Let us call it what it is: fraud. Incompetence is no longer an adequate explanation.
Homeward Bound is in default on their $1 million loan from the city. They have no way of repaying what they owe, or finishing work on the decrepit building looming over a Port Townsend neighborhood. They never did, and they and the public officials who threw money at them knew it all along.
After sitting vacant for three years, the building is showing increasing signs of deterioration. The lot is a mess, a disgrace to the neighborhood. The only residents of the property are the rats seen by one neighbor and a homeless man living in a copse of trees. For this taxpayers are on the hook not only for a $1.4 million bond obligation, but also for the substantial, still unknown costs of what it will take to get rid of the empty, asbestos and lead contaminated, not up-to-code, uninhabitable 70-year old building.
But city leaders and Homeward Bound don’t want to hear the word “default,” because that would mean the time for reckoning has come. Instead, on June 15, 2020 Port Townsend City Council voted to “defer” payments on the loan until October 1, 2020, while “options” are explored. Without that action Homeward Bound was required to make a first payment of $23,000 on July 1.
They had been given a grace period of two years during which they were supposed to complete construction of the building and rent it out to earn income which they would accumulate in a cash reserve to start repaying taxpayers. They never started work on the building except to get it off wooden stacks where it squatted for over two years.
Yet, in November 2019 they were back making a pitch for at least another million dollars, giving the city a chance “to get in on this,” as if “this” were some sweet deal serious players wouldn’t want to pass up. They glibly promised the building would be ready for occupancy by December of this year, well knowing that was a pipe dream.
“Scam” and “con job” are also fitting descriptions for the Cherry Street Project. At one point, nearly the whole city was taken in. But those who snickered at the idea from the start have now been proven the wiser members of our community.
I was at the Road House having lunch the day the building was trucked to its hillside above Cherry Street. City leaders and housing activists were at the Pourhouse celebrating. Men and women at the Road House in oil stained overalls, people who know how to make and fix stuff, were laughing and shaking their heads. They’re still laughing and shaking their heads, but now they’re also angry because it is their tax dollars that have been squandered and they are going to be asked to pay even more.
Homeward Bound: False Hopes, False Front
Homeward Bound has portrayed itself as an organization worthy of great public trust. It has gotten away with the act because it has been a pet project of the politically powerful in our community. The mask has now come off for good.
It was a shell corporation of one person when the city gave it a parcel worth $600,000 and $250,000 to purchase and move the building here. It has gone through several convulsions in the last three years, several presidents, and its leadership group has shrunk from twelve directors to the bare minimum required by its by-laws. Pleas for more people to step up have gone unanswered. They don’t even have volunteers to keep the weeds down and pick up trash.
Homeward Bound describes itself as “a vibrant organization that is a fundamental component of ensuring the availability of affordable housing in perpetuity in Clallam and Jefferson Counties.” The Homeward Bound website and Facebook page say it has an office in Uptown at 616 Polk Street, Port Townsend. This is what is inside that one room office.
Homeward Bound lost its treasurer last year and in January put out a request for another volunteer to fill the position. So far, from all that can be gleaned from its website and Facebook page, no one stepped up.
In February it announced it was looking to hire a bookkeeper [correction: office manager] and would keep the job posted until filled. It is still posted.
Its by-laws require transparency. It stopped posting minutes of its meetings almost a year ago.
But their greatest act of deception has been low-balling the costs and complexity of this project as it sought free land from the city and subsidized loans.
Getting Off to a Bad Start
From two years of reviewing documents obtained by a series of public records requests, it appears that the city agreed to finance purchase of this building without first seeing it. The 70-year old building called the Carmel House was located in Victoria, B.C. and slated for demolition. No one from the City of Port Townsend went there to see it before purchase. The city did not contract with an independent building inspector, as a home purchaser does before closing a sale. Instead, the city relied on someone chosen by Homeward Bound. According to former city manager David Timmons in an April 24, 2017, city council meeting, that person was “a builder in the community” who “came back with a positive report.” You can watch that meeting by clicking on this link.
