Diversity not welcomed. Dissent and free speech punished. Different cultures, values, and faiths oppressed and marginalized. You’ve got to watch what you say and nod your head at the right time. Or else.
That is what Port Townsend is becoming.
This truth came to light painfully for many who participated in the more than 400 car, truck and motorcycle Back the Blue rally on August 30. Parents with children were subjected to verbal abuse, profane gestures and obscenities, along with a grown woman who dropped her pants and panties. Owners of businesses who have been here for decades, who have employed people of every race and nationality, found themselves being labelled racists and Nazis by other business owners. Kind, gentle senior citizens, people who never hesitate to step up to volunteer, who have kept alive traditions and annual celebrations, who built this place, were given the middle finger and told to “Go home. Get out of our town.”
Scroll through the Facebook page of Deputy Mayor David Faber, where you will find an elected official, supposedly sworn to represent and serve all the people, repeating the vitriol and instructing his circle to ignore anyone who doesn’t think like them, followed by hateful discussions about local businesses that are owned by proprietors who are, well, just different.
Different is no longer allowed in Port Townsend. This is not the “different strokes for different folks” crowd in charge anymore, the “do your own thing,” “live and let live” hangout of the hippies of yore who didn’t want to be pushed around and didn’t desire to push anyone around, either.
This is not just teenagers who don’t know any better. This is a public official calling for a large segment of the community to be shunned and maligned, with, as we will see in the discussion that follows, the foreseeable consequence of suffering harm. A growing number of people echo the sneering condescension of the Deputy Mayor towards “the repugnant cultural other”–simply defined as anyone who doesn’t think, talk, vote and act like them. The “repugnant cultural other” is the prism through which they view anyone outside their insular circle
This is harsh stuff. It has been building for years. People have been run out of our community because they are different. People who have raised families here wonder what has become of a town they loved.
It is ironic that for a city with prolific “Refugees Welcome” signs the targets of hatred have frequently been minority-owned businesses that trusted in the promises of this nation, specifically freedom of speech. There was the fudge shop on Washington Street that dared put a “Trump” sign in its window. The boycott and whisper campaign that resulted, whether it crushed their revenues or not, made it clear that this minority family was not welcome to participate in the American Dream, at least not in Port Townsend.
Lobo del Mar was a mixed-race and ethnically diverse, huge extended family that made this a better, livelier place to live. They were conservative and did not hide their values. The facts are murky, but they pulled out when it became unavoidably clear they were no longer welcome to be themselves in and around Port Townsend.
This summer, Black Lives Matter activists encouraged a boycott of two immigrant-owned businesses because a red truck painted with a Culp for Governor emblem and “All Lives Matter” was frequently parked on their premises and the businesses displayed political signs with which the activists disagreed. Sure, they went after the owner of the truck and are still at it, but they also encouraged harm to the immigrant-owned businesses.
This same crowd went after another immigrant-owned business simply because it employed a girl who, in a moment of immaturity and stupidity, was recorded singing some offensive ditty. They wanted to hurt the girl, and they didn’t hesitate to hurt the business that employed her. They harassed the owner. They posted false derogatory reviews and comments on social media and consumer review websites. The owner had to let the girl go to protect himself. She grew up here, but has moved out of state for her own well-being.
As I was writing this, I got a Facebook message copying the explanation of a local business as to why they are leaving. They say because of their beliefs and their reluctance to endorse the Black Lives Matter movement their business had been “taken down” and they are selling out and moving out. Because they are still in the process of extricating themselves from the persecution I cannot reveal more at this time.
I wrote earlier this summer how the Deputy Mayor had sparked an ugly campaign against the owner of a Port Hadlock business park by exploiting false allegations as to why he had not permitted a Black Lives Matter sign in the window of the office of his tenant, the Jefferson Community Foundation. It was falsely alleged that he had been motivated by racism. It turned out the owner had a mixed race family and was simply enforcing a rule against any political signage that applied to all tenants. A bar and grill in Port Hadlock started getting false and damaging reviews because someone found a story we wrote about how this businessman had helped start the place two years ago. The businessman received so many hateful calls and emails he felt his personal security was threatened and left Jefferson County.
