Category: Uncategorized

One More Power Play Before the County Commission Gets More Complicated

First a plug for RANGE Media. RANGE is a new (started April 2020), local, digital news outlet with (currently) three young writers, Luke Baumgarten, Valerie Osier, and Carl Segerstrom, who publish two or three times each week. The articles include an end of week concise guide to local government meetings with links to agendas and more. Here’s an example from Sunday, December 18, that I found very useful in constructing this post: New year, new jail? by Valerie Osier. The RANGE articles provide a richness and clarity on local issues and local government actions that one finds only sporadically in local print and television outlets. I urge you to sign up for the RANGE emails. There is a free option. I finally signed up for a paid subscription. I urge you to join me in supporting their work. 

The Al French way on the Spokane County Commission

This month—finally—the Spokane County Commission, the legislative and executive power of the county, seats five commissioners instead of three. Amber Waldref and Chris Jordan, elected last November, were sworn in to two new seats on the commission in a well-attended ceremony held on the coldest day of 2022, December 22. (YouTube video here. See P.P.S.) The prior three member commission, the standard in Washington State for small counties, consisted of Al French, Josh Kerns, and Mary Kuney. All three were re-elected to the commission under the new by-district election format that (by state law) replaced the older election scheme. (In the old system commissioners first had to survive an in-district top two primary, but then were elected in a county-wide contest.) Mr. French narrowly retained his seat in the new in-district election format, garnering 23,786 votes (51.6%) over Democrat Maggie Yates’ 22,279. 

It is no secret that Mr. French in particular did not take conversion to the new structure of county government lightly: he mounted a legal challenge to the new state law that mandated the new structure, a challenge that went all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court. He and his fellow plaintiffs lost. Most county voters probably didn’t notice. 

With the composition of the Spokane County Commission changing at the first scheduled “BoCC Regular Session Meeting” this month one might have naively thought that significant not-time-critical decisions could wait until the new commissioners were seated in January. At least one might have hoped that a prospective vote on such a decision might be announced ahead of time so the public would have a chance to weigh in—but that’s not the Al French way. (See P.S.)

In the way of Al French, the published agenda for the December 13th meeting of the Commission, the last “Regular Session Meeting” of the year (ifyou could even find it on the county website), buried the matter of putting up a referendum for next November in the “Consent Agenda”—a part of the meeting meant for routine items. Here’s the entry under “d” of the Consent Agenda Items:

In the matter of calling an Election within Spokane County to be held on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, and submitting to Electors a Proposition to impose a Two-Tenths of One Percent (0.2%) Sales and Use Tax equal throughout Spokane County, as authorized by RCW 82.14.450, the proceeds to be used by the County, Cities and Towns within Spokane County for Criminal Justice,Public Safety, and Behavioral Health purposes.

Since the Consent Agenda items are supposed to be routine, there is no public comment. Mary Kuney was out of town on county business, so the meeting—and the voting—was all up to Al French and Josh Kerns. 

You would be pardoned if, after reading this Consent Agenda item in full, you still weren’t sure of the intended use for the new revenue. Commissioner Kerns provided a hint.

From the Spokesman article on the new tax referendum:

“We have kicked this political football around for over a decade,” Kerns said. “It’s time for the voters’ voices to be heard.”

The “political football” is, of course, a new jail. Remarkable. If “We have kicked it…around for over a decade”, what is the emergency that requires that two good ‘ole boys, in the last meeting before a major change in county governance, to vote in a tax referendum that won’t be on the ballot for eleven months? I guess it’s just the Al French way. 

Whether or not we should support a 0.2% increase in the sales tax levied in Spokane County, one purpose of which is to build a new jail, depends greatly on the specifics. French and Kerns (grandly identified as “the Spokane County Commissioners”) provide a “news flash” with few details but a lot of glossy language about “Criminal Justice Improvements”. One expects that the 2023 municipal elections will be all about “law and order.”

Choosing a rise in sales tax as the method of funding a new jail by declaring this referendum in the last days of the old commissioner regime is strategically preemptive. Why choose an increased sales tax, absolutely the most regressive tax option, the option that falls most heavily on those who can least afford the extra burden? 

One hopes that the Al French way will play less well with the new five member commission. Mr. French, the most powerful elected law-making official in Spokane County, has cast his shadow over the operations of county government for far too long. Perhaps his need to usher in this jail funding referendum in such a rush is a sign that Mr. French fears that his grip on the levers of local power are about to loosen.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. We saw another example of the Al French way of power in the Zoom meeting in which [we have to suspect] he engineered the firing of the Spokane County Health Officer, Bob Lutz, in the middle of the Covid pandemic—a firing for which Amelia Clark, his inept administrative ally in the Spokane Regional Health District, ultimately resigned. 

P.P.S. Attendees at the swearing in ceremony for Amber Waldref and Chris Jordan on December 22 noted that current Spokane County Commissioners Josh Kerns and Mary Kuney also attended the ceremony, but Al French was conspicuously absent. Perhaps he was out of town for the holidays—or perhaps this was just another example of the Al French Way—staying out of the limelight while pulling the levers.

Intended Consequence of Republican Messaging?

Drumming up angst over caravans of immigrants coming from Central America, “rapists and murderers” all, were a key feature of Trump’s 2016 campaign. Rampant immigration was the justification for his “Build the Wall” rallies. Fox News was especially good at breathless coverage of the latest caravan. More recently, Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis’, a presidential aspirant, and Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s heartless stunts shipping legal asylum seekers north to score political points remind us that immigration remains an issue that Republicans find useful. 

Surges of migration from Central America are usually covered in the media as caused by gangs, political repression, and poor economic conditions in some Central American countries. But why do surges seem to happen in the lead up to elections, just in time to rile up fear and hate for electoral advantage? 

Thanks to Martha Raddatz and Thom Hartmann and a basic understanding of how people are motivated to make desperate migrations, we may have a better way of looking at the phenomenon. Start by asking yourself if you’ve ever heard a Democrat say anything about “open borders”. Then remind yourselves of the unified buzzword messaging that the Republican Party and right wing media are really good at.

I’ve copied Hartmann’s article below. I don’t always agree with the opinions he expresses in his almost daily The Hartmann Report, but I always find it interesting reading, and this time I really think he nailed it. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The Dirty Game Republicans are Playing with Desperate People’s Lives

Who on Earth would want to send thousands of desperate people to our Southern border just in time for every midterm facing a Democratic president? Who would be that crass and cynical?

Thom Hartmann Dec 20

Just a month ago we finished President Biden’s first midterm election and, as predictably as the sun rises in the east, right around election time and for the months afterward a wave of refugees and immigrants have shown up at our southern border.

This happens every two years when a Democratic President is in office. And finally the US news media seems to be getting a clue as to why. More about that in a moment.

