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Conway’s last post on the Identity Evropa Discord server, which included images of the group’s propaganda he said he placed at the University of Central Oklahoma, was published on March 3, 2019, days before Unicorn Riot posted the group’s 770,000 leaked messages online. allowing anti-fascist investigators and investigators to exploit messages in search of clues to the identities of some 700 pseudonymous extremists.
Conway had left many clues. He posted a link to an article in Enid News.
But more importantly, Conway had announced in a message that she would bring the original Oklahoma state flag to the rally in Charlottesville. (He added this flag to the existing Oklahoma flag, which honors Native Americans. Indians in 1925 and followed the existing flag,” he said. )
Photos taken via HuffPost at the Charlottesville rally show a man with black hair and a beard, dressed in khaki pants and a white polo shirt, marching with the original Oklahoma state flag. Other photos, adding one taken via Unicorn Riot journalists, show this same guy among the crowd of neo-Nazis who marched on the University of Virginia campus with tiki torches on the eve of the Charlottesville rally shouting “Jews won’t update us. “!» We don’t know if he sang.
On March 29, 2019, Right Wing Watch, an organization that documents right-wing extremism, published an article identifying Conway, Identity Evropa’s regional director in Oklahoma, as Judson Gannon Blevins, an Iraq War veteran who lived in Enid and worked at its facility. my father’s roofing business. They described anonymous resources who they said knew the guy in the Charlottesville photographs as Blevins.
Identity Evropa was disbanded shortly after content on its Discord server was posted online. The organization was later renamed the American Identity Movement, but it eventually disbanded. But Blevins appears to be employing other social media accounts to continue proving his identity to white people. nationalism, adding once under his own name. ” James Allsup is a smart man,” Blevins wrote in December 2019 on his own Facebook account.
Allsup well known at the time. As reported through several national media outlets, Allsup was a member of Identity Evropa and had attended the Charlottesville rally, but had still been elected to a seat on the Washington State Republican Party district committee.
Elsewhere online, Blevins gave the impression of having a Twitter account with the username @AbolishJournalism. (On Identity Evropa’s Discord server, “Conway” had indicated that the account belonged to him. )The account expressed particular contempt for Native Americans, which is notable given that the Blevins State has one of the highest indigenous populations in the country, in part due to the forced expulsion of tribes from the eastern states to Oklahoma by the U. S. government in the 19th century, an act of ethnic cleansing, carried out at gunpoint, known as the “Trail of Tears. “
But the account @AbolishJournalism supports a racist distortion of this story. ” When you ‘lost’ your land because you sold part of it for liquor and guns, and the other part was taken from you because of the wars you continued to start while you were with the guns you bought, then you tell everyone to the white guy ‘I stole it all,'” one tweet reads.
The account @AbolishJournalism expressed hope that white nationalists would run for office.
“I agree with the argument that ‘the Republican Party cannot be replaced from behind,’ but it did not deter our boys from being elected to smaller offices, such as city councils, county commissioners, or even state legislators,” a 2019 report reads. Pious. .
“Essentially, positions where you can control the radar and still be effective,” he said.
Blevins announced his candidacy to constitute Enid City Commission District 1 in November 2022. The following month, he declined an interview request from Enid News and Eagle about his involvement in Identity Evropa, but later sent a letter that does not deny the allegation.
“I think we can all see this for what it is, a best-selling article published 4 years ago through a left-wing media outlet funded through George Soros,” Blevins said in the statement, referring to Right Wing Watch. “It was slander then and today it is slander. The labels applied to me are the same ones applied to any American who opposes the liberal status quo in power. I am proud to have served this country honorably and defended our rights in the United States. Marine Corps: I am surely opposed to the erasure of American history and heritage. “
January 8, 2023, Enid News
However, many citizens of Enid angrily refused to comply with what their local newspaper had reported.
