Category: Uncategorized

A perspective the Mayor needs but appears unwilling to accept

THIS is the kind of Christianity with which I grew up. What follows is an open letter written by Maurice Smith, a man who has worked among the homeless and marginalized of Spokane for the past 15 years. (Read his bio here at the bottom of the About page.) It was posted on Monday, September 19, 2022. It is long. It is wordy. It is sermonic—as it ought to be coming from a man who is an honors graduate of the Denver Seminary. It is a fitting condemnation of local media’s “journalism by Press Release” and the policies of the Mayor’s office. I have read and followed with dismay biased media accounts and/or nasty, uninformed social media discussion of every incident Mr. Smith brings up in his letter. 

To help get beyond “Press Release journalism” I recommend you send an email to Dan Simonson at  dsimonson@mac.com  and ask to be added to a list serve email he manages. It comes with the Subject line “[ShelterSpokane] In The News…” Mr. Simonson aggregates news stories from widespread sources as well as occasional posts from people like Maurice Smith who offer their unique, on-the-ground experience.

Please read Maurice Smith’s open letter to Mayor Woodward copied below, share it widely, and

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

To: Mr. Johnnie Perkins
Adminisrator, City of Spokane

Nadine Woodward

Mayor, City of Spokane

Mr. Perkins and Madame Mayor,

Another Incident
As I am sure you are now aware, on Thursday, September 15th, a Dodge Caravan belonging to the City of Spokane Water Department (license plate XMT39245D) visited a private home next to Camp Hope where a City employee disconnected a water hose that was supplying water to the Camp. This individual also proceeded to take two of the hoses that had been connected to the water supply, effectively stealing private property. A police report for the theft was filed (Incident Number 2022-20163829, taken by Officer Mead, Badge 1314). I would expect this kind of stupid behavior from a couple of “bored & beered-up” college sophomores, not City of Spokane employees. This incident represents the second effort by City of Spokane employees to cut off water to the Camp, the first being the visit of two uniformed SPD officers to the home supplying the water and asking the homeowner to please stop supplying water. This second time, the homeowner was livid that the City would come on her property, turn off water, and disconnect hoses without her permission or any legal authority to do so. Again, the City of Spokane should be ashamed of its behavior in these incidents. But there is a growing reason why such incidents are occurring ever more frequently.

A Growing Cancer
Over the past year, I have successfully fought off two rounds of cancer. While I’ll spare you the details, the aftereffects and scars left over from those two fights present me with daily reminders of how insidious, dangerous, and life-changing cancer can be, and how long-lasting those scars and aftereffects are. But now I and my community, beginning with the homeless community, are being confronted with one of the most insidious and dangerous cancers any individual or community can face. It is the cancer of anger and bigotry leveled toward those experiencing homelessness. It is the cancer of marginalization and dehumanization that declares 600(+) homeless individuals to be nothing more than “nuisances” to be “abated,” removed by whatever means might work, including cutting off their water supply.

The Wisdom of Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel famously sang “Fools,” said I, “You do not know, Silence like a cancer grows.” To remain silent about this growing cancer would be to acquiesce and allow it to grow unchecked and unopposed, eventually destroying the Shalom of our entire community and falsely placing the blame upon “those homeless nuisances.” The blame for this broken Shalom must fall on the doorstep of those who broke it: on the steps of City Hall. Dehumanize 600(+) individuals experiencing homeless by declaring them to be nothing more than public nuisances, then force them into the new prize shelter project that can’t accommodate more than 250 (when fully ramped up). Forget the impossible math of forcing 600(+) people into 250 beds. Forget individual stories of people trying to work their way out of homelessness. Forget the vulnerable elderly and disabled in the Camp who have NOWHERE to go. Forget the terminally ill cancer patients who live there because they have no other options. Forget basic human compassion and simply label everyone on that city block as drug addicted, mentally ill, criminal derelicts, and “nuisances” to be “abated.” Forget that “How we see people is the beginning of how we treat people.” Forget that this spreading cancer threatens the Shalom of our entire community, not just Camp Hope.

“Fools,” said I, “You do not know, Silence like a cancer grows.”

This Cancer Is Metastasizing Spreading
This spreading cancer is metastasizing to the larger community. Two weeks ago we had an incident at the Camp when an individual from Idaho showed up ostensibly to help a camp resident retrieve a stolen laptop. This vigilante from outside the Camp came armed with a GoPro video camera and A SEMI-AUTOMATIC PISTOL SIDEARM! I confronted him and told him he could not be on Camp property wearing a sidearm, and if he wanted to remain on the property he would need to secure the weapon in his car. He tried to argue with me about his Second Amendment rights. I politely but firmly told him I didn’t care, and that he either had to leave or remove the weapon. He reluctantly complied and a more serious confrontation was averted. I reported the incident to the SPD officer assigned to watch the Camp, but the officer (whose name I’m withholding) said, “There’s nothing we can do about it.” Right. A local news outlet later ran a story about the stolen property and the laptop at the Camp and was given the GoPro footage. But no mention in the story about an armed vigilante, only rampant property crime and a stolen laptop that was recovered later that day off Camp property.

“Fools,” said I, “You do not know, Silence like a cancer grows.”

