Beware teh Anarchy

Local unrest followed cycle of social movements
The Register-Guard

It was the late 1990s, and the Eugene scene had a backdrop of activism, tension and violence.

Bottle-throwing throngs of drunken college students confronted police.

Tree sitters drew clouds of pepper spray as they tried to halt a downtown housing development.

Anarchists regularly flooded the streets - decrying consumerism, corporate greed, excessive police force and government in general. They drew more police gas, beanbag shotgun rounds and arrests by the scores.

Vandals roamed at night, breaking business windows, torching Dumpsters and spray painting the anarchist symbol - a circled A.

Amid the helter-skelter, a secretive cell of radicals took their activism to yet another level - large-scale arsons around the Northwest for the cause of animal rights and environmentalism.

The comparative quiet of the years since then may create an impression of that period as a chaotic era, a fluke disconnected from the norm.

Continued...