Kelci McKendrick, the reporter who wrote the article, was grocery shopping at a Walmart when she got a call from one of the readers: City Commissioner Scott Orr. He recalled Orr yelling at him on the phone about what he called “irresponsible journalism” without “any hard evidence. “McKendrick, who was 25 at the time, said she broke down in tears after the call.
Orr, reached for comment via email, did not respond to a question about his call to McKendrick. Explaining why he disputed the allegations against Blevins in McKendrick’s article, Orr told HuffPost, “We all understand things differently. “
A handful of local politicians have criticized Blevins, adding Jerry Allen, the incumbent commissioner who opposed him, who told the newspaper that “there’s no position in Enid for that kind of attitude. “
Derwin Norwood, commissioner of District 2 and the city’s only black commissioner, also said there is “no place” for Blevins’ alleged views. “We are all created equivalent in the symbol and likeness of God,” he said.
And perhaps the most powerful denunciation came from District 3 Commissioner Keith Siragusa, a former police officer, who said, “If, in fact, all of this is true, I don’t think I’m eligible to fill that position because it’s not representation. “of what is the people of Enid.
But all three commissioners hesitated or declined to comment on the news.
In a healthy, multiracial democracy, a political crusade would be torpedoed by convincing evidence of the candidate’s involvement in a white supremacist group. But it soon became clear that everything else was happening on Enid. Less than a week after the article went to print in Enid News
“I’m surprised that Enid News
Burleson called the article “yellow journalism” that relied on an “accusation made through a far-left socialist organization” to falsely label an “American patriot who fought for his country as a ‘white nationalist. ‘”He also expressed skepticism that Identity Evropa is a “white nationalist” extremist group, noting that it was founded through a Marine. “I refuse to settle for the cancellation of smart people by left-wing communists,” Burleson said.
“Judd, wear this item as a badge of honor,” he added. “Citizens of Enid, do not be deceived. “
Burleson’s resume is long. He served two terms as president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma; appointed through former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating as regent of the Northwest Oklahoma Council on Higher Education; ran as number one for the 2022 Republican Congress (lost to the incumbent president but still received about 25,000 votes); worked for years as a chaplain for the Tulsa Police Department, claiming to have investigated “occult-related crimes”; and maintains close relationships with a number of influential figures, including the two U. S. senators from Oklahoma.
He stepped down as pastor of Emmanuel Enid in 2022, after years of turning the church into a center of conservative politics, known for inviting MAGA luminaries like Charlie Kirk and Dinesh D’Souza to deliver speeches from a level on the ship. Burleson now runs Istoria Ministries, a nonprofit organization committed to spreading the “gospel of Jesus Christ. “
When HuffPost caught up with Burleson early one morning at Istoria Ministries, a new single-story building in Enid, he had just finished his weekly men-only Bible study. Before talking about his for Blevins, Burleson explained why he thinks other people are trans. psychopath”; why Western civilization is “superior” to other civilizations; why Christianity is “superior” to Islam and Judaism; and why the “real” anti-Semites are real pro-Palestinian protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Burleson had come to Blevins’ defense, he said, because he knew Blevins’ pastor. “His pastor said it was amazing,” Burleson recalls. We have young people in our network whose parents are incarcerated, too poor, or too distant for their children to go to church. Judd drives a bus for them, picks up the kids, and takes them to church.
And what about the evidence that Blevins marched with the Nazis in Charlottesville and that he had never denied doing so?”I don’t accept as true what I read or see on the news,” Burleson said, doubting that the Charlottesville rally was truly “racist” or “white supremacist. “
HuffPost noted in Burleson that neo-Nazis in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will update us” and beat a black counterprotester with flagpoles while insulting him.
He recounted a verbal exchange he had with Blevins in which, he said, Blevins admitted to attending the Charlottesville rally, an admission Blevins made publicly.