Notwithstanding Fox “News” hysteria about a “caravan” of immigrants heading for the border during Obama’s last year as president, in the months leading up to the 2016 election, by that time, as Politico noted:

“In fiscal year 2017, the last year of the Obama administration and the first of Trump’s, 303,916 migrants were arrested by the Border Patrol. This was the lowest level in more than three decades.”

The last big “surge” was two years earlier, five months before President Obama’s second 2014 midterm elections. You may remember when the southern border was suddenly overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of immigrants and refugees and it was all over the news with apprehensions at 220,000, up from just 96,000 the non-election year before.

The crush of people “somebody” had sent to the United States was so intense Obama had to declare it an “urgent humanitarian situation,” thus enabling him to mobilize more resources to block or deal with the seemingly-unending stream of desperate humanity.

The same thing happened, mysteriously, during Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign; the severity of the border crisis during that election year led to President Obama taking executive actions that included creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and an expansion of provisional waivers.

Who sent them and why do they so conveniently and predictably arrive just in time for elections (and echo for a few months afterwards)?

During Obama’s first midterm election, the fall and winter of 2010, another “sudden wave” of immigrants provoked Arizona to put into law the notorious “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.”

It famously allowed Arizona police to stop and even arrest people they suspected may look like “illegal immigrants,” and required police to investigate the immigration status of all persons detained. It was so odious that four of its major provisions were declared unconstitutional two years later by fellow Republicans on the US Supreme Court.

The wave of immigrants who hit our border in 1998, Bill Clinton’s last midterm election, was so severe that he initiated the Border Safety Initiative (BSI) and cut a joint-cooperation deal with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

Four years earlier, the surge that showed up for the 1994 midterm election caused Clinton to produce and implement the first Border Patrol Strategic Plan.

Who on Earth would want to send desperate thousands of people to our Southern border just in time for every midterm facing a Democratic president? Who would be that crass and cynical?

ABC host and reporter Martha Raddatz interviewed Texas Governor Greg Abbott last weekend. As if on cue, he insisted the sudden tsunami of immigrants and refugees on his state’s southern border was all Biden’s fault.

But — finally, after decades! — a reporter had heard enough Republican bullshit about immigration and the border.

“You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders,” Raddatz said to Abbott, “but I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, ‘we have an open border, come on over.’

“But people I have heard say it are you, are former President Trump, Ron DeSantis; that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So they do get the message that it is an ‘open border,’ and smugglers use all those kinds of statements.”

Bingo.

Whenever there’s a Democrat in the White House, literally hundreds of Republican politicians step up to the microphone or tell their local newspapers and radio stations about how the president has suddenly “opened up America’s southern border!!!”

It’s a lie, but they amplify it as hard as they can.

Those news stories and press releases make their way via social media and the internet to desperate people in Venezuela, Central America, and Mexico. Impoverished people there aren’t knowledgeable enough about American politics to see the message for the cynical political ploy it is, so they abandon home and family to begin the dangerous and often deadly trek to the US.

Democrats don’t say our borders are open, and, as far as I can tell, never have. In March of 2021 the rightwing Washington Examiner newspaper went on a search for Democrats proclaiming that we’d “opened!” the southern border in the first months of Joe Biden’s presidency.

They found nothing. Well, they found that both Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had called the situation on our southern border “a crisis,” as well as a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who was merely acknowledging the surge of immigrants. And a single Democratic mayor in Texas who also said it was a crisis. That’s it.

But literally hundreds of Republican politicians, just like they do every two years, have spent the past few months proclaiming to every despairing potential refugee south of our border that the door is wide open. Just google “open border” and “congressman,” “congresswoman,” or “senator” and you’ll get a list too long to print.

At the top of that list just from the past few months, of course, you’ll find the most contemptible Republican demagogues:

— Ted Cruz wants everybody south of our border to know that the “Biden Open Border Policy [is] A Very Craven Political Decision”;
— Rick Scott wants everybody to know that “Americans Don’t Want [Biden’s] Open Borders”;
— Marco Rubio says there’s “Nothing Compassionate About Biden’s Open Border Policies”;
— Rand Paul is so extreme he tells us Senator Rubio “is the one for an open border”;
— Josh Hawley says “Biden’s Open Border Policy Has Created a Moral Crisis”;
— Tom Cotton “Insists the Border is Wide Open”;
— Ron Johnson wants the world to know that “Our National Security is at Risk Because Democrats have Turned Border Security into a Partisan Issue”;
— Marjorie Taylor Greene “BLASTS Open Border Hypocrites”;
— Mo Brooks opposes “Socialist Democrats’ Open Border Policies for Helping Kill Americans”;
— Lauren Boebert says the “Root Cause” of the open border crisis “is in the White House”;
— Matt Gaetz “revealed a complex and deceitful agenda by Joe Biden’s Democrat administration to evade our Southern Border law enforcement”;
— Gym Jordan says “Biden’s Deliberate Support of Illegal Immigration Could Lead to Impeachment”;
— Kevin McCarthy says the Biden Administration has “Utterly Failed” to secure the “open border”;
— Elise Stefanik proclaims “Biden’s Open Border Policies have been a Complete Disaster.”
— Tom Cole’s website features “Biden’s Open Border America”;  
— Bob Goode brags about introducing legislation named the “Close Biden’s Open Border Act”;
— John Rose “Calls Out Biden’s Open Border Policies”;
— Paul Gosar claims Biden is “Destroying America with His Open Border Policies”;
— Roger Williams complains about the “Democrats’ Open Border Problem”;
— Tom Cole wants the world to know that Biden’s “open border policies have given the green light to migrants and bad actors from around the world…”;
— Gus Bilirakis “Denounces Dangerous Open Border Policies on the House Floor”;

The list goes on and on.

Democrats, on the other hand, only want people coming into the country legally and have tried to deal with the issue responsibly. That’s why they don’t shout so loud it can be heard in Venezuela that the US border is “open.” Most, in fact, refuse to even use the phrase, because it’s a naked political lie.

Every two years, this misanthropic Republican crew provokes a crisis on America’s southern border because it plays into their narrative that Democrats are encouraging more Brown people — “soon-to-be Democrat voters” they call them on rightwing hate radio — to come to the USA to “replace” good upstanding white people.

Lest you think this biennial Republican rhetoric isn’t a cynical political ploy but is, instead, a good-faith effort to identify and fix a problem, look at the vote recently on legislation that would update our immigration system and fund a more effective border patrol. Only five Republicans could bring themselves to say “yes” to doing something about this situation.

Republicans are playing a dirty game with people’s lives. Somebody needs to ask these degenerate political SOBs:

“What it would take for you to leave your home with all your possessions in a small bag and travel a thousand miles on foot risking rape, robbery, kidnapping, torture, and the murder of yourself and your family members?”

