OSU Hate Crime Trial
A hate crime trial for an Oregon State University student, and former student government representative, with ties to white nationalists, has begun today.
Graduate student Andrew Oswalt, and an unknown accomplice, were captured by surveillance footage plastering racist bumper stickers on the cars of Showing Up for Racial Justice members, over stickers showing support for immigrants and refugees.
Following his arrest, photos of Oswalt marching with white nationalist groups in Portland, delivering Nazi salutes from a freeway and waving a swastika flag subsequently emerged. For months, he hung a Confederate flag across the street from the university’s black cultural center.
The 28-year-old was recalled from the OSU House of Representatives by student voters, with almost 90 percent of the vote, but remains a PhD student at the university.
Oswalt is on trial for three counts of first degree intimidation, which carries a maximum sentence of five years. The trial is expected to last three days.
Enviros Sue Trump
The national nonprofit organization Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump Administration today, rebuking the government for “refusing to recognize that ocean acidification caused by fossil fuel pollution is impairing the quality of Oregon’s coastal waters.”
Twenty-two million tons of carbon dioxide are absorbed daily by the Earth’s oceans, and the result is an increasingly acid condition that is stunting the growth of essential plankton, shellfish, and coral.
Attorney Emily Jeffers, speaking for the Oregon-based nonprofit, was quoted in their press release saying “Ocean acidification is wreaking havoc on Oregon’s coastal waters while the Trump administration ignores the dire threat created by our fossil fuel addiction… This pollution is already harming Oregon’s oysters and plankton that whales and salmon depend on. We can protect water quality and coastal communities but only if federal officials address acidification before it gets worse.”
An Oregon State study cited in the Oregonian noted that seventy-five percent of shellfish farmers in the State are concerned about the effect of oceanic acidification on their harvest.
- KBOO