“Judd told me he was there because he felt our country was being overthrown and the Constitution was being overturned,” Burleson said. “And I assure you that I will put my reputation that he is not a racist on the line. “
Campaigns for commissioners or aldermen in any city, especially a small town like Enid, are usually low-budget affairs. Blevins’ campaign indexed only three donations in its monetary reports. There was $100 that Blevins himself had contributed; another $10 more from a local woman; and a third, much larger donation from a man who lives a four-and-a-half-hour drive south of Enid, near Dallas.
Joshua Berkau of Irving, Texas, donated $1,944 to the Blevins crusade. Berkau is 26 years old and, according to public records, worked as a cashier manager in 2021 for a county commissioner’s crusade in Denton County, Texas. He also seems to be hooked up to a number of blogs and other sites that come with racist content and betray the dominance of white supremacist jargon.
An account on Pastebin, used to publicly purchase links and text logs, owned by “Joshua Berkau,” includes a folder titled “Crime and Not Whites. “It’s full of links to articles about American Renaissance, a white supremacist website. , all falsely claiming that Black people are inherently more prone to violence. Another record is titled “Immigrant Crime. ” And there’s still another one called “Race
An account registered in the “Joshua Berkau” call on Gravatar — a service that creates “unique avatars” that can be used on other web platforms — was connected to an old blog called “American Homeland. “It’s empty of content, unless there’s a message stating that it’s a backup in case the owner’s other blogs are “marginalized. “Shoah is a word for the Holocaust that white supremacists, in ruthless appropriation, use to describe their social media accounts or blogs. banned for violating the terms of service, regularly because they are too racist or anti-Semitic.
But perhaps the most compelling evidence that Berkau is involved in white supremacist circles comes from an examination of a number of limited liability corporations registered in his name, including Sphinx Vending LLC, Spanish Horses LLC, and Ghost Dancing Redux LLC. What is transparent is that Berkau started one of them with a known member of an active white supremacist group. Berkau registered Sphinx Vending as an LLC in January 2023, according to public records, with a co-owner named Robert Whitted.
Whitted was convicted last year of conspiracy to riot. He is among about 30 masked members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist organization known for staging flash-mob-style protests in cities across the country, arrested in 2022 in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. just as they were about to ambush and disrupt a demonstration. LGBTQ Pride occasion in a lakeside park. Whitted was later sentenced to five days in jail.
Berkau did not respond to a request for comment about his appointments with Whitted or why he made a donation to Blevins, a guy running for a city commission seat three hundred miles from his home.
Whitted responded to a request for comment.
Ahead of the Feb. 14, 2023, election, Blevins spoke at two town halls where he answered questions from his opponent, incumbent Speaker Jerry Allen. At the first forum, Blevins did not address the links with Identity Evropa, but spoke about infrastructure. But afterward, two local Democrats, Connie Vickers and Nancy Presnall, confronted Blevins and asked him to admit or deny his white supremacist activism and participation in the Charlottesville rally.
According to Vickers and Presnall, Blevins ran away from them.
At the next forum, a week before the election, the moderator directly asked Blevins to explain his involvement in Identity Evropa. This time, Blevins repeated what he had done in the past to Enid News and Eagle, calling Right Wing Watch’s initial article about him. A best-selling article published through a “left-wing” media outlet. Again, it wasn’t a denial.
In recent years, a wave of far-right extremists has swept across the United States, vying for seats on local school boards, library boards, fitness boards and city councils. They are also increasingly running for uncontested positions as GOP officials, such as district captains. or election inspectors, to take control of the Republican Party from behind. This localized technique of “flooding the area” developed, in part, as a result of the fallout from the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election through the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U. S. Capitol, when the far right found itself in disarray, reeling from a wave of arrests and prosecutions.
Local elections, which in a depleted local media ecosystem tend to attract less attention, have low turnout. This gives extremists an opportunity: if a radical minority of the electorate shows up and votes as a bloc, it is not easy to get their candidate elected. Very difficult. It’s a strategy, as described in the NPR podcast “No Compromise,” of “taking credit for voter apathy to impose its will on society. “
Progressive activists in Enid say that’s how Blevins came to power.
