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Dear Group, This evening, May 20, a distinct group of local Republicans, “The Republicans of Spokane County,” (distinct from the larger and more extreme “Spokane County Republicans”) are meeting at 6:30PM at the Fairfield Inn on Argonne in Spokane Valley. I’ve reproduced the invitation, forwarded to me by a friend on their mailing list (the bold is mine): Sharia Law, Antifa, Left Wing Extremism…….all the things we hate and stand against. Yet, when far right activities occur in our own back yard……….crickets. Are we complicit? What can we do? Are these two sides of the same coin? Please join us at the Fairfield Inn on Argonne and Mission at 6:30, on May 20, 2019 for our May meeting featuring Senator John Smith. John’s unique history gives him insights to the story you may not have heard. We need to have a serious discussion as Republican voters on the direction we are heading in our region. Please like our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/RepublicansofSpokane/ and refer to our meeting post for more information! Beva L. Miles Chair Republicans of Spokane County It seems that at least a few Republicans have gotten the message about Rep. Matt Shea (State Rep from Legislative District 4, Spokane Valley and points north). Shea has been featured in national media, most recently in yet another article in The Guardian on May 9. (That article provides a fairly comprehensive summary of Shea’s wingnut activities, ongoing for at least a decade. It is worth reading if you haven’t.) The only Republican who has publicly called out Matt Shea and the lunatic wing of the Republican Party Shea represents is Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich. Others, particularly Washington State representatives from Legislative District 7 (NE Washington) specifically avoid the topic. McMorris Rodgers accepts Shea’s endorsement. (Is she fearful that if she were to come out against Shea she would lose her white supremacist and Redoubter support?) Who is “Senator” John Smith and what is his unique history that offers him insight? Mr. Smith was appointed to fill the State Senate position for LD7 (NE Washington) left open due to the terminal illness of Senator Bob Morton. (Morton was the man for whom McMorris Rodgers worked right out of Pensacola Christian College and the man on whose coattails McMorris Rodgers became a State Rep from LD7 when Morton became Senator.) John Smith was appointed to the State Senate January 4, 2013 by the vote of 13 of 15 County Commissioners (of the five counties all or part of which are in LD7, Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille, most of Okanogan, and the northern part of Spokane ). Less than a year later to December 6, 2013 Mr. Smith was defeated by Brian Dansel in a low turnout special election. (Dansel was replaced by Shelley Short in 2017 when Dansel took a position as a “special assistant” in the USDA). A the time of his appointment Mr. Smith was vice chairman of the Stevens County Republican Party. What happened, what is his “special insight” that shines light on “far right activities” in eastern Washington? After all, Mr. Smith never won an election and served less than a year in public office. For an eastern Washington Republican, Mr. Smith sounds like a pretty reasonable guy, at least in the Spokesman article about his appointment in 2013. His story might be worth hearing… Keep to the high ground, Jerry P.S. Do take note of the things “we hate and stand against…Sharia Law, Antifa, Left Wing Extremism” in the ad for this meeting. Why does this sound to me more like declaration of articles of faith than anything grounded in reality? Is anyone aware of any credible evidence of efforts to install Sharia law in eastern Washington? Activities of “Antifa”? I haven’t ever seen anything locally and very little nationally to suggest the workings of Antifa. These are boogeymen, straw men, whose only purpose is the inflame the followers. It is a sad commentary on the divisive tactics of the right. And what is “left wing extremism” exactly? P.P.S. The 2013 special election for Bob Morton’s LD7 Senate seat was one of those in which the apparent underdog (Brian Dansel) won. Dansel, age 30, was a Ferry County Commissioner with total of candidate contributions of $42,614.76 going against an (appointed) incumbent, John Smith, with $127,517.59 in contributions. Of those contributions Smith even had more in individual contributors and contributions than Dansel. Incumbency and a thrice over monetary advantage couldn’t cut it. What went on here? |
Local Campaign Finance Fiasco
Note: The inspiration and the basic facts for this email come from Daniel Walters‘ article “A mayoral candidate who already dropped has busted campaign donation limits wide open” which appeared in The Inlander May 13.
