Category: Uncategorized

Republicans chart their comeback 

Jerry LeClaireJun 7

The New York Times Editorial Board in an opinion piece entitled “Congress Needs to Defend Vote Counting, Not Just Vote Casting” detailed Republican efforts to undermine faith in the integrity of our electoral system and pass state laws restricting voters’ access to the ballot, but to seize control of state electoral administration and set the stage for invalidating electoral results they deem unfavorable. 

Republican-controlled state legislatures are whittling away at the integrity of electoral democracy in the United States, rushing to pass laws that make it harder for Americans to vote and easier for partisans to tamper with election results.

It is a legislative assault motivated by the failure of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and justified by baseless allegations about the legitimacy of his defeat. Mr. Trump and his supporters pursued indiscriminate lawsuits to overturn the results and then, urged on by Mr. Trump, some of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the completion of the election process. Now they are seeking to rewrite the rules to make it easier for Republicans to win elections without winning the most votes.

The threat to democracy of that electoral groundwork is worrisome on its own, but several recent pieces of news suggest a growing and disturbing backup plan now openly supported by some of the most far-right members of Congress. 

During an “America First” rally on May 27, 2021, a rally that also featured the antics of the QAnon promoter, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) exhorted the crowd (the bold is mine): 

We have a Second Amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it. The Second Amendment, this is a little history lesson for all the fake news media, the Second Amendment is not about, it’s not about hunting, it’s not about recreation, it’s not about sports. The Second Amendment is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does, but it sure is important to recognize the founding principles of this nation and make that they are fully understood.

Gaetz’ exhortation is a gross rewrite of the 2nd Amendment words (“well organized militia) and its origins in Southern concerns over slave rebellion. 

Eight days later, on June 4, a Republican-appointed (Bush II) federal district judge, Roger T. Benitez, overturned California’s decades old ban on assault rifles. The named plaintiff in the lawsuit, James Miller, is an attorney and a “Volunteer Advisory Board Member” of the political action committee San Diego County Gun Owners (SDCGO), which is itself one of the plaintiffs in the suit. SDCGO, on the front page of its website, promotes a movie, “The Plot Against the President,” which has nothing to do with gun ownership and everything to do with promoting a conspiracy theory. A trailer advertising the movie offers cameo appearances of Donald Trump, Trump Junior, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), and, you guessed it, Rep. Matt Gaetz (among other vaguely familiar figures in the Trump pantheon whom I could not identify by name). The net effect of the SDCGO website is a sense of “patriotic” preparation for armed conflict for political ends.

The same Friday, June 4, the Spokesman Review offered a front page story, “Concerns about ex-comic starting a ‘Ruby-Ridge-style compound’ roil Boundary County.” The owner and founder, Owen Benjamin, vows to offer 

…a gun range, saying that there will be “a whole thing where we teach kids how to shoot” and stating that “we’d live near VerTac Tactical, so we’d be safe as bugs in a rug. I mean, I’d have my own private paramilitary force, which is always a good thing.”

Vertac Tactical, as demonstrated on its website, bares no resemblance to the hunter safety, marksmanship-oriented firearms training available to me as a youth in Wisconsin. Vertac Tactical is all about military weaponry. 

Former WA State Rep. Matt Shea (R, Spokane Valley) was (and, doubtlessly, still is) promoting paramilitary training in northeast Washington, while, as a “pastor”, he is offers justification for armed conflict to his quasi-Christian flock with his provocative writing, “The Biblical of War”. 

The “Three Percenters,” a militia group implicated in the January 6th insurrection, is named after the erroneous assertion that only three percentof colonists were active “on the field” during the American Revolution against Great Britain. Regardless of historical accuracy, the core belief of the Three Percenters is that a few well armed revolutionaries can change the course of history. 

Meanwhile, according to a reputable survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) of over five thousand randomly chosen Americans from all over the United States, fifteen percent agreed that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Among those who put their trust in far-right media sources like One American News Network (OANN) and Newmax, four in ten agree with that statement. 