In 2020, they saw a local anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers organization shape an organization called the Enid Freedom Fighters. This new far-right coalition showed up at city committee meetings in red T-shirts, shouting at commissioners who voted in favor of mask mandates and other measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has already killed more than 1. 1 million Americans.
The following year, the Freedom Fighters joined the anti-transgender backlash that swept the country, directing their ire toward the “indoctrination” of young people with “an LGBTQ agenda” in local Enid libraries. Suddenly, the library’s petty board meetings have turned into one of the city’s biggest spectacles, with gigantic angry crowds of screaming constituents. For 2022, the library’s board of trustees voted to ban systems that advertise “sexual perversion” or reference gender or sexual orientation.
Thus, on election day in February 2023, when Blevins was at the polls, this far-right coalition was already mobilized. That afternoon, Enid News and Eagle reported the results: Out of more than 800 votes cast, Blevins had won with 36 votes.
He thanked his circle of family and friends for his victory. “The credits will be for them tonight,” Blevins told the newspaper. “I was delivered to the other side of the finish line. “
Blevins was scheduled to be sworn in on May 1, 2023, at a city commission meeting inside the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Municipal Complex. About 50 progressive activists gathered outside that day, holding signs, and one with a photo of Blevins in Charlottesville, which read, “ONLY A NAZI WALKS WITH THE NAZIS. “
“It’s abominable,” Neal, who was protesting there, told local news station KFOR about Blevins. “It’s unforgivable. Of course, as a priest, I pray for him.
Neal, a Navy veteran and recently ordained a priest in the Orthodox Catholic Church, wore his black cassock and white table collar. He and NAACP leader Lanita Norwood had led the formation of Enid’s Social Justice Committee, the fiery liberal organization that followed Blevins. election.
The organization was not a radical “antifa” group, as Blevins sought to describe them, but it was made up of ordinary Democrats and fairly moderate currents. They expressed their opposition to Blevins under the banner of patriotism, highlighting Enid’s history as a military city. Enid’s Military Airfield trained pilots to fight the Nazis and their Axis allies in World War II,” said the online page of Enid’s Social Justice Committee.
“Enid’s sons and daughters did more than their fair share in the fight against Nazism and fascism,” he continued. “Now their descendants have a new war to win. Enid’s city commissioner, Judd Blevins, adheres to the same Nazi ideology we defeated just 80 years ago.
City ordinances would only allow a recall effort to be introduced after Blevins had served six months in office, so until then, Enid’s social justice committee focused on getting Blevins to recognize and resign his mandate within Identity Evropa, and lobbying the mayor. and his fellow city commissioners to denounce him.
His protest at Blevins’ swearing-in was a foretaste of the difficulty of those tasks. As they held up their banners and chanted, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay!” Judd Blevins passed away!” They were approached by a guy many of them recognized: Kyle Williams, one of the richest men in town.
Owner of Jiffy Trip, a chain of gas stations and convenience stores throughout Oklahoma, Williams is perhaps best known as the man who decided to make Enid the annual home of the “world’s largest freshly cut Christmas tree,” sending out a gigantic tree each year. 2,000 miles from California to Enid, where it’s decorated with 20,000 light fixtures and 10,000 ornaments, overlooking the city from a height of 140 feet. (In 2021, strong Oklahoma winds lashed the arid plains of Enid and shattered the most sensitive part of the “Tree of Christ,” as Williams calls it. )
Neal says Williams interrupted their protest, came face-to-face with a member of Enid’s social justice committee and yelled at him. As it turned out, Williams was a big supporter of Blevins.
“We kept asking him, ‘Why are you talking to someone who’s linked to Nazism?'” Neal recalled, to which Williams kept replying, ‘Me, him’ over and over again. Williams did not respond to a request from HuffPost for comment on the confrontation. .
Later, an organization of white youth waving a Trump flag from their car continued to drive past the protest and rev their engines.