We’ve gotten the hate here. I’ve written about that before, and it never lets up. I am sure we’ll get more after this article is published.
I don’t like publishing articles from contributors under pen names. But some people do not feel safe identifying themselves. This is especially true of business owners. They know who is solidly in control of local government. They fear the whip. They’ve seen uppity business people punished.
What have we done to earn the attacks? We’ve spoken up, as is our right as American citizens. We haven’t toed the line. We see the world differently, consider facts some don’t want discussed, and reach different conclusions.
I was shocked to see prominent downtown business owners join in this chorus of vitriol. When you reach out to them to meet to try to understand why they are calling hundreds of their neighbors “racists”–people who come into their restaurants and bars and stores, whose homes they list for sale– they cover their tracks and pull up the drawbridge.
Do I now do all my shopping and dining elsewhere, and encourage my circle of contacts to spread the ‘boycott’ word? I’m not going there. This stuff has real potential to seriously damage this little community.
I launched Port Townsend Free Press because it startled me that people would thank me just for expressing ideas and beliefs they shared, but were afraid to say themselves. Something back then seemed very wrong to me, and now I am getting a better picture of the problem.
Learning to Talk to Each Other
Since the huge Back the Blue rally I’m reading “I don’t feel safe” on the social media of those who have attacked others. As far as I can tell, their insecurity springs from the recent realization that they are surrounded by lots of people quite different from themselves.
This was Sheriff Joe Nole’s observation, reported in The Leader. People “were freaking out” at that six-mile long Back the Blue motorcade. “They couldn’t believe what they were seeing,” he said.
One public effort at bridge building was reported by the Peninsula Daily News. It involved Oceana Van Lelyveld, owner of the Cellar Door pub, who was an instigator of sorts in blocking Water Street to the last cars of the Back the Blue rally (and dozens of uninvolved motorists). On her social media she branded participants as racists and worse (though it is hard to imagine a worse epithet). She was invited by a young man in one of those cars to meet and talk to try to understand each other. She ran with this to the newspaper to show how reasonable she was. The young man and Van Lelyveld set a date and place, but she backed out without explanation.
Can Port Townsend be a truly diverse community? It is going to have to find a way, because those people in those hundreds of cars and trucks that upset the apple cart are not going away. This is their home.
We need a substantive, honest effort to communicate with each other. We will begin that important work by talking without fear of ostracism, isolation, retaliation or banning–you know, what President Obama did with his “beer summit” between a White police officer and a Black Harvard academic.
With such heated passions at the moment, an alcoholic drink may not be the best solvent. So who’s up for coffee?
[Related: Brett Nunn’s observations as a long time resident of the sad turn being taken by the town he loves
It took growing up around people of every race and nationality to recognize systemic racism. I can now say I’ve found it, right here in Port Townsend. I am 67 and have been in business here for over 30 years.
My family lived in a completely integrated working poor, blue collar shipyard town in the Bay Area. Integration didn’t have to be legislated. Nobody had money to live anywhere else but in the cheapest housing, so we all lived together.
Racism was real, and in your face. My friends experienced discrimination, and, as a poor white kid, so did I. It was just something you had to live with. When you went out on the street you looked over your shoulder. Even at the municipal swimming pool you had to be aware of your surroundings. We learned early that the best way to keep from getting your ass kicked on a regular basis was to show you could not only take a thumping, but give one, as well. Once you did that, you were pretty much accepted and left in peace.
We had a few riots and it was common to see Black Panthers doing their “citizen patrols.” I even met Angela Davis. I was the acolyte at a sort of secret nighttime baptism performed by Father O’Connor of her god son in our neighborhood Catholic church. I can still see all those black leather jackets and black berets, the huge Afros, and little me in my robe with my brass candle lighter.
My friends were a mirror of the neighborhood. You had to have friends who didn’t look like you or you just weren’t going to have friends. We went through a lot and grew close as we became men. We all did pretty well because we never let our working poor status hold us back. We never let circumstances or racial crap tell us who we were or what we could be. One of my buddies, who is Black, started out making french fries at McDonald’s, back when they made them on site from whole potatoes. He went on to own three McDonald’s in the Bay Area. He has employed hundreds of young people, paid for college educations and set many a wayward child on the path to success.