There’s not a single Republican in Congress with half the courage of these men, women, and children who have risked everything — including their own lives — to answer the “Open Borders!!!” call the GOP puts out every two years just to score political points against Democratic presidents.

Thank G-d for Martha Raddatz. Hopefully more reporters will start asking Republicans why they hang out the welcome sign every two years and then blame Democrats when desperate people answer their call.

Where was our attention focused?

Since Christmas there has been a welcome lull in local, regional, and even national news. Stories seem to bubble quietly in a cold, wet winter background as we slide into the new year. The filling of my email inboxes, text messages, and cell phone push notifications blessedly slacked off for the holidays. 

Of course, the right wing rage machine kept cranking away. My electronic feed from the Epoch Times continued apace. The Epoch Times is considered eminently trustworthy, a must-read “news” outlet, by an alarming number of my Republican friends and acquaintances. The ET presents me with a steady stream of click-bait headlines worthy of the old National Enquirer, headlines suggesting new ground-breaking information about the horrors of vaccines, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the revealed injustices against “free speech” on Twitter before Elon Musk welcomed back trolling misogynists, white supremacists, and Christian Nationalists. 

The one story that was fed to us every day over the holidays by local (and national) news outlets was the grisly murder of four young students at the University of Idaho. The publicly know facts remain slim: three young women and one young man were murdered, apparently in their sleep, in their apartment, by at least one assailant wielding a sharp weapon on November 13th. After more than a month a 28 year old Ph.D. student in the department of criminal justice and criminology who was studying at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, a short drive away from the U of I, was arrested in Pennsylvania and charged with the murders. He will be extradited. That is most of what is publicly known, and yet the reading and watching public all over the nation seems insatiable for every detail and the media obliged (or was it the other way around?). 

I am as horrified by this story as the next person—but reading each succeeding article adds very little to what I actually know. One day there will likely be a trial, then a book, then maybe a documentary like the recent Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer, but for now most of what we read and hear is speculation, quotes from (usually un-identified) sources said to be friends, relatives, and acquaintances of the victims and the accused—plus a accusation made by one deranged Texas TikTok mystic. Nonetheless, the articles keep appearing—and we keep reading them. 

I find myself stepping back to ask why we, and the media, are so captivated by this particular murder story while most unsolved murders, even local ones, disappear from the news in a just a few days. I suspect that the answer lies in our inability to mentally distance ourselves from these young people and their families. These were promising lives of three young women and one young man snuffed out in their prime for no reason we can identify. There is no hint of nefarious activity that might, in some warped person’s mind, have marked them for murder, nothing about their behavior that can set them apart from the people we are, were, or know. Their deaths are terrifyingly random and far too close to home geographically and emotionally. They remind us of our own, our children’s, and our friends’ potential mortality. We cannot look away—and, importantly, the mostly white, college-educated reporters covering these murders also cannot look away—it is all just too close. The articles keep coming and we keep reading with morbid fascination. It would be good of us to remind ourselves why we cannot break free—and to remember that other crime victims probably merit—but often do not receive—such rapt attention.

I mostly do not do Twitter, but occasionally I get wind of something that makes me smile. I leave you today with a link to 19 year old Greta Thunberg’s deflation of puffed up he-man Andrew Tate, a put down that not only rocketed to one of the most liked tweets of all time, but which may have led to Tate’s and his brother’s arrest soon thereafter in Romania on a charge of human trafficking. The exchange was covered by dozens of media outlets. It case you missed it, here’s a link to one of them. Good for Greta!

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

And an Interesting Reading Recommendation

I plan to return to writing next week on January 2, 2023. The City of Spokane City Council and Spokane County Commissioners don’t re-convene until next year—and I need to recharge my batteries. 

Meanwhile, for those of you who were never quite satisfied with the story that Santa Claus originated from the particularly generous 4th century Roman Catholic bishop Saint Nicholas (with many subsequent cultural modifications), there is another story from far northern Europe that, for me, offers a better explanation of how flying reindeer became part of the story that most of us grew up with in the North America. 

Here’s the link: The Hidden History of Santa Revealed! (To read it you may need to click a “No Thanks” button to get past the subscription offer.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Monday’s Mayoral Press Conference

As we descend into subzero temperatures this week, Mayor Woodward on Monday held a press conference flanked by Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl, Spokane County Sheriff-elect John Nowels, and Spokane County Commissioner Mary Kuney. The next morning Dan Simonson’s listserv, [ShelterSpokane], featuring all the articles he could find on homelessness from the last 24 hours. (Sign up to receive the [ShelterSpokane] listserv emails by emailing <dsimonson@mac.com>. It is a great way to keep up with this issue.) 

The Mayor’s press conference was covered by the Spokesman, KHQ, and KXLY. The three article titles are listed below with the full text of each article following in the same order. Reading them one after the other, all of them descriptions of the same press conference, is an education in how people can see and hear the same event differently. The differing accounts remind me of the parable of the blind men and an elephant. Each blind man, having touched a different part of the animal, comes away with a different idea of what an elephant is. 

Even more telling is this: In the Spokesman the reporter does not choose the title for the print version of the article. Emry Dinman’s “Cold snap could leave unhoused vulnerable” becomes, in the print version renamed by the editor, “With bitter cold on the way, Spokane city, county leaders say hands are tied on Camp Hope”. The digital version title evokes sympathy and concern while the paper version’s title sets the reader up to read the article as a discourse on the political conflict over the fate of Camp Hope. 

There are a couple of lessons here. First, to hope to understand what happened one needs to read or listen to more than one news source. Second, everyone has a filter, a filter that is conditioned by the experience of a lifetime. If you want the complete picture you need to view the press conference yourself. Sadly in this era of digital media, despite a lot of searching I was unable to find a video of the event. (If any of my readers finds one, please send me the link by “Reply” email.)