It was not a formal building inspection where the inspector crawled under the house and up in the attic, walked the roof, took photographs, and offered an expert opinion backed by their guarantee and insurance. After two years of public records requests I have seen nothing of the sort in the city’s files. But I did discover a toxic materials inspection Homeward Bound apparently had from the beginning but did not share with the city until last year. I will come back to that.
This “builder in the community” was not identified by name, but the handout from Homeward Bound for that meeting, a one-page document with a picture of the building on its lot in Victoria, identified Brian Finch of Sustainable Structures NW as Homeward Bound’s general contractor. It appears that the person the city relied upon in loaning the funds to buy the building was a person hoping to get the job of remodeling and finishing the building once it was brought to Port Townsend. This was hardly a professional, disinterested inspection.
Finch and his company left the job, and apparently the area. Homeward Bound has publicly complained that its general contractor just up and vanished. According to the Washington Department of Licensing and Inspections the business license for Sustainable Structures has been suspended.
Homeward Bound presented the projected costs of making the building habitable through its volunteer consultant, Mark Blatter (though he was later compensated by Homeward Bound, according to December 2017 minutes). The year before, Blatter had lost employment with the Bainbridge Island housing authority after abruptly resigning. Blatter told the city council at the April 24, 2017 meeting, linked above, that all the plumbing, carpentry, painting, electrical, landscaping and parking lot work would need only $100,00 to $150,000. He was quoted in newspaper reports predicting the building would be rented by the Fall of 2017.
Homeward Bound quickly realized that those numbers were “completely bogus.” That was the word one of its presidents used to describe the project budget. The entire project, she complained, had been “rushed, slapped together.”
I have not seen in the city’s files any written project budget by Mr. Blatter. He, too, was quickly gone from this project and replaced by a second volunteer project manager, who drew up yet another low-ball project budget.
More Money Wanted, More Misrepresentations
In less than a year Homeward Bound was back before council seeking an awful lot more money. They presented their second project cost estimate and said they needed $834,000. In May 2018 council voted to float a bond large enough to cover that amount. The bond proceeds would then be loaned to Homeward Bound, which would pay it off over 40 years. The total cost of the bond over that time came to $1.367 million, because it included a $451,115 hidden interest subsidy in addition to the interest for which Homeward Bound would be responsible. We revealed that in our first report on this fiasco. With the $600,000 value of the land given to Homeward Bound, a $30,000 organizational grant, free utility work, and other considerations, the real cost of the project within a year had ballooned to more than $2 million.
In September 2019 as Homeward Bound sought construction permits, city staff informed it that under state law it would have to conduct a hazardous materials inspection. Homeward Bound responded by providing a toxic materials inspection report that had been prepared by the prior owner. That report showed that asbestos had been found in flooring and lead in the paint on all walls.
This report was not disclosed to the city until after Homeward Bound had obtained the nearly $1.4 million loan package. The project budget submitted in 2018 as the basis for that loan said nothing about the costs of mitigation, containment, or removal of asbestos and lead.
Painting a Rosy Picture for the Public
Periodically, Homeward Bound would go on a public relations blitz. They were always on track, moving forward and excited to be providing much needed low income rentals for Port Townsend.
But they’ve known all along it was not going to happen. Nothing has been happening. They don’t even take care of the building or grounds. We’ve previously reported city inspectors found holes in floors large enough to swallow a person. Trash is scattered around the property, now hidden by waist high weeds. On our most recent visit we observed that the doors were wide open and the black material protecting the plywood was fraying and torn. Other signs of deterioration around the building are evident. The condition of the building reminds one of an expensive Christmas gift, broken and forgotten, after the child grew bored with it and moved on to new toys that are more interesting and less trouble.
After discovering that the Cherry Street project had its first tenant, in a homeless camp in the trees, on February 27, 2020, I reached out to the group with some questions, such as when they would expect their first tenants inside the building. Homeward Bound president Paul Rice, who is also on the city’s planning commission, responded:
Towards the end of March we’ll be having a public meeting that will hopefully address all your questions. There will be an update on our progress, as well as a Q&A session. We will likely start promoting that next week, and plan to reach out to you directly to invite you once it’s live. Thanks for your continued interest in our CLT and the Cherry Street Redevelopment Project!