Added up, Trump Republican undermining of electoral confidence, efforts to undermine weapons laws, a growing militia movement, and an increasing number of Americans subscribing to the idea that violence is warranted, is a flashing warning light we would all do well to heed. History is replete with examples either of societies descending into armed conflict (Libya and ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq are current examples) or coming under autocratic rule in effective abandonment of democracy (currently Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Belarus and, earlier, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy). “It Can’t Happen Here” is a profoundly dangerous assumption…

And, as if to amplify my unease, as I pondered this post at six thirty in the morning last weekend in North Idaho, an incredibly loud pickup truck roared by my perch, an oversize Confederate battle flag flapping wildly from a pole anchored to the bed… 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The ongoing saga of administrative bungling

Jerry LeClaireJun 4

On Tuesday this week (June 1) the members of the Washington State Board of Health (WSBOH) met to consider the preliminary investigation and possible action in the case of Amelia Clark. Amelia Clark is the Spokane Regional Health District’s (SRHD’s) Administrator. Seven months ago at the height of the Covid 19 pandemic Ms. Clark made a lot of news. She was the public face of the District and the SRHD Board of Health in the days-long ouster of SHRD’s health officer, Dr. Bob Lutz. 

“At a chaotic news conference, Clark refused to say whether Lutz was fired or he resigned.” according the the Spokesman. In retrospect, Clark’s refusal to clarify suggests that she at least had an inkling of the thin legal ice on which she stood. 

By Washington State Law (RCW  70.05.050)

…the local health officer shall not be removed until after notice is given, and an opportunity for a hearing before the board or official responsible for his or her appointment under this section as to the reason for his or her removal.

Ms. Clark might have imagined (or had been told by someone of presumed authority?) that a perfunctory meeting in executive session, i.e. in a privileged behind-closed-doors meeting, would satisfy the state statute. She may have thought (or been told) that Lutz’s dismissal would blow over in a few days and all would be well. Instead, the outrage was loud, swift and specific. In an effort that looked like an attempt at damage control to retroactively satisfy the letter of the law, the Board met the next week in public. After a presentation of a litany of disjointed complaints by Ms. Clark, a rebuttal by Dr. Lutz and his attorney, and another private executive session, a majority of the Board voted to rubber stamp Ms. Clark’s dismissal of Dr. Lutz as a fait accompli.

It might have ended there were it not for sustained community outrage, the involvement of community leaders, and an understanding of the law. Ben Stuckart, former City Council President and others filed a complaint with the Washington State Board of Health, the body empowered by law (RCW 70.05.120) to review and take action against a local health administrator. In response the State Board of Health may hold a hearing “if a preliminary investigation so warrants.” After that hearing it is within the Board’s power to remove the administrator from office. 

The preliminary investigation is complete. You can read it as a document here. The work was done by Karen M. Sutherland of the Seattle law firm Ogden, Murphy, and Wallace. The document is extensive and thorough, providing evidence that Ms. Clark did violate the provisions of RCW  70.05.050 in her dismissal of Dr. Lutz.

I watched the Tuesday meeting of the WA State Board of Health online. Karen Sutherland carefully and clearly presented her preliminary investigation. This meeting was not typical material for the members of the board. They are mostly health professionals with expertise in epidemiology, not legal determinations. After some questions and deliberation they unanimously approved a motion to do the next thing the statues require: hold a formal hearing to which they may subpoena witnesses and take testimony under oath. They decided to hire the services of an administrative law judge to run the proceedings. 

Researching this process through to this point is an education in the way government is supposed to work if citizens are paying attention. It is also a cautionary tale warning us that without citizen involvement government and government agencies can go off the rails.

