’d like to think that with the organized voices of the students, that might encourage them to rethink that.”

UO Vice President and General Counsel Kevin Reed says Principle 5 does not require the university to provide replacement of displaced uses by a deadline, but he anticipates alternative areas for the Urban Farm will be identified before construction of Phase 2 begins.

Reed also says he sees “no evidence that Phase 2 of the Knight Campus violates the Campus Plan,” and campus planners are dedicated to following the plan. However, University Policy IV.07.07 — which obligates campus planners to follow the Campus Plan — allows deviations from the plan at the discretion of the President, according to Reed.

In addition to the Campus Plan, the Campus Physical Framework Vision Project is a document intended to supplement the Campus Plan and provide a vision for open spaces and buildings at the UO. The document refers to the farm, stating its intent “to honor the Urban Farm” and “to design open space with plant materials to complement the adjacent Urban Farm.” However, unlike the Campus Plan, the Campus Physical Framework Vision Project is not legally binding and is only a recommendation.

Ethos Magazine made multiple attempts to contact Campus Planning and Facilities Management for comment on the documents, but CPFM leaders did not respond to these attempts. Instead, these attempts were redirected to Public Affairs and Issues Management staff, who responded with answers from the Urban Farm’s frequently asked questions.

While the Campus Plan and the Campus Physical Framework Vision Project are intended to guide decisions about development at the UO, the President and the Board of Trustees have a significant amount of power over such decisions, according to Michael Fakhri, a professor at the UO School of Law. Fakhri teaches a course called Food, Farming, and Sustainability — which utilizes the Urban Farm — and considers himself both a teacher and student of the program.

He says there were concerns about the Urban Farm in 2018 during the initial construction of the Knight Campus. Since

Madison Sanders is a second-year landscape architecture student at the University of Oregon and an organizer of Save the Urban Farm. “Being able to witness the impact of providing students the opportunity to build a personal connection between themselves and a productive landscape is what is most valuable to me,” Sander says.

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2018, Fakhri says, the university has prioritized the Knight Campus over the farm.

“My experience of watching the decision making and knowing the policies, I think they actively ignored the Urban Farm. They actively decided to treat it as something they can worry about later,” he says. “It was clear that a lot of the decision-makers and ultimately the Board of Trustees and the President — they are the ultimate decision-makers on this — chose to treat the Urban Farm as a very low priority.”

Keeler says he had discussions about the Urban Farm with some designers and campus planners and submitted an impact report to the College of Design detailing the consequences of Phase 2. The College of Design has been in conversation with Knight Campus developers, according to Keeler, but he has not been included in these conversations.

Students have not been included in these conversations either, and Youngblood says impacts on the Urban Farm will dissatisfy students — Save the Urban Farm estimates about 900 students and community members attended the event it hosted on May 6. She says seeing a building as more important than the trees, plants and soil at the farm is offensive to her.

“It makes me sad to see people not recognize the value and importance of a space like this,” Youngblood says.

If it’s not feasible to protect the Urban Farm in the space and to the extent it currently operates, Sanders says students’ voices 16 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

need to be included in conversations regarding the farm’s future.

“The students and the faculty who understand the farm need to be included in those conversations” before it’s too late, Sanders says.

Both Youngblood and Sanders say it is important to protect the Urban Farm in its current location due to the history and significance of the space. The space is significant to many students, community members and Keeler himself. After investing “30 years of blood, sweat and tears” into the farm, Keeler says he feels compelled to protect it.

“People have faith,” he says. “And although this isn’t sort of a recognized church, this is my faith; to protect living things and especially the ones in this area that students have worked so hard for.”

Youngblood has a connection to the farm too. This connection began when she took the Urban Farm class during her second year at UO and “immediately fell in love with it.” Youngblood had some gardening experience before the class, she says, but witnessing plants blooming and popping out of the dirt with the onset of spring drew her to the farm.

“I felt a real connection to the space and the garden, and it sort of started me off on this whole journey,” she says.

After taking the class, Youngblood volunteered at the farm until she was offered work-study there in her third year at UO. She says she has found community and grown as a person

A group of students turn over the soil in the “back 40” during an Urban Farm class on a Tuesday afternoon.

through her involvement in the program. Originally coming to the UO as a pre-med student, Youngblood says the Urban Farm developed her love for growing food and influenced her to change her career plans. Youngblood — now in her fifth year — continues to work with the farm through her work-study.

While she has not taken the Urban Farm class, Madison Sanders’ path was influenced by the program too. Sanders studies landscape architecture, but she came to the UO as a geophysics student. It wasn’t until she spent time at the Urban Farm through the Environmental Design First-Year Interest Group that she changed course, she says.

Sanders –– who serves as an ASUO senator –– became involved in Save the Urban Farm and says she proposed the coalition pass an ASUO resolution to communicate the information regarding Phase 2 and its impacts on the Urban Farm to the UO community.

“As students, we really have the power to mobilize with really large numbers,” Sanders says. “So the goal of the resolution that I was proposing was to tap into that on the rest of the campus.”

With the help of other Save the Urban Farm organizers, Sanders wrote the resolution and received 260 co-signatures.

She says she hopes to use her positions in ASUO and on the Campus Planning Committee to connect Save the Urban Farm with other organizations at UO. Determining the capacity of Save the Urban Farm and

the UO community to affect change is a question that both Sanders and Youngblood are grappling with. The two strive for students’ voices to be included in decisions regarding Phase 2 of the Knight Campus and the Urban Farm but are unsure what power their voices will have.

“It feels really daunting, just with the amount of money and power they have,” Youngblood says. “The difficulty in finding clear answers has been frustrating as students and hindering what we’re trying to get done.”

While it feels daunting, Fakhri says students have options to protect the Urban Farm. One of these options is to go to the City of Eugene and the State of Oregon to designate the farm as a historical site. He says the designation as a historical site may not halt development, but it could slow down the process and raise the public profile of the farm.

Youngblood says Save the Urban Farm discussed this option and tried to designate the farm as a historical site. However, the coalition has not made much progress yet. The coalition will continue to work towards a historical designation, according to Youngblood.

Another option is to create a UO policy that explicitly protects the Urban Farm, Fakhri says. Section 4.3 of University Policy I.03.01 reads: “Any individual in the University community, any University unit, or the University Senate may submit a proposal for the development, revision or repeal of a Policy.”

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 17

Youngblood’s brother and father share a moment in the rain at the Urban Farm event. Youngblood’s father, Tyson Lancaster, and brother Asher Fasone-Lancaster, came out to support Grace and all of the students who hold the Urban Farm dear.