It Is Spreading To Local Media
This cancer of anger, bigotry, marginalization, and dehumanization leveled toward those experiencing homelessness is metastasizing and spreading, even into the local media. People who should know better and should be discerning are now manifesting the symptoms of this disease. A local news outlet recently ran a story describing the Camp as “worse than Lord of the Flies” and featuring an anonymous interview with someone describing alleged incidents of rape and “branding” in the Camp. No such incident was ever reported to Camp managers (I’m one of the managers and am in the Camp daily) or to the police (who will tell you that there’s nothing they can do without a police report being filed). As Julie Garcia, the founder of Jewels Helping Hands, is a rape survivor herself, we take such accusations VERY seriously. The day after the story aired (without ANY requested input from Jewels Helping Hands), we scoured the Camp, asking residents for ANY information they might have regarding the alleged rape incident. The result? Neither a victim nor a perpetrator, nor a time, nor a location, could be identified. Only unsubstantiated rumor that gets reported as “news.” And the “branding” incident? We found the individual involved, who confessed that he had been involved in a drug deal gone bad, and the “branding” was the consequence (that doesn’t make it good or right, just very painful). He wouldn’t say if the incident occurred on Camp property or elsewhere. But, yes, he was the victim of a pissed-off drug dealer. Being stupid has consequences, whether in a homeless camp or anywhere else life takes you. Lesson learned . . . hopefully.

“Fools,” said I, “You do not know, Silence like a cancer grows.”

An Abnormal Atmosphere
Under any normal conditions, journalistic integrity would have rejected both of the above stories as nothing more than anonymous and unsubstantiated accusations. But this spreading cancer has created an environment where stories that should have been scrutinized and rejected as anonymous rumors and gossip become believable and printable stories. By publishing them, news outlets become a megaphone and a vehicle for spreading this cancer into our larger community; this cancer of anger, bigotry, rumor, gossip, marginalization, and dehumanization leveled toward those experiencing homelessness who have no way to defend themselves and no voice with which to tell their stories. As a result, don’t waste time wondering why the residents of the West Hills Neighborhood (or ANY neighborhood, for that matter) don’t want a shelter or transitional housing facility filled with those “nuisances” in their neighborhood. The cancer this Administration has created and fostered has spread and metastasized into the very neighborhoods the City needs for any homeless plan to succeed.

“Fools,” said I, “You do not know, Silence like a cancer grows.”

A Financial Cancer
This spreading cancer has financial implications. A story published by a local news outlet declared, “Camp Hope Costs Taxpayers Hundreds of Thousands, City Files Nuisance Order.” That’s right. Those homeless people are a nuisance that’s costing Spokane big money. According to the story, the City of Spokane has spent more than $400,000 on garbage dumpsters and police overtime. Here’s what’s missing from the story. How does that expense (if accurate) compare with the more than $400,000 the City of Spokane overpaid for two weeks of operating a warming center at the Convention Center? That would be $200,000 per week at the Convention Center, compared with providing sanitation services at Camp Hope for more than 24 weeks, at a per week cost of less than $17,000. In comparison, the City has gotten one hell of a good deal for their expenses at Camp Hope but got royally ripped off at the Convention Center. Why was such a per week waste a justifiable expense at the Convention Center, but a per week cost of less than 1/10th (actually 8.5%) of that expense a terrible thing at Camp Hope? Answer: This spreading and metastasizing cancer can’t do math, or re-interprets math to support the narrative of “nuisances,” people who aren’t worth the cost or effort of keeping them safe. And the City wants to be reimbursed for having to waste money on those “nuisances.”

“Fools,” said I, “You do not know, Silence like a cancer grows.”

“She’s Going To Be Okay, Mom”
Last Sunday, the 11th, I was picking up garbage on the perimeter of Camp Hope when a woman approached me. She told me her daughter (whom I met later) is in the Camp and has been homeless for a year. She lives two hours away and had driven to Spokane to check on her daughter. As we talked she began to weep. I held her as she sobbed, trying to comfort her saying, “She’s going to be okay, mom. She’s going to be okay.” Perhaps what I should have told this distraught mother was the cancerous truth: “Your daughter’s going to be okay as long as some fool from the City doesn’t cut off our water supply. She’ll be okay as long as the City doesn’t fine us for helping her, or the Mayor doesn’t have her declared a nuisance and swept off this property with nowhere to go.”  Let me know which truth I should be sharing with the moms, dads, and families that come to the Camp, concerned for the well-being of their loved ones and hearing from local media that they are all about to be swept off the property by a City that regards their loved ones as nothing more than “nuisances.”

“Fools” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Paul Simon
The Sound of Silence lyrics © Paul Simon Music, Sony/ATV Songs LLC

Yours for Restoring the Broken Shalom of Our Community,

Maurice Smith

Executive Producer

Preview of New Documentary, “Camp Hope 2.0”

MyRoadLeadsHome.org

The Night of the Unsheltered Homeless

The Least of These

The Hidden Homeless (SpIFF Version) [Official Selection 2020 Spokane International Film Festival]

Documentary YouTube Channel

509.475.8797

“We can’t change what we don’t love;

We can’t love what we don’t know;

And we can’t know 

what we’re unwilling to invest

with our time, our efforts, and

our resources.”

Background and Mindset

So who is Cathy McMorris Rodgers really? Her background speaks volumes. 

Most of what follows is based on her Wikipedia article and an article on her life that appeared in the Spokesman in 2004. Cathy McMorris was born May 22, 1969 in Salem, Oregon. In 1974 when Cathy was five her parents and young brother moved to an off-grid farm in Hazleton (pop. 305), British Columbia, not far from Alaska. She was taught in a two-room schoolhouse. Just seven years later when Cathy was twelve they moved again, this time to Quesnel, B.C. (pop. 10,000) 350 miles SE, so her father could take a job as the principal of a private Christian school. That lasted three years. 