My particular take home messages from all this coverage (seen through myfilter):

1. Mayor Woodward continues to appear more interested in getting Camp Hope dismantled and out of the public eye than she is in making sure homeless people don’t freeze. In the midst of a cold snap—and still with inadequate numbers of beds in her city system to accommodate all those at Camp Hope, she wants to blame the temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge for limiting her option to forcibly close the camp. 
2. Sheriff-elect John Nowels, at least at first blush, comes off as less combative than out-going Sheriff Knezovich. He at least acknowledges that the “outreach” performed by a battalion of law enforcement officers carried out at Camp Hope may only have succeeded at “upsetting some people”. Still, he wishes to blame their reception “on calls for camp residents not to interact with police”. Many or most of Camp Hope’s residents have experienced law enforcement “sweeps” of homeless camps. What prevents him from understanding that “outreaching” law enforcement officers bearing papers saying the camp will be closed might be perceived as threatening, and that non-engagement might be the best course for all concerned? 
3. Woodward remains severely math-challenged. She says there were 332 people at the Trent Shelter (TRAC) last weekend, and “we are prepared to go to 350 and beyond”. Camp Hope was still home to at least 377 souls—and all their belongings. How do you fit 377 people and all their belongings in 18 beds—or even in the “beyond” that Ms. Woodward hand-waves into existence? The space has only recently been approved by city departments for 350 “guests”. There is something wrong with her blaming a federal judge for blocking her option of forcibly closing Camp Hope when the city has no place for them to go. 
4. With no physically realistic place to go, for the people of Camp Home the threat of losing digits or a life in the subzero temperatures this very evening is better addressed by reaching people where they are—as Julie Garcia of Jewels Helping Hands is actually doing—providing space heaters (see the end of the KHQ article). Meanwhile, Mayor Woodward holds press conferences… 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The Spokesman-Review

Cold snap could leave unhoused vulnerable 

KHQ

Spokane officials address homelessness crisis, shelter system as a cold snap settles in

KXLY

Spokane officials provide update on Camp Hope developments

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Cold snap could leave unhoused vulnerable 

By Emry Dinman

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

The week ahead is expected to be exceptionally cold, with Thursday’s temperatures forecast to drop below zero, and as hundreds of unhoused people in Spokane remain sleeping outside.

At a news conference about Camp Hope, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward speaks to the media in front of Spokane County Commissioner Mary Kuney, left, Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl and Spokane County Sheriff-elect John Nowels on Monday at Spokane City Hall.

During a Monday press conference alongside Spokane County Commissioner Mary Kuney, Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl and Spokane County Sheriff- elect John Nowels, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward told reporters that ongoing legal battles in federal court had limited the options available to quickly move people out of Camp Hope, the city’s large and controversial homeless encampment.

A recent restraining order issued by a federal judge temporarily barred a sweep of the camp or widespread arrests without individual probable cause. The next hearing in that case is scheduled for Dec. 28.

Though Woodward said this order had stymied efforts to quickly close the camp, she reiterated that she wanted to get people out of the cold and assured residents and businesses around Camp Hope that they had not been abandoned.

“Families, business owners, employees, students and school staff have endured a great impact and we have to remain solution focused,” Woodward said.

She emphasized that local hospitals are full, and with dangerously low temperatures forecast for the week ahead, Woodward said that it is imperative for the homeless to utilize local shelter services. She also called on service providers currently working with Camp Hope residents to extend their assistance to the Trent Resource and Assistance Center, the largest component of the region’s homeless shelter system.

However, there are not enough shelter beds available now or in the near future to house all of the homeless at Camp Hope, either at the Trent shelter or elsewhere. As of Monday night, there were 91 shelter beds available throughout the Spokane system, according to sheltermespokane.org, far less than what would be required to house those staying at Camp Hope, let alone all homeless Spokane residents.

The Trent shelter is currently permitted to hold 350 people, not including up to 25 staff members, according to reporting by Range media. Woodward insisted Monday that the capacity of the Trent shelter could be “flexed” up to 450 beds and that the city doesn’t want to turn anyone away, but added that the Salvation Army, which manages the shelter, does not currently have the staffing to safely do so.

“That’s what we’re working on,” Woodward said.

But Woodward, Kuney, Meidl and Nowels largely avoided addressingn the lack of shelter space Monday, short of calling for the state to provide more funds. Instead, they blamed ongoing court battles for “limiting our ability … to move people into a warm place.”

The restraining order, issued Dec. 12 by U.S. District Court Judge Stanley A. Bastian, restricts local law enforcement from forcibly evicting residents, arresting them without individual probably cause or using infrared technology to surveil the camp.

The order came days after at least a dozen law enforcement officers from the Spokane Sheriff’s Office, Spokane Valley Police Department and Spokane Police Department arrived at the camp unannounced on Dec. 6 and handed out leaflets stating “this camp is to be closed.”

The leaflets, which officers and deputies handed out again on Dec. 7, also provided some information for homeless services, though camp organizers said the information was already widely available and the leaflets contained inaccurate information.

Though law enforcement have stated that the outreach was intended to connect residents with services, camp organizers and residents called the exercise little more than an attempt to intimidate. They pointed to the number of law enforcement personnel, as well as the warning of impending closure.

Nowels disputed that characterization, saying that law enforcement conducted themselves professionally and only arrived in large numbers for their own safety.

Though Nowels said Monday that he was unsure if the outreach had any effect “other than upsetting some people,” which he blamed on calls for camp residents not to interact with police, he said the outreach would have continued if not for the judge’s order. Though the restraining order makes no mention of barring further outreach, Nowels said he did not expect the sheriff’s office to do so again during the current legal battles.

But Nowels insisted that traditional law enforcement action will continue at and around Camp Hope.

“We need the citizens and businesses who live and work in that area to know that we hear them and that we’re going to do everything in our power to help address the crime that is unfortunately occurring surrounding that camp,” he said.

According to Meidl, crime has surged in the quarter-mile around the camp since it opened last December, up 79% compared so far this year when compared with 2021, or 62% when compared to a three-year average.

In response to the increase in crime several months ago, the police department stationed two officers outside the camp to be a visible deterrent and to respond to calls.

Meidl said this presence has cost city taxpayers $400,000 in overtime, despite concerns raised by city leaders that overtime costs have been out of control. When asked whether those officers had lowered local crime rates, Meidl did not have clear answers.

“What I’m hearing is that, instead of having a lot of the individuals who like to like to bring drugs and other things into that camp, it’s pushed them a little bit further out into the neighborhoods,” Meidl said. “So we’re still having an issue with crime.”

Julie Garcia, founder of the organization Jewels Helping Hands which manages Camp Hope, said that she doesn’t believe the increase in crime in the area has been caused by residents of Camp Hope.

She claimed that the residents of Camp Hope are closely monitored to prevent criminal activity. Instead, she said that there are a number of other homeless encampments in the area, and blamed a rise in crime on those camps.

Local law enforcement officials have accused Camp Hope organizers of refusing to cooperate with police, including by interfering during the “outreach” activities earlier this month by warning campers to stay in their tents and not interact with officers or deputies.

Garcia has conversely accused local law enforcement of declining to arrest troublemakers in the camp and dragging their feet when called on for help.

During Monday’s press conference, Nowels stated that local law enforcement has recently made several arrests of people in possession of firearms, stolen vehicles and large quantities of fentanyl.

Garcia stated she believed she knew of a single individual who had been arrested that fit Nowel’s description, but argued that camp organizers had been trying unsuccessfully to get law enforcement to trespass him for nine months.

“We have continually asked for assistance,” Garcia said. “We try to do everything we can to get law enforcement involved when we know of any crime happening inside the camp.” Emry Dinman can be reached at (509) 459-5472 or by email at emryd@spokesman.com.