After the protest, members of Enid’s social justice committee, mostly dressed in purple shirts, entered the municipal building, where Allen, the incumbent president of District 1 that Blevins had defeated, delivered a farewell speech. National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C. , where he became emotional after watching a crowd of unruly high school students fall silent as they walked through the exhibits.
“I’m very proud of them because they identified what this museum stood for,” Allen said. “We are very fortunate to have an army that protects all of us. We have a police force that protects us all. No race, no nationality, no creed. Everyone counts. That’s what this country was founded on. Inclusion. We welcome everyone. And that’s why, to that end, Mr. Judd Blevins will be here in a few minutes. . . »
The members of the ESJC are prepared. Maybe he’d finally denounce Blevins, but Allen didn’t.
“He deserves the respect of the board,” Allen said. So I hope they give him the opportunity that I had many years ago when I did this. . . Thank you. ” The commissioners, the mayor, and many others in the crowd applauded. (Allen is dead. )
Blevins raised his right hand and was sworn in shortly after, taking his seat on the city commission for the first time. Then, newly elected Mayor David Mason announced the public comment portion of the evening, imploring the assembled crowd for “decorum” and pronouncing a new rule: a one-minute delay.
‘Wow, wait a minute?'” said the first speaker, Ben Ezzell, a member of Enid’s social justice committee and a former city commissioner, as he walked to the lectern. “Here’s the thing, everything you just said about decorum is important, yet lately we’ve been sitting in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Municipal Complex. And what we all praise about Dr. King is that he pointed out that decorum is rarely not the way to go. There are times when we want to stand up and sign that things are okay. . . Therefore, decorum is a shield. . . “
“30 seconds,” the mayor chimed in.
“And when you use that shield against white nationalists, that’s wrong. It’s not okay to say we want decorum, so don’t point out that Judd Blevins is a white nationalist, a member of Identity Europe. . . Show leadership and say no to what’s wrong. “
“Time is up. “
“Well, wait a minute, that’s kind of fucked up,” Ezzell replied. “Do better. “
The meeting ended a short time later. KFOR chased Blevins, asking him on camera to talk about his history with Identity Evropa. “I sense that you never stop by to please everybody,” Blevins said, visibly nervous, his voice trembling. “As for the other people who are outside, at the end of the day, they’re here because the election didn’t go their way and that’s OK. “
“So, are those claims true?” the KFOR reporter asked. “Do you have any connection. . . “
“That’s all I have to say,” Blevins said, ending the interview and walking out.
For the next six months, Blevins has consciously avoided answering questions like these. Mason and the other five city commissioners didn’t seem interested in pressing him on this issue.
In November, ENID’s Social Justice Committee will offer an olive branch to Blevins: simply send this letter acknowledging and denouncing your time with Identity Evropa and your participation in the Charlottesville rally, and the organization will not undertake a recall effort. Norwood, the only black city commissioner, encouraged Blevins to point it out, but at the Nov. 7 city commission meeting, Blevins announced he would refuse to do so.
This refusal meant that Enid’s Social Justice Committee would begin the recall effort, members informed her in the public comment portion of the meeting. They then took turns at the lectern reciting racist messages, Blevins said, as “Conway” had written on Discord, adding “Hitler would never have allowed it. “
Then Blevins made his statement, but some other denial without denial. That’s when Neal interrupted him and kicked out of security, making Blevins laugh.
As ESJC members yelled at Blevins at the end of the meeting, a group of Blevins supporters taunted them. “Oh my God, you crybabies,” said Neanne Clinton. Clinton, a middle-aged real estate agent with long, straight blonde hair, is a regular at city commission meetings and has spoken out against LGBTBQ books in libraries and mask mandates.
“Black Lives Matter is the real Nazis,” he told HuffPost. “They hate Jews and protest for Palestine. I am a conservative, patriotic Christian Republican who believes in our country and our Constitution. Like Judd, he was never a Nazi. He has nothing to excuse. Just because those other people call him a Nazi doesn’t mean he is.