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Fakhri says putting forth a UO policy is a long process, and “law moves slower than life needs it to.” However, the process could publicize what’s happening to the Urban Farm and provide more protection.

Protecting the Urban Farm is important not only because of the program’s positive impacts but because it implies what the university values, according to Fakhri. While the Knight Campus promotes progress and innovation, Fakhri says protecting the farm is a “modern thing” because it is dynamic, evolves and provides an example for urban farms at other universities.

“What’s at stake is literally, ‘What is the University of Oregon all about?’” Fakhri says. “The heart of the university itself.”

Youngblood stands beside the asparagus grove in the “back 40” where she says she first “felt connected to agriculture” when she took the class. “It’s another area that’s going to get ripped out,” she says. “It seems like a small area, but it produces so much food and goodness to the soil.”

SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 19

In Shock

Three months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Oregon’s Slavic community continues to send aid to Ukrainians while feeling the emotional impacts of the conflict at home.

20 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

Written by Caleb Barber Photographed by Skyler Beard Cartography by Ian Freeman

S

“

lava Hubenya says he’s stopped keeping up with the news.

Throughout his life, Hubenya and his family have kept up with the protests and political unrest in his home country. But recently, it’s become overwhelming.

The night the Russian military began their invasion in February 2022, Hubenya was working a closing shift at Panda Express. When he heard the news, Hubenya says, he couldn’t believe it at first.

“My coworkers were asking me, ‘Did you hear that Russia’s troops are on the border of Ukraine? Do you think they’re going to invade? Are you worried?’” Hubenya says. “That same night I hear that Russia is firing missiles into Ukraine.”

He says that as the invasion has continued the sense of shock has diminished, but the stress of the situation isn’t going away.

“The more you read about it, the more heartbreaking it is,” Hubenya says.

The United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross has designated the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces a humanitarian crisis.

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s military offensive has Ukrainians not knowing what to expect and puts UkrainianOregonians in a state of worry over their families who are still in Ukraine. Ukrainian-born Oregonians like Hubenya, while physically distant from their home country nearly 6,000 miles away, still feel the consequences of the conflict through their families, friends and relatives.

The last time Hubenya was in Ukraine was when he was only two years old. He doesn’t remember much about what it was like to live there. His parents and one of his older brothers visited in 2013, a year before the Russo-Ukrainian war started in February 2014.

The more you read about it the more heartbreaking it is.”

-Slava Hubenya Many members of Hubenya’s family are from Dnipro, a major city in eastern Ukraine and a key target in Russia’s attacks. His uncle moved his family from Dnipro to Germany when the Russian invasion started in February 2022. His mother’s siblings still live in and around Dnipro today.

According to Hubenya, his family in Ukraine have recently been hearing bomb sirens more and more frequently.

“When it first happened it was a shock,” Hubenya says. “It’s like ‘Wow, this is really happening.’”

But Hubenya’s family in Albany, Oregon, have been able to keep in contact with the rest of his family in Ukraine through phone calls and the instant-messaging platform Viber. The Russian invasion has caused significant damage to Ukraine’s internet and communications infrastructure, not to mention recent Russian cyber attacks limiting internet access for Ukrainians.

“Just hearing from them is good news,” Hubenya says. “The videos they send, some of it is sad and some of it is promising.”

Hubenya’s family and friends send him photos and videos of the invasion’s aftermath. They include smiling people giving thumbs up to the camera, partially destroyed buildings and videos of his father’s friend loading corpses into an ambulance.

Evacuation

Russia’s military operations against its neighboring countries have been ongoing throughout the 21st century.

When Georgia, the country bordering Russia’s southwest in the Caucasus mountains, elected pro-Western leadership and foreign policy changes, Putin launched an offensive on several Georgian villages. The Russo-Georgian war displaced about 192,000 people during the conflict, and upwards of 20,000

Vlad Bilan, a third-year University of Oregon Student who immigrated to the U.S. from Dnipro, Ukraine, when he was a child, looks out of the window of his apartment. “I had this dilemma where, for the first week when the Ukraine news started coming out, I was checking the news like every single day. After a while, I just kind of cut off checking the news nearly as frequently and then talked to my parents most of the time,” Bilan says.

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remain displaced as of 2014, according to reports from the United Nations.

As the current invasion continues, it’s not clear how many more Ukrainians will be displaced and evacuated. Oregonians with Slavic roots are finding ways to channel local and public support into aid that can be distributed to those still living in Ukraine. One of the most prominent ways is through fundraising, usually spearheaded by churches and humanitarian aid groups.

One of these churches is Living Word Adventist, a Russianspeaking Slavic church in Oregon City. Living Word’s pastor, Alex Paraschuk, and most of the church’s members have relatives living in Russia or Eastern Europe. When the invasion started, Paraschuk says, the church was in shock.

“We just called our friends and relatives at the churches there wanting to know what was going on,” Paraschuk says.

Food insecurity and damage to water, gas and electricity infrastructure continue to worsen for refugees. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 5.7 million people received emergency food assistance since February.

Living Word has raised more than $20,000 from members of the church and community members in Oregon since the invasion started. Paraschuk and Living Word’s administration correspond with church leaders currently living in Ukraine’s southwest region to use those raised funds to buy fuel, potatoes, eggs, bread and medical supplies. Paraschuk says that church groups in Odesa have also used Living Word’s donations to offer refugees a shower and access to electricity as they evacuate westward.

According to Paraschuk, the Ukrainian churches that Living Word has been corresponding with send small teams of volunteers to eastern Ukraine to evacuate families from their homes in Russian-occupied territory. Many of the pastors whom Paraschuk corresponds with have already evacuated westward to outposts in Odesa and Mykolaiv, but their congregations stay behind for fear of being shelled in transit.

According to findings made by the UN’s Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, more than 12,000,000 people are estimated to have been displaced from their homes in Ukraine, and about 6.3 million have left the country altogether.

Almost 3.5 million refugees have crossed the Western border to Poland, with the rest of the diaspora largely funneling into neighboring Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia.

Paraschuk described a recent mission Living Word helped fund: a pastor from Mykolaiv organized an evacuation plan where four volunteers from his church drove a minivan to Russian-occupied territory in Berdyansk and Melitopol to evacuate small groups of eight to 10 refugees at a time. The volunteers drove two to three

22 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

times a week to occupied territory, filled the van up with as many people as possible and drove west towards Odesa, Dnipro, even as far as the Polish and Romanian borders.

Many who are able are choosing to flee their homes and travel west by car or truck, but the journey comes with risk.

