From Eugene Weekly
February 13, 2025
"I always introduced her as ‘the most radical person I know,’” says Antonio Gisbert, one of Candice King’s coworkers at Homes for Good and a fellow drafter of the Oregon Rebate Plan. “Like, the good sense of the word ‘radical.’”
He also called her “a force of nature,” which is a phrase many of her friends echoed to describe her. Other words and phrases that friends, neighbors and family used to articulate King to Eugene Weekly were “activist,” “anarchist,” “passionate” and “compass.” They also say she was “one of the most sophisticated thinkers I know,” “a brilliant, bright star who was always burning in a lot of different directions at the same time,” and “a revolutionary.”
Friends also talked about her laugh. It was frequently described as something loud and hollering that would spread like wildfire. “A beautiful sort of cackle with confidence laugh, just projecting joy,” Gisbert said.
King was a homeless advocate who worked with and pioneered a variety of projects and initiatives throughout Eugene that fought for opportunities and placement for unhoused people. She was passionate about social justice, cooking and making sure people knew their rights.
On Jan. 18, Candice King died. She was 40 years old.
In the summer of 2023, King organized the Almaden Rent Strike against R&R properties and her landlord who lived in San Mateo, California. When her rent was raised and her rental assistance ran out, King stopped paying rent, offering multiple times to buy the home from her landlord. She was rejected and was ordered to leave. Instead of moving out, however, she occupied the house with her family and invited friends, neighbors and strangers to join her in protesting house hoarding in a city that is filled predominantly with renters, and Oregon’s history of systemic racism. For 96 days, her house on Almaden Street was occupied 24/7 by a revolving door of people who stood beside her.
She was ultimately evicted at the end of the summer, but though she left her home, the occupation formed “a really strong community of a lot of people who support each other, and continue to stand up to the city and predatory landlordism to this day,” neighbor Penny Grady says. “So there were a lot of wins in it, too. We worked really hard.”
King was born on May 2, 1984, in Wichita, Kansas. Being a “military brat,” as her son describes, she lived abroad as a child, mostly in Germany and spending some time in Japan while her father was stationed in those places. By the age of 14, she was back in the states, and out on her own. As a teenager, she couch surfed and worked two jobs. After working as a grocery bagger for some time, she found a job as a cook, and eventually as a chef, which she worked for 12 years.
When she was 18, she had her first daughter Marieca Hare with her husband, Nathan Hare, who she married in 2002. Five years later, she had twin sons, Gordon and Thurgood. “She definitely had some things to say about having twins at age 23,” Gordon Hare says. “It’s not easy raising two infants at once, and it’s definitely not easy to breastfeed two infants as well.” Hare laughs, “After she reiterated doing it multiple times, I was like, ‘Alright, I got you, dude.” King and Nathan Hare divorced in 2009.
In 2011, King was heavily involved in the Occupy movement, along with several other social justice movements at the time. Occupy originated with Occupy Wall Street, which started on New York City’s Wall Street, protesting corporate greed and economic equality. It was through Occupy that she met her second husband, Eric King.
King and Eric married in 2012, and moved the family to Kentucky, where Candice attended Berea College and achieved her degree in international political economy. “To be accepted to Berea as a non-traditional student is so competitive,” Lesley Sneed, a friend from college says. Berea was the first integrated college in the South, and the first to have Black educators. It promises free tuition, but has a very stiff acceptance policy. “It’s not all about grades. They judge you on your level of passion, your level of wanting to change the world, to be involved in community service,” Sneed says.
From 2013 to 2016, while King was in college, she was deeply involved in many initiatives that combated low income and environmental issues. Sneed tells EW that on top of being a full-time student and mom of three, she was one of the first people at Berea to push for a student union. Sneed says she also contributed to peace and social justice talks and events, “she participated in every protest that was going on in Berea,” volunteered for the local radio station and worked for the peace and social justice department at the school. “I was just like, ‘You are doing too much.’” Sneed says of King’s activities. “She did this all on her own time.”
King won many awards and national scholarships — several scholarships that allowed her to do an agricultural economist internship in Bolivia, and she also made the dean’s list on multiple occasions. Sneed says King’s free time was spent creating community, whether it be by integrating the international students in with the rest of the students, or gardening and cooking with her family and friends.