Cathy was a fifteen year old high school junior in 1984 when they moved to an orchard near Kettle Falls where she worked at the family’s fruit stand. Cathy and her brother attended the Columbia River Christian Academy, a school established in 1973 by people looking for a way to school their children in their brand of Christian worldview. Her father taught the younger grades at the same school. He served as chairman of the Stevens County Republican Party. They attended a “non-denominational evangelical Christian church”. 

Ms McMorris went off to the “Pensacola Christian College” in Florida. The wikipedia article notes that at the time she attended the College it was not accredited. It is identified as an “Independent Baptist liberal arts college.” The Independent Baptist churches are also referred to as Independent Fundamental Baptist or IFB. A Pew Research Center 2014 survey found that members of Independent Baptist churches comprised a mere 2.5% of the adult U.S. population. The Pensacola Christian College was finally accredited in 2013 by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. Ms. McMorris graduated in 1990 with a degree identified as Pre-law.

I invite you to the Wikipedia article on the Pensacola Christian College to comprehend the narrowness of the experience. This is NOT a place where a student is exposed to wide ranging ideas. 

In 1990 Ms McMorris went straight from college to managing the campaign of Bob Morton in his run for the Washington House of Representatives from the 7th Legislative District (NE corner of WA). When he was elected and then took office in 1991 she became his legislative assistant. When Morton was appointed to the LD7 Senate seat, Ms. McMorris was appointed to fill the LD7 Rep seat that Morton had held. Ms. McMorris was all of twenty five years old at the time. 

During her time in Olympia she pursued an “Executive MBA” from the University of WA starting in 1993 and graduating in 2002. According to Wikipedia: “Executive MBA (EMBA) programs developed to meet the educational needs of managers and executives, allowing students to earn an MBA (or another business-related graduate degree) in two years or less while working full-time.” 

Serving for LD7 she never faced serious opposition for her State Rep seat. Eastern Washington U.S. Representative George Nethercutt gave McMorris the nod in 2004 when he vacated the U.S. House CD5 seat to run for Senate, a race he lost. She bested Don Barbieri that year for the seat, winning with nearly 60% of the vote. Peter Goldmark in 2006 whittled her down to 56.5%, the lowest percentage with which she has won in a general election. 

If, as George Layoff points out in “Don’t Think of an Elephant”, people develop frames around issues that cause facts to bounce off, Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ frame, based on her education and upbringing, must be particularly impervious. She has been steeped in Independent Fundamental Baptist Christianity. From a fundamentalist childhood and education she shot directly into politics. There was no pause to examine her place in the world. Her frame provides rigid certainty with no need to consider other points of view. Empathy, the ability to imagine oneself in another’s shoes, is not likely to be her long suit.

It is not my intent to paint Ms. McMorris Rodgers as evil. She does not go to the mirror every morning and ask herself, “What nasty, awful thing should I work on today.” She does, however, go to that mirror with the mind frame of absolute certainty conditioned by the narrowest of narrow religious upbringings, carefully shielded even from broader Christian thought. She goes to that mirror having spent her entire adult life in Olympia or D.C. and with almost no broader life experience. 

We need a Representative with a broader understanding of the world and how it works. This November is time for McMorris Rodgers to be retired by the voters.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The consequences of the belief that “life begins at conception”

How many times has Cathy McMorris Rodgers (U.S. Rep. from eastern Washington, CD5) sworn in public and in private that she believes and will vote in accordance with her belief that “life begins at conception”? Her brand of Fundamentalist Christianity demands that as an article of faith. Every Republican on the general election ballots in eastern Washington this November has at some point declared the same thing. (Some few have cleverly dodged the question by claiming that making laws restricting women’s freedom to make medical decisions about their own bodies isn’t a local issue—but now, post Dobbs, it is an issue at all levels of government.)

“Life begins at conception” is an article of faith to which every Republican candidate attests to energize their base voters. The controversy over abortion has been the linchpin of the Republican-generated culture wars for half a century. During those fifty years, women—and men who respect women’s intelligence and autonomy—could still vote Republican (or not vote) knowing they were safely shielded from the logical consequences of the doctrine that “life begins at conception” by the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade(1973). Under the protection Roe offered, rooted in a right to privacy, a right recently gutted by the Republican-packed Supreme Court, the consequences of the doctrine “life begins at conception” could fester away in Republican dogma without the broader electorate needing to pay much attention. 

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Almost no woman under the age of sixty in this country today has personally experienced a society in which women are not trusted to privately make the most personal medical decisions a woman ever faces. Every mother and grandmother—and every father and grandfather who respects women’s intelligence—everyone who remembers the era before Roe v. Wade needs to share their stories with their children and grandchildren and exhort them to vote in November to keep us from returning to the pre-Roe era. 

