Month: August 2022

Which Local Republicans will join him on stage?

The announcement and analysis copied below was sent by email from Jerusha Hampson with encouragement to “pass this on”. I’ve read the Rolling Stone article M. Hampson referenced and visited the Facebook Pageadvertising this coming Sunday’s (August 21) “free” concert at 6PM in the Spokane Pavilion. It all checks out. Apparently, Sean Feucht is sufficiently well known among the Evangelical/Fundamentalist/Christian Nationalist far right to score his own wikipedia page. Who is footing the bill for this concert? A national political operative of a similar Evangelical stripe, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, was brought to Spokane by the Spokane GOP as the featured speaker at their Lincoln Dinner in 2019 (the following year Kirk appeared at the Candlelight Christian Fellowship in CDA). Some one or some organization must be covering the cost of staging the concert.

Rolling Stone shows Sen. Josh Hawley on stage with Feucht on October 25, 2020, in Washington, D.C. In Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano, far right Republican candidate for PA governor, appeared on stage in May 2022 with Feucht in the run up to the primary election in PA. Inquiring minds want to know which local candidate(s) in Spokane County will seek the “blessing” of appearing with Feucht and thereby declare their allegiance to Feucht’s toxic brand of political Christianity. Regardless of whether you can attend to find out and record a video, I think it is worthwhile to take note of the tendrils of national extremism drawn to our region. Read up.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry 

Christian National/ Worship Leader/Far-Right Activist, Sean Feucht, is Holding a Concert at the Spokane Pavilion on Aug. 21st

Sean Feucht is a Christian singer/songwriter/former worship leader at Bethel Church in Redding, CA. Two years ago, in the summer of 2020, he began holding “worship protests,” in defiance of California’s restrictions on large gatherings due to covid-19. Because the restrictions included church-related gatherings, he claimed it was Christian persecution. These worship events became the “Let Us Worship” movement, and Sean has spent the last two years traveling to dozens of cities around the US holding these worship concerts. His concerts can draw thousands of people. He repeatedly broke covid restrictions and has also had some issues with getting event permits. For example, he was banned from holding a concert at Seattle’s Gas Works park in Sep. 2020, so instead he set up in a nearby street and called it a “protest.” Despite still being able to hold an event, he claimed it was persecution. Covid restrictions are mostly lifted now, but he is still holding these concerts to push the right-wing movement he’s built. 

During 2020, he specifically made a point of going to cities with a lot of Black Lives Matter protests- basically saying those cities were broken and needed God. In June 2020, he held a concert in Minneapolis at the spot where George Floyd was murdered. He’s called to BLM movement a “fraud,” and has been very antagonistic toward the movement in general. In Dec 2020 he held a couple “outreach” events at Skid Row where he and dozens of followers went mask-less into Skid Row (during a time when covid-19 cases and transmission rates were high) and evangelized to the homeless population, praying over them, and even laying hands on them. He did however, face a lot of resistance from activist who came out to try and protect the homeless population. At one event in Portland, OR, he invited people to come out and provide event security, and at least one of guys who showed up was a Proud Boy.

He’s a Christian Nationalist and very politically active. He has also started a movement called “Hold the Line,” which is aimed at getting younger Christians involved in politics. As you can probably guess, he is extremely anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ.  He’s held events in DC at the National Mall and in front of the Supreme Court.  Sean is a huge Trump supporter and was one of many pastors and worship leaders who visited Trump in the Oval Office to support him during his 2019 impeachment. He is frequently at events with far-right politicians/activists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Josh Hawley, and countless others. 

Anyway, he is holding a free worship concert at the Spokane Pavilion on August 21st at 6pm. There is nothing inherently wrong with a worship concert, but Sean Feucht holds particularly dangerous views, and his concerts are about much more than music. Plus his events often bring in large numbers of people. Maybe it’s not important in the grand scheme of things, but I think it’s just good to know about events like this that are happening in your community. Sean and many of the people who follow him are also the type who will do things like evangelize to strangers and pray over ill or disabled people- and these events have clearly caused trouble in the past. He has traveled recklessly around the country for the past two years, breaking state/local regulations, and facing almost no consequences for his actions. He does get protestors at some events, but like many other Christians of this brand, he has a persecution complex, so anyone or anything that tries to stop him is evidence that Christians are being oppressed. And it’s also evidence that his movement is in the right.