Russia’s occupation of eastern Ukraine makes traveling by road through militarized countryside extremely dangerous for civilians. Ukrainian refugees told CNN wartime correspondents in May 2022 that convoys of refugees fleeing Eastern Ukraine are forced to navigate roadblocks and avoid Russian shelling and gunfire, all while rationing food and medical supplies over the span of several days.

The funds raised by Living Word also go towards paying for gas for these evacuation trips as well as funding church-based refugee camps in Odesa and Dnipro. Paraschuk says that refugees, many of whom have gone without their personal belongings or showers for weeks, can stay at the camps and use the resources accumulated there as they make their way westward.

The Entire Pie Chart

Vlad Bilan is a third-year student at the University of Oregon and of Ukrainian descent. He was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, and lived there for two and a half years before his family moved to the U.S. Although he was born in Ukraine, Bilan says he’s “99.9% Americanized.”

Both of Bilan’s parents are in ministry. His dad was a pastor for 17 years but recently became a chaplain. His mom just dropped her chaplaincy to take up pastoring in the Gresham area outside of Portland. Most of the people who made up her congregation were Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovian.

Bilan says he’s grateful to have grown up in this community and that it helped him and his sister maintain their knowledge of their own culture and language.

Bilan has an uncle in Portland, his grandma lives in an apartment on his parent’s property, and much of his mother’s family lives in North Carolina. Some of his family lives in or near recently Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine: Dnipro, Kyiv and Yevpatoriya, Crimea.

“Thankfully, everything is going okay with them,” Bilan says.

“Recently, they’ve been spending a lot of time in the basements of their homes to stay safe.” As of the publication of this story, Bilan says he hasn’t heard any new updates on their situations.

Bilan says his great grandmother has been stubborn, unwilling to leave her house in Kyiv.

“She was like, ‘This is my house,’” Bilan says. “‘Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.’”

When the conflict started in February 2022, Bilan says, his family experienced a dramatic upheaval of lifestyle. Bilan’s aunts

Ukraine

“On the positive side of things and something I’m honored to be a part of is my family is trying to do a lot of different fundraising programs or outreach programs,” Bilan says. Bilan and his family are trying to raise money to bring a group of 20 to 30 students who were displaced in Ukraine to Oregon to finish their education. “I’ve been super thankful to at least be able to help there,” Bilan says. “It eases that sense of like helplessness when you see the news or you read an article and you’re like ‘what can I do?’”

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and uncles who are in Ukraine call his parents frequently now, updating them on the war’s progress and how they’re faring.

“If you have pie charts in your mind of things you think about day to day, it almost seems like their entire pie chart was taken up by everything happening in Ukraine,” Bilan says about his parents.

For Bilan, staying informed about the conflict has been a double-edged sword.

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“You’re constantly checking in, and it’s just more bad news,” Bilan says. “It was constantly messing with my head.”

Bilan says he’s glad that the public is following along with the war in Ukraine and spreading awareness and support through social media, but he notices a difference in attention to this conflict compared to other conflicts.

“The people who are struggling in my family, this isn’t anything new to the families struggling in Syria or Palestine,”

reporting done by NPR, Poland, a country that has received several million Ukrainian refugees in the past few months, kept thousands of war refugees from the Middle East from entering their borders only a few months prior.

Bilan says that he feels a twinge of guilt distancing himself from the news.

“How privileged am I to say, ‘This is ruining my day, so I’m just going to turn it off,’” Bilan says. “This isn’t helping me, and it isn’t helping me help anybody.”

Away From Home

Bilan says. “Other people have been feeling this pain much longer and much harder than our country has.”

The World Health Organization’s emergency coordinator for the Ukrainian refugee response, Paul Spiegel, reported that Ukrainian refugees have generally been well-received by neighboring European countries. War refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, however, faced considerably different and more restrictive immigration policies. According to

Bilan’s family and support network live a couple-hours drive from Eugene, but international students at the UO do not have that luxury.

Becky Crabtree is the associate director at the International Student and Scholar Services, and she and her team work with international students as they navigate their visa status, scholarship applications, financial viability and emergency responses to global conflict.

Not only is the ISSS a visa sponsor for international students, it is also an aggregator of emergency financial and legal resources. If a global catastrophe occurs in an international student’s home country, Crabtree and her team will reach out to the students from that country with a list of aid and resources that the ISSS keeps handy.

After the invasion, the departments of the Division of Global Engagement sent resource documents to Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Georgian and Moldovian students with information on how they can apply for financial and legal aid.

The document includes links to applications for off-campus employment, federally-sponsored Higher Education Relief Funds and emergency financial aid.

Crabtree says UO’s Ukrainian students took about two months to reach out to the ISSS for support after the invasion started.

“I think the first month or two they were in shock, just trying to figure out how long this was going to last,” Crabtree says.

“They were more concerned about their families than their own situation.”

When a crisis strikes an international student’s home country, Crabtree says her team has to think holistically about who in the student population will be affected and in what ways.

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Western economies retaliated with sanctions on Russian banks and exports. These actions have devalued the rouble, ultimately causing inflation in Russia to rise to 17.8% in April. The consequences of this high inflation rate is passed down to the Russian consumer, including the parents of Russian international students. Crabtree says about 10 Russian students are negatively impacted by these sanctions, as their families back home have faced increased job insecurity and inflated consumer prices. These international students too have qualified for some of the emergency resources offered by the ISSS. Even though their unit is responsible for students they sponsor, who are non-immigrants, Crabtree says the ISSS is SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 25

“always here for immigrants or even U.S. citizens who selfidentify with what is going on in other countries.”

“Why does God need to test us?”

Late morning on May 14, Paraschuk finished his service at Living Word. As the congregation filed out of the pews into the church lobby, Victor Muzica collapsed his tripods and packed up his camera equipment. Muzica, a photographer and videographer based out of Clackamas, Oregon, records live streams of worship and services at Living Word to be rebroadcast on YouTube and Facebook. He is also an active member of church services and programs at Living Word.

College and high-school-age church members brewed tea and grabbed some light snacks before joining Paraschuk and Muzica for a Bible study session after the service. Paraschuk led a Russian-language study group, Muzica sat in on the English language group. Today, the topic was Hebrews 11:17-18 — Abraham’s offering of his only son, Isaac, to God. “Let me ask you this,” Muzica says to the group, “Why does God need to test us?”

A few in the circle raised their hands.

“He’s testing our understanding,” says one.

“It’s about free will,” says another.

The group thought aloud about the message of the verse, and Muzica took the opportunity to share his take: “God takes responsibility even through our division,” Muzica says.

“He will find the solution and lead us to a happy end.”