The Lutz dismissal saga last fall reeked of behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Administrator Clark’s and Board Chairman Ben Wick’s announcement of Dr. Lutz’ dismissal was poorly prepared, confusing and contradictory. Mayor Woodward praised the action in a letter composed and sent before the announcement, suggesting prior knowledge. After public outcry that clearly caught Ms. Clark off guard, a proper Board meeting with a hearing and a confirmatory vote was hurriedly scheduled the next week. This put the Board members in the position of either backing up Ms. Clark’s action or admitting she had misstepped. At that emergency Board meeting Al French darted on and off the Zoom screen, contributing little in public and an unknown amount in executive session. Minutes after the vote that rubber stamped Ms. Clark’s action (and before anyone on the Board had caught their breath), County Commissioner French offered up Dr. Velasquez as Dr. Lutz’ interim replacement. The public will never know exactly how the drama unfolded, but it makes no difference to the issue at hand: a competent administrator should understand the law. The law is available with a few keystrokes on the internet. A competent administrator would have pushed back at whomever was urging her toward the summary dismissal of Dr. Lutz. Ms. Clark either understood the thin ice she was on and gambled that she could get away with her action or she did not do the homework required of a competent administrator. Either way, all the evidence I have read suggests that Ms. Clark broke the law. 

Points to contemplate:

1) These days the rules by which we are governed are easily accessible (even if they require some diligent reading).

2) Mechanisms exist in the law for common citizens to expose and compel the system to examine alleged faulty behavior. It is incumbent on the citizens to understand and use the tools available. 

3) Washington State requires that governmental meetings be conducted in public, but that is useful only if citizens like us pay enough attention to notice when things aren’t right.

The Washington State Board of Health is in the process of scheduling the required hearing. The proceedings should be very interesting. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Shawn Vestal offers great commentary on the Amelia Clark case in his Spokesman article of May 23: State probe of Lutz firing puts the lie to the attempt to rewrite history. 

Appalling last minute tweaks in the latest effort

Jerry LeClaireJun 2

Judd Legum’s post in his Popular Information blog/email (which I highly recommend) added some important details to the recent news out of Texas, where last weekend the state legislature’s majority Republicans stumbled (briefly?) in passing SB7. SB7 is arguably the most egregious example of the nationwide Republican effort to restrict voting rights. Mr. Legum points out that some of the grossest voter suppression provisions were new additions that had not appeared in either the Senate or House versions previously passed by those bodies. Instead, they were added by Republicans in a closed door session of the Conference Committee that met to reconcile the differences between the legislation passed in the two chambers. Had it passed, the sixty-seven page Conference Committee version of the bill would have done so including provisions no one in either chamber had previously seen or discussed, forced through in the last minute rush to close out the regular session. 

If restricting voter access to the polls wasn’t enough, the Conference Committee slipped in a Republican electoral poison pill: The added clause would have allowed a sympathetic judge to declare an election void “without attempting to determine how individual voters voted.” No need to prove that wild allegations of electoral fraud actually have merit, just get one judge on your side and voila! you can nullify the will of the voters! Had it passed, this legislation would have opened the door to the autocratic takeover over of Texas elections.

I’ve reproduced Judd Legum’s post below. I urge you to read it and absorb the details. Mr. Legum and his small team often focus on the disconnect between corporate speech and corporate political donations, a theme he touches on at the end his post.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

How voter suppression legislation was defeated in Texas — and what happens next

Judd Legum June 1, 2021

For months, the Texas House and Senate have been working on legislation to make voting in the state more difficult. Texas Republicans claim the legislation is necessary to crack down on fraud. But Texas is already the most difficult state in the country to vote and there is no evidence that fraud is a real problem. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) devoted 22,000 staff hours to identifying voter fraud during the 2020 election and came up with 16 people who put an incorrect address on their voter registration forms. 

Nevertheless, Republicans in each chamber passed versions of “SB7,” a bill that would suppress voting. Then House and Senate Republicans negotiated behind closed doors, combined many of the worst provisions of each bill, and added new restrictions that weren’t debated in either body. 

At 6 AM Sunday morning, the Texas Senate approved this Frankenstein version of the bill, which targeted voters of color with surgical precision. The last step was for the Texas House to approve the legislation, which appeared to be a formality. 

Then, late Sunday night, the process collapsed. The House did not approve the bill and the legislative session ended. The legislation is dead — at least for now.

What happened?

Under Texas law, all legislation in the session needed to be approved by both chambers by Sunday at midnight. Because of internal disputes among Republicans about the final composition of the bill, the Texas House did not begin considering the bill until Sunday evening. 

