NEWS
Sponsors, Inc. is holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 3
pm Thursday, Jan. 30, at its new Bothy Cottage/RISE (Reunite
in a Supportive Environment) home. The five-bedroom,
3,200-sq.-ft. house is the first of its kind in Oregon and
unique nationally. Its mission is to help mothers who are
returning home from prison. Services include parenting
classes, cognitive behavioral therapy, drug treatment and
more. RSVP to tdejohn@sponsorsinc.org or call 505-5687.
Local businesses Hallspot and Opthub will be presenting
at the SmartUps gathering at 5 pm Thursday, Jan. 30, at the
Oregon Electric Station Jazz Room, 27 E. 5th Ave. Guest
speakers will also include Doug Porter and David Schroeder,
experts in prototyping and manufacturing. $12 advance,
$18 at the door. See eugenechamber.com.
The Oregon Small Woodlands Association will have its
annual forestry tree seedling sale from 7:30 am to noon, or
while supplies last, Saturday, Feb. 1, at Alton Baker Park.
Supplies are limited so come early for best selection. Trees
available will be Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine, grand fir, noble
fir, incense cedar, Western red cedar and redwood. Prices
range from 75 cents to $1.25 per tree. Contact Michael
Atkinson from the OSWA at 344-4991.
The Eugene Food & Ag Forum will provide an update on
the Southern Willamette Bean & Grain Project at 4 pm
Sunday, Feb. 2, at Cozmic, 199 W. 8th Ave. The project is a
consortium of farms, businesses, community organizers
and nonprofits working to stimulate the cultivation and local
marketing of organically grown grains, dry beans and edible
seeds to provide year-round food resources in the Willamette
Valley. Dan Armstrong will speak, along with Jeff Broadie and
Kasey White of Lonesome Whistle Farm.
A new Toastmasters Club will meet for the first time at
noon Wednesday, Feb. 5, at LCC’s Small Business
Development Center. The club will meet in Room 122,
Building 11, on the LCC main campus. The first meeting is
free, open to the public and will include light refreshments.
LCC faculty, management, staff and students are encouraged
to attend. See lanesbdc.com or call 463-6200.
The nonprofit Eugene Waldorf School is looking into
developing a four-year high school in Eugene. The school
once had a high school in a new building adjacent to the
school’s main buildings at 1350 McLean Blvd. but the new
high school may be off site. A free lecture and discussion on
the topic has been planned for 7 pm Wednesday, Feb. 5, at
the school. Find the Waldorf high school initiative on
Facebook at wkly.ws/1oe.
We hear firefighters in Eugene and Springfield have
teamed up with South Lane Fire & Rescue, Lane Fire Authority
and Western Lane Ambulance to support local social
services. The firefighters and paramedics collected $1,000
out of their paychecks to build and paint two structures at
Opportunity Village in Eugene, says Robert Grand, one of the
organizers of the construction event that happened Jan. 27.
The 30 off-duty firefighters and EMTs who worked at the
project are members of Lane Professional Firefighters
Association.
Eugene freelance writer and editor Sharleen Nelson has
come up with something unique, a full-color “Oregon
Festivals” wall calendar that lists and features more than 90
festivals, fairs and celebrations throughout the state. The
2014 calendars sell for $7.95 through her GladEye Press or
on Amazon. See wkly.ws/1of.
WHITE RACIST MINIONS
ATTACK ONLINE
Horus the Avenger of White Rabbit Radio sends out his
minions to spread “the Mantra,” proclaiming, “Anti-racist
is a code word for anti-white” and other derivations of
the racist message. While racist rabbits sending minions
might sound like some sort of internet hoax, marchers in
Springfield’s Jan. 20 Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebra-
tion encountered one of the propagators of the Mantra,
Jimmy Marr. Marr was standing in front of Springfield
High School with a woman holding a sign that read, “Di-
versity is a code word for anti-white.” Marr was wearing
a kilt and playing the bagpipes.
Dana Jo Cook of Springfield says MLK marchers were
visibly upset by the sign, and she took a photo and sent it
to EW for publication in order to bring “a face to the level
of discrimination in our community.”
Cook and others familiar with Marr — who is prob-
ably best known in Lane County for giving a pro-National
Socialist talk at the Pacific Forum discussion group and
leading some members of the audience in a Nazi salute
— said they had heard Marr was considering running for
mayor. EW asked for confirmation of the rumor in the
blog post.