Dear Group,
Andrew Rathbun was running for Mayor of the City of Spokane. On April 24 he announced he’d changed his mind. He is not running for Mayor. Instead, he filed to run against incumbent Karen Stratton for Spokane City Council, District 3 (NW part of Spokane). All that is pretty unremarkable. Filing week for public office ends today. The political landscape shifts, odds change. Even though Mr. Rathbun has dropped out of the mayoral race, he has left a big mark. During February and March, when Mr. Rathbun was still planning to run for Mayor he contributed $29,010 to his campaign, a fairly princely sum for a personal contribution to a local election campaign. He accepted several $1000 contributions from supporters for either the Primary or the General, for a total of $2000 from some individuals for his mayoral candidacy. His new account for the City Council candidacy shows he contributed another $11,500 personally and is already accepting $2000 (Primary plus General Election) donations.
Here’s where is gets complicated. In late 2017 the Spokane City Council passed the Spokane Fair Elections Code. Its intent was to make donations to political campaigns more transparent and make it harder in our local community for large donors to overwhelm the campaign contributions of more modest contributors. Among the new regulations is a $500 cap on a contribution to either a Primary or a General election ($1000 for the two combined), The Washington State limits are twice that at $1000 for each election ($2000 for the whole cycle of Primary and General).
There was a problem, however. In 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that spending one’s own money on one’s own political campaign is part of a candidate’s right to free speech. If someone like Andrew Rathbun wants to jump into a race and self-fund his campaign, it is his Constitutional right to do so. Lacking any Constitutionally valid means of limiting such self-funding, the new Spokane Fair Elections Code says that if a candidate enters a race and contributes $11,500 or more to his/her own campaign, then the restrictions revert to the higher State of Washington limits for everyone in that race. The writers of the Spokane Fair Elections Code reasonably figured that in the event of a self-funding candidate the other candidates should at least be allowed to accept a nigher level of contribution (the Washington State legal limit).
Andrew Rathbun is no longer a mayoral candidate. He says he has wound down his personal money in his mayoral campaign account to below $11,500.
This makes Mr. Rathbun a bit of a spoiler. What to do when one candidate exceeds the personal contribution limit and drops out of the race, and no other candidate has similarly exceeded the personal contribution limit? Nadine Woodward knows exactly what to do: ask contributors for the full $2000 to cover both elections and declare that’s the way it ought to be. The limits were lifted by Mr. Rathbun, right? You can’t turn back the clock.
When Nadine Woodward filed with the Public Disclosure Commission on April 2 she opened with twenty-one thousand dollars in $1000/election donations. Currently, Ben Stuckart has 334 distinct contributions, Woodward has 200, and yet they have gathered equivalent funds at around $65,000.
Rathbun argues that the limits should revert back to $1,000 (Primary + General) now that he’s gone. “I am not aware of any requirement for me to report the above, but I believe this is the right course of action in the spirit of full disclosure, transparency and the Spokane Fair Elections Code.”
Woodward disagrees. No surprise there. She has the big money associated with the Spokane Republican Party behind her (even though all these municipal races are nominally non-partisan). The language of the Spokane Fair Elections Code and the City Attorney’s office agree with her.
In a system that affirms spending personal money on a campaign is part of “free speech,” writing campaign finance law without loopholes is tricky business. Ms. Woodward and the Republican machine that backs her wasted no time in finding and exploiting the opening. (Read the P.S. below for a fanciful conspiracy theory.)
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. If this story were played on the national stage the conspiracy theorists would be having a field day. Here’s how it would read: The local Republicans saw an opportunity to subvert the new Spokane Fair Elections Code. Mr. Rathbun was funneled money from the local wealthy Republicans supporting Woodward. (Alternatively, Mr. Rathbun is himself a wealthy committed Republican willing to legally spend $29,010 to support Woodward.) They set him up to briefly enter the mayoral race. Once he established a campaign account he contributed the money to his campaign precisely to trigger blowing up the contribution limit for Ms. Woodward. Then, carrying the extra name recognition with him, Mr. Rathbun shifted his focus to a City Council seat, contributed the precise amount necessary to blow up contribution limits for the City Council seat, too. Even better (from the standpoint of weaving a conspiracy theory), along the way Mr. Rathbun is coached to throw people off the scent by accusing Woodward of campaign finance irregularities (Mayoral candidate raises questions about opponent’s transparency.) and insisting, disingenuously, to the Inlander that, in the “spirit of full disclosure, transparency and the Spokane Fair Elections Code,” the limits should revert back once he dropped out of the mayoral race. Of course, he knew full well what he was doing the whole time. Alex Jones, step aside, spinning a conspiracy theory is easy!