The group seemed satisfied by this answer as the Bible study came to a close. Church-goers at Living Word were smiling and embracing. If they were worried about the invasion, it didn’t show on their faces or in their voices.

Paraschuk says that Living Word’s official stance is and always will be firmly anti-war, a sentiment he encourages among his congregation. But Russia’s manipulation of information about the war’s progress has obscured the role it’s played in causing this crisis for many at the church. Some members of Living Word only speak Russian, and Paraschuk says that most of the news content they consume is Russian state-sponsored propaganda.

Russian speakers who don’t have access to the internet and who don’t understand English-language news often rely on the narratives constructed by Russian-language news stations for information on the conflict. And on March 4, Russia enacted two laws that criminalize independent war reporting and anti-war protest in Russia, making counter-narratives against the war in Ukraine illegal to report or broadcast and near impossible to disseminate to Russian-language news consumers, according to Human Rights Watch.

In the last two months, the New York Times reviewed more than 50 hours of Russian television footage. They found that Russian news stations have frequently accused Ukrainian

“

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officials and Western media outlets of fabricating evidence of Russian war crimes. At the same time, Russian news outlets are spinning their own narrative of the war to frame Ukrainians as the perpetrators of violence against their own people.

Photos of Ukrainian civilians lying dead in Bucha, Kyiv were called a “hoax” and “staged” by Russian tele-journalists. ProRussian news media has convinced some Russian-speakers that the conflict has largely been perpetrated by Ukrainian forces.

BBC reported that some Ukrainians living in targeted cities called their parents to tell them about the devastation of the shelling, only for their parents to question or even deny their children’s testimonies.

Despite Living Word’s anti-war stance, Paraschuk says that many in the congregation believe that Russia is innocent. He also says that there have been moments of tension between groups in the church whose viewpoints on the war conflict are not compatible. But Paraschuk has been attuned to the misinformation-based division within Living Word since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because of the influence of Russian state-sponsored media on some of his congregation, Paraschuk says that he avoids discussing specifics about the war during his services. Instead he emphasizes the importance of spreading compassion and sending aid to the victims of tragedy, no matter the causes.

“You just have to say, ‘You have this picture. I have a different picture,’” Paraschuk -Vlad Bilan says. “The reality we will all see after this is over.’”

Paraschuk says that the best he can do as a spiritual leader is cultivate an attitude of compassion at Living Word, regardless of what’s on the news. And to do that, Paraschuk says that the church will continue raising money to support Ukrainians affected by the invasion.

The end of this conflict is not yet in sight, and new humanitarian efforts continue to develop as the people of Ukraine face new and unforeseen challenges.

On May 23, Bilan organized a GoFundMe campaign to help Ukrainian high school student refugees’ move to Oregon to continue their education. With help from his mom, a pastor at Sunnyside Adventist Church in Portland, Bilan’s goal is to raise funds to help pay for those students’ visas, flights, textbooks and other essential items.

The amount of support and unity he sees coming out of the Slavic community in response to this conflict is empowering, Bilan says.

“That ‘let’s go’ attitude and spotlight and worldwide support has been so uplifting,” Bilan says. “Seeing the work that the church and my family have been doing has inspired me to keep helping in any way I can.”

You’re constantly checking the news, and it’s just more bad news. It was constantly messing with my head.”

PODCAST Podcast Talkshow Stay tuned for monthly episodes featuring follow-ups on previous Ethos stories, inside scoops on our reporters’ processes, and indepth coverage of the Eugene community. Coming out early each month, the Ethos Podcast brings the magazine’s mission of raising underrepresented voices to the forefront while also focusing on our sources and reporters beyond the initial story. Thus far, we have covered West Eugene’s fight for environmental justice and our most recent episode explores young journalists experience with trauma reporting.

Scan the QR code to listen to the first episode: with Kate Jaques Prentice

EP. 1: STILL WAITING: WEST EUGENE RESIDENTS STAND BY, CONTINUOUSLY THREATENED BY THEIR OWN SOIL

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A model swings on a dancing pole. According to Centre for Social Connectedness, a non-profit focused on building social connections, sex work is often stigmatized as disgraceful. This social stigma was born in how the law treats sex work, according to the Centre.

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Written by Nika Bartoo-Smith Photographed by Illka Sankari Illustrated by Sophie Barlow

The Other Side of the Pole Despite the stigma and danger that surround the industry, sex workers in Eugene still find empowerment and confidence through their jobs.

T

aking the stage in chunky platform heels and a custommade black glitter bodysuit, Nena Pratt started a slow reveal striptease inspired by years of being a burlesque performer. “Living Dead Girl” by Rob Zombie blared on the speakers. Pratt spent many nights at Bobbi’s VIP Room, surrounded by mirrors, broken lights and other dancers.

“I had somebody compare my dancing to strip clubs in the 80s when it was all pole tricks. And it was just hot girls being hot on stage,” Pratt says.

In 2018, Pratt decided she wanted to go to massage school and needed to come up with an extra $1,000 to pay for her year of classes. She says she was intrigued by her roommate, who had been stripping at a club in Springfield for a few months. Unsure it would be a good fit for her, she did not immediately consider it.

“I took one pole dance class and dislocated my knee and couldn’t walk for four months. So I was pretty put off by that experience,” Pratt said, although she was already involved in other aspects of sex work through a phone sex hotline and the online platform OnlyFans.

Her roommate, a dancer at a different club at the time, recommended that Pratt apply to Bobby’s VIP Lounge in Springfield, Oregon, a club with a “lower bar” where she wouldn’t need an audition or be expected to pole dance. She worked at the club until March 2020, dancing as an independent contractor.

At the time, Pratt got questions like: “How could you do that while you have respect for yourself ?”

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“I don’t know that I have ever had a job that didn’t require me to actively use my body to accomplish the job.”

-Nena Pratt “For me, the idea was especially funny because people saw it as using my body for work, which I don’t know that I have ever had a job that didn’t require me to actively use my body to accomplish the job,” Pratt said.

Sex work is just that: work. But it is set apart due to the stigma it can carry.

Sex work is the consensual exchange of sexual services for money, including exotic dancing and photos or videos via OnlyFans, according to the Human Rights Watch. According to the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness, a nonprofit focused on building social connection and combating social isolation, the stigma surrounding sex work is often characterized by “a mark of disgrace, a social discrediting, or a spoiled identity.” It argues that the root of this stigma is likely grounded in how the law treats sex work. According to Amnesty International, the criminalization of sex work makes the workers less safe, allowing more instances of abuse and harassment. Prostitution is illegal in all 50 states, except for a few areas in Nevada. While stripping is legal, the act of sex work remains stigmatized.