Julie Garcia – Founder of Jewels Helping Hands

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KHQ

Spokane officials address homelessness crisis, shelter system as a cold snap settles in

• Guy Tannenbaum, KHQ Local News Reporter

Woodward acknowledged conditions at the shelter should have been better from the start. “We’ve made some mistakes, I’ll just tell you that. We’ve learned,” she said.

SPOKANE, Wash. –  At a briefing on Monday afternoon at the Emergency Operations Center—the Spokane region’s response to Camp Hope—officials touted improvements to the Trent Resource and Assistance Center (TRAC). They also discussed the outreach efforts to camp residents by Spokane police officers, Spokane County Sheriff’s Office deputies, and members of the Spokane Regional Behavioral Health Unit (BHU). It’s the first briefing they’ve held on the matter in nearly a month.

“As we speak, updates are being made to TRAC,” Mayor Woodward said.

Woodward stated the updates will include building 350 better-quality beds with privacy screens, adding another shower trailer, office space, and storage units.

Those beds are being built by a team of more than 100 community volunteers, with hopes to have them ready at TRAC by the end of the week, according to the city.

Woodward acknowledged conditions at the shelter should have been better from the start.

“We’ve made some mistakes, I’ll just tell you that. We’ve learned,” she said. “We’ve never had a facility like this that can accommodate this number of people, ever. It’s all about getting people the help that they need and to move them along in their journey out of homelessness.”

Sheriff-elect John Nowels praised deputies, officers, and the BHU for their outreach efforts at the camp two weeks ago, playing body-cam video from inside the camp to show interactions between law enforcement and camp residents, stating it disputes claims by those who called their resource flier hand-out intimidating to residents.

“Their actions were everything but what was just described,” Nowels said.

Despite that, the temporary restraining order signed by a judge last weekprevents officers and deputies from going into the camp unless they have probable cause for an arrest.

“The temporary restraining order does not preclude us from doing that [making arrests], nor should it,” Nowels said. “I think everybody agrees that we need to keep the community safe, but we also need to keep the law-abiding and innocent people living inside that camp safe as well, and we will do that.”

To that end, Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl said there has been a 79% spike in crime in the quarter-mile radius around the camp from the beginning of the year through the end of November.

“When you look at violent crime in the city, 2% year-to-date [increase] compared to last year,” Meidl said. “When you’re looking at property crime across the city, you’re looking at a 19% [increase]. So, the numbers surrounding that camp within a quarter-mile are up exponentially more than the rest of the city.”

Woodward said they’ve continued to have weekly conversations with the Washington State Department of Commerce, Washington State Department of Transportation, and Empire Health Foundation. Both Woodward and Nowels described those conversations as recently centered on repairing and rebuilding relationships to find a way forward.

With bitter cold temperatures expected this week, both the City of Spokane and service providers at the camp are preparing for the cold snap.

Woodward said at this afternoon’s briefing that 332 people stayed at TRAC over the weekend and emphasized that no one was turned away by staff.

TRAC is the crux of the city’s inclement weather policy—whether with extreme heat, extreme cold, or smoke.

Last year, the city opened up an emergency warming shelter at the Spokane Convention Center, but Woodward says that’s not on the table right now.

“Even though we had 332 [people at TRAC] over the weekend, we are prepared to go to 350 and beyond,” Woodward said. “Those new beds will be in place on Thursday, and we don’t want to turn anyone away. If that means a mat on the floor to increase capacity there, then we will do that.”

That raises the question of capacity restrictions at the facility.

“Our building inspector indicated that because of the size of the facility, that it could be beyond 600, but we have to make sure we have the staffing for that as well,” Woodward said. “The Salvation Army has been working to increase their staffing to accommodate the surge that we’re expecting to see this week because of the below freezing temperatures.”

At Camp Hope, Julie Garcia from Jewels Helping Hands said that each camp resident—whether they’re in a tent or an RV—has been given a space heater.

Garcia said the two warming huts inside the tent will be open 24 hours, and the resource tent and its heaters will be open until 5 p.m. each night.

Garcia also stated providers have continued to offer rides to some place warmer, such as TRAC, if a resident wants to go.

“We have prepared as much as we can prepare,” Garcia said. “Everybody here knows that we will take anybody to any place else that they’d like to go. Other than that, we can hunker down and try and get them through the next week.”

#################################################### 

KXLY

Spokane officials provide update on Camp Hope developments

Posted: December 19, 2022 2:29 PM Updated: December 19, 2022 6:46 PM byEsther Bower

SPOKANE, Wash. — City officials provided an update on the status of Camp Hope, along with recent developments at the homeless encampment.

Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward, Spokane County Commissioner Mary Kuney, Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl and Spokane County Sheriff-Elect John Nowles all spoke on Monday.

Woodward said changes are coming to the Trent Resource Center. The mayor also said there is litigation working its way through and comments are limited because of the pending legislation.

Legal action has been filed against the City about the homeless encampment over the last couple of months. The most recent action taken was a temporary restraining order signed by a federal judge that prohibits law enforcement from doing a full sweep of the camp.

A court date has been moved numerous times about the county’s litigation brought against Washington State. As of now, a date is scheduled for next week, but that could change again.

The Mayor says the updates are based on feedback from people living at the camp and the Salvation Army. The mayor said 332 people stayed at the Trent shelter Sunday night and no one was turned away following reports that Trent was turning away people.

Woodward said they are bringing 350 new beds to Trent and partitions are being installed to increase privacy. There will also be more hand washing, shower and storage space at Trent.

“We have to remain solution-focused,” Woodward said.

Kuney said she was worried about the upcoming cold weather coming to Spokane, adding East Sprague doesn’t deserve the camp anymore. She says people who live and work there feel unsafe.

County Commissioners have given $500,000 to improve Trent. Kuney says volunteers are putting beds together right now to help those experiencing homelessness sleep somewhere safe and warm.

Meidl said they have been tracking crime at Camp Hope since it first started in December of last year. Police say they’ve seen a 58 percent increase in calls for service since the fence was put up in October. Since October, crime had gone up 85 percent in the area. The OT for extra patrol costs the City $400,000.

“Homelessness is not a crime,” Nowels said. “Being unhoused is not a crime.”

Nowels said people are using criminal behavior to pay for drug addictions and other ways to support themselves, adding those kinds of things need to be addressed.

Law enforcement went to Camp Hope unannounced two weeks ago, giving resource flyers to people living at the camp. Nowels says accusations made that the sheriff’s office was harassing and intimidating people at the camp when they were there is inaccurate. Nowels added that the process of handing out flyers was “community-oriented policing.”

The sheriff released body camera videos from when they visited the camp two weeks ago. These videos were not requested by the media.