HuffPost pressed her about the photographs of Blevins in Charlottesville, but she refused to acknowledge them.
Outside, another woman from the neighborhood, 65-year-old Trudi Bandi, was walking back to her car. He said he didn’t like the insults or attacks on Blevins. Most of the time, he says, he didn’t perceive what it was. all about. HuffPost asked him if a white supremacist served on the city council. “What difference will it make for the municipality?” she said. That’s what I don’t perceive. “
When HuffPost explained that it would likely be baffling for Enid’s Black citizens to have a white supremacist on the city council to craft policy, Bandi countered that Blevins owns a roofing company in the city that hires non-white workers.
“I’m just saying that if that’s what he believed at the time, and he still believes it or not, he’s not living that life right now in this city because I’ve witnessed it,” he said. He in my community because of the paintings he made. And the other people he hired to do the paintings in my community were all colors.
A few days later, Blevins announced in a statement that he had filed a complaint with police. “The mechanic informed me that my brake cables had been cut,” he wrote. “An investigation is being carried out lately to identify the culprits and register a complaint as an offender. “
He added that for years he has been receiving “threats from far-left fringe groups,” “since the meeting of the Enid municipal commission on November 7, verbal harassment and threats have turned into criminal violence. “
Blevins did not provide evidence that the alleged crime was politically motivated, but told police he suspected three members of the ESJC. “I never imagined that I would face internal threats for a status befitting those beliefs,” he said.
ESJC President Kristi Balden denied that her organization was guilty of the vandalism.
“Everything our organization has done . . . is to interact in the democratic procedure presented to us in the Enid Charter,” he told Enid News and Eagle. Cass Rains, a spokesperson for the Enid Police Department, told HuffPost that the investigation into Blevins’ brake lines “was closed” because officials “could not discover or rule out that a crime had been committed. “
In the weeks that followed, Mayor Mason presented a solution to censure Blevins, condemning his “failure” to “explain and for his participation in a white nationalist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11 and 12, 2017. “
But at the Nov. 20 city commission meeting, the mayor and commissioners voted unanimously to introduce the resolution. They would vote on it. Instead, one of the commissioners, Norwood, asked Blevins to stand by his side.
“Do you love me?” Norwood Blevins.
“I love you as a brother in Christ,” Blevins replied.
“I love you too. I forgive you. “
“Thank you,” Blevins said.
Norwood then hugged Blevins, as the other commissioners and the mayor gave them a standing ovation. For the ESJC members in the audience, the whole scene was deeply confusing. Why did Norwood forgive Blevins for something Blevins had never apologized for?a desperate and empty ploy to appease the ESJC.
Commissioner Blevins has not apologized for his involvement in a hate group, but Norwood still grants him his pardon pic. twitter. com/rJWwkRppjI
– Molly Conger (@socialistdogmom) November 22, 2023
By late November, the ESJC had collected enough signatures from voters in District 1 to consider a recall, leading Blevins to consider a stance hostile to the group.
“I can’t wait to see who, if any, would be willing to join the so-called ‘Enid Social Justice Squad,’ a small leftist organization close to Antifa, which seeks to bring ‘family-friendly’ drag displays to our country. They proclaim a gospel contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and whose rhetoric and habit are actively dividing and destroying our nation. “told Enid News and Eagle. ” It’s unfortunate that Enid is being held hostage through an organization of other people who harbor so much hatred towards those with other critics who can’t attend our public meetings. “
“The attacks on me are encouraged by the same antifa radicals who rioted and burned down cities across this country in 2020,” he added. “Despite the efforts of this fringe group, wonderful things will happen to Enid in the years to come, and I hope to be a component of that process. “
In January, when an educator and local business owner named Cheryl Patterson announced she would run against Blevins in the recall election, she was careful to distance herself from the ESJC, saying the organization had not asked her to run. Her main platform as a candidate, she said, was a return to normalcy.