Eugene is no exception.

Claire, who prefers to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns, is a content creator for OnlyFans based in Eugene, selling photos and videos for money. She says that she sees stigmas surrounding sex work all the time.

“There are also a lot of assumptions that people that do sex work are troubled or did not choose to become a sex worker,” Claire says. “But in my opinion, it’s just like any other job. I think something that’s really important is that people should be comfortable with their bodies.”

Pratt and Claire don’t have physical sex with their clients, but they are still sex workers who experience both the stigma and empowerment that comes with it.

“I think sex work has a unique ability to be more exploitative than other lines of work because it’s criminalized in so many ways,” Pratt says. “And because then it lacks legal protection.”

Pratt worked at Bobbi’s for about a year. Although she enjoyed some aspects of the job, there were aspects that she did not like, mostly due to management.

On an average night, Pratt brought home $50. Many 30 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

clubs have a rule that if clients are not spending money on the entertainment, they are required to leave, according to Pratt. Bobbi’s rule is looser — customers are asked to leave if they aren’t spending money on tipping dancers, gambling or buying drinks, according to Jessica Hills, a bartender and fill-in manager at Bobbi’s. Pratt remembers nights when more than 10 people would be in the club, but none of the dancers made any money because customers were spending it elsewhere.

“In an environment where nobody is making sure that the people who are working are making money, it led to a lot of unpleasant interaction between people working and customers,” Pratt says. “It just felt like there was a lot of lazy management that led to these things.”

Sometimes, Pratt says those customer interactions would get messy, and it often fell on the dancers themselves to take care of it.

Pratt says that she did not have to deal with many problematic customers, but it did happen on occasion. For her, one of the best ways to handle it was setting boundaries, like holding customer’s hands while giving a lap dance to keep them from touching her and sometimes even refusing to help a customer altogether if they gave her a “bad vibe.”

“In an environment like sex work where there is, by design, some element of mystery and slowly moving things forward,” Pratt says, “there are always going to be people who want to push that along and see how far it will go.”

For Pratt, although these experiences were uncomfortable, she treated them as a way to practice setting clear boundaries, she says.

Dealing with customers who crossed boundaries is not unique to Bobbi’s. Diana, a dancer in Lane County who also prefers to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns, says that she also has to deal with customer harassment and boundary-crossing almost daily. She says she is often touched by men even when she tells them not to, is called degrading names and was once even punched in the face.

There are bouncers at the club who are supposed to help protect the dancers, but Diana says that oftentimes when she brings a concern forward, the customers are only told to leave for the night with a simple handshake.

“I think that a lot of people don’t realize that someone’s

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worst day is your every day. And it’s consistent sexual assault and consistent abuse,” Diana says. “I think that people don’t acknowledge the other side of dancing.”

Diana says sex work is not all it is made out to be. One of the ways she copes with the abuse is by talking to a therapist she trusts and finding support in those she is close with.

Pratt says she wishes it wasn’t all her responsibility to care for herself in an exploitative industry.

“If people actually cared about people being exploited in sex work, they would be able to shift the conversation to increasing protections and giving sex workers legal working status,” Pratt says. “I think making them all legally employees would go a long way in preventing a lot of workplace abuses.”

While trauma and mistreatment are part of the job for both Diana and Pratt, there are other parts that they both find pleasurable. They both expressed an increased sense of confidence in their bodies at some point while working. The confidence fluctuated, but a common theme of body and sexual empowerment remained.

Since 2020, Pratt has learned there is more to sex work than meets the eye. There are some challenges, but most stem from systemic issues resulting from a lack of legal protection.

However, there are parts of sex work that are uniquely pleasurable.

Pratt said working in a club has helped her stop worrying about whether people found her attractive. One of the first things she learned while stripping is you’ll always be someone’s type.

“I have a little bit of a belly. It’s something I’ve always been insecure about because it’s something society wants us to be insecure about,” Pratt says. “I did not think that anybody would be into my stomach or my stretch marks until we have a customer come in who’s like, ‘I will pay you $100 to sit in my lap and just squish me right now for 20 minutes.’”

That same confidence carried over into other areas of her life as well, teaching Pratt a new sense of self-love and appreciation for her own body. That body confidence has stuck with her even now that she is no longer stripping.

“It made me stop worrying so much whether or not anybody could find me attractive,” Pratt said. “Not only was I not so insecure about having a belly, but I kind of stopped caring if anybody could tell. That mental attitude of not caring stuck with me after I was no longer on the clock.”

Diana says she feels this heightened sense of body confidence as well.

When Diana first started dancing, she says, she assumed she would be required to do makeup and hair and wear expensive lingerie. In reality, she gets to come to work wearing what is most comfortable to her, which is often underwear from Target and a crop top.

Being able to dress how she chooses has helped Diana feel more comfortable on the job. She has also noticed physical changes in her body as a result of dancing, something she says she is proud of.

“Now I can do pull-ups, and I’m strong, and I have muscle.

I’ve never loved my body so much,” Diana says. “And I have a very womanly body. I have hips. I have stretch marks. It’s a body that’s not normally appreciated, and it’s so appreciated in my line of work.”

For Claire, OnlyFans serves as a platform that has helped her claim and embrace her sexuality.

“I’ve always been very sex-positive; nothing is ever taboo to me,” Claire says. “I just thought OnlyFans was a really cool way people were embracing their bodies and claiming themselves as sexual beings.”

In July 2021, Claire started an OnlyFans account, a platform that had long appealed to her. Depending on how much time she puts into the work, she says she can easily make upwards of $600 a month from posting photos and videos for her followers.

While money is an added bonus, what really compelled Claire to become a content creator was the increased confidence she thought it would bring.

“I’ll make jokes because people that I haven’t talked to for years will all of a sudden be hitting me up, sliding into my DMs,” Claire says. “It’s a sense of confidence for sure — people that didn’t give you any attention before are now all of a sudden literally paying you to look the way you do. It’s empowering.”

Facing stigma and mistreatment at work is common, but Pratt and Claire say that is not unique to sex work. Pratt says she still feels empowered by her work while also acknowledging a need to challenge the stigma and create better working conditions.

“I think that the more that people embrace sex work, the less taboo it becomes,” Claire says. “And the more conversations that we have around just sex in general and OnlyFans and sex work, the more that it can be less of a shameful thing.”

A model touches their skin. Nena Pratt, not pictured, has had experience in sex work through a phone sex hotline service and as a dancer at the Springfield Club Bobbi’s VIP Room. Pratt says dancing helped her find confidence in her own skin. To Pratt, dancing has helped her realize that, regardless of what you look like, you’ll always be someone’s type.