Here’s one of mine. My very first steady girlfriend Marianne and I broke off our relationship not long before I left Wisconsin to go to college in 1968. Years later she told me this remarkable story: Marianne, it turned out (to my surprise), did not have the benefit of the detailed “birds and bees” talk from her parents that I had from mine. After we broke off our relationship she got mixed up with an older bus driver on whose bus she rode daily in Milwaukee. She (they?) succumbed to the hormones coursing through the veins of a teenager, and, to her surprise and dismay, she became pregnant. Once she realized what had happened—and once it was clear that the sperm contributor to the conceptus would take zero responsibility—she faced a United States in which abortion was illegal and illegal abortion was potentially deadly. Her parents’ finances were limited—but obtaining a safe abortion was essential to her and her parents, who by this time fervently regretted that their daughter had not received more explicit sex education. They offered to cover the bill for an odyssey that makes crossing a state line to obtain an abortion seem tame. Marianne, 19 years old and alone, flew from Milwaukee to Tokyo, Japan. In Japan suction abortion was (and is) legal, safe, and widely available. In Tokyo, in a country where she could neither read or speak the language, she obtained an uncomplicated abortion. This was no medical “holiday”. There was neither time, money, nor the will to go sight-seeing. Marianne was back in Milwaukee in what felt like a whirlwind, she and her parents safely relieved of a totally unwanted pregnancy—and what must have been thousands of dollars (in today’s dollars). 

One doesn’t need to look back any further than the sixties to glimpse an American legal and social structure in which women were seen as second-class participants whose reproductive decisions were made for them by hospital medical boards and paternalistic physicians. A friend of mine, Jane Bowen, the widow of Dr. Channing Bowen, a prominent pediatric cardiologist in Spokane, is now almost ninety-seven years old and sharp as a tack. At my considerable urging she recounted to me her personal experience of the patriarchal culture to which the “life begins at conception” Republican political candidates would like to see us return. 

After giving birth to four girls in seven years (1953 to 1959), Jane, then in her mid-thirties, sought a sure method of preventing further pregnancy. She requested a tubal ligation of her obstetrician/gynecologist. He refused as a matter of course. Jane was told by Dr. Tom Gilpatrick, a family friend, that there existed an unpublished formula among the OB/GYN doctors, a formula that considered age and number of babies already birthed, a formula that had to be met before an OB/GYN would consent to performing a tubal ligation. Caring for four young girls at age 35 wasn’t enough, according to the patriarchal standards of the time, just the sort of thing that would resonate with Tucker Carlson and the folks who listen to him spout about “replacement” by being out-bred. Jane, even with the agreement of her physician husband, would not be permitted to have a tubal ligation. She would have to rely on something else (abstinence in the context of marriage?) in a time when abortion was illegal and contraception was neither as effective nor as widely available—even for married couples—as it is today. 

For Ms. Bowen, this experience of bald-faced patriarchy spurred her to become one of the instigators of the new Planned Parenthood Clinic in Spokane—originally intended to help make contraception, sex education, and women’s health care more widely available. (Locally, abortion services weren’t offered by Planned Parenthood until the early 1990s when I was on the board, by which time persistent harassment by extremists had succeeded in limiting community availability of legal abortion under Roe.)

In the post-Roe world a vote cast for any “life begins at conception” Republican—which is all of the local Republican candidates—risks an eventual return to the patriarchal society that existed before Roe. Assemble your stories and tell your children and grandchildren what it was like. See to it that they register and understand the importance of their vote this November.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Erratum, Update, and To-Do

Last Friday’s (September 9) post, “Flynn’s Reawaken America Tour Comes to the Inland Northwest” must have rung a chord: it was among the most widely shared and most read of any recent post—as well it should be considering Flynn and company’s disturbing Christian Nationalist message and the money-sucking ticket swindle this two-day-long piece of pseudo-Christian misinformation represents. 

ERRATUM: I started the September 9 post with “Tomorrow and Sunday, September 16th and 17th, from 10AM to 6PM, you’re invited by Matt Shea and company to “The Great Re-Awakening,” aka the “ReAwaken America Tour” held just over the border at Stateline Speedway in Post Falls.” I was oblivious to the logical contradictions in that sentence: September 16th and 17th are THIS COMING Friday and Saturday and NOT last weekend. I find it a little worrisome that just one observant reader Reply-emailed me to gently point out my temporal disorientation. I thank that reader.

Expropriation of the Christian Message: Since we’ve been granted the extra time by my error, once more I want to encourage you to sign on to the petition protesting this event in our region. It was recommended to me by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, an organization I respect and support. You can access the petition here.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 2404 N Howard St, Spokane, is holding a vigil from 11AM to noon on Saturday, September 17, in protest of the Post Falls Christian nationalist tour. Click here for the background, reasoning, and details.

The Rt. Rev. Gretchen M. Rehberg, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane, has an excellent article published in the Spokesman that addresses the Flynn event head-on from a Christian perspective that I highly respect. Read it here.

Politics and Fleecing the Populace: Aside from its Christian cloaking, Flynn’s event, the ReAwaken America Tour, reeks of a carnival sideshow dedicated to extracting money from the deluded while propagating lies and mistrust. The whole thing is run by a failed Republican candidate and serial entrepreneur, Clay Clark, who has already re-branded his show from a “Health and Freedom Tour” dedicated to spreading Covid-19 misinformation to the new “ReAwaken America Tour” dedicated to 2020 election conspiracy theories. His web ad page for the current Tour breathlessly declares that every previous tour stop has “Sold Out”. The ad for the Speedway Event this Friday and Saturday proclaims “Just 4000 tickets will be sold”. In the original post I wrote of my experience texting for tickets. At that time (last Friday, September 9) the fellow who called me back from the boiler room excitedly told me there were “only 129 tickets left”—and yet the website two days later still offered tickets for sale. Does that trajectory seem unlikely for an event destined to sell out 4000 tickets?