Not getting a direct answer, I followed up, asking Rice to respond to two simple questions: 1. When will the first apartments be available for rent? and 2. Will Homeward Bound make its first loan repayment to the city?
Homeward Bound president Rice responded:
As for rentals, we are still working on determining whether or not the units will be rentals or affordable condos for sale to persons earning between 30 and 80% of AMI, or some combination of the two. We are looking to maximize our ability to pay back the note from the City, while still ensuring that the Carmel Building offers affordable housing to Jefferson County. We have not completed our feasibility study with regard to this issue yet, but are actively exploring our options. There will be much more information on these topics at the public meeting. I should be able to share the date and time for that later today, and will do so with you as soon as I am able.
This is an admission that three years since this building was floated across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Homeward Bound still had no plan for how taxpayers could get their money back. Rice never came back with the promised information. Unsurprisingly, the public meeting Rice promised never happened.
I put similar questions to County Commissioner Kate Dean, who has played a leadership role on the board of Homeward Bound since 2017. She didn’t give me an answer but promised she would give me a tour of the building. I’m still waiting for that tour.
Black slavery in Port Townsend. Not its practice, but its products. Cars using cobalt mined by Black African slaves, including child slaves, will drive over the “Black Lives Matter” section of Water Street. This is a stark reveal of the systemic racism of Port Townsend’s liberal, moneyed elites.
Electric vehicles and hybrids (EVs) need cobalt–large quantities of cobalt. Most of it comes from the Katanga Province of the Congo. The large quantities of cobalt needed for EVs cannot be supplied by Australia or other countries. Amnesty International and numerous media outlets from CBS News to the Washington Post have confirmed that cobalt is mined in Katanga by people living as slaves, including tens of thousands of children. They work in horribly unsafe conditions that regularly kill or maim them.
One leading human rights researcher, Siddartha Kara of Harvard University, has concluded that the mines use the forced labor of as many as 35,000 Black children, and nearly a quarter of a million Black adults. UNICEF puts the number of children forced into mining at 40,000.
White liberals committed to a New Green Deal don’t seem to care about this 21st Century slavery. At least none of the liberal, left-leaning organizations and politicians we contacted. We asked the local Jefferson County EV Association, the City of Seattle’s green vehicle fleet director, Coltura–the state’s most powerful EV advocacy group, and Governor Inslee if it bothered them that the cobalt needed for the green technologies they were pushing depended on the suffering and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Black slaves. Most avoided the question. Not one expressed concern.
That article written two years ago was entitled “Do Black Lives Matter When It Comes to Green Cars?” As human rights activists point out, nothing has changed in the past two years. The response to the exposure of this modern day slavery has been window dressing by the European and Chinese middlemen and the industrial users of Black blood cobalt.
The stream of cobalt for those pricey electric cars still comes from the same mines and slave laborers. It is still bought and processed by Chinese and European middlemen. And it still goes to the same cars purchased almost exclusively by First World, affluent, mostly white consumers.
Metal rods replace crushed bones in a young miner’s legs.
Human rights activists have escalated the fight for justice. In December 2019 a landmark lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C. by International Rights Advocates against some of the world’s largest high tech and EV companies. It alleges they have knowingly utilized forced Black child labor in the Congo to procure the cobalt needed for their products. The photographs for this article come from the complaint in that litigation. The two maimed boys are plaintiffs in the case.
Siddartha Kara worked with African human rights organizations to document the suffering and lay the groundwork for the lawsuit. He says:
This lawsuit is intended to compel the defendants to remedy the horrific conditions at the bottom of cobalt supply chains. Whether our legal system agrees that they should be held to account for the death and injury of these children remains to be seen. Whatever the outcome, it will be the first time that the voices of the children suffering in the dark underbelly of one of the richest supply chains in the world will be heard in a court of law.
The mining operations are protected by one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Local and national politicians are getting wealthy off the slave labor of fellow Black Africans. The military is used to chase away human rights researchers and terrorize workers asserting their rights. When tragedy strikes, the army covers it up. Kara saw this for himself:
I experienced quite viscerally just how deadly cobalt mining can be. I was documenting a cobalt site near the village of Kapata, when I learned that a tunnel dug by creuseurs had collapsed, not 100 meters from where I was standing. I rushed to the site, but the area was already under guard by the Congolese military when I arrived, so it was impossible to gain entry. Bereaved family members wailed with terror. Behind the dust and madness, it soon became clear – no one had survived. According to people at the mine, 63 people were buried alive that day.