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When Art Meets Activism How Kundai Kapurura stepped into her identity as an artist to give back to her community.

Written by Haley Landis | Photographed by Collin Bell | Illustrated by Sophie Barlow

I

t’s midmorning on a Friday when Kundai Kapurura enters the sewing studio nestled in the corner of the Erb Memorial Union at the center of the University of Oregon campus.

Large spools of thread protrude from a board hanging on one of the room’s walls. An archaic-looking weaving machine rests below the back window, and shelves rimming the room hold sewing machines, bins of materials and a collection of sewing books.

Kapurura pulls out a seat at one of two worktables in the center of the room and drops her bag of materials on the other.

She grabs a pair of scissors and lifts out a handful of neon fabrics.

Today’s design is a custom order for a couple in California: two matching crewnecks, each with color-contrasting, hand-drawn flames sewn into their hems. She begins cutting out the pattern she had drawn the previous week, moving the scraps aside to save for later projects. Things are quiet in the studio today, but Kapurura often works in her room with music playing. She finds her creativity thrives in isolation, something she learned during the pandemic.

“I can get in a zone where it feels like nothing else exists but what I’m working on,” she says, transfixed on the fabric in front of her.

The project is one of many designs that Kapurura has taken

on since launching the clothing line Philanthropy Phabrics with her friend Sophia Cobb in 2020. The brand’s mission, Kapurura says, is to create “a sustainable future through handcrafted fashion.” They take clothing donations, thrifted items or pieces from their own closets and transform them into new designs, infused with aspects of Zimbabwean and Colombian from each of their backgrounds.

But for Kapurura, the work is more than just clothing design — it’s a means of giving back to her community and being a social justice advocate. The brand donates 10% of its proceeds to local activism causes, focusing on ones that need timely support. Kapurura and Cobb are dedicated to causes that “uplift their community” and eventually hope to expand beyond local causes to national ones. Moreover, Kapurura is learning to take up space as a Black woman in business, use her voice and harness her creative abilities to spur social change.

She does it all while balancing life as a full-time student and business owner.

“She’s an amazing artist with a humble heart, a passion to serve others in that social justice lens and create space for other artists,” says her twin sister, Kudzai Kapurura.

Alongside her twin sister, Kapurura grew up in a tight-knit family with her parents and older brother. Her parents moved from Zimbabwe to the U.S. in 2000, the year she was born,

Kundai Kapurura is a product design major and co-founder of Philanthropy Fabrics. Kapurura began hand-painting and upcycling clothes in 2020, at a time when she felt — due to the emergence of COVID-19, the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasingly destructive wildfire season — a general sense of unrest globally as well as within the Oregon community. After reaching out to her co-founder, Sophia Cobb, the pair began creating and selling sustainably sourced clothing with their own creative spin while donating a portion of their profits to various local organizations.

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making her a first-generation American. From a young age, Kapurura was an artist in the making, even if she didn’t see it.

She would often doodle on pamphlets in church, do origami in class or spend her free time painting.

“Kundai is one of those people who is creative in so many different senses,” Kudzai says.

Her father, Tapiwa Kapurura, heavily influenced her studious habits and strong work ethic. He attended law school and now works helping refugees acclimate to life in the states. His fearless pursuit of tasks such as writing a book showed her how to tackle even the most daunting projects.

Her mother, Victoria Kapurura, passed down a skill integral to her life in Zimbabwe: sewing. She had started sewing lessons in the third grade in Zimbabwe, so it was only natural she taught the skill to her daughter. Kundai picked it up quickly, along with coloring, drawing and cutting designs from various materials. Her mother encouraged her creativity and tried to incorporate natural resources like reeds, tree bark and various fibers they had used in her village.

Kapurura went on to take a home economics class in middle school that loosely resembled fashion design. It was some of her first exposure to the world of design. She laughs recalling the teacher explaining color theory and how “black is a slimming

"

Kund ai believes

36 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

color.” She sees it as a testament to how far she has come with design from the early days of those introductory principles.

Her artistic interests played a large role in her decision to come to UO as a product design major. Her mother says the major “really represents who she has been all her life,” given her artistic nature as a child. Kapurura spent the beginning of her first year exploring the many mediums the program offered. She experimented with stop-motion animation, collaborative painting, collaging, 3D modeling and more.

Kapurura says she loved the quiet time and getting to focus on what she was creating.

And then the pandemic hit.

Quarantined back in Salem with her family, she spent her summer creating art with whatever was lying around.

“Using household materials to create art was my passion during the pandemic,” Kapurura says. For one project, she took items like wire hangers, bottle caps and even a fidget spinner to create a sculpture inspired by “Useless Machines,” a work created by Bruno Munari.

Despite her natural talents, she struggled to view herself as a true artist. She felt she didn’t have the ability or the notoriety that comes with the title. But it was during quarantine when Kapurura finally picked up a painting set — a Christmas gift

o b y n a , g n i that what she is do

d n a c dy else

do it,

e z i h l o a w e r t m ’ n u s e c o h d talent e h s t u b - Victoria

from her sister that had been confined to a corner for the previous six months.

“I was so afraid to touch that art set. When I tell you I didn’t think of myself as an artist, I really didn’t,” Kapurura says.

The painting set breathed life into her creative aspirations.

It led her to start an Instagram account for her art, where she began to share it with the world. Paintings of abstract designs, flowers and a remake of a Frank Ocean album cover filled her profile page.

Kapurura then reached out to Sophia Cobb, a high school acquaintance with similar artistic interests, and proposed a collaboration: a one-time clothing line to raise money for local activism causes.

Her proposal to Cobb was prompted by what she refers to as the “complete civil unrest” in 2020 as the Black Lives Matter Movement, Oregon wildfires and COVID-19 pandemic all coincided. It ignited a desire to use her skills to give back to her community.

In the following weeks, the pair started designing a line of clothing. It didn’t take long for them to connect with Salem

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Kapu rura

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local and fellow fashion enthusiast Austin Herndon, who organized pop-ups — short-term shopping spaces curated by local vendors. Herndon invited them to participate as designers in an upcoming event.

When the next pop-up rolled around, they showcased their designs under the name Philanthropy Phabrics for the first time.

Vibrant African patchwork, line-drawn faces, hand-painted dragons and detailed distressing adorned the roughly 30 tops, pants and jackets they brought.

They received overwhelming excitement and support in response to their clothing. They chatted with friends and family coming to support them throughout the day, took photos with people purchasing items and accepted clothing drop-offs to be turned into custom pieces. By closing, over half of what they brought had sold. Realizing their potential, they agreed to take Philanthropy Phabrics and make it a business.