Marr posted in the comments section of the blog that
“I had not considered the idea, but I can now see from the
comments that I have a moral mandate to exploit every
conceivable avenue capable of producing an increase in
awareness of White geNOcide.” The spelling of genocide
is called for in the “White Rabbit rendition” of the Mantra
and the capitalization of white is called for by Bob Whita-
ker on his racist whitakeronline.org site, where he also
tells followers to “use emotional language” and to ask
questions like “Why do you hate little White children?”
PATCHY SANDERS
HAS EUGENE ROOTS
Patchy Sanders, a band that made its first appear-
ance in Eugene at Sam Bond’s Garage a year ago, is
returning to the same venue on Feb. 2 to showcase its
first record, & The Wild Peach Forest.
One of the band’s founding members, Ian Van Or-
num, is a former UO student known for his past ac-
tivism, particularly for being Tased at a peaceful anti-
pesticide rally he helped organize in 2008. Van Ornum
was unable to discuss the status of his appeal for his
conviction for resisting arrest, but in December 2013
the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that he could contin-
ue to pursue his appeal. Van Ornum was lying on the
ground when he was Tased.
Nearly six years later, Van Ornum is returning to his
former city to show off his musical talents. “It’s nice to
The annual KLCC Microbrew Festival is coming up Friday
and Saturday, Feb. 7-8, at the Fairgrounds on 13th Avenue.
Friday hours will be from 5 to 11 pm and Saturday 1 to 11
pm. All proceeds will benefit the public radio station. Some
66 breweries from around the West Coast and as far away as
Vermont will offer samples of their most popular brews.
Those attending must be 21 and over. Admission is $12
advance through klcc.org and $15 at the door. Admission
includes three beer tastings and a souvenir glass. Additional
tastings will be $1 each. Thousands of used records and CDs
will also be for sale and live music will be provided Friday by
Sol Seed and Saturday by the Hank Shreve Band. Music
begins both nights at 7:30. Home brewers can submit their
brews to be judged. Entries are being collected at Falling Sky
Brewing through Jan. 31.
IA N VA N OR NUM, OF PATCH Y SA NDERS, IS SECOND F ROM L EF T
8
January 30, 2014 • eugeneweekly.com
According to a Southern Poverty Law Center article
on White Rabbit, Horus the Avenger of the radio show is
Timothy Gallaher Murdock of Dearborn Heights, Mich.,
and also uses the name Tom Worth. “He is single and lives
in the basement of his parents’ home,” SPLC writes.
The link to the EW blog was then posted on several
racist websites, such as whitegenocideproject.com and
majorityrights.com. Marr posted it on the racist Storm-
front site and on the whitakeronline.org site. This then
triggered Whitaker’s “BUGS swarm” which is dedicated
to pointing out “the ongoing program of genocide against
White people, which is being committed by anti-Whites.”
Essentially, a fairly small number of people begins
bombarding a blog, YouTube video or other online com-
ments section with the Mantra. The swarm proclaims
itself as “winning” when it overwhelms other posters in
sheer numbers. At press time the EW blog had more than
1,050 comments.
Members of the swarm commented from all over the
U.S. as well as the U.K., and those who argued against
the racist and bigoted posts, such as Cook, were both lo-
cal and out-of-state. One anti-racist commenter, sociol-
ogy professor David Brain of Florida, who came into the
discussion via Facebook links to the blog, points out that
“the internet has enabled these people not only to vent
their fear and anger, their sense of powerlessness, but to
do so in the company of others like them from all over
the world.” Brain and others’ attempts to respond to the
swarm’s comments resulted in many repetitions of the
Mantra and sometimes name-calling such as “fat white
whore.”
Marr is allegedly also linked to the banner that was
dropped on the I-5 pedestrian bridge in September 2013
that read “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.”
— Camilla Mortensen
EDITOR’S NOTE: The comment section for the EW blog post that triggered
the “swarm” will be shut down (though remain available for reading) after
this issue goes to press. The online comments for this story will be limited to
100 because even our patience has limits.
share something with Eugene that I’m extremely ex-
cited about,” Van Ornum says.
The band started as a 10-member ensemble after
meeting at a singer-songwriter camp outside of Ash-
land. A year and a half later, Patchy Sanders was cut
down to four original members; it then added three
new members. After raising $15,000 from a Kickstarter
campaign, Sylvia Massey, who is best known for work-
ing with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty and
Johnny Cash, offered to produce the album.
“Massey made our dream of a first initial record
come true,” Van Ornum says. “I mean, we worked with
one of the best producers in the country.”
Last November, Patchy Sanders performed on
NPR’s West Coast Live with singer-songwriter Mason
Jennings.
Patchy Sanders plays with My Father’s Ghost
at 8 pm Sunday, Feb. 2, at Sam Bond’s; $5.
— Kevin Sullivan