Tag: LGBTQ+

Former City Employee Sues for “Reverse Racism,” Rufo Tells Tall Tales to Bellevue Audience

1. A former Seattle Human Services Department employee is suing the city for alleged discrimination based on his race (white) and his gender (male).

The lawsuit, filed by a California-based libertarian group called the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of ex-city employee Joshua Diemert, claims that HSD failed to promote Diemert and provide him with the significant raises he was “promised” while promoting less-qualified women of color. The suit also alleges that Diemert’s immediate supervisor, a woman of color, engaged in “unrelenting coercion and racial harassment,” forcing him to quit his job instead of accommodating an unspecified medical condition that Diemert claims was exacerbated by people constantly talking about white privilege around him.

Many of the examples of “racial harassment” listed in the lawsuit appear to involve Diemert inserting himself into other people’s conversations to make comments his colleagues perceived as racist, such as an incident where he claims he was chastised for “joining” his coworkers’ lunchroom conversations about white privilege, which occurred while he was “trying to cook his food.” In another example, Diemert claims a supervisor “berated” him for “attempting to correct [a coworker’s] discriminatory behavior toward a white applicant.” In a third, he accuses the city of forcing employees to participate in “critical race theory” during a training at El Centro De La Raza, where his comments led a coworker to call him an “asshole” in an email to another person.

In addition to $300,000 in damages, the lawsuit asks the court to find that the city’s anti-racist policies violate the 14th Amendment (equal protection) and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (protection from discrimination on the basis of race or sex). The suit also claims that the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative “aims to end American culture because it was created by ‘white, wealthy, Christian, cis-gender, straight, non-disabled men coming from Europe who wanted to protect their place within hierarchy and empire.'” That quote comes from a city document called “Building a Relational Culture,” which says nothing about “ending American culture,” but does provide a broad framework for undoing structural racism at the city—the actual project of RSJI.

Diemert’s lawsuit, which has gotten some coverage on FOX and various right-wing websites, is one of many recent lawsuits attempting to reframe racism as something that primarily happens to white people. The Pacific Legal Foundation is responsible for many of these anti-affirmative action claims, including a lawsuit challenging Women and Minority-Owned Business (WMBE) contracting goals in California; a case accusing the University of Minnesota of discriminating against men when it cut the men’s gymnastics program; and a case alleging that elite public schools in Boston discriminate against white and Asian kids.

The city’s Human Services Department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office said the city has not been served with the lawsuit yet and could not comment.

2. “Critical race theory,” unsurprisingly, was also among the topics professional troll Chris Rufo brought up at a talk last month to support the Washington Policy Center. (PubliCola reviewed a recording of the event). If you aren’t familiar with WPC, it’s the libertarian think tank that was responsible for all those confusing pro-capitalism billboards you saw around town a couple years ago. (“Free markets destroy climate change,” one read, with a Tesla logo as the “T” in “climate.”) The event, which was emceed by conservative podcaster and Project 42 “brand ambassador” Brandi Kruse, also featured former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

Rufo, a onetime Seattle City Council candidate who spun off a job at the right-wing Discovery Institute into a career as the nation’s leading purveyor of disinformation about CRT, has since turned his attention to vilifying trans women, drag queens, and LGBTQ+ people in general. Rufo’s work is part of nationwide efforts to drive LGBTQ+ people out of public life through both legal methods—such as Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law—and violence, including increasingly violent protests against LGBTQ+ events, including drag shows).

Kids are not being taught “fisting” in schools—but, as Rufo noted, it’s the kind of “salacious” story that gets attention from people like Tucker Carlson.

Speaking to a group of “young professionals,” Rufo bragged about his efforts to spur people to act by speaking to their emotions, even when that means ignoring “data” and facts. “I had been doing this campaign on critical race theory, doing the reports, working with the Trump White House,” Rufo said. “And all of a sudden I see something really incredible happen. I started seeing all these videos of parents at school board meetings going nuts. And that’s what you want to see.”

As an example, Rufo continued, he was pushing out stories about “the teachers union—they’re the villains, right?”—he paused for boos—”which was promoting a guide book, a kind of recipe book that was in cartoon format designed for kids, that had a guide to BDSM, sadomasochism, [and] fisting.” In reality, the “cartoon guide” is a document aimed at teenagers seeking information about queer sex, produced by a Toronto Planned Parenthood affiliate and the United Way of Greater Toronto that was linked, among many other documents, on the website of an internal NEA LGBTA+ caucus. Kids are not being taught “fisting” in schools—but, as Rufo noted, it’s the kind of “salacious” story that gets attention from people like Tucker Carlson.

Rufo also claimed a victory closer to home: The reversal of calls to “defund the police” by members of the Seattle City Council. In taking credit for this change, he claimed that Nordstrom’s flagship store in downtown Seattle, he said was “burned down” to “ashes.”  Nordstrom, which is located just a few miles from the Bellevue hotel where Rufo was speaking, remains fully intact and was bustling with holiday shoppers earlier this week.

SPD Touts “Safe Space” Hate-Crimes Program, but Advocates Say There’s No Evidence That it Works

Interim SPD Chief Adrian Diaz, Detective Beth Wareing and LGBTQ Liaison Dorian Koreio at Hing Hay Park

By Paul Kiefer

Hand-sized stickers bearing a rainbow-colored police badge are ubiquitous in storefront windows around Seattle. They are the calling card of the Seattle Police Department’s “Safe Place” program, a six-year-old project that theoretically recruits business owners to provide shelter to victims of hate crimes and to report hate crimes to the department. The project doesn’t cost the department much—stickers, printed materials and a single staff member are the only expenses. But whether it has made a difference for victims of hate crimes is still hard to discern.

The Safe Place program is one of SPD’s points of pride. Since launching the program in 2015, SPD has trained and licensed nearly 300 other law enforcement agencies to replicate it across the country. The goal of the program, Interim SPD Chief Adrian Diaz said during a press conference to announce new translations of Safe Place materials last week, is to give victims of have crimes a “safe place” to call the police—inside a business with one of the program’s stickers in its window. Business owners who sign up for the program gets a sticker, written instructions, and a short training from an SPD officer on how to respond if the victim of a hate crime enters their business in need of help.

“As far as we know, the program is mostly a way for businesses to signal that they’re inclusive, whether or not that’s actually true in practice.”—Catherine West, Legal Voice.

But does the Safe Place program work? According to SPD LGBTQ Liaison Dorian Koreio, who administers the program, the department has no way to track whether the Safe Place program has led to an increase in reports of hate crimes, which is how SPD would know the program was having an effect. Koreio said SPD doesn’t review hate crime reports to determine whether a Safe Place business sheltered the victim or reported the crime—in fact, he said, the department doesn’t keep track of Safe Place businesses’ locations. “I know where they are roughly,” he said, but he has no data to test the program’s impact.

Those who work with the groups most frequently targeted in hate crimes—in Seattle, Black and LGBTQ residents—say the program may not live up to the fanfare. “As far as we know, the program is mostly a way for businesses to signal that they’re inclusive, whether or not that’s actually true in practice,” said Catherine West, an attorney with the women’s and LGBTQ rights advocacy group Legal Voice. “And more importantly, some members of the LGBTQ community do not feel safe engaging with law enforcement, so the other question is whether encouraging people to document hate crimes by calling the police will really give you an accurate picture of who experiences those kinds of crimes and harassment.”

Detective Beth Wareing, who investigates hate crimes for the department, argued that it’s possible that the Safe Place program prompted more people to report hate crimes to SPD over the past six years. After the department launched the program in 2015, Wareing said, there was a roughly 60 percent increase in reports of hate crimes compared to the previous year; between 2013 and 2014, hate crime reports only rose by roughly 15 percent.

In the years since, reports of hate crimes have continued to rise steeply; SPD received nearly 800 reports in 2020, compared to 205 in 2015. The increase in hate crime reports in Seattle vastly outpaced the rise in hate crime reports nationwide. According to Wareing, who spoke with PubliCola after last week’s press conference, a steep rise in the number of reported hate crimes doesn’t necessarily mean that more hate crimes took place—instead, she said, it may mean that more people were able to report hate crimes to the police than in past years. The number of crimes that still go unreported, she added, is “unknowable.”

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Wareing hypothesized that the program might achieve results by relieving some pressure for victims fleeing an attacker. “When we talk to victims, they talk about the barriers to reporting, or the things that would make calling 911 more attractive option,” she said. “And having a safe place to do that where they can wait is undeniably one of those ways.”

While some advocacy organizations in Seattle collect reports on hate crimes independently of SPD, Wareing told PubliCola that she doesn’t see any clear alternatives to calling the police to report a hate crime, despite concerns like those raised by West. “I never advocate for calling anything other than 911 as a first step,” she said. Continue reading “SPD Touts “Safe Space” Hate-Crimes Program, but Advocates Say There’s No Evidence That it Works”

Durkan Seizes on Graffitied “Homophobic Slurs” as Another Reason to Close CHOP

During a press conference earlier this week, Mayor Jenny Durkan, who is gay, said that small businesses within the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone had been vandalized with anti-LGBTQ graffiti by people inside the protest area. “I have talked to many small business owners that literally have just been holding on. It was their week to reopen, and their businesses are sanctuaries for many people, including the LGBT community,” Durkan said.

“They’re not only closed, but there’s graffiti with homophobic slurs written on their buildings. That’s not who we are in Seattle and we’re going to do everything we can to change that dynamic.”

Two days after Durkan’s comments, I spent a couple of hours in the CHOP searching for homophobic graffiti on buildings in the area. I didn’t see any (on this or any prior walk through the CHOP), although I could have missed it or it might have been scrubbed away. There were, however, many signs and spray-painted messages supporting the black trans community, which one of the groups most targeted by hate crimes and police violence in the United States.

In fact, the only “slurs” I could find were the spray-painted message “Fags against cops,” painted on a rainbow crosswalk across from Cal Anderson Park, two that read “Dykes 4 BLM,” and one that read “Dykes 4 Anarchy.”

When I sent a couple of photos of these messages to the mayor’s office to find out if this was what Durkan was referring to, a spokeswoman said, “She met with [business] owners including some LGBTQ biz owners who had mentioned the tag of the f-word on/near their business. Not sure the specific location of the photos referenced below. But that specific word in graffiti is what she was referencing.”

Louise Chernin, the head of the Greater Seattle Business Association (the city’s LGBTQ+ business group), said she had not seen any homophobic graffiti herself, but added that “more than one person told me they saw homophobic graffiti around the neighborhood.”

Reclaiming words meant as slurs, of course, is a long and proud tradition among oppressed groups of all kinds. (“Queer,” the Q in LGBTQ+, is a great example of a term for identity that began its life as a slur.) Bottom line: Calling the “f-word” homophobic in every context is like saying it’s misogynistic for women to start a magazine called Bitch.

Durkan has repeatedly implied that the ongoing presence of protesters, barricades and graffiti in the six-block CHOP area is harming the LGBTQ+ community on Capitol Hill, a “historic sanctuary” for LGBTQ+ people. What is clear from even a brief walk through the neighborhood, however, is that the majority of the signs, graffiti, and even pro-protest posters hung up by businesses themselves, are overwhelmingly pro-queer—and that a lot of it is explicitly anti-Durkan.

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