This is what goes into those Teslas and BMWs, the Audis and Mercedes running on cobalt. This is the human suffering inside Chevy Bolts and Volts, and Toyota Priuses and hybrid Highlanders.
Tesla, the pacesetter for electric vehicles, made noises it was going to abandon cobalt. It was concerned about high prices, the security of supply and, last, the bad PR it was getting. Elon Musk announced that for his company cobalt would be a thing of the past. But just like other PR stunts from EV manufacturers trying to deflect criticism, Tesla’s promises were lies. It recently announced a long term contract for Katanga-mined cobalt, signaling that a supply chain that starts with slave labor would a major part of its business plan for years to come.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is demanding that companies buying Katanga cobalt do more to end forced child labor. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Glencore, the huge Swiss corporation, that next to the Chinese purchases and processes the most Katanga cobalt. This company is a direct descendant of the consortium that exported natural resources when Belgium ran the Congo as a slave colony. Britain is investigating another major mining corporation for promoting fraud and corruption in Congo’s cobalt mines.
White silence is violence, we are told by Black Lives Matters activists. Where are the white voices speaking against the Black slavery behind the EVs recharging outside the Co-op?
The push for a total conversion to electric vehicles is strong in this town, coming from the top down. We have a county climate action plan that targets all fossil fuels, and seeks drastic reductions in carbon emissions from transportation that are possible only if people stop driving or replace their existing vehicles with EVs, despite the cost in Black lives.
Unlike the mining camps of the Congo, there is no Black slavery in the Dakota or Texas or Pennsylvania oilfields. Many Black blue-collar workers in the oil and gas industry regularly make six-figure salaries as roughnecks, equipment operators or truck drivers. The industry projects adding nearly 600,000 minority jobs over the 20 years, about a third being in management and professional fields. But the systemic racism behind the relentless drive to go green does not place the benefits for those Black and Brown lives on its scales, just as it does not count the broken Black slaves in Katanga’s hell holes.
Do Black African Lives Matter to Black Lives Matter?
We know that the area’s White liberals don’t care much about the suffering behind their slick EVs.
What does Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County think? Do they see anything objectionable about cars built with slave labor driving over the colorful “Black Lives Matter” lettering on Water Street? Do they think it makes a mockery of the message?
We asked. Like the white, liberal electric car activists we surveyed, they have nothing to say on the subject. Their silence, likewise, is violence.
For more information on the Black slavery behind green cars:
Going back as far as the 1970s there has been talk of building a sewer for the Port Hadlock area. The designation of Port Hadlock as an Urban Growth Area in 2002 meant that a sewer was required. It has been some time coming to fruition, but a sewer in Port Hadlock is closer than ever to a reality. Its cost has been the major issue.
Several years ago a small group of property owners approached Jefferson County about the delay in building the sewer. Originally the county wanted to build the sewer to serve the commercial areas along Rhody Drive, Nesses Corner Road, Chimacum Road and Irondale Road. In addition they were going to build a gravity collection system and a fixed treatment plant. The cost for that was over $40 million. Getting grant money was the major issue. To reduce initial cost the group proposed to scale back the project. Essentially the proposal was to cut the cost in half by excluding Rhody Drive at the beginning and instead of a gravity system using a pressure collection system and modular treatment units. After a financial review it was determined that this could be done for just over $23 million.
Where Will The Money Come From?
At this point an explanation of how a sewer is funded is in order. A while back Belfair was declared a UGA by Mason County, so they then needed to build a sewer system. Mason County funded the sewer but made some assumptions regarding the number of hook-ups that would happen. The hook-ups expected did not materialize due to the Great Recession. That system had severe funding issues. Recently, Clallam County built a sewer for the Carlsborg UGA. Clallam County was able to use the nearby Sequim treatment plant and only had to build the collection system. Clallam County had sufficient money available in their infrastructure fund to build the collection system. They will be reimbursed the cost through hook-ups to the system.
