Activism Despite COVID: A Sit-Down with Black Unity’s Midas Well

Written by Alexis Weisend

If you’re a student living in Eugene, odds are you have heard the rallying cries of Black Unity and their supporters. Midas Well, a member of Black Unity, spoke with me about how exactly their group formed and amassed supporters despite the pandemic.

Weisend: I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got started with Black Unity.

Well: I’ve lived in Oregon for four years now. I've always been very interested in social justice, specifically racial justice, and more specifically ending police brutality. In the terms of Black Unity and how I got started with them, we had that big protest on Friday, May 29th. That was the riot, and then that Sunday was the huge protest in Eugene where probably 10,000 people came out. It was incredible. I mean, both of those things were two very different sides of the same coin. Then Monday rolled around, and there was nothing planned. So, I hopped on Facebook, and I was like, “hey, everyone, meet up at the courthouse—six o’clock.” So, I showed up at the courthouse, and there were like 700 people there. We just marched for seven hours.

Weisend: Hours?

Well: Probably. Those days we were meeting at six and marching past midnight. This was when we were still getting tear-gassed every night...pepper-sprayed and everything. Yeah, and there were no routes or anything like that. We were still letting anyone get up and speak on the megaphone.

Weisend: So, you weren’t a part of Black Unity yet?

Well: There was no Black Unity. Black Unity came out of this whole movement. I was just out there protesting, and I guess I was leading it in the sense that I was just walking in the front. We’d get tear-gassed and everything, and we’d splinter and run around the streets playing cat and mouse with the cops all night. But I started to notice certain people there every day. It was like, “I see you. You see me.” The first Black Unity meeting probably had like 27 people there. It was just black leaders. So, I probably got invited to the second meeting they ever had. There was a lot going on. At that point, we were protesting about seven days a week. Things were a lot different then.

Weisend: I wonder if you could tell me some of the unique tactics that Black Unity has learned from leading events, especially protests, in a socially distanced way due to COVID.

Well: In terms of protest tactics—it was really a crash course because there's not a lot of room for error when you’re getting chased by cops and counter-protesters. Keeping people safe was probably the biggest one that we had to learn things about because we were popular with much more of a mainstream crowd more so than the radical. We had to figure out ways to keep people safe, which for us would be kind of common sense, but a lot of people haven't dealt with cops. A lot of people haven't been around firearms or panic.

Weisend: I’ve been to some of your protests and they’re very unique—like the way you guys handle media. This counter protester came up to my friends and immediately five of your press guys came over and filmed them and flashed lights in his face. But they were standing six feet away from him.

Well: Yes, de-escalation is huge for us because we are a nonviolent group. When people don’t think they’re on a camera, they’ll say and do whatever they want. But if you remind them that there’s thousands of people watching them potentially, people will definitely calm down a lot more. We always say the revolution won’t be televised but it's going to be live streamed for sure. But you’ve probably noticed we haven’t been out on the streets recently. We’re trying to see what we can do online and trying to revert back to that a little bit. Of course, we always mask up at our protests—both for safety, cameras and for COVID. We had people walking around with hand sanitizer. Ourselves—we’re getting tested as much as possible. Making sure we’re not passing it amongst each other—passing it to any of our people. When we go to street feeds and things like that, all of my volunteers get their temperature taken, and they’re safe-certified so they understand basic sanitization protocols.

Weisend: Did you see a lot of student support despite the pandemic?

Well: We know it would pick up when school started again. We call that recruiting season. During the first term, we were protesting a couple times a week, and it felt kind of like the beginning of the summer again. I mean, we had hundreds of people out there. And students are loud! We’d go marching through campus and at the end of our protest, we’d have an extra 150 people. My favorite chant since the beginning was, “Out of your home and into the streets.” We got a lot of people.

Weisend: I know that Black Unity does protests, but I also know that they do a lot of community events. Could you tell me about some of those and which are your favorites?

Well: One of the biggest things we are for is police abolition. One of the first steps to police abolition is community involvement and bringing the community together. Communities that are well-fed, well-housed, well-educated and well taken care of statistically have a much lower need for cops and incarceration. Personally, I’ve been in charge of the houseless outreach programs. During the fires, a lot of the shelters and stuff shut down, which is insane, and soup kitchens are shutting down. We went out there and we were feeding hundreds of people a day. [We] passed out like 50 tents. For Thanksgiving, we fed people all day. [We] probably fed 150 people. On Christmas, we did a toy and clothing drive [for] over 300 people. On New Year's Day, we fed like 250 people in the morning. We had a pancake breakfast, and we did a full street fair for the houseless community. We have children’s programs for education and tutoring as well. Education is a huge one [that] we’re very involved in, especially black education and black history in America. Our Juneteenth event was massive. A month or so after forming, we threw a massive event in the park, and thousands of people came.

Weisend: What do you think Eugene could do better?

Well: Shut the f*ck up and listen. I’m turning that on myself too. There’s so much talking going on—so much patting on the back...so much clamoring for some sort of recognition. People just need to listen a lot more, and that’s something I’m working on myself too.

Weisend: If readers want to support Black Unity, how could they do that?

Well: The best way to support us is to show up to our events and share our content on Instagram and Facebook. We’re always taking donations.

After I conducted this interview with Mr. Well, Black Unity filed a lawsuit against the Eugene Police Department on Monday, March 8. The lawsuit alleges that Eugene Police Officers violated the constitutional rights of peaceful Black Unity protesters by assaulting and arresting them during a July 29 demonstration.