February 20, 2025 • 56 mins
"They got what they wanted." Those were the words of Don Logan after a February 11, 2025 meeting of the Scottsdale, Arizona city council. Twenty-one years after Dennis Mahon tried to murder Logan with a package bomb, the city of Scottsdale finished what the klansman started: they closed the city's diversity office.
Sources:
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/to-serve-and-humiliate-6422314
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/us/politics/trump-fake-electors-emails.html
https://www.newsweek.com/strip-club-sued-allegedly-drugging-patrons-stealing-credit-cards-1883758
https://www.azfamily.com/2025/02/12/scottsdale-city-council-votes-end-programs-involving-dei/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/costco-dei-policy-board-statement-shareholder-meeting-vote/
https://s201.q4cdn.com/287523651/files/doc_financials/2024/ar/FY24-Proxy-Statement.pdf
https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/ebbd88bb-cc8f-4e1e-8d5e-a52f8f780b94.pdf
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone Media. On February eleventh, twenty twenty five, the
City Council in Scottsdale, Arizona wrote an epilogue to an
episode of this show that I thought was already over.
On February twenty sixth, two thousand and four, a bomb
(00:24):
went off in Scottsdale. A pipe bomb concealed an inconspicuous
looking brown box exploded in the hands of the man.
The package was addressed to Don Logan. Inside the box
was a note one he didn't get a chance to
read that day. The bomber demanded that Logan, the director
(00:45):
of the city's Office of Diversity and Dialogue, cease and
desist his corrupt activities, but he didn't. Don Logan carried
on the work of trying to make the city of
Scottsdale lay safe and welcoming place for people of all races, genders,
and sexual orientations, and after he retired in two thousand
(01:06):
and seven, the office continued that work under a new director.
A poster printed last year for their Scottsdale for All
campaign showed Scottsdale residence of all backgrounds smiling under the
hot desert sun. A sek in his turban A woman
in her hijab, a man in a wheelchair, black and
(01:27):
Hispanic residence, visibly queer and gender nonconforming people, all working
together to make their home and more inclusive place. With
a shoestring budget of a fraction of a percent of
the city's overall operating expenses, the office put on community programming,
did outreach to underserved communities, and provided trainings to city employees.
(01:50):
Until last week, just two weeks shy of the twenty
first anniversary of the bombing that nearly killed Don Logan,
the Scottsdale City Council voted five to two to finish
the job, closing the Diversity Office and ending all city
funding for programming and training related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
(02:11):
The weird little guys of decades past may be in
federal prison for their crimes, but their ideas are alive
and well. And you don't need to don a pointy
white hood or a swastika armband to force hateful ideas
on a city. A smart pantsuit will do just fine.
I'm Molly Conger and this is Weird Blue Guys. This
(02:53):
episode is not about a new weird Blue guy. We
are unfortunately revisiting the aftermath of the actions of a
guy we've already spent a few episodes discussing. Back in October,
when the show was still pretty new, there was a
week where I didn't quite get it together to have
a full episode ready to go in time. I was
(03:15):
in court for a trial for a couple of days,
I had a death in the family, I had to
travel out of state for a wedding, and the sixty
plus hours it takes to put an episode together just
weren't there. So one of the episodes that month was
a sort of cobbled together collection of personal reflections on
(03:35):
the work so far and pat it out with some
odds and ends, things that hadn't made it into past
episodes that I thought were interesting, and updates on some
stories that had come to light after the air. Things
like that, and the episode actually came out pretty good,
I think, and I decided that the format could be
(03:56):
useful for future emergencies. You know, every couple of months,
I could revisit past episodes and tie together loose ends.
Maybe there were new developments in old cases. It would
be a good release valve for me, and I think
it's something you all would still enjoy. I keep a
document where I add those odds and ends as they
occur to me, but I haven't needed to use it.