Texas House Democrats initially engaged in the debate over SB7, raising various procedural and substantive objections as the clock ticked closer to midnight. Then around 10:35 PM, as Republicans prepared to end debate and call for a final vote, all of the Democrats left. “Leave the chamber discreetly. Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building,” Texas Representative Chris Turner (D), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, wrote in a text message.

The exodus deprived the body of a quorum, which requires two-thirds of the 150 representatives present to conduct business. Texas Speaker Dade Phelan (R) was forced to gavel out the session, killing the bill. It was the first time Democrats used the tactic to block legislation since 2003. 

The fight, however, is not over. Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) immediately said the legislation would be added to a special session of the legislature. It’s unclear, however, when such a session will occur. Greg Abbott @GregAbbott_TXElection Integrity & Bail Reform were emergency items for this legislative session. They STILL must pass. They will be added to the special session agenda. Legislators will be expected to have worked out the details when they arrive at the Capitol for the special session.May 31st 2021557 Retweets3,174 Likes

Later, Abbott said he would veto the section of the budget that funds the modest salaries of the state legislators. If he follows through, the legislature’s professional staff and maintenance workers also would not get paid. 

The last-minute attack on Sunday voting

After they left the legislature, many Texas Democrats went to “a Baptist church about 2 miles away from the Capitol in East Austin.” The location was not an accident. It was an effort to highlight a last-minute addition to the bill which banned voting on Sundays before 1 PM. That provision was a transparent effort to undermine “souls to the polls,” a tradition in the Black community in which voters are encouraged to cast their ballot after attending church service. Reena Jade Diamante @reenajadeHAPPENING NOW: After breaking the quorum, House Democrats hold a press conference at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in East Austin. Rep. Cole says it’s fitting they’re here because “the Black church has always been the focal point of the Civil Rights Movement.” #txlege May 31st 20212 Retweets10 Likes

Notably, the limitation on Sunday voting was not included in either the House or Senate version of SB7. It was not debated in either chamber. During the legislative session on Sunday night, Republican proponents of the bill refused to take questions on why it was added. No one has explained why votes cast before 1PM on Sundays are more likely to be fraudulent than votes cast after 1PM.

“Why in the world would you pick Sunday morning to outlaw voting in Texas, but for the fact that they know that a lot of Black parishioners historically have chosen that time to organize and go to the polls?” Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX) asked.

Overturning elections “without attempting to determine how individual voters voted”

Another last-minute addition to SB 7 would allow Texas judges to declare an election “void” without bothering to determine if allegations of fraud would have had any impact on the outcome of the election.

OVERTURNING ELECTION. If the number of votes illegally cast in the election is equal to or greater than the number of votes necessary to change the outcome of an election, the court may declare the election void without attempting to determine how individual voters voted. 

The provision appears to be an effort to address a problem that Trump had while pushing the Big Lie that Democrats stole the presidential election. Attorneys representing Trump would make wild allegations of fraud but were unable to identify which ballots were fraudulent. This provision would make that unnecessary. 

For example, one argument advanced by Trump’s lawyers was that thousands of absentee ballots were fraudulent because not enough were invalidated as compared to previous elections. Under this provision, a sympathetic judge could void an election on this basis. It would open up the possibility of voiding elections based on suspect statistical analysis rather than actual evidence of fraud and an examination of votes. 

Texas Representative Briscoe Cain (R), the chairman of the House Election Committee and a lead sponsor of the bill, was part of Trump’s team that attempted to void the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania. 

A related provision would lower the standard to establish voter fraud from “clear and convincing evidence” to a “preponderance of the evidence.” 

Other restrictions on voting

Other provisions in SB7 were included in versions of the bill debated in the House and Senate, but are unnecessary or discriminatory:

Bans drive-thru and 24-hour voting which were used in Harris County in 2020, disproportionately by voters of color. 

Makes it a felony to send an absentee ballot application to anyone who didn’t request one.

Allows partisan poll watchers “freedom of movement,” potentially opening up voters to harassment.

Subjects local election officials to numerous new criminal penalties, including a new crime for counting “invalid” ballots. 

Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director with the ACLU, called it “one of the ugliest anti-voter bills in the country.”