Nowels said they had very few interactions with campers because many people were inside their tents or RVs.

With brutally cold temperatures this week, many will be looking to find a warm place to stay for the night. The Convention Center was used last week as a temporary warming center. The Trent Resource Center is the City’s newest shelter, resource center and emergency warming center. The mayor says the space there can hold 600 people.

—
Anyone wishing to join: please send an email to <dsimonson@mac.com>.
 
Also, visit our website for resources regarding homelessness in Spokane –https://sites.google.com/view/shelterspokane2022/home

What does it mean for our region?

When convicted felon and retired General Michael Flynn and his ReAwaken America Tour came to Post Falls in September peddling Christian Nationalism and election denial it posed a dilemma: highlight it or ignore it? After all, there were a number of local Republicans peddling the same sauce at the same time (Bob McCaslin, candidate for Spokane County Auditor, for example), but none of those peddlers announced they were attending Flynn’s show, nor, as far as I know, did any of them appear on stage with Flynn and company during their two day Post Falls departure from reality. 

That local/regional Republican political calculus must have turned the corner, however. Sensible people should take notice. The Kootenai County Republican Party recently announced they are bringing in, as their keynote speaker, an even more prominent insurrection promoter and election denier than Michael Flynn, not just for a monthly meeting, but for their February 11 Lincoln Day Dinner to be held at the Coeur d’Alene Resort. 

Northwest Georgia’s U.S. Rep. Greene’s recent comments delivered at the New York Young Republican Club about her role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol, as reported in the very conservative New York Post, are beyond the pale:

“I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed.”

Hearing that, I cannot get out of my mind the image of a man carrying a Confederate Battle Flag in U.S. Capitol. Abraham Lincoln, were he to hear Greene’s words and look down on the Kootenai County Republicans at their Lincoln Day Dinner in February, would be astonished and dismayed at the turn of events. Members of the Party that he founded to oppose the spread of slavery hosting a firebrand speaker from Georgia—a woman who plainly states her support for a second insurrection—that she would have done a better job—would be gut-wrenching for the dinner’s namesake. 

Image matters. That the Kootenai County Republican Party is hosting a woman who claims her armed insurrection would have succeeded should be found revolting by anyone remaining among local Republicans who respects the rule of law and the principles over which the Civil War was fought and won. Lack of repudiation from remaining local Republicans not allied with the extremist leadership of the local party over this choice of speaker is a sign of rot. 

Where does this woman, Marge Greene, come from? What is her origin story? She wishes to portray her credentials as those of a successful business woman who worked her way up the ladder. The truth is closer to an entitled rich girl seeking her niche by exploring the world as a serial “True Believer” in right wing Christianity, the redemptive value of bodybuilding, and immersion in and espousal of QAnon’s whack-o cesspool of fringe conspiracy theories. A lengthy article in the January/February 2023 issue of The Atlantic titled “Why Is She Like This?”, subtitled “On the ground in the Georgia congresswoman’s alternate universe,” is well worth the time investment to click and read in its digital form. 

Sadly and alarmingly, in the end, Marge Greene is probably a fitting speaker for the current local/regional Republican Party leadership to choose for their signature annual celebration, the Lincoln Day Dinner. One can only hope that any remaining reasonable Republicans will find the leadership’s choice a step too far.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Imagine for a moment the furor that would ensue among local Republican mouthpieces if a local Democratic organization dared to invite Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to speak—and AOC is advocating working within government, NOT for violently overthrowing it. 

P.P.S. “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer, often referred to as “the longshoreman philosopher”, published in 1952 and referenced above, is key to my understanding of the serial fanaticism of the type Marge Green represents. I read Hoffer’s work a half century ago, but I often return to its insights on fanatics and mass movements. Wikipedia offers a good summary.

What they are, how they arose and what they tell us.

One of a number of valuable take-home messages from the highly recommended eight part podcast series Ultra by Rachel Maddow is this: pay attention when you hear, “That’s the past. We need to move on.” When you hear those words look for a bit of history someone or some group would rather you did not know. 

Ultra centers on the history of racism and Nazism in the United States in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, people and events no one I know (including me) was taught in school, events with eerie parallels to the present. 

There was a significant “We need to move on” sentiment after WWII that buried this history—a history we should find instructive. Try to find time to listen the Ultra podcast series. 

We hear echoes of “We need to move on” in Christopher Rufo’s call to ban the teaching of “CRT”—“We need to move on” from considering how attitudes and beliefs around slavery have on-going effects on our society. 

We hear echoes of “We need to move on” in a particularly malignant form in the Holocaust denial that percolated among the Charlottesville marchers in 2017, the “good people” Trump refused to denounce. “Moving on” from the history of the Holocaust endeavors to make racially-based nationalism into a noble cause.

We hear the echoes among those harassing and taking over public school boards and pushing to ban books about race and discrimination on the excuse that “teaching that will make our white children feel bad.”

We hear echoes of “We need to move on” among Republicans who insist that both racism and discrimination ended in the legislation of the 1960s—and now the goal is “colorblindness”. 

Of course, we DO need to “move on”. We need to move on into a world in which we are better people for having learned about the gross injustices of the past, and, armed with that understanding, we need to strive to avoid repeating the senseless prejudices of our collective past.

In the Northwest we have a long history of racism that most of us weren’t taught. The “Oregon black exclusion laws” were enacted in the 1840s by the white migrants to the Oregon Territory. The Oregon Territory of the time included land now divided into Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and parts of Montana. In 1857 when Oregon voted to become a state, the writers of the state Constitution enshrined in Section 35 of its Bill of Rights an infamous black exclusion clause. At the time a large majority of the “settlers” voted forthe exclusion clause even as a similar large majority voted against allowing slavery. (see 1857 Law). This Section was officially repealed in 1926 a ballot initiative that passed with 62.5% of the vote. Thirty-seven and a half percent still voted to keep the exclusion on the books, even though it was technically unenforceable under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Attitudes change very slowly. 

The Oregon Territory saw early immigration from states like Missouri, states that had similar black exclusion laws on their books. After the Civil War the lands of the former Oregon Territory, including what is now Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and part of Montana, was a magnet for white migrating from the war ravaged South. The Territories were a refuge where any latent fear of rebellion or lawlessness by black people wouldn’t be an issue—thanks to the exclusion laws. It doesn’t take a detective or an historian to understand how the Aryan Nations, Matt Shea’s Liberty State, and the American Redoubt movement all find fertile ground today in regional attitudes that have smoldered, passed down thanks to the same attitudes that produced the exclusion laws. 