“Realizing people were willing to look at the clothing and loved the clothing and saw the artistic value in it was the moment when I realized ‘Dang, we can keep doing this,’” Kapurura says.

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Kapurura says, as a Black business owner, there were times when she didn’t feel comfortable taking up space. During quarantine, she began experimenting with unique and vibrant hair colors. “I feel like that was one of the ways I learned how to take up space,” she says. According to Kapurura, majoring in product design has also helped her realize she can exist within a non-conventional career path while remaining confident and finding success.

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Kapurura holds a copy of Virgil Abloh’s book of quotes. Abloh is an American fashion designer and one of Kapurura’s biggest inspirations.

Kapurura says Abloh, who passed in late 2020, combined a skating and street world style with that of high end brands like Louis Vuitton.

To Kapurura, Abloh walked a path she hopes to follow.

“It’s possible.”

Kapurura and Cobb form a perfectly balanced team, preferring different but complementary mediums. Cobb creates with vibrant colors and intricately painted designs inspired

by Colombian fashion. Kapurura utilizes African patchwork, repetitive patterns and line drawings. More remarkable than that, she brings love and joy into each piece she creates — something she says is a hallmark of Zimbabwean culture. Her work with the brand has helped her redefine what it means to be an artist.

“Just the way that she sees things, the way that she creates, has been very inspiring for me,” says Cobb, a third-year business student at Oregon State University. Living in different cities, Kapurura and Cobb work independently on many of their designs but come together for collaboration pieces, passing the design back and forth.

Philanthropy Phabrics has allowed Kapurura to “define herself as a designer,” and it is already having an impact. In 2021, the two women donated to five organizations, including

the Black Youth PDX Movement, Marion Polk Food Share and Women’s Foundation of Oregon.

Philanthropy Phabrics’ mission is to be a sustainable brand, but Kapurura says the meaning of sustainability far surpasses just planetary health; it includes the people who live on the planet. She says donating to causes that uplift people and showing that the brand is there for the community directly is just as important to her as sourcing materials in a way that doesn’t harm the planet.

“Kundai believes that what she is doing, anybody else can do it, but she doesn’t realize how much talent she has,” her mother says.

Since launching the brand, Kapurura has fully embraced her title as a designer. She works as an art curator for a gallery in the EMU, takes on graphic design projects, expresses herself through fashion and experiments with mediums that may have seemed intimidating in the past.

Having peers and those younger asking her how she came up with the brand, if they can collaborate and admiring her work SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 39

has helped her overcome doubts. It’s “one of the few markers of ‘you’re doing something right,’ and you’re showing people they can do it too,” she says.

She hopes to create space for people like her in the world of design, emulating the trails blazed by some of her biggest inspirations.

“I wouldn’t have the audacity that I do today if we didn’t have people like Virgil [Abloh] or Andre Leon Talley,” she says, “just people who are Black, who are women, who are first-generation Americans in the industry.”

Nearing the end of a busy term, Kapurura sits across the table in a study room located just a short walk away from the sewing studio. She explains how as a Black woman, and one in business, there were certain things she felt that she couldn’t do or space she couldn’t take up in the past. With vibrant blue strands woven into her hair — something she would have considered too bold merely months ago — she says she feels like she’s learned to take up that space.

“I used to think that it took a name, or it took a famous piece to be an artist,” Kapurura says.

“But I think art is everywhere. It’s inside of us, and so everyone is an artist.”

Kapurura says designing clothing for Philanthropy Fabrics has helped her explore herself and believe in her own abilities. “I feel like I’ve always had a creative mind, but I didn’t necessarily know how to express that,” she says.

Kundai Kapur Kundai Kapur

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Kapurura ai Kapurur SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 41

PROTESTING

FOR

Year after year, a group of old friends gathers each week for peace in downtown Eugene.

Written by Kendall Porter | Photographed by Natalie Myking | Illustrated by Lynette Slape

W

alking up to the Eugene Public Library location downtown on a Saturday afternoon, the colorful flags held by a small group of protesters are almost immediately noticeable. Young children exiting the library hand-in-hand with their parents look mesmerized by the fluttering bright colors and crane their necks for better views of the spectacle. The designs range from a satellite view of Earth to a full-spectrum rainbow, but all carry the message of the phrase emblazoned on the side of the latter: peace.

The protestors talk amongst themselves, covering a range of topics from politics to the daily happenings in their lives. Some of them dress up for the occasion, donning a sock monkey button-up (that, it was noted, may have been intended as pajamas) or heart sunglasses.

When it rains, they huddle under the library’s awning, but they start parading around the street corner once the sun comes out, holding up signs and striking up conversations. Standing outside the library every Saturday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. has become a part of their weekly routine. They’ve been doing it for the past 20 years.

The group of demonstrators does not have an official name, but it does have a long-established presence in the community of Eugene. The vigil first started in 2002 in protest of the bombings of Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, Trudy Maloney, a long-time protestor, says. In the beginning, the vigil was led by Peg Morton, a name that comes up frequently when talking to the group, although she has since passed.

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Their focus has shifted over the past two decades, but their call for peace has remained the same.

“We’re just a bunch of old hippies who haven’t given up yet,” Julie Lambert, the “baby” of the group, says.

While they know that they can’t change what’s going on in the world, Ed Necker says being there — outside the library each week — is something they can do.

The group end’s each vigil with a repeated mantra that they adapted from a Buddhist prayer: May all beings be happy.

May all beings be well.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings be free.

Peace, peace, peace.

Trudy, 73, remembers when she and Peg stood outside the Federal Building twice a week, every week. Numbers slowly dwindled from the larger demonstrations until it was just the two of them.

“In the beginning, people would yell at me, spit at me,” Trudy says. “My father told me, ‘Stand up for what you believe in, even if you stand alone.’”

In those days after September 11, 2001, Trudy says, peace was not on people’s lists. After Peg got arrested during a different demonstration, a semi-frequent occurrence in her life, Trudy followed through on her father’s words. She stood alone.

A group of protestors stands outside the Eugene Public Library. Even though the group doesn’t have an official name, they have been meeting for one hour every Saturday for the past 20 years. Rain or shine, the group protests for peace.

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Karen Stingle has been involved with the library protest for around 10 years. Stingle’s father was in the Foreign Service. In turn, she lived in several locations throughout her life. She got involved in activism while living in DC during high school. “My father was overseas at the time. I started doing peace marches and stuff,” Stingle says. “He got kind of uptight about how I was questioning our government, but I’ve always felt like that was the right thing to do.”