Corporations go quiet

As Popular Information first reported in March, the sponsors of Texas’ voter suppression legislation were backed by millions in corporate contributions over the last three years. Under pressure, two Texas corporations, American Airlines and Dell, issued strong statements opposing the legislation. Later, a few dozen corporations signed a letter with more ambiguous language objecting to the bill. Hundreds of corporations and executives have signed onto a broad statement opposing efforts to restrict voting. 

But as SB 7 barrelled toward the finish line, corporations went quiet. “By the time the Texas bill was poised to pass over the Memorial Day weekend, the opposition from businesses had grown faint,” the AP reported. 

While some corporations were willing to issue statements, none expressed a willingness to take action if the bill was signed into law. It was a willingness by corporations to take action that defeated, for example, anti-gay legislation in Georgia in 2016. 

While the bill may be revived in a special session, the delay gives activists more time to renew pressure on the corporate community.

The Evolution of a Holiday (Holy Day)

Jerry LeClaireMay 31

When I was growing up, Memorial Day was still known among my much older aunts and uncles as Decoration Day. For them it was a day to remember the dead, not just the military dead, but all those family members who had gone before. It was the family custom to visit the cemetery across the road from the old farm and place flowers on the graves of the remembered dead. 

As a teenager Memorial Day in our small town was the day to listen to a few speeches by local notables down in the local park. They eulogized those who died in our wars. Then local military veterans, mostly in their fifties and sixties, their performance slightly less than crisp, fired off a twenty-one gun salute with their Springfield rifles, seven men, three volleys, in honor of our military dead. The Vietnam War was just starting to percolate somewhere far away. 

Like other national mythologies we were taught, it seemed to me that Memorial Day had always been celebrated—and that it meant the same thing to everyone. The historic truth is far more complex. Our commemorative national holy day grew out of local commemorations organized by locals in various communities during and after the American Civil War. The wikipedia article on Memorial Day offers a window on the complexity of the process by which we arrived at the current observance. The lesson is that many things we take for granted actually evolved over a long period of time, nudged forward by the efforts of many individuals and organizations. Memorial Day today feels like a day trying to speak of national unity—but its origins lie in the sometimes bitter remembrances of our bloodiest conflict as a nation.

As we mark this Memorial Day let us strive to understand and deal honestly with the injustices over which the Civil War was fought and so many lives were lost, lives lost both during the war and in the aftermath that stretches to this day.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. I hesitate to use the words celebration or holiday in describing Memorial Day. Both modern words connote joyousness, a feeling that seems to run counter to day that marks the remembrance of the dead. 

Or growing pains among the militant far right?

Jerry LeClaireMay 28

I was going to take today and Memorial Day off, but after reading Shawn Vestal’s update on Matt Shea, The Covenant Church, and Ken Peters in the May 27 Spokesman, I had to share. Mr. Vestal’s writing alone is reason enough to subscribe to the Spokesman Review.

For reference, Matt Shea is the former Representative from LD4 (Spokane Valley north to Mt. Spokane). After exposure of his “The Biblical Basis For War,” Shea was stripped o his committee assignments and declined to run for re-election in 2020. Then, Mr. Shea, with no known theological training, became the pastor of the Covenant Church at 3506 W. Princeton Ave in near north Spokane, taking over from the former pastor, Ken Peters. Mr. Vestal takes the story from there.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Shawn Vestal: Matt Shea out at church over schism with fellow ‘general’ Ken Peters, but abortion protests go on

On Tuesday night, the so-called “Church at Planned Parenthood” met along Indiana Avenue to protest abortion, as it has done scores of times in recent years.

There was singing and praying and preaching and calls to end abortion, as usual. They met across the street from Planned Parenthood, as they have done since a judge ordered them to be less disruptive to clinic operations. A guest pastor from the South came and spoke to the crowd.

But some distinct differences were bubbling under the surface.

The alliance between the founder of TCAPP, Ken Peters, and Matt Shea, the former state representative, Ammon Bundy accomplice and supporter of “biblical warfare,” has fractured. Peters started TCAPP when he was pastor of Spokane’s Covenant Church; he left last year to establish other churches and TCAPP events around the South, and when he did, he named Shea as the pastor at Covenant.