After graduation, King received an offer from the University of Oregon to complete her master’s degree. In 2017, she packed up and headed over to the Pacific Northwest, pregnant with her fourth child, Leslie. It didn’t take her long to get involved in the homeless community when she moved here. She worked with Homes For Good, where Hare says “she had single-handedly housed about 5,000 people by being able to advocate and give them information that was being withheld from.”
She also worked with Eugene Housing & Neighborhood Defense (HAND), created the Housing Navigators Collaborative, ran for Eugene City Council in 2020 and helped found Ward 9: The Homeless Neighbors association, among a smorgasbord of other efforts to advocate for her homeless community.
“I feel like when you become such a prominent figure, you’re the problem solver for people. It can become that you don’t even realize that you don’t see [your own problems] anymore,” Hare says. “She was the kind of person that helped so many, that she really struggled to advocate for herself.”
In 2022, Eric died suddenly, and her job was difficult to hold on to. In 2023, she was evicted for the first time, sparking the rent strike. During this period, the community assembled to stand with her. To the people who attended the occupation, the land was known as “Possum Kingdom.” Jetty Etty, a homeless advocate who is known in the community by her pseudonym, described the scene with the smell of Candice’s cooking always wafting from the constantly stocked food area, kids playing and people hanging out. “We had a pool area. We had a medical station. We had a rad little library. Bands came and played. It was just incredible. It was a really beautiful experience.”
When EW asked King’s friends about their favorite memory with her, the resounding answer was “I can’t say.” Jenny Moore, a friend and “possum mom” who devotingly attended the Almaden occupation added, “I can tell you it was fucking fun, and I’ll never forget it.”
Brittiny Raine of CORE Eugene says of her, “That was Candice — unapologetically brilliant, vibrant, fierce and impossible to ignore. Her energy made you want to be around her.”
King loved oysters, death metal, Fiona Apple, mycology and making and giving art. Grady says, “Her house was full of handmade art, and they would often give their friends little gifts.” Many also considered her an emotional anchor. “If I was struggling, she would welcome me with open arms, into her house, into her kitchen… ‘Just come here. Come here and hang out with me. Come here and cry on my shoulder,’” Moore says. “Her capacity to care and to give care was unmatched.”
After the rent strike, King and her kids lived in Airbnbs and hotels, before living in the Janet Smith House for about a year. During the last three weeks of her life, King stayed with a friend in a house that she helped place them in during her work at Homes For Good. King’s official cause of death has not been released.
King spent her life bringing people together, regardless of who they were or what they believed. “We’re all a little problematic,” Grady says was one of King’s signature catchphrases.
“She was really into loving people for Being,” Grady says. “Even when they’re complicated or messy. She loves people for their whole selves.”
A public memorial service will be held noon Feb. 22 at The Lavender Network, 440 Maxwell Road in Eugene. Friends and family ask that attendees wear red to honor her memory.
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RIP Candice Yemaya
From listening to the noise until it makes sense
January 20, 2025
Hello, reader. How are you doing? Local activist Candice Yemaya has passed over to the other side. I was crying yesterday when I found out, shocked. Rest in peace as we continue your vital community organizing work.
I first met Candice in my backyard when Ming and I lived at Walnut Street Co-op. There was a monthly community dinner potluck; we spoke briefly. She was fat and Black, and you know I love having other fat people and People of Color around. I learned later that she was also Japanese and other ethnicities.
Candice had brought her family with her, including children. The kids were running around being kids. I was happy with how much life had suddenly arrived. The normally-serious space was filled with motion and sound.
“Wow, some real people are here,” I thought. At the time, Walnut Street was almost all white people. Ming is Asian, and my mom was Mexican-American so I’m half. Otherwise, everyone there at the time was white. Probably I’m not supposed to mention it, but sometimes I feel like white people are ghosts. More about that later.
As a contribution to the potluck, Candice brought ice cream and ice cream cones. I can’t eat those foods, but I’m glad other people can. A few leftover ice cream cones were in our community’s shared north kitchen for a month or longer, afterward. Every time I saw them, I would think of that happy evening.
rent strike
Candice was being evicted from her home, and there was injustice the way landlord-tenant situations tend to have injustice. Property is theft! Rent is theft. All we want is total freedom. Whose streets? Our streets.