I encourage my readers to text to 918.851.0102 to inquire if there are any tickets left for the show this Friday and Saturday, September 16 and 17, in Post Falls. Ask how much tickets cost. Send me an email to jxindivisible@gmail.com with the day and time they contacted you, the number of tickets they said were left, and the offered range of prices. (I certainly would NOT give them a credit card number, no matter how much they hype the urgency.) Perhaps we can expose Clay Clark’s and Michael Flynn’s boiler room project for the grift I suspect it is—or we’ll find that their marketing techniques have attracted thousands…

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. One of my readers responded to the poster for the “ReAwaken America Tour” in my original email with, “That “Great Awakening” poster is a “Where’s Waldo” of neofascist authoritarian cult followers.” I might add “leaders” of the authoritarian cult. For fun, see how many you can pick out. 

P.P.S. Another reader queried, “Did you notice that these same people who are trying to ‘ReAwaken’ are the ones who dis people for being ‘Woke’? What’s up with that?”

P.P.P.S. For any of you unfamiliar with the history of “Awakenings” in the history of the last 400 years of the protestant Christian churches I recommend this wikipedia article. Clearly, Flynn’s and Clay Clark’s clever branding of the tour as a “ReAwakening” is meant to pretend to an Evangelical underpinning of its political message.

Whose election narrative are they peddling?

The local (and the Washington State) Republican Parties are trying to perform a delicate, desperate straddle between sane Republicans and the Trump MAGA wing of fevered election deniers. 

The Spokane County Republican Party (aka SpokaneGOP) is promoting distrust in Spokane County’s election systems administered under Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton—while simultaneously pretending that the Party believes there really isn’t a problem. 

This double-talk comes from some of the highest ranking local Republican Party officials. Matt Hawkins, the SpokaneGOP’s state committeeman and the 3rd or 4th highest ranking officer in the Spokane County Republican County, made some very intentional news back in June of this year. As the leader of the Spokane GOP’s “election integrity subcommittee”, Mr. Hawkins presented a petition to the Spokane County Commissioners (three Republicans: French, Kerns, and Kuney) calling for a “comprehensive election system audit” to “restore confidence in our elections.” Mr. Hawkins’ seems to want it both ways:

“We’re not trying to say any one person has done anything wrong,” Hawkins said. “We’re not trying to say that any fraud has been committed. We are trying to say we want to restore confidence to the election system.”

Hawkins’ essential public claim is, “We in the Republican Party aren’t election deniers, we just have to reassure all those deluded folks in our Party who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent”.

The trouble with Hawkins is that his public statement, like that of so many Republicans, is a lie about what he really believes and why he believes it. Hawkins, functioning in his capacity as the SpokaneGOP’s representative to the State Republican Party, sent a highly revealing email earlier this year to 4th legislative district Republican Precinct Committee Officers. (I’ve copied the email in full at the bottom of this post.) In that email I invite you to click on any of his treasured references, but let’s look at the very first one he offers, the one entitled “Video Title 1” featuring “Captain” Seth Keshel. It is found on Rumble, the cloud service that also hosts Trump’s “Truth Social”. The video is posted by Northwest Grassroots, the same extremist Spokane Valley-based group that warmly hosted James Allsup in 2018. (Allsup is the proudly white supremacist Charlottesville marcher and former Republican PCO from the Pullman area. Cecily Wright, co-instigator of NWGrassroots and disgraced chairwoman of the SpokaneGOP, is now LD4 State Rep Rob Chase’s legislative assistant. You can’t make this stuff up.)

“Video Title 1” in Hawkins’ “Sites of interest” is Mr. Keshel’s “2020 Election Analysis ‘The Truth’ ” presentation at the Post Falls Greyhound Park and Event Center in October of 2021, nine months following the January 6 insurrection. Mr. Keshel’s presentation is a statistical joke: he takes historical election data, notes that 2020 is an outlier, and concludes that fraud must be involved. This is not evidence of fraud. It is a demonstration that the future is difficult to predict—and that the Trump presidency stirred people of all stripes to come out and vote. (That was the conclusion I reached based on the data presented before I read this Associated Press article, which I recommend.) 

It should come as no surprise that Keshel’s Greyhound Park presentation is introduced by LD4 Washington State Rep. Rob Chase, who, with Bob McCaslin, has been widely disseminating the election fraud narrative. (McCaslin is the wholly unqualified Republican candidate running to replace Vicky Dalton as Spokane County Auditor.) The Greyhound Park video presentation is a local extension of Mike Lindell’s (the “MyPillow Guy”’s) widely panned 72 hour “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Keshel was not only a participant in South Dakota but also took part in the election-conspiracy theory discussions at the estate of Lin Wood with Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and Doug Logan, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, the folks who worked diligently to overturn the 2020 election. Apparently, Keshel’s “election statistics” presentation was either accepted as convincing by the assembled conspiracy theorists or was seen as useful in much wider efforts to overturn the 2020 election, efforts that culminated most visibly in the January 6 insurrection.

This Greyhound Park presentation by Keshel is the sort of conspiracy theory garbage that represents the true conviction of the local Republicans who, in their public utterances, claim they just want to “restore confidence”. 