But Shea left abruptly last week and started his own congregation, presiding on Sunday over the first services of On Fire Ministries. It appears, based on a video of the service, that a large proportion of Covenant’s congregation went with him, along with several key church leaders.

The reasons for the split are unclear. Peters, in a brief phone interview Tuesday before the TCAPP protest, said, “We let Matt go. We felt he was better on his own. It wasn’t a good fit, long-term.”

He said he didn’t want to be more specific, to avoid airing dirty laundry. But he did say TCAPP would continue.

“We plan on working together with Matt from a distance on issues we agree on, such as abortion and other moral issues,” Peters said.

TCAPP protests in Spokane have been a focus of controversy and legal battles since 2018. Clinic officials spent months complaining to the city about the noise, obstruction and interference with operations from the protests, which started late in the afternoon during the clinic’s final hours of operation.

After Planned Parenthood tried, without success, to get police to either move the protesters or require them to be quieter, the City Council took up the issue and strengthened the city’s noise ordinance last March following a raucous council meeting.

Planned Parenthood is now suing TCAPP, as well as Peters, Shea and other officials, and a judge issued an injunction ordering TCAPP to move its services across the street and start their events after the clinic closes. Clinic officials say that TCAPP has continually pressed up against – and gone beyond – the limits of the injunction, including starting protests earlier than ordered, holding events in front of the clinic and exhibiting threatening behavior toward a clinic representative.

The alliance between Peters and Shea has been central in Spokane’s far-right circles, where religion and politics are one. Shea sometimes preached at Covenant, where ultra-conservative politics were always explicitly on the agenda. As recently as January 2020, Peters appealed to the congregation to make contributions for Shea’s “legal defense fund.”

“Write a check to Covenant Church and put in the memo, Matt Shea Legal Fund, and then we’re going to write out a check from our church to the North Creek Law Firm,” Peters said.

That plea came as Shea’s tenure as a state lawmaker was collapsing under the weight of new revelations about his activities. A state legislative investigation concluded he engaged in domestic terrorism in helping Ammon Bundy plan and carry out the Malheur bird refuge occupation.

A former compatriot helped bring forth a series of damning revelations about Shea’s extremist activities and associations, among them, his planning for an end-times war, including by the training of child soldiers, and conducting background checks into his political opponents. His ties to the Marble Community, a locus of far-right, patriot activities in northern Stevens County, gained renewed attention, as did the connections to Christian Identity and dominionist philosophy.

Following years of local reporting on Shea, he became a national story.

After years of looking the other way, the GOP establishment and others in the conservative mainstream cut Shea loose. The House GOP caucus gave him the boot. Longtime funders stopped writing him checks. That was what was happening when Covenant passed the hat for his legal fund, and when, a few months later, Peters named Shea as his successor.

“This is God moving generals around,” he told his congregation.

Shea and Peters were big Donald Trump supporters and helped to peddle the election fraud canard, and both are COVID conspiracists and anti-maskers. Shea held “Stop the Steal” rallies; Peters spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., the day before the Jan. 6 insurrection, after being flown down to the capital, he said, by Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy and election-fraud mainstay.

Shea was a frequent presence at TCAPP from the start, as well. He took over as head pastor at Covenant last May, as Peters left to focus on starting a new church in Nashville – as well as beginning to spread to other cities in the South. Peters said this week that he’s having success growing two ministries: TCAPP and his Patriot Church. The head of the Patriot Church in Colbert, Jay MacPherson, is now the pastor at Covenant in Spokane.

Shea’s ouster occurred last week, and apparently took many in his congregation by surprise. He managed to get his new church up and running without missing a Sunday, he said in his first sermon, which was streamed online. The service took place in a conference room at the Mirabeau Park Hotel, and it was a packed house. It seemed, based on videos of congregation sizes at Covenant, to be as big or bigger, suggesting that many, if not most, of the Covenant congregation followed him.

During his sermon, Shea referred to the split only in general terms. He said Peters had asked him to leave and start a new ministry.

“Some of the stuff wasn’t done in the way that it should be in the kingdom, but we just bless everyone involved because God still wants to work through them,” he said. “We just look forward right now. We don’t look back.”