The reality is that Jefferson County does not have the funds to build a sewer for Port Hadlock outright. The County must obtain grant money and arrange to have only property owners, who benefit, to pay. Therefore, to ensure that the general taxpayers of Jefferson County do not have to pay for the Port Hadlock Sewer, Jefferson County is going to fund the sewer through hook-ups, property assessments, grants and 50% of the PIF money. A Local Improvement District (LID) will be formed to comprise the properties to be sewered. THe LID is primarily a funding mechanism. A LID is used to fund many improvements, such as sidewalks and other road improvements, water systems, sewer systems, and broadband improvements.
PIF stands for Public Infrastructure Funds. In Washington State the State refunds back to certain counties part of the sales tax collected in the county. These funds are dedicated to infrastructure Improvements. Jefferson County has dedicated 50% of that fund toward the Port Hadlock Sewer.
Many people get confused about who will pay for the Port Hadlock Sewer. As stated above, funding will come from grants, affected property owners and PIF money. The property owners in the LID are only the ones that benefit from the sewer. If you are not getting a sewer hook-up you will not be paying for the sewer. This includes properties in the Port Hadlock UGA but outside the boundaries of the LID.
Those properties that get hook-ups will pay for sewer through four different methods. First, to pay for the collection system each property is given a “Special Assessment.” This special assessment is an economic assessment of the increase in value gained by having the sewer vs. not. Jefferson County has determined that each property will pay for 50% of this increase in value. An option is made to pay this off over 20 years rather than all at once. Second, when a property is actually hooked-up to the sewer a hook-up fee is paid that funds the construction of the treatment plant itself. Third, since a pressurized system is going to be used, each property will pay for the tank and pump plus the pressure line to the road; this is called the side sewer. Fourth, each property will pay for the sewer operation through monthly charges based on water usage.
In April of 2020 the State granted $1.42M to Jefferson County to do a final design. The contract was awarded to Tetra Tech, a Seattle based engineering firm.
There has already been some survey work for the sewer final design that some of you may have noticed. Most of the work is done by engineers at a desk. Once the final design is done a much more exacting cost can be determined as to the true cost of the sewer. In addition the side sewer cost will now be known for each property.
At this point it will be determined if the property owners to be sewered wish to proceed. If they do, a LID will be formed. Should at least 40% (by area) of the property owners determine that they do not want a sewer they can petition the county to stop the LID process. If the petition is successful the LID and sewer can be put on hold for a year. After a year the county could then go through the LID process again.
The advantage of forming the LID is that it is a legally effective document. It states who can be assessed for the cost of the sewer. This prohibits the county from taxing all the county residents from being taxed to pay for the sewer under State law.
Why Do We Even Need A Sewer?
Some people ask the question “Why do we need a sewer? We have gotten by just fine without one up to now.” This is a very good question. The need for a sewer hinges on two issues, health and density. Using septic systems is a lower cost method of sewage disposal. The problem is when more density is desired. It then becomes necessary to build a sewer system.
Proper disposal of sewage is an important health issue. Proper sanitation including sewage disposal has eradicated many diseases that were previously common. Cholera, typhoid, dysentery are some of them. Nitrate contamination of drinking water causes “blue baby” syndrome. A clean environment and clean drinking water are two of the most significant hallmarks of a modern society.
A sewer is needed to enable affordable housing to be built. Affordable housing basically is a function of density. The most affordable type of construction is the apartment building. This high density is where the importance of a sewage system comes in. Other high density uses are schools, restaurants and large employers.
No new apartment buildings have been built for some time outside of Port Townsend. That is because we lack a sewer. The same goes for restaurants, grocery stores and large employers.
To improve our economy and housing a sewer system is a requirement. Once the sewer system is built we will be able to have more housing, jobs and a better tax base.
The initial Port Hadlock Sewer System will use property that has already been purchased by Jefferson County. The treatment system will be built south of Nesses Corner Road and north of Lopeman Road. The infiltration ponds will be built just south of Lopeman Road.
Because a pressurized collection system is to be utilized the road work can be minimized. A gravity system would have created a substantial amount of road work. A pressure system will use much smaller lines some of which can be installed by boring under the road rather than digging it up.