All kidding aside, what IS Andy Rathbun thinking stepping into two local races with his fat fat bank account and blowing up the contribution limits? At the very least he is thumbing his nose at the intent of the Code. At worst, his plea for the limits to revert in the mayoral race after his departure suggests he is clueless about reading an ordinance. That alone ought to disqualify him for both the races in which he has meddled.
A Humane World
Dear Group,
On Saturday, May 4, around 5:30 PM a troubled young man lost his life in Spokane Valley. He was shot multiple times by a Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy near the homeless camp in the woods where the 25 year old had been living. The woods are near the Mirabeau Apartments east of N. Pines Rd. Ethan Murray was pursued into the woods to a rock outcrop near his encampment by the Sheriff’s Deputy who shot him based on a report of his acting “very high” near some children in the adjacent apartment complex. What exactly happened in those moments before Ethan died will never be known. Ethan can no longer speak for himself. Spokane County Sheriffs Deputies do not wear body cameras. Ethan was unarmed. Ethan was mentally ill. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2015. He had no history of violence, but the Deputy chasing him surely knew none of these things.
Had Ethan committed a crime for which he should die? Presumably, the proximate cause of Ethan’s being killed was his unwillingness or inability to understand and comply with the Deputy’s shouted commands, a Deputy chasing him in the woods toward his camp, his temporary home, a Deputy probably with pistol drawn, a Deputy certainly hyper-alert and infused with his own adrenaline. Was the chase and the adrenaline warranted? What was the crime? Acting high? It is tempting for some to imagine the Sheriff’s Deputy as simply trigger-happy, anxious to kill. To imagine that is to imagine a monster in a uniform. This man is no monster. That is too easy. This officer found himself standing there with a smoking gun because sheriff’s office procedure put him in a position to heatedly chase a young man who was merely acting strangely. Once in the chase, as part of our society bristling with guns, the officer likely feared for his life. It is likely that in the Deputy’s mind the shots that took Ethan’s life were fired in self defense.
I have sympathy for both people acting in this scene. The problem is a broken system, a system that utterly fails to support the mentally-ill, the drug addicted, the homeless, the folks on the margins of society, people many of us dismiss as “them”, those expendable people, those failures, failures on account of their imagined moral weakness. The problem is a system that ignores these people until a neighbor’s report of “acting high” causes a sheriff’s deputy to chase a young man into the woods and shoot him when, in the heat of moment, he fails to comply with a barked order.
I never met Ethan, but Ethan’s mother, Justine Murray, is a friend of Emily’s. Emily had Ethan in class in middle school. Emily’s daughter and Ethan’s sister are close friends. By all accounts Ethan was a courteous young man who loved the outdoors, He was diagnosed with schizophrenia four years ago, at the age when the disease commonly shows up. He was never violent, but, as mental illness and self medication intruded on his life, he wandered. For his family it was a challenge to keep track of him, to know he was safe. Justine worked tirelessly trying to help Ethan get the support he needed. She poured and pours herself into advocating for the mentally ill.
Last Sunday, Mothers’ Day, May 12, a week and a day after Ethan died in Spokane Valley, Emily and I attended a Celebration of Ethan’s Life. All in attendance were aware of Ethan’s struggles, his diagnosis of schizophrenia, his encounters with meth and the law, his lapses into unreality, his intermittent homelessness. People spoke of the heart-warming interaction a woman in one of the Mirabeau apartments had with Ethan a couple our hours before he died. (Read the Spokesman article.) How many others, the mentally ill, the down-and-out, the homeless, people of color, how many die under similar adrenaline soaked circumstances at the hand of law enforcement, die in circumstances that never should occur?
In a humane world there would have been resources available to respond to the neighbors’ calls about the homeless camp long before the sheriff’s office was called to respond to a young man behaving oddly. In a humane world Ethan would have had available consistent help in dealing with his schizophrenia and drug encounters. In a humane world law enforcement would not have to imagine that every person in every encounter is carrying a gun. In a humane world law enforcement would de-escalate the tension in encounters like this one. In a humane world Ethan would still be alive.