If you want to know more about this guy, there are dozens and dozens of articles about him- just google his name. I’ll include a link to a recent Rolling Stone article about how he has suddenly been raking in millions of dollars, but it also has a lot of other information about what he’s been up to.  https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/maga-preacher-sean-feucht-scored-millions-from-his-trump-loving-flock-1380126/  (if this link doesn’t work, just google “sean feucht rolling stone”)

Here is the link to the Facebook page for the event if you want to know more: (20+) Let Us Worship – Spokane | Facebook

Also, the church he was formally a worship leader at, Bethel, is another fascinating rabbit hole to go down and might also give you a lot of insight as to why Sean is who he is. Bethel is a large, non-denominational, charismatic church that emphasis faith healing, and has caused all sort of problems for the city of Redding. There is a lot of good media about it, too.

Anyway I just have a particular fascination with extremism and fundamentalism. I know too much about this guy and I am bad at making things short. Sorry for any errors as I am a horrible proof reader. But thanks for reading.

Al French as Climate Denier

Spokane County County Commissioner Al French is, arguably, the most powerful elected official in Spokane County (and among the best paid). He retains his power by mostly keeping a low profile, working behind the scenes while leaving only a few fingerprints in public controversies (like the firing of the County Health Officer, Dr. Bob Lutz, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic). Mr. French, an architect and developer, is an astute politician. He mostly stays out of the public eye while he exerts influence, “currently sit[ting] on 40 boards, commissions, councils from the local to regional and state levels” (quote taken from a 2022 Spokesman article whose link has since gone stale). 

When Commissioner French does pop up in the news we should pay attention. So it was with the front page article in the Sunday Spokesman on August 7, “Heat pumps: Coming to a home near you? Washington building code proposal prompts debate as Inflation Reduction Act could spur their use”. Mention of French’s opposition to government nudging the building industry toward heat pumps was easy to miss, appearing half way through a very long article. 

First, let’s get one thing straight. As a matter of pure physics a heat pump as a way of heating (or cooling) indoor space is wildly efficient. As a baseline, consider that baseboard electric heating is 100% efficient, that is, every packet of electrical energy delivered to the baseboard is converted to heat in the room it is meant to heat. A modern heat pump, by contrast, delivers between two to five times the heat energy in the home for every unit of electrical energy that powers it. That’s an “efficiency” of between 200 and 500 percent. By contrast, any other form of energy, natural gas, oil, propane, or wood, (once it is delivered to your home) will produce less heat in the home than the energy contained in the fuel delivered. For example, natural gas, even when burned in the most expensive and highest efficiency boilers and furnaces, still has to lose heat as exhaust from combustion, yielding a maximum efficiency of less than 100 percent, i.e. less energy as heat is delivered to the space than the energy contained in the fuel.

But wait! Doesn’t a named “efficiency” of two to four hundred percent for a heat pump violate the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that within a closed system energy is neither created or destroyed? Here’s the trick: the “closed system” of a heat pump includes the outdoor source of heat content (the air or the ground). The electricity used by a heat pump is not directly “burned” for its energy value. Instead the pump extracts already existing heat (or cold) from the air or ground and moves it into the room. (A refrigerator is a “heat pump” that works only in one direction, extracting heat from the inside of the refrigerator and moving that heat up-gradient into the kitchen.) The instantaneous efficiency of a heat pump depends on the temperature gradient between the source and the destination.

Consider this doubling to quintupling of the input electricity’s heating (or cooling) energy value that a heat pump offers. As an oversimplified thought experiment consider that if one could snap one’s fingers and instantly supply all the world’s heating and cooling needs with heat pump technology the world would use 50-80% less total energy to satisfy those heating and cooling needs than we currently satisfy mostly by burning fossil fuels that significantly contribute to global warming. 

Eventual conversion to heat pump technology would produce such a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that objections can only be aimed at the details of making the conversion, not at the desirability of the result. (Unless one is a closet climate denier who believes that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is completely unnecessary.) Here is the entirety of French’s arguments as put forward in the Spokesman article:

Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves on the State Building Codes Council and has pushed against the electric requirements, noted such a change also would require increasing the electrical capacity at a home or multifamily building. The additional costs would be passed on to renters, he said, and leave them without a source of heat should the power fail in the winter.

The requirement would most directly hit low-income renters and people of color, French argued, increasing their costs of living.

