Rantz: City of Olympia embraces racist segregationist meeting at taxpayer expense

The City of Olympia is hosting a racially segregated community safety meeting as officials continue to advance Black Lives Matter-inspired initiatives. The meeting appears to come after community outreach resulted in too much pro-police and law enforcement feedback.

City leaders created a nine-member Community Work Group to “reimagine public safety” via an “inclusive” process that included a survey and both in-person and digital community meetings. The bulk of their work was completed and summarized in June.

The community feedback showed a consistent theme, according to the summary document.

Several residents complained of a lack of attention to property crimes and a “need for people who violate laws to be held more accountable, and for OPD [Olympia Police Department] to be able to do law enforcement.” They complained there was “too much leniency for houseless individuals and others who are breaking laws” and demanded the city be more honest about its crisis.

“While not expressed by all participants, but was expressed in each group, the word ‘accountability’ was invoked in connection to two sentiments (a) criminal laws have been diluted, and (b) there is a need for more personal responsibility to be required of those committing criminal behavior,” the document claimed.

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City of Olympia embraces racist strategy

But the city is not done soliciting opinions. If you want to attend the next meeting to give your input, you should be black.

The City of Olympia is hosting an October 27 meeting that explicitly invites “Black community members.”

“In a continuation of its ongoing outreach efforts, the Reimagining Public Safety Work Group will host an additional listening session for Black community members on Thursday, Oct. 27. Black community members are invited to attend and share their experiences and the impacts of anti-Black racism in our community from 6 to 8 p.m. at Risen Faith Fellowship, 2149 4th Avenue E. Olympia, WA,” the event invite says.

How can the city legally justify a race-based meeting on the taxpayer dime? They can’t — and won’t.

“Specifically, you asked if the session was legal and seemed to indicate some concern that it violated the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA). Please have no concern. The listening session is legal and is not a violation of OPMA,” spokesperson Kellie Purce Braseth assured the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

Merely calling something legal is not a legal argument.

Generally, disingenuous public officials have justified these racist meetings by claiming they won’t turn anyone away at the door. Thus it’s open, technically, to everyone. But the clear intention is to make this a meeting only for black people.

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Olympia leaders think black residents need a ‘safe space’

The city of Olympia thinks its non-black citizens are so racist that it needs to establish a “safe space” where what they believe to be hypersensitive black residents will feel safe to share their views free from hate crimes and white supremacy.

“A safe space is not just one where participants are sure they will come to no physical harm, but also one when participants are confident no one in the room will cause them emotional harm,” Braseth said. “Often, that sense of safety comes with sharing the room with those who share their experiences. We have created such safe spaces in this process for marginalized members of the community, but also for our police, fire, and other public safety personnel.”

But would the city ever set up safe spaces for white people to convene? After all, they’re constantly labeled white supremacists by fringe left-wing activists. That might cause “emotional harm.”

They’d never do that. They shouldn’t. It’s as racist an idea as a black-only meeting. We’d call the idea of a “safe space for white people to speak without fearing black people’s reaction” so racist that even the person who innocently floated the idea should be shunned. Yet it’s considered progressive to have that same scenario, just with the races reversed.

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Liberals inspire us to remind you: segregation is wrong

Segregating people by racial identity — or religion, gender, etc. — is wrong. Before progressive activists took over education, we used to learn segregation was wrong. Now the very people touting their embrace of inclusiveness are telling people of the wrong color that they’re not welcome to a taxpayer-funded meeting.

It’s also deeply condescending.

The city of Olympia will have you believe that the black community is so fragile that they’re only comfortable talking around other black people. To the extent that that might be true of some black people, it’s likely the consequence of living in a world where racial segregation thrives. All these “safe spaces” reinforce the false idea that black people are sensitive and white people are dangerous. This is intentionally divisive. But it’s also likely social engineering.

The city of Olympia may be selecting a black-only meeting to get opinions they presume the black community will hold. The BLM movement, which inspired the mostly white staff in the city, proclaims that most black people have a negative perception of cops. It’s false, of course. This is a scam of a movement that has made grifters, in my view, a lot of money.

The reality is most people share the same views of public safety. The meetings, up until this point, have shown that. No amount of social engineering will change that. So perhaps the city could be a little less racist when convening the community?

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently for more news and analysis.

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