The June Spokesman article notes that Rob Chase and Bob McCaslin both supported the petition to the Spokane County Commissioners for a third party audit of the 2020 election. In view of Chase’s introductory remarks in the Greyhound Park video, McCaslin’s bid to replace Auditor Vicky Dalton, and the SpokaneGOP’s fealty to Trump’s election fraud narrative in the person of Matt Hawkins, we shouldn’t be surprised. 

Matt Hawkins, functioning as spokesperson for the SpokaneGOP, Rob Chase, and Bob McCaslin are infusing local Republicans with a crackpot election fraud narrative that doesn’t stand up to the most basic scrutiny. They must know this narrative is not a winning argument in the broader court of public opinion. For that reason they and the entire state and local Republican Party is calling for a third party audit to “restore confidence” in election systems in the State of Washington, election systems they barely understand. As a result there isn’t a single Republican candidate in Washington State who will actually state unequivocally that Joe Biden is the fairly, legitimately elected President. 

Vote them out in November, vote them all out.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

From: Matthew Hawkins <matt@hna-cap.com> 
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2022 4:47 PM
To: PCO’s 4th <PCOs4th@NETORGFT2352099.onmicrosoft.com>
Subject: SCM Report for SCGOP

Attached is the report for the Board meeting tomorrow night. Thanks for all that you do.

Respectfully,

Matthew C. Hawkins, SCM-Spokane

C: 509.990.3509

matt@HnA-cap.com

Sites Of Interest:

Video Title 1: Captain Seth Keshel – Idaho and Washington – County by County

https://rumble.com/vo7v7a-captain-seth-keshel-idaho-and-washington-county-by-county.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=4

Video Title 2: Dr. Douglas Frank – Nationwide Overview of Results

https://rumble.com/vo7wa6-dr.-douglas-frank-nationwide-overview-of-results.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=4

Video Title 3: Professor David Clements – Our Legal Positions

https://rumble.com/vo7u8a-professor-david-clements-our-legal-positions.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=4

Frank – The Voice of Free Speech Social Media

Kim Wyman Interview:  https://komonews.com/news/podcast/politicast/podcast-seattle-unlikely-to-change-direction-with-new-leadership

Americans United & Determined to Improve Transparency A.U.D.I.T. – Telegram  

Elections Fraud Report Released – Exposes All in 7 States – Conservative Patriots (conspatriots.com)

Updated 11 Min Video “A Citizen Primer” Video Here  

Technology Expert Determines if Ballots are Legitimate or Fake (22 Mins)

https://www.regent.edu/misc/analyzing-american-election-integrity/

Also 

https://lindelltv.com/

For Washington State:  

https://weicu.org/

If you want to see something that raises concerns about Washington State, at minimum look at minutes  8-15. 

[If you click on the video link that Hawkins offered, a message from YouTube appears: “Video Unavailable, This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” The account belonged to Gail Golec, a fringe candidate for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who lost in the August 2 primary. She was reprimanded for telling her followers to steal pens from polling places for reasons only a conspiracy theorist deeply down an election rabbit hole would understand. 

You can’t make this stuff up, either. ] 

Now back to “evidence” cited in Matt Hawkins’ email:

Judge rules, Trump was right:  Turns Out Trump Was Right: Court Judge Rules That Michigan Sec. Of State Over Stepped And Broke Law Regarding Absentee Ballot Order – Analyzing America

Appended to Hawkins’ email was another gem. I take this missive of Hawkins’ as the relatively polite, glossy version of Eric Greitens’ widely criticized, truly gross and inappropriate MAGA political ad, “Hunting for RINOs”. As you read, remember this plea for ideological purity was sent out in early January of 2022:

SCM Report for End of Year 2021 January 4th, 2022 Board Meeting

…Coming into the new year, we need to lay plans for ensuring we are restoring confidence in our Elections, which Ruth’s Elections committee is doing a fantastic job. [Presumably this Ruth is Ruth Ryan, the woman who is also organizing the SpokaneGOP’s election observers.]

I am hearing discussions around the State about the need to evaluate not just our new candidates that are planning on running this year, but to also evaluate our current elected officials that may be looking to run again in this next year. Yes, the idea may become reality in that a Red Wave could be coming both within the State of Washington, as well as in Washington DC. We need to ensure that as Republicans are elected that they will be a cohesive force in getting the results we would like to see. The following observations should be discussed locally:

1. Do our candidates support a Comprehensive Audit of the Election system?
2. What are the defining issues we need to layout as action items for our Candidates to act upononce they are elected to office and do, we have their support today?
   1. Schools & education
   2. Elections
   3. Technology and the impact on …
   4. Mandates
   5. Others
3. How do our candidates support Constitutional policy? We all know Insley claims he does, but what does this really mean?
   Some have likened this to the “Newt Gingrich” Contract with America, from 25 years ago. There have been discussions for a Contract with Washington.

How do we ensure that if we are fortunate to experience a Red Wave, that measurable results can be identified that will improve our State and local communities for the benefit of our families?

Respectfully,
Matt Hawkins, SCM

The Christian Nationalist Message is Loud and Clear

Tomorrow and Sunday, September 16th and 17th, from 10AM to 6PM, you’re invited by Matt Shea and company to “The Great Re-Awakening,” aka the “ReAwaken America Tour” held just over the border at Stateline Speedway in Post Falls. The tour is brought to you by the entrepreneur, former DJ and business coach, and failed candidate for mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma (in 2009), Clay Clark. Mr. Clark hatched the show as “Health and Freedom” tours in 2020 peddling conspiracy theories about Covid-19. In the summer of 2021 Clark rebranded the show as the ReAwaken America Tour, shifting emphasis to conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and now featuring the Trump-pardoned criminal, Michael Flynn. 