Long, long after Ethan’s death has dropped out of the news cycle and most readers and TV news watchers have moved on and forgotten, we will still be dealing with the consequences of not having funded and constructed that humane world, that world where fewer law enforcement officers find themselves unnecessarily chasing, threatening, and shooting people whose crime is mental illness, drug use, confusion, and incomprehension.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
Washington Policy Center
Dear Group,
I was aghast to find there are still people in the Spokane community who do not know of the Washington Policy Center, its funding, its political agenda, and its deep connections with Greater Spokane and the local (and national) Republican Party. That said, I was unaware of WPC until I came upon their table at the Ag Trade Show in Spokane in the fall of 2016. I learned that WPC functions arm-in-arm with McMorris Rodgers’ local machine when, as a physician, I was one of the subjects of what I called a “constituent biopsy” you can read about here.
Today “Spokane Solutions” is held at the Davenport Hotel. To mark that event I want to share with you a community letter I have signed along with around eighty organizations and a few other individuals. It appeared as a full page ad in the Sunday, May 12, Spokesman Review on page 10 of the main section:
The Washington Policy Center doesn’t represent Spokane.
Dear Friends,
As Spokane-area voters, workers, business people, civic leaders and faith leaders, we reject the divisive political agenda the Washington Policy Center is promoting in our community.
The Washington Policy Center has flown in controversial ex-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for a paid political event in Spokane. Walker is notorious for his attacks on public schools, the environment and workers’ rights – attacks that are out of sync with the values of Spokane-area residents.
The Washington Policy Center is attempting to spread that same divisive national agenda here in Spokane. We oppose their attempts to influence our community. The Washington Policy Center is not the independent “think tank” it claims to be, but a political operation that promotes the interests of the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. The Washington Policy Center is not fully open and transparent about its funding, but it is clear that it is bankrolled by out-of-state corporate interests, foundations and billionaires to promote a national political agenda that is harmful to Spokane families and our economy.
The Washington Policy Center’s outsider agenda includes:
•Privatizing public education by diverting local public school funding to private organizations
•Weakening environmental protections, sacrificing clean air and water
•Restricting workers’ right to advocate for fair pay and working conditions, making it harder to support our families
Simply put, the Washington Policy Center doesn’t represent Spokane.
As Spokane residents, we do not need or want out-of-state politicians, billionaires and groups like the Washington Policy Center telling us what’s best for our community or deciding which public policies we enact.
Unlike the groups funding the Washington Policy Center, we live here and we actually care about what happens here. Our vision for Spokane is a positive one – one in which all of us work together as a community to decide our future and that lifts up all of us.
We, the undersigned Spokane-area individuals and groups, are committed to working together to create a stronger, healthier, economically successful community for all of the residents of greater Spokane. We call on Greater Spokane, Inc., to join with us and not to co-sponsor divisive events such as the Washington Policy Center’s Solutions Summit.
Share widely.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. I’ve reproduced the signatures below.