So a site of resistance sprung up. People moved there to camp in the yard. There was a fence, gate, and an outdoor kitchen–there was a first aid medical supplies area, and a bookshelf library of books and zines. There were art supplies and signs that people made, multiple seating areas, lights. At times there was a party atmosphere of joy.
In fact my friend’s birthday party was held there, and bands played amazing, loud music. Ming and I danced under a huge tree.
There was “the stoop” which had someone guarding 24-7. The idea was that one day the site would probably be raided. Eventually that did happen, and the resistance there is no longer. But the dream is still dreamt.
sacred love
The community that sprung up around the eviction resistance was sacred. It was sacred because it came from the people and was formed out of love. It wasn’t top down from a nonprofit–it came from our hearts.
Ming and I visited frequently to deliver flowers. We felt happy to contribute.
I would pick lilacs, wild carrot, lemon balm, mint, lavender, calendula, and sunflowers at Walnut St to bring in DIY vases like a pasta sauce jar I pulled out of the recycling bin. Always I would include rosemary for protection.
the revolution should be beautiful
The flowers were prayers. The revolution should be beautiful. Resistance can be serious but should also be happy. We all deserve pleasure.
The flowers Ming and I brought were our biggest contribution. I rarely saw Candice, but I hoped having cheerful plant beauty around enriched her life.
Other people brought flowers too. When we visited, I would sometimes grab a jar of faded, falling apart flowers I’d left the week before so I could reuse the vase.
Sometimes the person personing the stoop would recognize me and Ming, and sometimes they would not. But always the flowers we brought were accepted. We also contributed zines, medical supplies, and foods.
aftercare
Next door was an intentional community, and I spent time there outdoors, visiting a friend or writing. Also I was part of an aftercare team set up to support the resistance. The idea was that we could offer aftercare in the days following a raid or other painful interactions with authority.
I had an aftercare menu on a clipboard and would take a shift, letting the stoop person know I was available in my spot. But mostly nobody knew who I was. I’m an autistic outlier introvert, and who wants aftercare or any kind of emotional care from a stranger?
One day I felt a prayer stir inside me. So I whispered my prayer in the beautiful outdoor kitchen, then wrote a version on a postcard and gave it to the loyal anarchist at the stoop. I had no idea that a few days later the kingdom would be raided and destroyed.
Candice Yemaya
I knew Candice for only a short time, and mostly just this one piece of her life’s work. There was so much more to her that I will never know. A person is a miracle.
I loved Candice Yemaya and was very interested. I thought there would be years and many chances for our work to intersect. What if we had made the queer fat disabled dance studio together? As her friend on social media I learned of her health struggles and a little about her past. I saw beautiful pictures of her and her family.
Now she’s transitioned to the other side, an ancestor to worship. She was younger than me. My life is a gift from God–that I still have my life is an honor I won’t take for granted.
How can we resist oppression and build the people up? How can I use my lifeforce and remaining years for the power of love? I renew my vow to nourish the revolution with pleasure and beauty. We need songs and sunflowers if not roses.
alive
I wasn’t close to Candice, but she was more vivid to me than most. It’s weird how the liveliest people I’ve known are the people who have died: my mom, my friend in high school who committed suicide, my caring, feisty therapist Tracye Ditmore.
Not all white people are repressed like ghosts. I spent most of my life quiet and at times silent. For ten years I wrestled with the Audre Lorde quote, “Your silence will not protect you,” until I decided yes, she’s right.
I keep a symbol on my altar of the community of resistance that formed around Candice because I wish there were many eviction defense sites in every neighborhood that I could support. My prayer is that the people continue to rise up.
Let’s all continue to speak the truth. I will honor Candice on Mother’s Day, and renew my commitments.
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From Neighborhood Anarchist Collective
January 22, 2025
Candice King was a visionary and a community-builder who spoke truth to power with a huge grin and a loud laugh. She brought people together across experiences and perspectives, helping all of us feel safer and more understood.
Candice tragically passed away on January 18, 2025. Right now the fundraising focus is on memorial costs and supporting the 4 King children through this transition.
Please share far and wide!
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