French said the effort to change the building code to require electricity circumvented the Legislature, which refused to forward to a vote a bill this session that would have prohibited expansion of new natural gas services in the state.

“The governor is trying to go around that,” French said.

French’s argument is relies on two longstanding (and very tired) Republican shibboleths: 

1. “It will cost money and hurt the poor.” By this argument everything that has any cost will eventually “hurt the poor”. Using the magic of Republican economic thinking, anything with a cost to producers is posed as a passthrough to consumers. (This is the flip-side of “trickle down” economics. Any expense to business is posed as a passthrough.) French conveniently avoids considering the burdens imposed on the poor by climate change. 
2. Freedom from regulation. Any governmental regulatory meddling with the free market prerogatives of builders and developers is inherently bad simply because regulation is bad. French ignores the fact that free markets, especially today’s free markets, are wildly myopic, focusing on shareholder value in the near term, not the expensive and painful consequences of global warming. Would we have reduced our electrical consumption by switching to LEDs from inefficient incandescents without a regulatory nudge? 

Mr. French is at least consistent. He has worked behind the scenes, backed up by realtors and developers, against all efforts to encourage conversion to heat pump technology since the topic first came up in the City of Spokane. (His efforts are detailed in the last half of the post Al French and the Levers of Government.)

Mr. French reveals his stand on global warming in his responses to the WeBelieveWeVote Survey. He marks maximal agreement with a statement that reads in part:

Ironically, pioneers in green industry technology favor increased oil and gas production because: a) green energy development requires fossil fuels; and, b) the transition to clean energy will take longer than predicted.

That is pure doublethink nonsense. Further development of fossil fuels means that conversion to clean energy will take longer. 

Mr. French is too much of a cagey politician, as are the WeBelieveWeVote people, to come right out and declare that they think we ought to ignore the issue of global warming—but they doesn’t need to. We are in a hole—and Mr. French wants us to keep digging. He sees no problem. 

Maggie Yates is running against Al French for a seat on the Spokane County Commission representing County Commissioner District 5. It is past time for Mr. French to move on. French’s Republican primary opponent, Don Harmon, former Mayor of Airway Heights, agrees. Soon after the primary Mr. Harmon publicly endorsed Ms. Yates. Predictably, French pulls out a wordier but just as flimsy version of Trump’s “RINO!” in response:

“Mr Harmon’s endorsement of my far left liberal opponent clearly demonstrates that he is not a Republican and misled the voters in the primary,” French wrote.

Send French packing in November. We need him to stop digging this hole.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Housing First vs. Housing Fourth

If we plan to tackle the problem of homelessness, a growing issue both locally and nationally, the first task is to acknowledge the complexity of the problem, the varied reasons that people find themselves homeless, and, therefore, the varied paths to regain a place in society. 

Once a person in modern society is rendered homeless the barriers to re-entry are far greater than are usually appreciated by the housed population. Once left without four walls and a lockable door pretty much everything housed people take for granted becomes a challenge. What contact address to give as a place for people or agencies trying to help? Cell phone? Where do you charge it? Still holding down a job? Where do you bathe, clean and store your clothes? How do you keep your few belongings from being rifled through or stolen while you’re working or gone to the public library for the air conditioning or seeking assistance? Prepared food is expensive, but without access to means to cook and preserve food… Where are toilet facilities available? Will the police come by while I’m away and throw my belongings in a dumpster?

The ”Housing First” model offers substantive relief from all these challenges by providing basic living quarters first of all. Basic housing provides a foundation (and an address) from which to work with a client’s other issues, which might include drug use and/or mental health. “Housing First” was developed and supported by social research over the last thirty years: first provide a basic, safe place to be, then work on the other issues. (Click Housing First for more.)

When a “Fall Symposium” to discuss the issue of homelessness in Spokane is announced by Hello for Good, a coalition of local business people, one might reasonably expect that “Housing First” would be discussed as a major part of the solution.

The introduction to the Symposium to be held Thursday, September 1, at 8AM at the upscale Davenport Grand Hotel certainly sounds promising—even collaborative:

Please join us on September 1st for an educational discussion on homelessness and its effects on our region. Engage with “renowned experts” [the quotation marks are mine] on this complicated topic to understand solutions, challenges, and data-driven decisions.