All these thoughts were spurred on by a superb article written by Shawn Vestal that appeared on the front page of the Sunday, December 11, Spokesman Review. In the paper paper the article had the eye-catching title “Project Covenant”. The racist, exclusionary covenants disclosed in the article are the direct descendants of the same attitudes and prejudices that justified the writing of the Oregon Territory’s black exclusion laws. Note well that the project to bring these covenant’s to light arose from sleuthing work of a professor at one of those “liberal”, “woke” universities, Eastern Washington University, the kind of place that many on the right seem eager to demonize. Even more telling is that the work of unearthing this history is supported by funding authorized by the Washington State legislature. Don’t hold you breath for similar funding to arise in the Idaho State legislature (or any majority Republican legislature)—despite the likelihood that moderate Republicans might see value in it. 

We should not feel threatened, demeaned, or “made to feel bad about” ourselves or the attitudes of our forebears by this research. What we SHOULD do is acknowledge and understand that this is our history and use that to avoid making the same mistakes. 

Here is Vestal, pasted from the digital version of the news“paper”: 

Covenant project unearths the threads of historical housing discrimination in Washington

Sun., Dec. 11, 2022

By Shawn Vestal

They are, literally, all over the map.

They are woven into the property records of homes developed in the mid-20th century in some of Spokane’s tonier neighborhoods – Comstock, High Drive, Audubon, Manito.

“No person of any race other than the White or Caucasian shall use or occupy any building or any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy of a domestic servant domiciled with any owner or tenant.”

They are attached to the deeds of homes in Millwood and Opportunity.

“No part of said property shall ever be used or occupied by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay, or any Asiatic race.”

They were included in property transactions by some of the most prominent citizens in Spokane as the city grew in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, including the owner of this newspaper, prominent developer and political figure Wayne Guthrie, and Whitworth College. On the West Side, they were included frequently in subdivision developments by aviation pioneer Bill Boeing, among others.

Almost the whole town of Airway Heights, from its founding in the middle of the previous century, was developed with racially restrictive covenants, even as the neighboring Fairchild Air Force Base was one of the most diverse places in the county.

They were even included in cemetery plots.

“The above described property shall be used for the burial of human dead of the Caucasian race only.”

It is not news that there were racial covenants built into the foundations of Spokane’s neighborhood developments during the middle decades of the past century. But a new state-funded research project is in the process of identifying every such covenant in Eastern Washington – and the tally is significant.

After scouring digital records, visiting courthouses and digging through the state archives, a team of Eastern Washington University researchers has identified 75 subdivisions or additions in Spokane County where racially restrictive covenants remain on the books. Those covenants are attached to the deeds of an estimated 4,750 individual properties.

They were filed regularly from the 1930s into the late 1950s – persisting even after the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional and unenforceable in 1948.

As the use of the covenants has come increasingly to light in recent years, it has challenged assumptions that state-sanctioned segregation was a reality only in the Jim Crow South – and that discrimination in the Inland Northwest, while very real, was primarily a question of informal, socially enforced racism. The official nature of the covenants, their widespread use by power brokers and public officials, and the awful and specific language involved puts the lie to those assumptions.

“It’s made me exceptionally angry, so I have to kind of keep that to myself while I’m writing about it,” said Jules Amante, an EWU student who is writing a project growing out of the research about the continuing shadow of real estate-based segregation in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood. “It’s just been a struggle for me.”

It’s not just undergraduates who can be shocked by this history. The man who initially opened the door to this subject in this state, University of Washington professor James Gregory, said that his work unearthing these racist documents for nearly two decades has been a series of discouraging and unforeseen revelations.

“There have been continual surprises,” he said.

‘It is our history’

Amante is one of the students in professor Larry Cebula’s digital history class at EWU. She and Cebula’s other students are working on projects growing directly out of the research that he, research coordinator Logan Camporeale and project director Tara Kelly have been doing to locate the covenants.

They have been tasked by the state with locating every covenant in the 20 counties of Eastern Washington and notifying property owners of their existence. Gregory is leading a team doing the same on the West Side.

The researchers will be asking the Legislature to extend its funding for the work in the upcoming session, with the goal of producing a database that documents every record of a racist covenant in Eastern Washington.

“This is the most meaningful work of my career,” Cebula said. “We’re helping to right a historical wrong, and I’m especially glad that Eastern has a role in uplifting and improving our region.”

The seeds of the project in our region started several years ago, when Camporeale – then a master’s student in Cebula’s program – was working in the state archives. One of his co-workers received a call from someone wanting to know if the covenants on their property put any limits on fencing.

They looked up her covenants and were shocked.

“There weren’t any rules about fencing, but there were rules about the color of folks who could live in her neighborhood,” Camporeale said.

Camporeale began rooting through archives and auditor’s records, compiling a list of plats or subdivisions in which the covenants were still filed with property records at the auditor’s office. By the time of a Spokesman-Review story on his efforts in 2016, Camporeale had found more than 30 such covenants, attached to properties developed in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s and still included in any real estate transaction conducted today.

People of color – as well as anyone who finds such covenants repugnant – will still encounter them when buying a home or lot.

By 2016, Camporeale had begun talking to policy makers about the possibility of having the covenants removed.

“My goal is to see these things go away,” he said at the time. “I want them to not be on the books. … At the very least, I want people to be aware.”

For Camporeale, it remains appalling to consider how ingrained and officialized this practice was. Even if some people had reservations, the covenants were “still signed by these power brokers we found who felt like, ‘This is OK and we’re going to just put our names on these documents.’

“That still gets me.”

But making these records go away – or at least finding a way to allow property owners to remove the repugnant language from their property records – has turned out to be complicated . It has pitted two competing principles against each other: Trying to right a historical wrong versus the need to preserve historical records.

Since Camporeale first began bringing this issue to light, court cases and legislation have attempted to address it. A Spokane homeowner sued to have Spokane County remove the covenant from his home’s records – a case that reached the state Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Legislature has passed laws that attempt to give homeowners a remedy without erasing the historical documents.

County auditors are developing procedures for carrying that out. The newest legislation allows property owners to add a disclaimer to their property record, noting the existence of the covenant and disavowing it.

It also allows a more drastic measure. Property owners can ask a judge to have the original record removed and replaced with a copy that has the offending covenant blacked out. In this alternative, the original record would be archived elsewhere, not destroyed.

Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton has been closely involved in the process all along – arguing against efforts to remove or destroy the records, and working closely with legislators to make sure new laws address that need. For Dalton, it’s a simple matter of the historical record; the chain of title on a property is a permanent record that should be protected.

“Permanent means forever,” she said. “We’re talking centuries and millennia.”

The state Supreme Court, in its ruling, was unequivocal in asserting the legal necessity of preserving the historical record.

“We must ensure that future generations have access to these documents because, although the covenants are morally repugnant, they are part of a documented history of disenfranchisement of a people,” Justice G. Helen Whitener wrote in the unanimous opinion in April. “It is our history.”