I encourage you to explore the background of the ReAwaken America Tour in its wikipedia article. With the exceptions of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Post Falls, Idaho, all listed ReAwaken events have been held at mega-churches, even as multiple other Christian Church leaders have condemned the tour—but, apparently, with much less fanfare and media attention. 

The poster for the Stateline event displayed below suggests (but carefully does not promise) that if you attend you might see not just General Flynn, the keynote speaker, but a lineup of a great many other far right grifters and supporters of insurrection, including Mike Lindell (the “MyPillow Guy”), Sean Feucht (recently in Spokane at Riverfront Park), Josh Hawley, ?Lindsey Graham, and Roger Stone, among a sea of others, some of whom I recognize but cannot name. 

The attraction of the headliner in Post Falls, Michael Flynn, is well-covered in this Associated Press article: “Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior”. I urge you to click and read. It draws heavily on an August 12-13 ReAwaken America presentation at the Cornerstone Church in Batavia, New York, that is said to have drawn thousands.

According to the AP article:

Flynn is “one of the most dangerous individuals in America today,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on authoritarianism and fascism who wrote the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

“He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups,” she said. “All of this comes together to present a very live threat. And he’s at the center.”

Flynn’s worrisome “Christian” Nationalist message reads like incitement to attack your neighbors:

He’s repeated falsehoods about Black Lives Matter and said that so-called globalists created COVID-19. He tells the tens of thousands of people who have paid to see him speak that there are 75 members of the Socialist Party in Congress, and has said the left and Democrats are trying to destroy the country. He asserts, above all else, that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The bedrock, he warns, is crumbling.

The country, Flynn often says in speeches and interviews, is in the midst of a “spiritual war,” and he goes after many of the institutions and ideas that stand as pillars of American democracy.

He has told audiences he doesn’t trust the U.S. government or government institutions that oversee the rule of law. He called the media “the No. 1 enemy” and said it has done a “horrible, horrible disservice to the country by just constantly lying and trying to deceive us.” He says elementary schools are teaching “filth” and “pornography.” He continues to assert, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that elections can’t be trusted. He says, over and over, that some of his fellow Americans are “evil.”

“They dress like us and they talk like us, but they don’t think and act like us,” he told a podcaster recently. “And they definitely do not want what it is that we want.”

Note well the link to “a certain kind of Christian”:

“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God, right?” he [Flynn] said.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identity of Christians and Americans, so that to be a “true” American is to be Christian — and a certain type of Christian. The ideology pushes the idea that the United States was founded on biblical principles and has a favored relationship with a Christian God, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who studies conservative Christianity and politics.

I find all this chilling. Worse, this is the sort of riled up crap that parts of the local Republican Party depend upon for votes—and the sane Republicans know better than to openly cross swords with these people (a topic for next week). Have a listen to this tiktok video of Matt Shea, former Washington State Representative from Spokane valley, self-appointed pastor, and endless promoter of his theocratic “Liberty State”. Then visit Redoubt Newsand note that the same quasi-military code appears on the top of the page. If you are tempted to want to dismiss all this, I urge you to recall the origin of the name of one of the militia groups that stormed the Capitol of January 6, the Three Percenters: 

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. Three Percenters today identify with this 3% because they were true patriots fighting for the freedoms the nation we love and honor was founded on. 

These people are nuts, but they’re nuts and organizing, and now they have a famous retired general and Trump-pardoned criminal to rally around in their quest. Worse, they are deceiving the gullible by cloaking themselves in distorted Christianity.

Add your name to this petition organized by local Christians and Christian sympathizers against this “Christian” Nationalist “ReAwaken America Tour”. Here’s the link to the petition: https://secure.everyaction.com/jQ4VzMGfe0yZdwJy7Ymttw2?emci=5cb756c2-312f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&emdi=4265d07b-922f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&ceid=155031

With its religious trappings and appeals to violence this gathering may be worse than having a Trump “Stop the Steal” rally in our backyard..

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I have no idea what the attendance will be at this Stateline event tomorrow, but the fact that it is happening in our neighborhood I find chilling and worrisome. Yesterday I texted to the number (918.851.0102) on the poster for a ticket. A few hours later I received a phone call from an excited, fast talking young man backed by boiler-room sounds who rattled off a dozen names of people pictured on the poster he said would appear in person at the tour. I asked it that included Josh Hawley. He asked if Hawley were pictured on the poster. I said yes and he reassured me that, then, yes, Hawley would be there in person. (I should have asked if Roger Stone was also going to be in Post Falls in person since he is also pictured on on poster.) Then he offered to sell me a $500 “VIP” ticket…or a $250 General Admission ticket…or a “scholarship” for $135…or, finally, “name your price”. The poster says that “4000 tickets will be sold”—and my young man insisted that I should buy now because as we talked the remaining tickets had dropped from 130 to 129—and they would surely sell out. I didn’t have the presence of mind to say “$5, but I don’t give my credit card information over the phone, so would you reserve a ticket and I can pay at the door?” I wonder how many true believers and how much money this hard sell will attract?

P.P.S. Apparently Sean Feucht, another Christian Nationalist pictured on the placard, came and went from the Spokane Pavilion with a free concert on Sunday, August 21. No one got back to me to say that they attended, and I cannot find any media coverage to say what actually happened. 