Building the sewer will benefit all of Jefferson County due to the increase in jobs and affordable housing and a more viable economy and tax base.
Genocide by abortion. Black Genocide. It is the leading cause of death among Black Americans, greater than all diseases, accidents, suicides and murders combined. Over nineteen million Black Americans have been intentionally killed. In some communities more Blacks are killed than born.
From Black Panthers to the heirs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black leaders have cried out for the killing to stop. They have been protesting Planned Parenthood targeting Black neighborhoods for a generation. They say that Planned Parenthood has spilled more Black blood than the Ku Klux Klan.
In an era when the cry of “Black Lives Matter!” rises from our streets, the Jefferson County Public Health Department honored the entity Black leaders hold primarily responsible, today and throughout its history, for Black Genocide. In October 2017, the agency co-sponsored a celebration of 100 years of Planned Parenthood. In doing so, it endorsed decades of eugenicist rhetoric, theories and programs embraced by Adolf Hitler and American racists.
The public officials responsible for this might plead ignorance, though that would be hard to believe. The facts are not secret. It is just that many white supporters of Planned Parenthood choose to ignore them, just as the Health Department did.
This same agency last week declared systemic racism to be a public health crisis. It would do well to reexamine its decision to ignore the charges of racism that have been made against Planned Parenthood. Not all Black Americans stand against Planned Parenthood or are as vocal as, say, Dr. Alveda King, MLK’s niece and leader in the fight to end Black Genocide. She points out that the killing of a quarter of the Black American population has not been from lynching or police shootings, but “from abortionists who plant their killing centers in minority neighborhoods and prey on woman who they think have no hope.”
But by tuning out those voices pleading for the killing to stop–perhaps because “they ain’t Black”in liberal white eyes–the Public Health Department has exhibited symptoms of the systemic racism it says is causing a public health crisis. In this case, the crisis is Black Genocide.
Everything to follow is well-documented. Most of the material comes from Black scholars and leaders. I have listed the sources on which I relied, with links, at the end of this article. This is a necessarily abbreviated treatment of a long, sad and still open chapter in American history. It starts at the conception of Planned Parenthood by Margaret Sanger.
One can support easy access to contraception and gynecological care without celebrating Sanger. One can pledge themselves to the defense of Roe v. Wade. But one cannot celebrate 100 years of Planned Parenthood and hope to avoid embracing Sanger’s racism and abhorrent eugenicist viewpoint.
Turning a White-Privileged Blind Eye to Black Genocide
The goal of reducing and eventually eliminating the population of Black Americans and other “undesirables” gave birth to the eugenics movement. It surfaced in this country in the first decade of the 20th Century about the same time as Margaret Sanger started the local clinics and chapters that culminated in the American Birth Control League. That organization was later renamed Planned Parenthood.
Birth control for Sanger was always about “improving” the “stock” of the American people. Sanger shared the racist eugenics viewpoint that whites were superior because they were more highly evolved. In an essay offering sexual advice to young girls she warned that Blacks could not help themselves from being inclined towards rape. It was in the Black man’s nature because of their low rung on the evolutionary ladder. At the bottom of the ladder was the Australian aborigine, “the lowest known species of the human family, just a step above the chimpanzee in brain development.”
Sanger later launched The Negro Project, an effort targeting Black communities to reduce their birth rates. In an infamous letter that surfaced after her death she detailed a plan for co-opting Black ministers and paying them to spread Planned Parenthood’s disinformation. “[W]e do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she wrote.
These were also the beliefs of the officers and directors, scholars and journalists of Sanger’s League and publishing arm, and, later, Planned Parenthood. Sanger worked her whole life to get the federal government to adopt her racist eugenic goals. She eventually succeeded with President Richard Nixon. Tape recordings of conversations with his staff reveal that he shared Sanger’s concern about an increasing Black population. He believed that abortion would be an excellent way to “take care of the Black bastards.” Taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood started at his initiative. (You can hear Nixon’s voice in the Maafa21 documentary linked below).
Racism and Eugenics Celebrated by the Jefferson County Public Health Department
In 1921 Sanger declared in a speech to the Pennsylvania Conference on Birth Control that the goal of her work “was to create a superman.” That would be done by eliminating from the gene pool those she and her eugenicist collaborators viewed as “weeds”–a term she applied to people of color. She also advocated having the federal government establish “open spaces” where the illiterate, the poor, the unemployed, and all classes she considered undesirable would be confined against their will until such time as they improved their “moral qualities.”
Contrast Sanger with Dr. Mildred Jackson, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the National Right to Life committee: “I became a physician in order to help save lives. I am at once a physician, a citizen and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow the concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live.
It is unsurprising that Sanger’s organization provided intellectual fodder for Nazi eugenics and the Holocaust. Hitler wrote of his admiration for essays published in the Birth Control Review and considered a book by an American eugenicist, part of Sanger’s circle, to be “his Bible” (Hitler’s words) on race theory.
One of Sanger’s directors participated in rounding up and forcibly sterilizing hundreds of Black Germans and their children. This was Lothrop Stoddard, a man fanatically committed to eliminating black and brown people from the United States. His work introduced the term untermenschen (English: sub-humans) into Nazi ideology. When he returned from Nazi Germany he resumed his collaboration with Sanger’s organization. Little wonder, as he was a founding member and director of Sanger’s League, and thus also a founding member of Planned Parenthood.
The Ku Klux Klan thought highly of Sanger and her organization. In her autobiography she wrote of the pleasurable experience of being the featured speaker at a Klan rally in New Jersey, and how pleased she was to be invited to twelve more Klan convocations. “We are paying for and even submitting,” Sanger once wrote, “to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” She was perfect for audiences draped in white hoods.
Sanger organized the World Population Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1927. She gave a leadership role to Eugen Fischer. He had prior experience running concentration camps for Blacks in South Africa and went to work for Hitler in applying his experience to territory conquered by Nazi Germany. One of his duties was to exterminate Blacks from Europe.
In 1933 the Birth Control Review published “Eugenic Sterilization,” by psychiatrist Ernst Rudin. He later wrote Germany’s eugenics law and participated in brutal racial medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
By 1942, the connections between Sanger’s League and Nazis were becoming uncomfortably visible. It was the depths of WWII and America was learning of Nazi atrocities used for population control and genocide. “Population control” had garnered too many negative connotations. The group rebranded itself as Planned Parenthood.
Forced Sterilization
Black Americans know well the history of forced sterilization government programs that targeted their women and girls, some as young as ten years old. Planned Parenthood was an active participant in that evil history, from formulating and publishing proposals for mandatory sterilization to assisting state and local government eugenics boards that forced the procedures upon unwilling Black women and girls. Sanger and her officers publicly called for forced sterilization on a national level, one proposal going so far as to demand the sterilization of a quarter of our nation’s population. Planned Parenthood was such a fierce supporter of forced sterilization that its Iowa executive director attacked the state for reducing the number of poor and minority women forced to undergo the procedure.
This, too, was celebrated by the Jefferson County Public Health Department when it chose to celebrate Planned Parenthood’s entire history, no exceptions, no reservations.
What was the Public Health Department’s motivation in engaging in an event unreservedly honoring an organization with such a repulsive history? This history is so vile it cannot be excused. We certainly would not allow any other organization to whitewash such an evil past.
All Black Lives Must Matter
“If Black lives matter, then Black women matter. If Black lives matter, then Black children matter. If Black lives matter, then Black babies matter.” Black activist Star Parker spoke these words to a crowd of Black Americans outside a Selma, Alabama abortion clinic. They had come there after crossing the Edmund Pettis Bridge, walking in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They believe his work is not done and that the greatest threat they face today is the leading cause of death among Black Americans, Black Genocide, or, others call it, race suicide by abortion.
About 13 percent of American women are Black, but they account for about 30 to 35 percent of abortions. They undergo abortions at three times the rate of white women. Black leaders see in those numbers not only a horrific loss of Black life, but also a loss of Black political power, for every Black life ended is one less Black vote. And they see in Planned Parenthood’s targeting of Black communities an extension of the racist eugenics agenda of Margaret Sanger that began with her first writings concerning Black Americans.
“For too long, this very important issue has been dismissed as ‘that’s just white people trying to stir something up,’” says Bishop E.W. Jackson, who led a Black protest against the addition of Sanger’s bust to the National Statue Gallery. “We want people to understand this is a vital interest to Black people.”