Scott Walker, The Rest of the Story
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Dear Group, For weeks readers of the Spokesman have been intermittently subjected to this ad by the Washington Policy Center for “Gov.” Scott Walker’s appearance at tomorrow’s (May 14) all-day “Solutions Summit” at the Davenport Hotel. (Notice the verbal connection to Nadine Woodward’s motto “Spokane Solutions” in her supposedly non-partisan race for Spokane mayor this fall. This is surely no accident.) On the Washington Policy Center website, you’ll note the “Solutions Summit” is co-presented by Greater Spokane, Inc. From that o3zWPC website blurb on Mr. Walker: “On June 5, 2012, Scott Walker became the first Governor in American history to survive a recall election. He received both more votes and a higher percentage of the vote than in his 2010 election, proving again that Wisconsinites want leaders in office who keep their promises. His book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge, chronicles his experiences, impact, and lessons learned as Governor.” Let’s look a little deeper. Born in 1967, son of a Baptist minister, Scott Walker’s life is the story of man who has checked all the boxes for a modern day career as a Republican/Libertarian politician. In 1985, as a high school student, Walker attended Badger Boys State at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. That, and later meeting Ronald Reagan at Boys Nation, Walker cites as kindling his interest in politics. (I attended Badger Boys State in 1968 and came away with the opposite lesson.) Walker was deeply involved in student politics from day one at Marquette University in Milwaukee, but dropped out in his senior year. His dropping out later made him the first governor of Wisconsin in 64 years without a college degree. Walker ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly for the first time at age 22. At age 26 he moved to Wauwatosa, in a more conservative Wisconsin legislative district, where his chances of political advancement were greater. In a special election in 1993 he claimed a seat in the Wisconsin Assembly. In 2002 he left the legislature when he became the Milwaukee County Executive in another special election. From County Executive he made a bid for governor in 2006, but withdrew for lack of funds and party support, “the only statewide race he ever lost,” (that is, before 2018–see below). Four years later in 2010 Walker rode into the Wisconsin governorship on the Tea Party wave. From 2011 until his defeat in 2018 Walker’s governorship was tumultuous, not unlike what we are suffering through as a nation with the current occupant of the White House. Here’s a quote from the Milwaukee Sentinel from an article entitled “In a divided Wisconsin, Scott Walker’s lightning-rod approach to politics worked for him — until it didn’t“: But another reason that voters were so polarized over Walker was Walker’s own approach to politics. His personality wasn’t divisive, like President Donald Trump’s. But his leadership was polarizing in several ways. One was simply his successful pursuit of aggressively conservative policies, which excited his supporters and angered his opponents. A second was the “shock and awe” factor. His defining early accomplishment — all but ending collective bargaining for public-sector unions — was not a policy he campaigned on in 2010. It was a post-election bombshell. That inflamed the conflict that followed. It embittered the left, which responded in ways that embittered the right, and set the tone for the Walker years. Walker’s years as governor of Wisconsin was right out of the Koch fueled national Republican/Libertarian playbook. Read the well-referenced entry on Scott Walker in Wikipedia for the details. Walker’s signature piece of legislation, the “Budget Repair Bill” gutted the collective bargaining leverage of public sector unions…on the excuse it was necessary to balance the state budget, but with the subtext that public employees are overpaid and underworked. Meanwhile, of course, Walker generated tax cuts of nearly 2 billion dollars (tax “relief”–notice the framing). His trashing of public sector unions resulted in the first recall election of a governor in Wisconsin history (and only the third in the nation). Walker was the first of those three to survive a recall, thanks to a $37 million dollar war chest, 2/3 of which donations came from out of state. The list of large donors includes the Bradley Foundation, David and Charles Koch, Americans for Prosperity, and something called the “Wisconsin Policy Research Institute” (WPPI is a member of the State Policy Network, as is the Washington Policy Center.) The list of big money donors that came to Walker’s defense reads like a summary of Jane Meyer’s book “Dark Money.” (see “Deep Background” in the References below). While crowing about tax “relief” Walker’s budgets slashed money for public education. His 2015 budget proposal slashed 13% from the state funding for the Wisconsin university system. He proposed putting the University of Wisconsin under a “private authority” (all his appointees). He even proposed a re-write of the university system commitment from “search for truth” to a goal of “workforce readiness.” Walker’s narrow, career politician background reminds me of McMorris Rodgers. His combative, change-everything style reminds me of the current occupant of the White House. Walker’s Downfall: So who toppled this college dropout, career Republican politician, this belligerent ideologue? To read the Washington Policy Center and Greater Spokane’s advertisement for Walker’s keynote address tomorrow you wouldn’t even know Walker had lost an election, much less to whom. The man who toppled Scott Walker in November 2018 is Tony Evers, a career educator with a Ph.D. in Educational Administration. Governor Tony Evers has worked as a classroom teacher, school principle, district administrator, and, most recently, as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Wisconsin. Savor the contrast. Evers margin of victory was small, but he was running against an incumbent with a huge war chest and lavish campaign spending (Walker’s 21.7 