Then there is Michael Tee, a Black man. He’s really smart and now a prominent lawyer in Vallejo, California. Dan, Jr. another close Black buddy, was raised by a single parent, graduated from the University of San Francisco and worked his way up to being supervisor of probation for Solano County. After that career, he had his own business on the Napa River. My pal Ray, another Black good friend, retired as police officer in Concord, California. And Gabe, my Filipino bud, owned a number of successful donut shops around the Bay Area. And there is my Black business partner of 13 years, before I moved up here.
Why am I sharing all this with you?
In all those decades of growing up, living and working with Blacks, Hispanics and Filipinos, watching my friends prosper and succeed, I had not seen this “systemic racism” thing until I recently started looking around Port Townsend. Here in this nearly homogeneous White, privileged Utopia I am seeing it fabricated by people who don’t know a thing about real racism, and who probably have spent very little intimate, heart-breaking, shoulder-punching, bear hugging, laughing, working and crying together time with people darker than themselves.
For starters, our liberal, “progressive” (but really primitive) establishment is frighteningly quick to call anyone who does not toe their line a racist. I have learned in the past couple weeks that anyone who supports law enforcement is a racist. I take that finger pointing very seriously because I know what real racism is. I grew up in it, fought against it, saw my friends face it and stood by them. I don’t have a White guilt complex. My friends and I beat the racists in our lives because we did not define ourselves or others by skin color. And we didn’t accept anyone doing that to us, either. We lived Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream: “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Those pushing this systemic racism thing are taking us backwards, to an even worse place than what I knew as I kid. Key people in our local political leadership want us to see skin color first and foremost. There really is no such a thing as systemic racism in this country anymore. There is no system of racism that kept my pals from rising, or other minorities from being business owners, senators, writers, firemen, mechanics, nurses…even President. It is a pretty pathetic system of racism that gave Barack Obama more popular votes than anyone else in American history.
The only “systemic racism” out there is a structure of beliefs, language, indoctrination and policies being created by those who lust for power over others, no matter their skin color. And it is a narrative that suits the psychological needs of those who, for some reason I cannot understand, want to believe it.
I’ve lived here for decades. Over those years I have employed 76 men and women of all kinds of races and nationalities. I have helped people immigrate to this country. I have never seen or witnessed any kind of system of racism. Sure, there are jerks, and jerks of every color. But in Jefferson County, there is no system–in commerce, education, government, the arts or law enforcement–that is racist.
I’ve heard it said that our demographics are evidence of systemic racism. Port Townsend is now mostly made up of White people who moved here from other parts of the country–including a large number of Trust Funders who don’t need a job and can handle the high cost of living. These people moved away from their hometowns, their network of friends and associates, their families in order to live here.
Such a thing is unheard of in the Black, Hispanic and Filipino families I grew up around. They are too family-centric. To move away from family when they retired–and had more time to be with family–would be illogical to them. They remain where their heart is, and that is where family is.
Growing up in a rainbow community made me who I am. I was blessed to get knocked around, to pick myself up, to make life-long friends with guys who taught me so much. The most important lesson, one I cannot repeat enough, is the antidote to racism. It is so profound and so powerful. It destroys all this “systemic racism” BS. Here it is: Don’t let anyone define you by your skin color, and don’t do that to anyone else. Ever. It’s that simple.
The homeless and their activists on one side, homeowners and concerned parents on the other, and the Jefferson County Fairgrounds caught in the middle. Lines are forming in a struggle for the future of this piece of open land in the heart of Port Townsend. The homeless contingent wants up to five acres turned into either a temporary or permanent encampment. Nearby homeowners on all sides of the Fairgrounds, the Lynnsfield community on the forested hills above, the apartments at the south edge, North Beach and the neighborhood squeezed between the Fairgrounds and San Juan Avenue, are organizing to stop what they see as a a power grab that would hurt their communities, home values and their children.
Currently, a sizable number of people identifying as homeless have claimed the right to live at the Fairgrounds for free. Relying on the Governor’s eviction moratorium, they are refusing to pay rent or other compensation to the Fairgrounds Association. They use the washrooms and trash bins and have run a long cord across the open field to a refrigerator in a tent set up against the fence at the back of the apartments just outside the Fairgrounds.
The story of how they got there is a convoluted tale compressed into the time since the Governor’s COVID declarations started putting those housed by COAST in the American Legion basement out on the street or into a hotel, and then, for those who could “congregate,” into the Oscar Ericksen Building at the Fairgrounds. Some have moved back to the American Legion basement, while others are squatting on the Fairgrounds property.
During this time there has also been a contingent of those who can’t or won’t “congregate.” These are people who have difficulty in society (e.g., some combat veterans), women who have suffered violence, people who would rather keep a pet than accept housing, and people who refuse to follow rules and choose to continue abusing alcohol and drugs.
They are not a homogeneous group. Port Townsend’s homeless population, according to a city employee who wrote for us in 2018, is composed mostly of those suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues. Some of these people can be very violent. There are also the “Bohemians” who choose this lifestyle and exploit the community’s compassion and free services, criminals on the run and, last in number, people who have lost housing due to rising rents, unemployment, domestic abuse, and other emergencies. See “Knowing the Homeless,” PTFP, August 24, 2018, and also, “Knowing the Homeless: The Individuals on Port Townsend’s Streets,” PTFP, September 27, 2018.
In the homeless tent encampment at the Fairgrounds, I met people who told me they had overcome addictions, a military veteran, people who had job skills and incomes but could not afford rent in Jefferson County, and people who maintained neat camp areas and cooked for those less fortunate than themselves. I saw the more resourceful people caring for some damaged, fragile individuals. I saw a young man with a large garbage bag cleaning up trash. I saw a man who may have severe mental health issues, dressed in a winter coat on a hot day and with a nine iron on his shoulder.
On the basis of two visits at different times of the day, the homeless seem to be getting along with the paying campers. On a morning visit, I saw a family with children rolling out of their tent while not far away a group in the homeless encampment were brewing coffee.
There are different groups at the Fairgrounds, says housing activist Barbara Morey. Some live in rather decrepit trailers and vehicles in the middle of the field. Several woman have moved away from the tent campers to be off by themselves. “It’s a way of life, of survival,” says Morey. And while she does not know of any needle use by the homeless at the Fairgrounds, she says she does not know all of them, especially recent arrivals.
There are indeed recent arrivals. On my second visit I saw RVs and trailers backed into spaces where before people had been living in tents. A woman I spoke with at length is gone, chased out by a man whom she told the Board of County Commissioners in a public comment is a drug dealer with people working for him. I had also interviewed this man at length. While we were talking a dog ran by with a large steak in its mouth and he had to chase after it. He was cooking steaks for “the community” that night. The long electrical cord running across the field went to a refrigerator in his tent. The woman who fled says he is the point of contact with the local food bank and uses food to exert control. In another letter to the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners, in which she related her reasons for fleeing, she said she had gone to bed “without even a morsel” when she got on his bad side.
Drug use among the homeless in Port Townsend is a serious problem. In a 2018 photo essay for this site, Sky Hardesty documented bags of dope in the homeless camps at Kah Tai Park, and reported how drug dealers were using the homeless to move drugs though our community. In a recent essay here, Gabrielle Guthrie shared how the homeless have peddled illegal drugs to children in Jefferson County.
Flyer announcing neighborhood meeting on Fairgrounds controversy
Though Morey says she walks her dog every day at the Fairgrounds and has seen no evidence of needle use, discarded needles are a concern for neighbors who convened an outdoor meeting of about 25 people in a driveway on August 27. They won’t walk their dogs on the Fairgrounds, they say, because of discarded needles in the grass. They say that since the homeless moved in they have also seen discarded needles scattered near the Fairgrounds and on trails leading from the Fairgrounds. They report that two young girls walking their dog on one of those trails came across a man shooting up in the middle of the day.
A recent letter to the BOCC from a neighbor northeast of the Fairgrounds reported multiple instances of the honor box for their small farm being vandalized and stolen and having to call police for a man who passed out on their property. They wrote of hearing from neighbors of sexual acts and defecation in public, fights, drug use, and other thefts. The Fairground in the last week reported to police that its overnight cash box had been stolen.
At the August 27 meeting, homeowners talked about three overdoses among the Fairgrounds homeless population, one requiring a helicopter evacuation. They talked of a trailer that burned down, of fights, loud arguments with threats of violence, open substance abuse, shouting matches and conflicts with neighbors outside the Fairgrounds. One woman related how blaring music at 3 a.m. drove her to her balcony to plead for it to be turned down. She got no response, so she dressed and drove around to the gate. At the fence behind her apartment she found the source of the noise inside a tent. The occupant did not respond when she shouted at him. He was passed out.
Since that meeting, one of the participants has reported to me that the area is experiencing thefts from mailboxes and stolen packages have been found ripped open on trails leading from the Fairgrounds.
Parents are worried that the proximity of a large homeless population poses a risk to their children. If the homeless population becomes a permanent fixture, there is concern that youth activities, like 4-H, will be lost.
A permanent homeless encampment would also pose very substantial challenges for the Jefferson County Fair when it resumes after the COVID closures.
Even the more stable homeless campers I met know there is a significant problem with other homeless who use drugs and engage in criminal conduct. “We’re not like them,” they told me. They say that the washrooms are locked at night because a homeless woman had moved into the ladies room and wrecked it–after it had just been remodeled.
I am not naming any of the individuals on either side. I was allowed to attend the meeting with homeowners on the condition, set mostly by one woman, that I take no photographs and use no names in anything I wrote. I won’t name the homeless individuals who shared their addiction and recovery stories and who leveled accusations against other homeless. I don’t want them risking retaliation from people who could easily be set off. (I have received direct threats from quite dangerous homeless individuals after writing about their violence in Kah Tai Park. I don’t want to put anyone else through that by using their names, especially people living in vulnerable circumstances.)
The neighbors, some of whom own the apartments within a dozen yards of the homeless encampment, are angry that no one from the County and no homeless activists had come to ask them how they feel about a huge change to their neighborhood.
At the end of the meeting they discussed how to get organized and shared contact information for County Commissioners and the mayor. One woman said she will be getting the police reports that could show how crime and emergency calls have increased since the homeless took up residence on the Fairgrounds. They lamented that “the homeless are more organized than we are.”
There are a number of proposals to create a permanent camp at the Fairgrounds for the homeless. “We want five acres,” I was told by the homeless group who met with me. “We need access to bathrooms for personal hygiene. We can put RVs over there, tents here We need electricity.”
Morey, who led what was essentially squatting by homeless on the Fairgrounds in 2015, says she is working with others on the City-County Joint Task Force on Affordable Housing and Homelessness. She has submitted to that group a proposal to lease a section of the Fairgrounds to Bayside Housing for eight months, with the installation of at least 12 “wooden tents” and spaces for RV living and tent camping. The “wooden tents,” Morey said, are already being fabricated. They are in the nature of stripped down tiny houses.
Is any deal to lease any portion of the Fairgrounds for a prolonged or permanent homeless camp at hand? “No,” says Sue McIntire, Jefferson County Fair manager. Morey acknowledges, in less definitive terms, “Negotiations are ongoing, but we’re not making much progress.”
County Commissioner David Sullivan. who has been engaged in discussions with the Fairgrounds and homeless activists said at the August 31 BOCC meeting and repeated at their September 8 meeting, that nothing has been agreed upon. “The Fairgrounds people have good hearts,” he said. “They have helped the homeless in the past. But this is not their mission.”
At almost all the meetings this summer, the County Commissioners have discussed the deteriorating situation at the Fairgrounds and the coming onset of winter. Sullivan has said some of the pressures on the Fairground may lift as adverse weather and muddy fields drive campers away. But the discussions continue, and there is increasing pressure to find a solution for what happens after October 1 when the Governor’s eviction moratorium expires and the Fairgrounds can evict those who are now claiming its property as their own.