He said, “The enemy is going to be out there making accusations and everything like that.

“There was no impropriety or anything like that.”

“I know some of you may be a little hurt. … Right now, the biggest thing we can do is return love for animosity.”

Whatever led to the schism, both men showed up for TCAPP on Tuesday night. Peters flew in and ran the proceedings. Shea attended and stayed mostly toward the back of the crowd. Peters closed the event by referring obliquely to the changes and saying that he still loves Shea, “no matter what the press says.”

In the interview, Peters said, “We feel like we made the right decision for our organization in letting him go, but we wish him and those who went with him the very best.”

Conservative Backlash against the 1619 Project

Jerry LeClaireMay 26

On Monday I wrote of the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission Report. The 1776 Commission was hastily assembled by a worried Trump administration in opposition to the 1619 Project. The 1776 Report seems meant to prevent ideas about race and slavery that the Report’s authors considered dangerous. The story of this conflict doesn’t end with the 1776 Report. According to some powerful, monied folk, people who write history like the 1619 Project and gain national prominence with it must be brought to heel. They must not be afforded a secure platform from which to teach, especially not in a university in the southern United States.

Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work as prime mover and lead author behind the 1619 Project. She is the recipient of fourteen other awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Foundations Fellowship. Earlier this year Hannah-Jones was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

For years conservatives have been denigrating “experts” and “elites” at our universities while claiming that a university education is a dangerous indoctrination (excepting, of course, Christian conservative institutions like Hillsdale College and Liberty University). Rarely, though, do these claims spill out into open cultural warfare, they way they have over the 1619 Project. 

According to NC Policy Watch, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a strong candidate for a tenured professorship as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina, was backed by the university’s dean, chancellor, and faculty. 

After the publication of the 1619 Project and the alarm it stirred among powerful conservatives, offering a tenured position to an uppity Black women at a university in the south, no matter how well-recommended, qualified, and supported, warranted drastic action—even if the news of that action might spill out. Adam Serwer at The Atlantic writes:

…in an extraordinary move, the board of trustees declined to act on that recommendation. Hannah-Jones was instead offered a five-year, nontenured appointment following public and private pressure from conservatives. Notably, other Knight Chairs at the journalism school have been tenured on its professional track, which acknowledges “significant professional experience” rather than traditional academic scholarship. Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer and MacArthur genius grant surely qualify.

The denial of tenure is significant. For an academic, nontenure is a short leash, especially for a position for which tenure is customarily granted. That leash declares, “You will censor your ideas, won’t you…” Mr. Serwer goes on:

If you’ve taken recent debates about free speech and censorship at face value, you might find Hannah-Jones’s denial of tenure deeply confusing. For the past five years, conservatives have been howling about the alleged censoriousness of the American left, in particular on college campuses. But the denial of tenure to Hannah-Jones shows that the real conflict is over how American society understands its present inequalities.

The prime value of 1619 Project is that it jump started a valuable and needed conversation about our history—a conversation that conservatives want to control by diminishing the author, denigrating the scholarship, and re-stating their own mythological version of our history.

For an extended discussion of the higher level controversy among historians around the 1619 Project I highly recommend Adam Serwer’s Atlantic article, “The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts.” It strikes me that the conversation the 1619 Project has sparked might lead to a very healthy re-evaluation of our past and present—a re-evaluation that many conservatives, happy with the old narrative, don’t want to have.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

How Will We Understand Our History? 

Jerry LeClaireMay 24

I read the 1619 Project cover-to-cover when it first appeared in the New York Times Magazine in August of 2019. I could not put it down. In a hundred pages that include ten essays, a photo essay, and a collection of poems and fiction by an additional 16 writers, the 1619 Project filled in a multitude of gaps in my understanding of American history.¹ Where it did not fill a gap it offered me a new perspective on much of what I was taught in school and absorbed from a life lived in mostly white culture. 

The title “1619” was chosen to mark the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia on land that, a hundred and seventy years later, would become part of the newly formed United States. The date of first publication of the Project in August of 2019 was chosen to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the enslaved. 