Another Example of Ignoring (or twisting) the Science

According to Fundamentalist Christians, including all local Republican respondents to WeBelieveWeVote.com’s Survey, “The Holy Bible is the supernatural, inspired Word of God; it is inerrant, supreme, complete, and final.” That statement could not be clearer. One consequence of Fundamentalist belief is straightforward: the Creation Stories (there are two, not one) in the Book of Genesis are not allegorical, they are not an attempt by members of a primitive society to explain their existence. Instead, for a Fundamentalist, the Creation Stories are the literal truth—and, by implication, the science of geology and all that it implies is junk science. “Our” eastern Washington Representative to the U.S. Congress, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a woman steeped in Fundamentalist education, makes this clear: “The account that I believe is the one in the Bible that God created the world in seven days.”

For a Fundamentalist (a status self-confirmed by every local Republican who responded to Question 1 of the WBWV Survey) there are other doctrinal consequences. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” There is no room in that statement for ambiguity. That binary statement is simple, direct…and factually wrong.

I was brought up to think of sex as a clear dichotomy, male and female. For my parents, it wasn’t so much an article of faith, it was simply obvious to them based on common observation. Obvious, that is, in the same way as it was “obvious” at one time that the earth was the center of the universe, the earth was flat, and the sun and the moon were moved in the sky for the benefit of Man. 

The Fundamentalist Biblical doctrine of binary, dichotomous sex determination, fails just as miserably under careful observation as does the doctrine of an earth-centered universe—but fewer Fundamentalist Christians have studied human embryology than they have studied the basics of modern astronomy. 

There was much that I found fascinating in my medical training, but the study of human embryology was, given my upbringing, an eye opener. “Gender assigned at birth,” for some percentage of babies is exactly that: assigned. Little seen, appreciated, or discussed outside of medicine, some percentage of babies are born with “ambiguous genitalia”. When I was in medical school the sex/gender of such babies was often surgically assigned according to the best guess and cultural bias of the doctors and the parents. When biological reality is actually studied it is far messier than simplistically binary. 

Still, Fundamentalist Christians, that is, all of the local Republican respondents to question one of the WBWV Survey, hang their hats on this binary notion and deny the messy biological reality that “gender assigned at birth” is a biologically wobbly concept. For this narrow segment of Christianity that seems to permeate local Republicans the biological fact that gender is messy—a clear challenge to the written Word—must be seen as the work of the Devil and, somehow, as an evil personal choice or, for minors, the consequence of being evilly “groomed”. 

Robert Hubbell, author of the highly recommended blog “Today’s Edition” eloquently addressed this issue in his July 19th entry in a subsection entitled “GOP accelerates pace of anti-LGBTQ agenda:” 

The GOP has determined that the last acceptable group to discriminate against (after women) is the LGBTQ community, and it is pursuing that agenda with a vengeance.

I have been outspoken in my defense of transgender people because . . . . well, they are people. Period. Full stop. I am always surprised when a well-intentioned reader sends an email that says either “God created two sexes” or “there are two sexes.” Both of those statements are wrong to their core. Anyone who believes so has not educated themselves about human sexuality, gender, and biology.

          If you believe there are “only two sexes” and are open to a scientific discussion of same, I recommend Dr. Steven Novella in Science Based Medicine, The Science of Biological Sex. I will not repeat his lengthy discussion but will note that 2% of infants have ambiguous genitalia and that common chromosomal variations include XXY, XYY, and XXX. And some people have cells in their body with XX chromosomes and other cells with XY chromosomes. And those chromosomal variations do not account for the role of gene variation in gender identity. I could go on, but you can read the article if you are interested in the science of biological sex.

          In the tens of thousands of cases each year when doctors must make their “best guess” as to the sex of an infant, that guess becomes ironclad in the view of GOP lawmakers and judges—even if the “guess” is wrong. So, all of the GOP bills that talk about “gender assigned at birth” create the illusion of certainty that does not exist.

          Even if the numbers of biological and genetic variants are small—say 2% of the population—that is no excuse for asking that segment of the population to “Sit down, shut up, and pretend to be someone you are not.” Nor is it grounds for discriminating against them. One day, we will look back on the institutional discrimination against LGBTQ people with the same shame and guilt that we feel looking back on discrimination against Black Americans in the Jim Crow south.

People are entitled to believe what they like. It is (still) a free country. But I don’t vote for people who reject reality and project hate on vulnerable groups based on adamantine adherence to a literal interpretation of an ancient text. Hate is not a Christian value.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Of course, it was only a few centuries ago when those who literally interpreted the Bible believed as an article of faith that the Man and the Earth he lives on were the absolute center of the solar system, that is, that the Sun orbits around the Earth. The dominant Christian authorities of the time bitterly persecuted scientists like Galileo for suggesting otherwise. Consider where that ended. (Of course, ideas now viewed as wrong and archaic almost never completely die out. Witness the endless and witless “proofs” that the earth is flat found on the internet.)

P.P.S. If you’ve read this far I want to put in a plug for Robert Hubbell and his blog “Today’s Edition.” People I meet often say they can’t bear to read the news any more, it is “too depressing”. Hubbell’s blog is a welcome antidote. He describes himself as “Citizen. Optimist. Realist.” and the blog as “A reflection on today’s news through the lens of hope.” I became a subscriber three months ago. I encourage you to do the same.