This event is hosted by Hello for Good, a coalition of private businesses committed to helping Spokane community members connect to important resources and take advantage of opportunities that will help them thrive. Through a collaborative effort with business owners, leaders, and community members, we strive to create full-spectrum solutions that address addiction recovery, housing, education, job training, and employment to create real and lasting change.

The collaboration and balance implied by that introduction is belied by the featured speaker, Dr. Robert Marbut. Dr. Marbut is the chief spokesperson and proponent of a homelessness solution ideology which he characterizes as “Housing Fourth”, a characterization by which he underlines the stark contrast between his approach and “Housing First”. 

Chris Patterson is one of the co-chairs of Hello for Good and, presumably, one of the organizers of the September 1 Symposium. In an article in the Spokesman last May, Mr. Patterson was hired by Hello For Good after serving as a regional administrator in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration. 

Contemporaneous with Mr. Patterson, Dr. Marbut, the featured speaker, “served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness…after being appointed by then-President Donald Trump.” (Dr. Marbut left that position less than a month after Trump left office.) It seems entirely fair to imagine that Mr. Patterson was aware of Dr. Marbut through his position in the Trump administration and fully aware of Dr. Marbut’s ideology concerning homelessness. 

Dr. Marbut’s position is articulated in his wikipedia article [a link worth reading in full for perspective on Dr. Marbut’s ideology]:

“I believe in Housing Fourth” — awarding permanent housing after residents have shown their personal lives are in order. “I often say, ‘Having a home is not the problem for the homeless,'” Marbut told the magazine Next City. “It’s maintaining a financial stability that allows you to maintain your homestead.”

As with many polarizing Trump appointees to government agencies, it appears that Dr. Marbut was chosen for precisely because his ideology was at odds with agency he was supposed to direct. Here’s how The National Low Income Housing Coalition characterizes Dr. Marbut’s tenure:

Robert Marbut left his position as executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) on February 16 [2021]. Mr. Marbut’s tenure at USICH was defined by his rejection of evidence-based best practices and endorsement of dehumanizing and ineffective methods for addressing homelessness.

Mr. Marbut rejected “Housing First,” a proven strategy that prioritizes finding safe, stable, accessible housing for people experiencing homelessness before addressing other problems, like substance abuse or untreated mental health issues. The efficacy of the Housing First model is supported by two decades of research and has been identified by USICH as a best practice for ending homelessness.

One of the other two speakers at Hello For Good’s September 1 Symposium is Paul Webster, a blustery fellow representing an entity he founded called the “Hope Street Coalition”. I urge you to visit the website and see for yourself. Look for substance amid the glitz and the general statements. There is no record of any program the organization actually runs or has brought to completion. The primary purpose of the website is for Mr. Webster to showcase (as “News and Media”) his opinion pieces. The title of one of his articles reveals his partisan stance: “Homelessness: Biden’s Plan to Combat It Is Recycled and Feeble.” Tucked away with one of the articles is a note that Mr. Webster served “most recently as Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD is a large department, but it is hard not to wonder if Mr. Patterson became acquainted with Mr. Webster and his ideology in that setting.

A third speaker, Jon Ponder, is the founder of “Hope for Prisoners”, a faith-based organization based in Las Vegas whose mission is to aid prisoners in re-entering society. Pastor Paula White recently joined the board of Hope for Prisoners. Her prosperity-gospel, televangelist ministry is based in Florida. She controversially served as chair of the “evangelical advisory board” in the Trump administration.

We would all like to solve the homelessness crisis that plagues not just Spokane, but communities with high housing costs (the factor most correlated with homelessness) throughout the nation. We also can acknowledge that for some homeless people taking advantage of a “Housing Fourth” style offering (like the Union Gospel Mission) is the best way forward. That said, this Hello For Good Symposium exclusively offers a forum to only contrary “experts” representative of a minority ideology of homelessness is a poor excuse for a gathering meant to help attendees “understand solutions, challenges, and data-driven decisions”. It would be a difficult to assemble a more partisan Republican speaker panel than the speakers Hello For Good is offering. This is not collaboration. It does, however, shine some light on Mayor Woodward’s comment that homelessness needs to be made “less comfortable”. 

Some who attend the Hello For Good Symposium will have their biases confirmed. Some, having little acquaintance with the issue, will accept the Symposium as the distillation of expert opinion on homelessness. Meanwhile, as the attendees listen to Dr. Marbut, Mr. Webster, and Mr. Ponder in air-conditioned comfort, people who actually serve on the ground with the homeless, like Julie Garcia of Jewels Helping Hands and Maurice Smith of Rising River Media and a host of others, will be out actually doing the work. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. If you are unfamiliar with the movement and documentation of “Housing First” I urge you to click that link and become acquainted. Too often we (myself included) are lulled into thinking that groups like Hello For Good must know what’s best—and we stand aside in a position of ignorance as they roll over better evidence. It is time for that to stop.

P.P.S. I can’t get Chris Patterson’s comment about Hello For Good, “We’re not focused on supporting the mayor or the City Council. We don’t work for them, they work for us” out of my head. Hmmm. I thought, perhaps naively, that the Mayor and the City Council were supposed to answer to the voters who elected them, not just a monied, ideologically driven group of local business people.

Save Your Questions–and Your Time

One of my readers who still receives notifications from McMorris Rodgers’ targeted email system received this today. Write down your questions in case “our” Representative offers another “Conversation.”

Dear ______,

On August 3, 2022, Congresswoman Jackie Walorski was tragically killed in a car accident while serving the people of Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District. 

In order to attend her funeral, I am postponing the town hall originally scheduled for tomorrow evening in Spokane. My team and I are already working to secure a new date for this in-person event, and I will follow upin the coming days once more information about the rescheduled event is finalized. 

In the meantime, please do not hesitate to reach out to my office with any questions or concerns you may have.

Sincerely,

Cathy

Cathy McMorris Rodgers | 1035 Longworth HOB, Washington, DC 20515Unsubscribe sunbunny737@gmail.comUpdate Profile | Constant Contact Data NoticeSent by mcmorris@mail8.housecommunications.gov

Wednesday at the Convention Center 5-6PM

A short article in the Sunday Spokesman in the Northwest Section noted that McMorris Rodgers will hold a town hall in Spokane on Wednesday. With some diligence it is possible to locate the advertisement for McMorris Rodgers’ town hall on her congressional website under the “Events” tab:

I am signed up to receive notifications of “Events” at least two different email addresses, but I have received nothing from “my” Representative to the U.S. House of Representatives for months. One might wonder if she were purposefully advertising her rare in-the-City-of-Spokane “Conversation with Cathy” only to known supporters rather than broadly to all those she is supposed to represent. 

The statement “Space is limited” comes with every CMR town hall announcement. It is hard to imagine that the Centennial Ballroom at the Spokane Convention Center would fail to contain those wishing to attend. 

There ought to be plenty for her to try and explain, including recent votes against codifying the right to use contraception, the right to marriage equality, and against a right for a woman to cross state lines for medical treatment. The bill numbers (and therefore access to the texts at Congress.gov) can be found, along with commentary, at Contraception and “Our” Representative. 

I will be unable to attend—and would be unlikely to be called upon if I did. I hope others will are able to go, prepare good questions, and post a video of the interaction. McMorris Rodgers has much to answer for. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Don’t Let Punditry Influence Whether You Vote

Most of my life I have read the pundits and the electoral projections—and most of my life (up until 2016) the predictions they’ve offered were often pretty close to the mark. How often do electoral predictions influence the result by lulling voters into the idea that the result is foreordained and participation both ineffectual and unnecessary? In some countries (Australia and Peru, for example) citizens are legally required to vote. In the U.S. elections are determined by the votes not cast as much as they are by the votes cast. How many eligible voters either don’t bother to even register to vote—and how many don’t bother to vote once registered—because predictions of the result are perceived to be accurate, and, since that’s true, why bother? 

Colin Tiernan’s article title in the Spokesman on Thursday, “Tuesday’s primary election was historic for the Spokane County Commission. But the way the votes fell wasn’t surprising” hints at an already determined result. The thesis presented is that the five new County Commissioner District primary results were determined by the way the districts were drawn last year based on historical voting patterns. Ho-hum, the results of the top-two primary contests were predictable—and, by implication, the result of the November 8th General Election is also predictable. How many potential voters will glance at that headline and internalize the idea that their vote in November won’t really matter?

Mr. Tiernan notes that in District 5, southwest Spokane County, that Maggie Yates won 46% of the vote while Al French and Don Harmon “managed a combined 51%” as if to imply that all of Mr. Harmon’s votes will be directly transferable to Mr. French in November. Not only is that not necessarily the case, but, later on Thursday, Mr. Harmon, a Republican and former Mayor of Airway Heights, endorsed Maggie Yates, saying, “I’ve been impressed by Maggie’s campaign and feel she is the fresh voice the county needs to move forward toward bipartisan solutions”. He added, “Al French needs to move on.” French received 40% of the vote, Harmon nearly 12%, and Ms. Yates’ 46%. Perhaps the November is not predetermined after all. 

It is also worth noting that missing from Tiernan’s formulation is the inherent uncertainty of voter participation in the coming November General Election. Ballot turn-in in primary elections is notoriously low—and any number of events, campaign efforts, and bits of news, local and national, will influence who will bother to vote in November. 

The recent landslide vote in Kansas to retain a state constitutional right of a woman to make her own medical choices regarding abortion should remind us that pundits’ predictions are just another form of hot air. That’s Kansas of all places, where the pundits imagined that the Evangelical vote would dominate. Something is in the air…

I am sick and tired of seeing talking heads nod in agreement over how their tea leaves predict that Democrats will lose control of the U.S. Congress in this fall’s election. As a welcome antidote I recommend another Substack writer, Robert Hubbell, whose work (along with that of Heather Cox Richardson) I read every morning. Hubbell’s “Today’s Edition Newsletter”, like HCR’s Letters From an American, offers national news with a grain of optimism. Hubbell’s August 4 piece, “Unconventional Wisdom”, was this inspiration for today’s post. Click that link. Read. Sign up for Hubbell’s emails. Contribute. And…

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The WSDOT Backfire

Facing a triple digit heatwave while more than 600 people living in tents, cars, and RVs on a block at Second and Ray that is owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation, Jewels Helping Hands (under the leadership and commitment of Julie Garcia) teamed up with funding from the Empire Health Foundation and donations of time and materials from private citizens. The team acquired, erected, and staffed a cooling tent with misters and fans to bring some relief from the heat for the homeless people who were facing temperatures in the 120s inside some of their shelters on this mostly treeless, shadeless block. 

To its credit, the City of Spokane’s Woodward administration had extended air conditioned library hours to serve as cooling centers for citizens struggling with the extreme heat. 

Even so, the need for the on site cooling tent for the residents of Camp Hope is clear. For many residents leaving their few remaining belongings untended at Camp Hope (or anywhere) to seek air conditioning at a library would be a daunting idea. The choice would be to tough-out the heat on site or venture out and risk losing one’s few remaining possessions. Furthermore, try to imagine the scene if even half the 600 residents of Camp Hope appeared at the nearest library and joined all the other overheated local citizens seeking refuge there from their overheated homes and apartments. Finally, although a half mile to public transit or a mile a library may seem inconsequential to many, imagine negotiating that distance in 90 degree heat with a mobility issue and generally poor health.

Led by Julie Garcia, the private coalition moved ahead—and was clearly mindful of concerns:

On that same Thursday, July 28, in the middle of our triple digit heatwave, a headline in the Spokesman read “City of Spokane puts WSDOT on notice over cooling tent at Camp Hope homeless encampment”. Greg Mason writes:

In a letter dated Wednesday [July 27] to WSDOT…Spokane Fire Department Fire Marshal Lance Dahl identified the cooling tent as an “illegally constructed temporary structure” and requested its removal.

Failure to remove the tent by 9 a.m. Monday could result in a civil infraction of $536 for every day the structure remains in place after the deadline, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Spokesman-Review.

You can surely bet that Fire Marshall Lance Dahl doesn’t send a threat like that to WSDOT without approval, and probably not without someone spurring him from the highest levels of City government—but, to read Greg Mason’s article in the Spokesman, you would think that Mr. Dahl was, on his own, engaging in a pissing match with WSDOT.

Here’s where I want to put in a plug for Carl Segerstrom and the team at local RANGE Media, an local online news start-up centered in Spokane and focusing on the region. Their work is well worth your financial support. In contrast to the Spokesman, Segerstrom and Baumgarten obtained emails from the City on June 28th that flesh out what was happening behind the scenes. Their article is entitled “Spokane mayor’s office has plans to dismantle cooling shelter at Camp Hope.” It is well worth the read as is Segerstrom’s entire six part series on Camp Hope and the heatwave. 

A government, like a corporation, as an entity, has “no ass to kick or soul to damn”. Reporting that says “the City of Spokane did ‘X’” means that the reporter doesn’t know exactly with whom a policy originated. Governments are composed of individual workers guided by people we elect. The votes that elect these people depend on our having a window on what they are up to.

According to RANGE, Breean Beggs, City Council President and an accomplished legal mind who likes to have the “i”s dotted and “t”s crossed, emailed the Council on Wednesday night (July 27) “giving councilmembers an update on a conversation Beggs had with Fire Chief Shaeffer about the steps needed to make the cooling tent legal, permitted and permissible.” Councilman Cathcart, true to form, apparently saw an opportunity to make the homelessness of the residents of Camp Hope “less comfortable” (to quote Mayor Woodward) by using WSDOT to take the fall for dismantling Camp Hope’s privately funded and managed cooling tent:

Councilmember Michael Cathcart early Thursday morning [July28th] to Smithson and City Administrator Johnnie Perkins asking them to address “legal questions and precedence concerns” Cathcart had surrounding permitting the Camp Hope cooling shelter.

Before noon the same day [July 28] Interim City Attorney Lynden P. Smithson sent an email that:

…details a plan to tell the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) that the temporary cooling shelter is an illegal building and demand the agency remove it from their property by Monday, Aug. 1.

It is hard to imagine that Smithson acted with Mayor Woodward’s approval of the plan. What better way to make the homeless “less comfortable” and encourage them (unrealistically) to pick up and move during the day to the air-conditioned libraries her administration apparently thought an adequate response to the heatwave. Helping to break up Camp Hope by spurring WSDOT to do the dirty work must have seemed a dandy plan.

But WSDOT would not play along. The next day, in a joint statement with its parent department, the Washington State Department of Commerce, responded (the bold is mine):

Ultimately, the safety and well-being of people is our paramount concern,” the statement read. “In response to the city administration’s notice of violation, the state will not take action during this extreme weather to remove the cooling center.

Remember this episode when you vote next year. Keep informed. Read the articles on RANGE Media’s webpage about Camp Hope for a much clearer idea than the Spokesman provides of what’s going on there. A picture emerges of humans struggling to survive a heatwave as Cathcart and the Woodward administration try to make their already miserable lives even worse. 

The good news is that the City Council voted unanimously last Monday (August 1) to provide monetary support for the cooling tent at Camp Hopeand to pursue resolving the permitting issues later this week. Even “Council members Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle voted in favor of the legislation after pitching a different proposal for spending the American Rescue Plan funding that did not receive enough council support to move forward.” Apparently, even Republicans are sensitive to the strikingly negative optics of kicking people when they’re already down.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Last week Mayor of the City of Spokane Nadine Woodward announced her candidacy for a second term as Mayor not for this year’s election, but for the 2023 election. Odd timing. The only obvious advantage of declaring candidacy is the legal ability to accept campaign contributions. Leaping in right before a whole different set of elections potentially interferes with this election’s Republican candidates’ ability to fundraise. Her announcement cited “great momentum”. Among the “accomplishments” she touted were her support for hiring more police (note: support, not success), her success at getting the downtown police station moved (to what advantage I was never sure), and the impending opening the East Trent shelter in a building leased from Larry Stone, an opening now postponed from August 1 to mid September—maybe. This is “great momentum”??

P.P.S. There is additional irony to Woodward, Cathcart, and Smithson’s joint effort to make the residents of Camp Hope “less comfortable” during the heatwave. WeBelieveWeVote.com is a local organization that attempts to weld Republican political ideology with a right wing interpretation of what it means to be Christian. Arguably, WBWV helped elect Woodward and Cathcart. (Sadly, the internet WayBack Machine did not preserve Woodward and Cathcart’s WBWV Survey responses from 2019 and 2021, so the linkage is not airtight, as WBWV doesn’t offer an archives.) Nonetheless, question 12 of the current WBWV Survey asks for agreement with this statement:

Providing a safety net for the poor and needy is the responsibility of individuals, families, churches, and local communities. It is not the responsibility of the government, which primarily exists to protect citizens from foreign and domestic threats. 

Cathcart (wisely, I suspect) refused to take part in the Survey this year in his campaign for a County Commissioner seat. That said, this Republican attitude toward the responsibilities of government vs. churches and the remainder of the private sector is commonly preached in Republican circles. In spite of that, this recent Woodward administration legalistic strategy is directed against the private sector efforts to “take care of the poor and needy” at Camp Hope. What’s wrong with this picture?