State-sponsored discrimination

Covenants restricting property usage are common in real estate transactions, including rules limiting livestock, setting home sizes and setback distances, prohibiting “noxious” activities, and more.

The use of such covenants as a tool of segregation emerged in the early 20th century, as other forms of segregation were being ruled illegal and new, more insidious methods of racial discrimination in housing were slithering into the mix. In 1917, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not legally discriminate on racial grounds, but didn’t prohibit the use of racially restrictive covenants or contracts.

In the early decades of the 20th century, segregation in Spokane’s restaurants, hotels, social clubs and other settings was a simple fact of life. The first racist covenants were filed in Spokane County in the 1920s – first for a cemetery, and then for the East Audubon Park addition. They became more common in the decades to come, continuing even as they were declared invalid and unenforceable.

In large part, this was due to the federal government and its mortgage-guarantee policies, which place a high value on stability and preserving home values in neighborhoods. In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority explicitly encouraged discrimination in its mortgage-insurance guidelines: “If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.”

These guidelines created the foundation for racist covenants and red-lining – the practice of downgrading neighborhoods where Black people lived and thereby making it difficult or impossible to get federally backed home loans. The practice directed public and private money toward white neighborhoods and away from Black neighborhoods, fostering the deep inequalities in wealth and home ownership.

In 1948, the high court ruled that such covenants violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause. But they continued to be filed with subdivisions and developments, in Spokane and elsewhere, for years. In combination with information and social forms of racism, they worked to create a segregated city.

Much of this history lay hidden underground until recent years. Gregory’s Segregated Seattle project, which went online in 2005, brought the issue to statewide attention for the first time. That work and the subsequent research challenges many of the assumptions people have had about segregation in America. Many people have tended to believe that official government-sponsored segregation was limited to the Jim Crow South, and that the forms of racial discrimination in the Northwest were primarily informal.

But the covenants prove that state-sanctioned racism was woven deeply into the history of this city and this state – and that this racism helped to shape our communities and foster the deep inequalities of wealth along racial lines.

“The forces of segregation were authorized by the state government, the city governments and county governments,” Gregory said. “They were protected by the government – official forms, government-sponsored forms of racial discrimination.”

In combination with red-lining, these covenants helped to deny people of color equal rights to buy homes – one of the chief ways that families acquire wealth and pass it along to the next generation. You see the shadow of effects of this today on the lower rates of home ownership among Black residents in Washington state, Gregory said.

“At whatever income level, African Americans own less property and their property is worth less – and that’s the generational wealth effect,” he said.

A common practice

In addition to passing legislation governing the handling of the covenants, the Legislature has funded the work of EWU and UW to identify all the racial covenants in the state and notify homeowners who have them.

EWU was tasked with finding the records in all 20 Eastern Washington counties. UW received the same to canvas the West Side.

Cebula and Camporeale hired Kelly, who has a background in anthropology and experience running research projects. They began by scouring the digital records of plat maps – the records filed when new subdivisions and developments are registered with counties. Many of the maps have the racist covenants printed right on them.

In Spokane, the covenants were used in developments by some of the city’s leading families. William Cowles Jr. and a partner signed off on five such covenants for neighborhood developments such as the Comstock additions.

The Cowles family owns The Spokesman-Review. When news of the covenants came to light in 2016, Betsy Cowles, chairman of the newspaper’s parent organization, the Cowles Co., issued a statement: “It isn’t clear to me exactly what role William Cowles Jr. had in the overall development at that time. What is very clear is that such racial segregation is offensive and in no way represents our company or family values. Today, we are proud of the work we have done and will continue to do in our companies and community to celebrate diversity and honor differences.”

Another prominent Spokane figure who included racially restrictive covenants in property developments was Guthrie, who built thousands of post-war homes in Spokane County. Guthrie also served on the City Council and ran twice for mayor – losing in his final run in 1981 to Jim Chase, the city’s first Black mayor.

In 1942, Whitworth College platted a subdivision for married student and veterans housing that included a racist covenant – the one with the exception for domestic servants. When the EWU research team let the school, now Whitworth University, know about this recently, university President Scott McQuilkin issued a thorough-going statement to the campus community repudiating the covenants, detailing the harm the practice inflicted, committing to including the information in the university’s history, and pledging to form a campus group to consider further ways to address the information.

“The discovery of Whitworth’s participation in a racial covenant reveals a moral failure, an action that contributed to injustice, racist systems, and untold consequences for people of color who were not granted the same opportunities as white people,” the statement issued Oct. 6 read.

“We have a duty, as people seeking to participate in God’s redemptive work, to study our history, to acknowledge and own our failures, and to form a better house for our current residents and those who follow. Whitworth University is committed to doing all of that.”

‘Creating history’

The EWU team’s work began with examining the digital plat maps associated with developments in Spokane County and other regional counties.

The team then moved on to the books of physical property records kept in county courthouses around the region. This entailed navigating the differences and peculiarities among different record-keeping systems.

They were unanimous in praising auditors around the region for helping them find what they were looking for.

“Everyone’s been great,” Cebula said. “Everybody agrees this was a great historical injustice and they want to help fix it.”

The rural use of the covenants was sporadic, in part because the middle of the 20th century was not a big growth period in small towns.

The team found just one in Adams County, for example – in a cemetery.

Camporeale estimates the research work is about three-quarters complete.

Gregory, the UW professor, is facing a bigger research challenge in the more populous West Side counties.

He said his five-person team has finished the work in Pierce, Thurston, Snohomish and Whatcom counties, and is facing daunting ongoing work in King County, where the records they need are mostly not digitized.

They’ve found about 40,000 individual properties with restrictive covenants.

“There’s no way we’re going to finish or even come close to finishing in King County when the funding runs out next summer,” he said. “And there are a whole lot of other counties on the West Side we haven’t even begun.”

Cebula is bringing the research into the other corners of his teaching. The undergraduates in his digital history class are each writing about some element of the research for a project that will be posted at the Spokane Historical web site.

One student is writing about the involvement of Cowles, another is looking in detail at where Spokane’s Black population has lived in town and how that has evolved, and another is writing about Airway Heights.

Rachael Low is writing a piece about a debate in 1968 between Carl Maxey and James Black, then the head of the state real estate agents association. They were debating a state law that would have held agents legally responsible for discriminating against buyers – the real estate association was opposed to the law.

Low and the other students said they were surprised to discover this element of the region’s history.

“There are people who are alive today who were affected,” she said. “It’s something we as a city need to remember and learn from.”

In the end, there will be more public awareness and much more easily accessible public information about where the covenants were used than ever before. With the new laws offering homeowners a remedy for dealing with the covenants in their own files, the researchers say concerns that they are trying to erase the history of this practice are wrong.

“We’re not erasing history,” Cebula said. “We’re making history.”

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry