This week’s Social Media Saturday looks at who is being invited into elementary classrooms, who is endorsing whom for county office, and whether long-standing approaches to homelessness, addiction, and animal welfare are delivering results—or simply rearranging the problems.
League of Women Voters Presents Constitution to Sequim Elementary Students
The League of Women Voters recently gave a presentation to elementary students about the Constitution and the 19th Amendment.
Teaching the Constitution is valuable. The League, however, describes itself as an activist organization.
It has pushed for its own materials to be used in local elementary schools—materials that encourage children to participate in Black Lives Matter protests.
Its state website explains that local chapters will acknowledge “the land known as the State of Washington is on the homelands of Native peoples who have lived here from time immemorial and who have long resiliently resisted the ongoing harms of colonialism,” express “deepest respect for and gratitude towards these original and current caretakers,” and work “to listen to and amplify the voices of Indigenous people, to partner with tribes… on policy and other issues… to educate the public about tribal/treaty government and welfare issues and to respect the sovereignty of tribes.”
Is it appropriate for activist groups to teach in elementary classrooms? Should Indivisible be allowed to make presentations? Would the district host a group focused on the Second Amendment? Would the reaction be the same if predominantly white men taught elementary students about gun safety, conservative values, Christianity, or the Constitution over ideology? These are fair questions when two League members serve on the Sequim School Board and activist organizations are welcomed into classrooms.
“They’re not teaching critical thinking; they’re teaching conformity. They’re not encouraging independent thought; they’re conditioning obedience. This isn’t empowerment. This is indoctrination. They are building a pipeline of future members who will never question the organization’s motives, never challenge its authority, and never recognize how tightly their worldview has been shaped by a group that claims to be “nonpartisan” while behaving like an ideological gatekeeper. That should absolutely alarm every parent, every educator, and every voter who still believes in genuine civic education rather than political grooming. The LWV is not simply influencing adults — they are actively cultivating the next generation of loyal followers.” — CC Watchdog Subscriber C.A.S.
Jim Stoffer’s Holocaust Analogy
Jim Stoffer is prominently listed as an endorser of Mike French. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Olympic Educational Service District 114 (OESD 114), he also lobbied Sequim City Council to allow three safe-parking spaces at Trinity United Methodist Church — an arrangement under which Commissioner Mike French authorized paying Stoffer’s church more than $118,000 in taxpayer funds.
Now, Stoffer has stated that Jake Seegers wants to “round up people and put them in camps; that was tried in WWII and didn’t go over so well.”
Weeks earlier, he compared Seegers to the KKK; now the comparison is to Nazi roundups of Holocaust victims.
Why does this man continue to be placed in leadership roles across the school district, educational service district, and community organizations while his church receives substantial public funding tied to the candidate he endorses?
Olympic Climate Action Endorses Mike French; Tumwater Creek Tells a Different Story
Mike French announced a key endorsement from Olympic Climate Action because he has “worked hard to pass climate legislation”—legislation that will raise housing costs, increase the cost of living, and restrict private property rights.
After nine years of leadership in both the city and the county, how have the environment and green spaces fared under Mike French? If salmon-bearing Tumwater Creek could speak, it might describe an ecological crisis choked with supplies from the county’s Harm Reduction Health Center—needles, Mylar blankets, uneaten food wrapped in plastic, and crack pipes flushed into Port Angeles Harbor with the next rain.
Asked at a recent county commissioner meeting whether he has participated in cleaning up Tumwater Creek, French conceded he has only “toured” it. There is a difference between passing environmental legislation, touring a problem, and doing the work.
Reshuffling the Same Stack of Cards
“They’ve run the homeless out of downtown” in preparation for Crab Fest this weekend, one Facebook user reported. They appear to have been shuffled to Peabody Creek and the Salvation Army.
Is the current approach to homelessness and addiction working? Is this a long-term solution? Is this compassion? Are you ready for change?
Open Drug Use and Unregistered Vehicle Outside Ballet Studio
Is it legal to drive under the influence? What about driving with registration expired for more than three years? Insurance is highly doubtful.
This was observed in the Red Goose Shoes parking lot: a vehicle associated with drug activity, a passenger either passed out or unresponsive, and a driver openly using drugs in front of little girls entering and leaving ballet. Why is it not treated as illegal to be under the influence behind the wheel, use illegal substances in public, and then drive an unregistered, uninsured vehicle into traffic?
When the non-emergency number was called, the response was that medics would check on the passenger. What about sending an officer to address driving under the influence and the registration and insurance violations? Is this enforcement standard applied to everyone, or only to some?
How Will You Do It?
Fungi Fest
Remember when Jake Seegers interviewed David Rogers? It was a local story of someone not only turning his life around without harm reduction, but going on to found the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival—an event that now draws thousands to Port Angeles after the summer crowds have gone. This year’s 5th annual festival (October 16–18 on the waterfront) has an action-packed lineup of talks, workshops, forays, vendors, and more; be sure to check out olypenfungifest.com and consider going.
New Substack Examines Olympic Peninsula Humane Society
After years of reported problems and lack of transparency at the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society, readers are encouraged to read the Substack “The Good, The Bad, and the Olympic Peninsula ‘Humane’ Society” by Mega Kittens Revenge.
The piece details alleged mismanagement, financial opacity, poor animal care conditions, and questions about whether donor and taxpayer funds are achieving their stated purpose.
Homelessness Task Force Member Endorses Jake Seegers
Homelessness Task Force member and formerly homeless resident John De Boer issued an endorsement—not for the chair of the Board of Commissioners he has watched for four years, but for Jake Seegers.
Estela Lopez on Skid Row Drug Busts
Readers are encouraged to check out the Substack conversation with Estela Lopez, Business Improvement Director of Skid Row in Los Angeles.
After the arrest of roughly two dozen alleged dealers operating from tents, Lopez—who has worked the area for nearly 25 years—discusses the ongoing challenges of trash, open drug markets, and the gap between city policy and street-level reality. The parallels to local conditions are worth considering.
Documentary Parallels Local Homelessness Conditions
An hour-long documentary set in Bellingham and Olympia shows conditions with uncanny parallels to Port Angeles and Clallam County.
Watch “Inside the Deadly Jungle Where Homeless People Burn Alive…” to see the direction current policies are taking us.
Fixing a Flat
Is “Indivisible - Port Angeles” ready to try new approaches to failed policies? They seem to be at least considering it.
The LWV is coming in through the back door of civic education by pushing the newer version called, Action Civics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_civics
Action civics is a modern and alternative form of civics education in the United States.
Critics of the system argue that Action Civics aims “to turn children into activists” and inappropriately promotes a “communitarian view that issues facing society are best dealt with through group action, by people joining hands and working together rather than through the political process.”
Students are being pushed to go out and carry signs and protest (as is being done in our community) for a single cause BEFORE infusing them with basic knowledge about government, and understanding of the merits (as well as the shortcomings) of American democracy.
IMO, LWV, is using Action Civics to create young backers for THEIR particular agenda, not educate students into a complete picture of our community government and how it is run.
We need to bring back Civics Classes based on American democracy and have it taught by teachers who do not bend the teachings to their personal view.