“I would love to see other people come to meetings because they want to care about what’s going on in our community,” she said. “But unfortunately, I think we have two other groups that come and scream sometimes. So simply politeness: we want courtesy.
Recall elections are now scheduled for April 2.
Michelle Solano, 42, remembers the segregation that prevailed in Enid just a few decades ago; when blacks like her and her family knew how to stay on their side of the railroad tracks. She remembers being called the N-word in elementary school and remembers rumors of KKK meetings a few blocks from her home.
Seeing Blevins on this city commission, he said, brought all those emotions to the surface again.
“I know racism is still alive and well,” Solano told HuffPost. “And it’s just sad that the city is sweeping it under the rug. “
It’s also inconceivable, he says, that so many people in Enid refuse to believe that Blevins was involved in white supremacist groups. “Do you want him in the [KKK’s] white hat?” she said. Do you need it with a sign that says “I’m a Nazi”?
Solano spoke to HuffPost in a Sunday school classroom at First Missionary Baptist Church on the city’s east side. The building, with a sun-drenched nave peeking through stained glass windows, wasn’t built until 1997, a year after the congregation was founded. An old place of worship, a 103-year-old church, was set on fire by a white man. Police were never able to determine that the arson attack on the First Missionary was racially motivated, but parishioners believed he was the victim of an arson spree. attacks that primarily targeted black churches across the United States in the 1990s.
Solano, also a member of Enid’s social justice committee, still believes in the basic goodness of the maximum number of people, adding his fellow city commissioners in Blevins. He was simply saddened, he says, that “Blevins’ presence on the board of trustees took away a lot of what the town needed. “
“We are destined for education, for the young people here, for after-school programs,” he added. “We shouldn’t worry about racism. “
Neal that Enid faces other urgent, even existential, upheavals that may be compounded by the bad press Blevins brings to town.
“The biggest risk for this city is when the next BRAC (base realignments and closures) circular comes,” he said, referring to when the federal government makes a decision on which military bases to close. “And if the Air Force makes the decision of whether it has a base here to train student pilots, or it has a base in the ‘Nazi city,’ Enid will lose that battle. And if the airbase disappears, this city dries up like dog dung and flutters in the wind.
But for Neal, the most troubling component of the entire Blevins saga has been how many Oklahoma lawmakers are taking rhetorical and policy positions that would likely be applauded through Identity Evropa, if the organization still existed.
Over the past year, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, banning abortions from the “moment of conception”; advocated sending the Oklahoma National Guard to the U. S. -Mexico border to “defend our country” against an “invasion” of immigrants and asylum seekers; and has made Oklahoma a floor for the strictest anti-transgender laws in the country.
“The way they’ve attacked transgender people, especially, I mean, if it’s bad enough to be gay, but if you’re trans here, it’s like a whole different order,” Neal told HuffPost.
As a ceremonial man, what infuriates Neal to the utmost is that men like Blevins, Stitt, and Burleson, the pastor of the megachurch, unleash the old bigotry of the poetry of the Bible, twisting the word of the Lord for their own ruthless ends.
“It’s the worst form of evil I can think of, apart from crimes against young people and genocide and that kind of thing,” he said. “Manipulating people’s religion to incite oppression, hatred and violence is reprehensible and beyond reproach. “
The shame of it all, Neal says, is that he loves Enid from the bottom of his heart, and he also believes that the other people here are fundamentally good, even if they are manipulated through the rhetoric of pastors and tough politicians. He has hope.
“Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better,” he said. “The clever thing about all of this is that it appeases all this latent hatred. And other people are starting to be forced to deal with it. People love the mayor and business leaders.
“Most pastors in this city would probably still need to pretend that nothing is happening, but that impulse is already there,” he continued. “People, pastors, business leaders, and politicians didn’t need to recognize the civil rights movement. There is momentum there, and it’s going to move whether you’ve given it your support or not. And I think we’re at that point. ” , where things are going to get worse before they get better, but they are going to get better.
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