It has been five months since our family business was declared non-essential. I struggle to remember all that has happened, and at the same time know that we should never forget.
I think this all started with a viral outbreak from China. Then came a quarantine because our leaders told us we would kill each other if we didn’t stay home and wear masks.
Then there was Governor Inslee’s economic shut down, and infamous essential vs. non-essential dictate sending small businesses in Washington State into a death spiral.
Then there were protests. Or was it looting? Or was it a riot? I don’t remember if the protest, looting, and riots were about the virus. Seems like it had something to do with justice, but the results were lawlessness. Everyone forgot about death by COVID when they could see there were no limitations placed on individuals when burning, beating, and looting.
Despite the problems elsewhere, there is good news for my Port Townsend family of four. With everything closed and nowhere to go, our monthly expenses were less than anticipated. The lack of a paycheck for months on end hasn’t decimated our savings as we thought it might, but we aren’t through this yet.
Our business is still alive. Paychecks may become a regular thing again. Looks like we will be able to pay our mortgage when it comes out of forbearance next month. We are still sorting, counting, and packaging product as a family around the kitchen table. My wife is still doing all the shipping.
I imagine our daily lives are somewhat like everyone else’s. The group gatherings, the summer travel, the festivals, the concerts by which we celebrate and recognize the mileposts in life have been cancelled. It has been hard to tell one week from the next.
I have tried to stay in touch with other families and friends in our community with some success, but so many people seem to have gone underground, only doing what they have to do, keeping to themselves, keeping their distance.
The unemployment process has worked for our former employees. With the added federal dollars, the government check was better than we could provide. What my wife has done over the last few months is to tear apart and rebuild our business so it can survive in unfriendly economic times. It is smaller, more efficient, and eventually will be able to operate from anywhere.
The business climate that motivated the rebuild had been developing for years, created primarily by elected officials who have rarely had to meet a payroll or balance a budget. The Wuhan Virus economic shut down just accelerated the process. In simple terms, state-mandated high minimum wages and mandatory time off for entry-level employees eliminates jobs. Not what we wanted to, but we are moving in the direction we have to go in order to survive.
I don’t know what Governor Jay Inslee is up to at this point, and I don’t care. Over the last several months he has demonstrated complete disregard for the small business owners of his state. All I can conclude, if he wins a third term as governor, is that the people of Washington no longer expect much from their elected officials.
School is supposed to start on September 8th. Families were asked to commit through the end of November to either an on-line version, or a couple of days of the week in school and a couple of days online.
The schools have made a massive effort to be ready. I have confidence in the teachers. I want my kids in a classroom with their peers. Yet, I have seen the damage done to the mental state of my fellow citizens. I would rather not put my kids into the pressure cooker that I expect the next few months to be, so online school is our choice.
All of us have witnessed the clear dividing line in this town during this experience. Many if not all of the don’t-open-up crowd either didn’t need one or haven’t gone without a paycheck. I was shocked to hear good citizens of independent means tell me that the people of our town should go without work for months so that they could feel safe.
The hardest thing about living in Port Townsend over the last several months hasn’t been the pandemic or the economic crisis. It has been the politics.
If a person does not march in lockstep with the prevailing opinion, that person risks becoming an outcast. Everyone assumes you agree with the prevailing opinion because you are here. Why would you be here if you didn’t agree with the prevailing opinion?
A person has to watch what they say, what they do, where they are seen, and who they associate with. God help this person if they put the wrong campaign sign in their yard. God help this person if they are seen at the wrong protest, or not seen at the right protest. If an individual hazards to make it known that they might support a candidate or concept that stands for anything but the prevailing opinion, they risk a verbal assault of vulgarities screamed in their face. Those less “passionate”–those who won’t scream at you–will just no longer acknowledge your existence. They will look right through you as you pass them on the street.
We all have roles to play in the future of Port Townsend. If we follow the model fed us by the establishment media we will continue down the road to an insular community of close-minded individuals. I would like to think that Port Townsend would resist this prospect, but it may be too late.
Related: Part 1 of this series, “Life in Port Townsend for a Family with a ‘Non-Essential’ Business”