million to Evers 7.7 million) Wisconsin voters finally pushed back and elected a man with actual expertise in education, a repudiation of Walker’s agenda of defunding. Now our local Republicans (under cover of the “Washington Policy Center”) have brought Walker to Spokane to preach Republican/Libertarian ideology to an audience WPC would happily keep ignorant of Walker’s electoral loss and the credentials of the man who beat him. .Keep to the high ground, Jerry P.S. Scott Walker’s 2011-13 budget proposal as referenced in wikipedia contained this nugget: He proposed a 5.5% decrease in the maximum amount of funding school districts can receive from state aid and property taxes, which would limit how much property taxes could be increased to compensate for the reduction in state aid. The budget lowered state capital gains taxes for investments in Wisconsin businesses. This sounds disturbingly similar in intent to the Washington State “levy swap equalization,” the $1.50/1000 assessed value cap the Republicans extracted as a “compromise” in the Washington State budget negotiations that Michael Baumgartner crowed about as a Washington legislator. Are these two tactics to undermine funding for public schools part of Republican orthodoxy? |
When It’s Personal
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The story for this post comes from This American Life, 673 Left Behind. If you have 20 I recommend you click and listen from 16:30 minutes to 36:40. You can read the full transcript here, but the podcast has a greater impact, an illustration of the power of storytelling. Dear Group, People thrive on Us versus Them narratives. Propaganda, often characterized by repetition of a few words or a simple idea, can be used to shape the narrative. Thus it is that anti-immigrant rhetoric “rapists, murderers, MS-13” fires up passion among those disposed to listen. But what happens when the “Them” gets personal? On the morning of April 5, 2018 agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers raided a slaughterhouse 15 miles outside of Morristown, Tennessee, a town of about 30,000 in the Appalachian Mountains. (The nearest big city is Knoxville, population 186,000, about an hour away.) Morristown is a bastion of Republicanism and an area containing about 100 churches. News articles of that day focus on the alleged malfeasance of the owners of the slaughterhouse in hiring undocumented immigrants, not on the effects of the raid on the social fabric of the surrounding towns. The podcast I featured today fills in some of the those details. Nearly a hundred people were held for questioning on the day of the raid. Fifty-four of them were sent to a detention center around six hours away in Alabama. They were allowed little or no contact with their families before departure. We don’t often think of it this way, but such an event touches many hundreds of lives. It tore at the social fabric of the town…and it provides cause for people to wonder if the point of deportation might be more than “rapists and murderers and drug dealers.” Below is a copy of part of the transcript from the podcast. [The bold in the quote is mine.]: Lilly Sullivan [moderator] She [Krista Etter] saw the ICE trailer, officers cordoning off the entrance to the plant. Krista’s a Trump supporter. She’s not a fan of illegal immigration. Most of the area is that way. The county went 77% to Trump. She didn’t know anyone who’d been directly affected. Over the weekend, she went to a vigil for the parents who’d been taken away, not because she wanted to. She didn’t. She’s the general manager for a local paper. And they asked her to take pictures. She says that when she showed up, she was actually a little angry that all these people were there at all, like what do they expect? These people broke the law. They should have seen it coming. Krista Etter Lilly Sullivan [moderator] Teenager Krista Etter Teenager Krista Etter Teenager
And God’s kind of going, see, I wanted you here, because you’re not correct in your thinking. You’re not correct in thinking that this is so black and white. Because when I heard crack down on illegal immigration, I interpreted it as a crackdown on illegal immigrants that were criminals. If there was a drug situation, you know, violent criminals, pedophile, any kind of situation of that nature. That’s what I expected. And I really believe I’m not the only one who did that. I don’t think anybody ever really stopped to think that they were going to go after the family man working at the meatpacking plant. That’s not what I had in mind. I’m still a President Trump supporter. I guess, I have to hold out hope that maybe he didn’t understand he was going after the guy in the meatpacking plant. I mean, I guess he probably does. Lilly Sullivan [moderator] You’d have to listen to the podcast to hear just how seriously the conservative residents of Morristown reacted. The trouble is it will take a lot more writing and storytelling and preaching than this podcast to change the propaganda narrative of “rapists, murderers, and drug dealers” for many of the Republican voters of area. Think of this story the next time you read of the City of Spokane City Council discussing alleged violations of citizens rights by government agents at the Intermodal Center (the old railroad station downtown). Keep to the high ground, Jerry P.S. Researching this story was a lesson for me in the fragmentary nature of our understanding of almost everything. The news articles I was able to google were very dry. They presented little beyond some raw facts, numbers and a few quotes, mostly from government officials. It is something else entirely to listen to the podcast, explore the area on googlemaps, and listen to the voices of the people who were there and the reaction of the community. This is a lesson the talking heads on Fox News and Donald Trump understand all too well: keep beating the drum about “rapists, murderers, and drug dealers” and your listeners will form a mindframe that allows them to condone the most awful things…so long as they don’t have to confront the reality of how those actions affect their neighbors, real people. |
James Longstreet Statues?
Dear Group,
Last Monday I wrote of the adage “You are judged by the company you keep.” Then I was referring to the Republicans who refuse to find fault with Matt Shea (State Rep, LD4), but never far from my mind was the welcome offered to James Allsup by then Spokane Republican Party Chairwoman Cecily Wright at her and her husband’s NWGrassroots gathering. James Allsup, once the Chairman of WSU’s College Republicans, spoke at the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally. Video showed young men with tiki torches, their faces contorted as they chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
This is the same rally about which the occupant of the White House declared there were “very fine people on both sides.” The stated purpose of the rally was to oppose the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Let’s look at statues of Confederate Generals. From the end of the Civil War to 1877, the Reconstruction Era, there were three competing visions of Civil War memory: “the reconciliationist vision, which was rooted in coping with the death and devastation the war had brought; the white supremacist vision, which included segregation and the preservation of the traditional cultural standards of the South; and the emancipationist vision, which sought full freedom, citizenship, and Constitutional equality for African Americans.”[2]
The outcome of the 1876 presidential election, one of the four elections in our history ultimately won with a minority of popular votes (thanks to the Electoral College…as in 2000 and 2016), was disputed. Part of the compromise that put Rutherford B. Hayes (a minority President) in office was that the government would withdraw from the South federal troops supporting Reconstruction efforts. Their continued presence in the parts of the South had been a major deterrent and irritant to those supporting the white supremacist post war vision.
With the end of Reconstruction the white supremacist vision largely won out, but it acquired new clothing: “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy”, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American historical negationist ideology that holds that, despite losing the American Civil War, the cause of the Confederacy was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle primarily for the Southern way of life[1] or “states’ rights” in the face of overwhelming “Northern aggression”. At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or denies outright the central role of slavery in the outbreak of the war.”
The statuary featuring Nathan Bedford Forrest (an early member and promoter of the KKK), Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis was all put up in the late 1800s and early 1900s by promoters of the Lost Cause, while the North essentially looked the other way and got on with business.
The historian Carl Becker wrote that history is what the present chooses to remember about the past. So it was with the choice of Generals to be remembered in statuary scattered throughout the South. Who was not chosen to be remembered in heroic statuary is instructive. General James Longstreet was one of the foremost Confederate generals in the Civil War. Robert E. Lee referred to Longstreet as his “Old War Horse.” Longstreet figured prominently at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, and a series of other battles. As a confederate general, he certainly deserved recognition in statuary, but the first and only statue of Longstreet was dedicated in 1998 at Gettysburg. Why?
Two reasons: Longstreet disagreed with Lee’s order for Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, an action many consider the turning point in the war against the South. (Note that like any good soldier he carried out the order he was given in spite of his critique, an order that sent more than a thousand men to their death marching uphill into a hail of lead.) Worse, from the standpoint of those wishing slavery were still legal, in 1874, still during Reconstruction, Longstreet led troops in New Orleans against the “White League,” a white paramilitary terrorist organization. The white supremacist southerners never forgave him…
Remember Longstreet and Reconstruction when you consider the intended message of Confederate statuary. As the victorious North looked away the losers wrote the history. We’re re-visiting that history even now among the company kept by local Republicans.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Since my second decade I’ve been interested the Civil War. I’ve visited a number of Civil War battlefields, most notably Gettysburg. In my youth I took part in Civil War re-enactments as part of the Civil War Centennial, I have been aware of General James Longstreet for decades, but, memory being what it is, I’ve sometimes found it hard to recall the side on which he fought. The articles and opinion pieces I read in preparing this post explain for me my haziness of memory.around this man. Indeed, history is what the present choses to remember about the past. Although I grew up in Wisconsin, I was taught Civil War history through the lens of the “Lost Cause.”