While I found reading the 1619 Project fascinating, others apparently found it deeply and existentially threatening to their understanding of the world. The 1619 Project shines light in the dark corners of American history where racialized slavery and the doctrine of white supremacy have festered, hidden away under a sanitized founding narrative. The backlash against the 1619 Project’s story might have passed without much general notice, except that one of those who felt their worldview was threatened by the 1619 Project was none other than Donald Trump. 

In September 2020, partly in reaction to the danger he perceived in the 1619 Project, Mr. Trump established the 1776 Commission, meant to support what he called “patriotic education.” The Commission was composed of conservative activists, politicians and intellectuals (none with the credentials of an historian). The White House’s announcement of the publication of the 1776 Commission Report (archived—not on the current White House website), well-characterizes the intent of the publication: “1776 Commission Takes Historic and Scholarly Step to Restore Understanding of the Greatness of the American Founding.” You can read (or skim) the 45 page Report here. The blatant, unsupported, Republican propaganda of the Report is eye-popping.²

It seems clear that elements on the right fear that the previously dominant educational narrative (inevitably including elements of the doctrine of white supremacy) is under threat and getting away from them, hence, the words “Restore Understanding” in the Trump White House announcement. Woe betide a country, in their way of thinking, that is capable of introspection and self-examination of its complicated history rather than clinging to a white-washed, mythologized story of national greatness. 

Elevating the 1776 Commission Report and denigrating the 1619 Project is a cause célèbre for right wing media and institutions. Having lost the bully pulpit of the Trump presidency two days after the 1776 Report was trumpeted on the White House website on January 18, 2021, copies of the Report are now prominently advertised for sale in the Hillsdale College monthly circular “Imprimis”, the same forum that hosts such lecture transcripts of the like of Scott Atlas, M.D. and Christopher Rufo. The 1776 Commission isn’t done, either. Recently, a new announcement, “Trump’s 1776 Commission to Reassemble, Tackle Critical Race Theory in History Education” appeared simultaneously on conservative media (e.g. The Epoch Times, where I saw it) breathlessly touted as “breaking news.”

The 1619 Project is not perfect. Legitimate historians have found fault with some of its assertions. Unfortunately for those who do not read the 1619 Project, a few repeated criticisms risk over-shadowing the importance of the work. Historian Leslie M. Harris, herself a critic of a few points made in the Project, captured this danger succinctly, writing that the 1619 Project is “a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories.” 

I strongly encourage you to read the 1619 Project on line (or listen to it) and decide for yourself about its content. (Or buy a copy and read it as a book.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The basis of conservatives’ attack on the 1619 Project is discussed in an article in The Atlantic ironically entitled “Why Conservatives Want to Cancel the 1619 Project.” This quote expresses the central theme:

The prevailing conservative view is that America’s racial and economic inequalities are driven by differences in effort and ability. The work of Hannah-Jones and others suggests instead that present-day inequalities have been shaped by deliberate political and policy choices.

P.P.S. Another excellent article along the same lines as the 1619 Project is also found in the June 2021 issue of The Atlantic. It is entitled “Black America’s Neglected Origin Stories”. This quote from the article rings true (the bold is mine):

The two origin stories that American children are most often taught are those of Jamestown, Virginia, an English colony founded in 1607 as a moneymaking venture, and Plymouth, Massachusetts, where people escaped religious persecution in 1620. The latter narrative is more inspirational and more in keeping with America’s sense of moral exceptionalism than the former, which is perhaps why it has tended to loom larger in the American mind. Both origin stories emphasize the triumph of amity over enmity between Indigenous people and English settlers, something very different from what actually happened.

1

The way I recall being taught American history there was a huge gap between 1620, the Mayflower and the slightly earlier Jamestown Colony, and 1763, French and Indian War. All of what happened between those years set the stage for 1776 and yet those years were mostly left blank in my early education. It is as though everything between the Pilgrim’s supposed friendship with Squanto and George Washington chopping down the cherry tree was all hunky-dory and not worthy of mention.2

One small example: The authors dismiss the entirety of Progressivism with a gross lie: “They rejected the self-evident truth of the Declaration that all men are created equal and are endowed equally, either by nature or by God, with unchanging rights.”