Among those who need to understand this vital interest to black people are the white officials of the Jefferson County Public Health Department. Nothing is more systemic about systemic racism than the government holding up for recognition and praise a century-long history of racism.
A Closing Observation
As Sanger’s true character and agenda have received more widespread attention. Planned Parenthood has begun to put some distance between itself and its founder and leader for many decades. It will occasionally say that Sanger’s views were “harmful,” but that’s about it. To this day, Planned Parenthood’s highest award is still called The Sanger Award.
Resources on Black Genocide
The volume of material available is massive, from books to historical monographs to videos. One place to start is the 2008 doumentary “Maafa21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America.” Maafa is a Swahili word for oppression, and refers to the nightmare of slavery. The film is long, 2.5 hours. It takes time to cover everything and display screen shots of the writings of Sanger and eugenists to prove what the film reveals. It also provides the audiotape of Richard Nixon lauding legalized abortion as a way to “deal with Black bastards.” The documentary has gained a wide Black audience, but far fewer whites know of it. It can be viewed online at this link.
PBS’ Frontline in 2018 produced a short-film on the growing Black anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood movement.
A number of videos on Sanger, her Negro Project and eugenicist ideology are available here.
BlackGenocide.org is a leading source for research and essays by Black Americans opposed to Planned Parenthood and what it is doing to their communities.
Here is a list of further resources. Just click on each heading to be linked to the underlying article. You will notice much of the opposition to Planned Parenthood comes from Black churches. That was also the fount of leadership for the civil rights movement. Two of these articles focus on relatives of Dr. Martin Luther King leading the fight against Black Genocide.
“Best commissioner in years.” “A breath of fresh air.” “Someone who is actually trying to help.”
I’ve been hearing from quite a few people in Jefferson County that County Commissioner Greg Brotherton is being extremely helpful and responsive to those struggling to preserve livelihoods and jobs during Governor Inslee’s COVID lock down. I’ve reported on how he has stood out from the dilatory and obtuse Board of Health in attempting to apply common sense solutions to reopening Jefferson County’s economy. Patrick Sullivan over at the Jefferson County Washington Facebook page, the most widely followed news source in the county, has also been reporting on Commissioner Brotherton’s similar efforts to get people back to work.
In just the past day I have again heard of Mr. Brotherton working closely with business people seeking help on understanding the perplexing, vague guidelines issued by the Governor for specific business operations. They have also shared with me that he has been, at least in their experience, the only commissioner to return their calls or emails and spend time trying to help them.
I’ve even heard from people who questioned his candidacy that Greg Brotherton has been impressing them. The one recurring reservation is that, being such a nice guy, he isn’t much of fighter. Some of them want him to be far more aggressive and contentious. Of course, many things that need to have happened, and happened with more alacrity and urgency, have not come to pass. But from watching (too many) BOH and BOCC meeting videos, I think it is clear Mr. Brotherton is doing what he can in the forums where he must work, with the people with whom he must work.
There is so much to be done. Jefferson County’s unemployment rate for last month exceeded 17%, making it the sixth worst county economy in the state of Washington. That is a grim statistic that translates to hopelessness, despair, substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, crime, and negative health outcomes that burden our medical care providers and first responders. Every business, no matter how small, that can return to vitality is a critical player in healing our community. Every minute a public official spends with a business finding a path for them to reopen is a major contribution in the right direction.
Readers of this site will recall a series of investigative and highly critical articles we ran when Mr. Brotherton was running for his current position. Those articles focused on an issue I have no reservations about having raised and raised aggressively. At the time he was running for office, Mr. Brotherton was in the business of selling marijuana and promoting its use. That would have been an irreconcilable conflict of interest for someone who, if elected, would sit on the Board of Health and oversee policies directing the county’s marijuana education and prevention programs.
Mr. Brotherton shed himself of that conflict of interest some time ago by selling his business. The concern behind those articles and investigations no longer exists.
For now, based on what we are seeing and hearing, he is doing a pretty good job, all things considered. I’d just like to put that on the record.
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[article restored to original 2020 version on 9/14/24 at author’s request]