Even before moving to Eugene, Trudy’s history with activism dates back to her adolescence. She lived in Chicago during the protests outside of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 — a protest against the Vietnam war where the phrase “the whole world is watching” was born.

It was a police riot, she says, and she called the officers who retaliated against them pigs.

She first remembers feeling like she had to speak up when she was around 15 years old. She grew up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago with “too much,” she says. When traveling with her stepmother to the Museum of Science and Industry through Hyde Park, where a riot had taken place, she saw a young child playing in a vacant lot full of glass. The child barely had enough clothes on. When Trudy got home, she layed on her bed and cried, not understanding why the world was so unfair.

“I can’t be complacent,” Trudy says. “I can’t say that I don’t care. I wish I could. Many times in my life I wish that I could just turn a blind eye and not care, but I do care. I care passionately.”

Throughout her life she’s carried the image of that young child with her. It “shocked me out of complacency,” she says.

Trudy strongly believes that “we were created by love to love.” To her, that means doing what she can do on her feet to “walk the talk.”

“I feel that whatever good you put out is something good,” Trudy says. “No matter what it looks like, every action has a reaction. And when you put out love, it’s a good thing to do.

And it feels good.”

Since 2002, in front of the old Federal Building, Ed Necker has joined his wife, Trudy, in demonstrating each week. Today, he holds a sign reading “Vietnam Veteran For Peace.”

“We’re the vigilantes, and he’s the vigil-uncle,” Trudy says due to the fact that he is often the only man in the group predominantly made up of women.

Being a veteran himself, Ed says that wars are unnecessary and wrong. While fighting in Vietnam, he says, it became obvious to him that it was commercially-driven and didn’t have anything to do with the people actually fighting in it. As long as there is war, he feels a responsibility to speak out against it.

He also says that his experience as a veteran speaks to a lot of people who respect him for what he did and listen to his perspective because of it.

For Karen Stingle, joining the group is a way that she can remind people that peace is important, but that we don’t have it yet. She first started joining around 10 years ago through her best friend, Jean Murphy, but has felt drawn back to it each week. She says she’s always liked the colorful flags and the friendly people, and, of course, the concept of peace.

“It’s just a nice little community of people,” Karen said.

“I like that we’re reminding people that we need to work for peace. It doesn’t just come naturally.”

Peace is a really obvious thing, in a way, she says, and yet it is something that the world still does not have. Karen attended the first vigil in response to the war in Ukraine outside of the old Federal Building, where she was given a button of the country’s flag, something she has worn “nonstop” since. Wearing it around has been a conversation starter, she says. One day, when it rained during the group’s weekly demonstration, she coordinated her yellow raincoat and blue umbrella to further show her solidarity.

For many group members, the weekly meeting serves as a chance to talk with like-minded people while expressing and supporting a message they believe in.

“It’s a comfort knowing that I’ll see these people and that we have this in common and that we’re all working towards peace in whatever way we can,” Karen says. “We’re pretty dedicated to showing up for this, and that just makes me feel good.”

“MAY ALL BEINGS BE HAPPY. MAY ALL BEINGS BE WELL. MAY ALL BEINGS BE SAFE. SUMMER 2022 | ETHOS | 45

Trudy Maloney, left, and Ed Necker have been married for 23 years and participate in the peace protests together at the Eugene Library.

Maloney has been an activist since she was a teenager and convinced Necker to protest after they met. Necker is a Vietnam War veteran and quickly realized that he was against the idea of war while he was serving. “War sucks,” Necker says. “My sign says ‘Vietnam veteran for peace’ and people respect and relate to that. I don’t believe in war; I believe in peace,” Necker says.

Julie says that over time she’s come to know all of the people in the group and feels bonded to them through their weekly ritual. She knows if someone is sick or unable to make it and knows when it’s someone’s birthday. People show up whether it’s cold or rainy to not break the tradition.

“It’s like everybody is special,” Julie says. “We talk a whole lot of the time we’re there. We catch up on each other’s lives and share that. It’s not just a peace vigil. It’s also a way of having like-minded people come together and experience some community inclusion that is, in a way, empowering.”

Helen Liguori, 93, typically demonstrates on the corner across the street to better spread the message through visibility.

She carries a sign that says “War Is A Dead End” and points it to the side of the street with cars stopped at a red light. She enjoys socializing but is ultimately there for peace.

Since moving back outside of the library once it opened up to the public again, the small group has found that it is not uncommon for people to stop by and strike up conversations, one of the reasons they prefer the library location.

But during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the group met outside the corner of a credit union on 29th and Willamette. The location was decided when a member living in the Cascade Manor retirement community could no longer ride the bus out of concern for her health. Rather than forcing her to choose between attending the demonstrations and personal safety, the group decided to bring the vigil to her.

During the height of the pandemic, Karen says, they got lots of attention from the traffic, from beeps to peace signs. But there was very little personal interaction, which was appropriate given the circumstances, Karen says.

Outside of the library, however, people stop by for a multitude of reasons. On one Saturday, a young man with red hair and an eclectic outfit of a Fila pullover and two-toned “good vibes”

sweatpants stuck around and offered up fist bumps and peace signs. He took up Jean’s offer of the extra flag, and the two conversed for the remainder of the hour.

Ed says that people have also come up in disagreement, saying that war is “inevitable” and should be supported, but the response is much more often supportive and thankful. When there is a dispute with passersby, one of the other members typically steps in to talk it out with both parties.

People approach to tell personal stories as well, speaking about their experiences with growing up in military families and their distaste for military recruitment tactics. After asking what they were protesting for, one canvasser expressed his frustrations with people only concerned about war when it is facing countries in Europe, to which the members within earshot agreed. He stayed with the group for the remainder of the hour, promising to return the next week.

For Julie, seeing everything going on in the world, the stories coming out of warzones, can be extremely overwhelming.

“I can’t do anything to stop it,” she says. “But what I can do, what I keep doing, is advocating for peace. It’s a small thing, I understand that, and it’s mostly symbolic, but it’s putting that energy out into the world.”

While she isn’t necessarily close to what is happening globally, she is close to her own community, and that is where she can start to make an impact, she says.

In mid-May, to expand their group, Helen worked to put the meeting time back onto the events section of the Eugene Weekly, where they used to announce their meetings a couple of years ago. The group whirred with excitement for the future, with at least one person mentioning the news to each latecomer that trickled in.

She hopes to one day have peace flags on all four corners of the intersection.

MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE. PEACE, PEACE, PEACE.” -Protestor’s Mantra 46 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022

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