(04:20):
I don't actually need it. This week, I find myself
writing an update to an old episode, not because I
had to fall back on my emergency plan for a
filler episode, but because we all find ourselves in something
of an emergency. I prefer to write stories about the past,
(04:42):
stories that are over. They don't always have happy endings.
In fact, they rarely do. The good guys don't always win.
More often than not, there aren't really any good guys
at all. Even when the story ends with some federal
prosecutor putting a violent white supremacist in prison, there are
(05:04):
usually uncomfortable questions about why it took so long, why
certain co conspirators weren't charged, how much information law enforcement ignored,
or how complicit their informants and undercover agents were in
the harm that was done. But at least at the
end of the episode, the story is over, a case
is solved, someone was held accountable, and maybe we all
(05:28):
learned a little bit of history. Lately, though, I've grown
increasingly uncomfortable with just how contemporary my stories of the
past are starting to feel storylines are recurring. Fringe ideas,
ones that I had to dig for hours through decades
(05:49):
old forum posts to find are now coming out of
the mouths of elected officials in the evening news every day.
It feels like I'm reading executive orders that it sound
like they were written by a stormfront poster who graduated
last in his class at law school. I don't like it.
I'm much more comfortable digging through the archives than i
(06:12):
am talking about current events. There's another show in the
cool Zone media family that does incredible work compiling a
weekly roundup of the terrible news coming out of the
White House. It could happen here puts that ongoing series
out every Friday, But I've been hiding from the calendar.
Invite our producer Sens for that. I don't want to
(06:32):
talk about the president Unfortunately. I think I have a
responsibility to explicitly connect these stories from the past to
their present day consequences. So this episode is a sort
of coda to a series of six episodes that ran
in December and January, beginning with the episode called Ku
(06:55):
Klux Cable Access TV that originally ran on December fourth,
All the way through the five part series on Dennis
Mayhon ending in mid January. I know it's a big
ask to expect you to be familiar with the storylines
running through nearly six hours of old episodes, so I'll
try to jog your memory as we go without repeating
(07:17):
myself too much. Last month, Costco shareholders rejected a proposal
from the National Center for Public Policy Research, a right
wing think tank, that attacked the company's diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies. What goes on in corporate boardrooms isn't really
my wheelhouse, but I know this kind of shareholder activism
(07:41):
isn't exactly novel, and it certainly wasn't the National Center
for Public Policy Researches first foray into shareholder activism. Far
from it. The think tank founded something called the Free
Enterprise Project in two thousand and seven, a nonprofit whose
whole mission is filing right wing shareholder resolutions. On their website,
(08:03):
they claimed that ninety percent of all right of center
shareholder resolutions are brought by their organization, and they've spent
nearly twenty years attacking sustainability efforts and diversity initiatives at
companies like Apple, Microsoft, target, Progressive Ups, IBM, Ford, Coca Cola,
Bank of America, Best Buy. The list goes on, but
(08:26):
this particular shareholder proposal felt nauseatingly familiar. The National Center
for Public Policy Research was trying to do in twenty
twenty five exactly what the neo Nazi group National Alliance
had done in nineteen eighty eight. And that's a strange
side story I covered in the episode called Ku Klux
(08:49):
Cable Access TV back in December. To refresh your memory
a bit on that side plot. After a Nazi terrorist
cell stole four million dollars from a rings truck in
California in nineteen eighty four, some of that money made
its way into the hands of National Alliance leader William
Luther Pierce, and with that stolen money, Pierce bought a
(09:12):
large tract of undeveloped land in the mountains of West
Virginia where he would establish his Nazi compound. But he
also bought one hundred shares of stock in AT and
T and in nineteen eighty eight, the group made their
first of three attempts to force the company to end
their affirmative action program. At that meeting. In nineteen eighty eight,
(09:33):
Chairman of the board, Robert Allen, denounced the proposal, saying,
as a shareholder of a sufficient number of AT and
T shares, this organization has a right to offer a
shareholder proposal, but we find the intent and wording of
this proposal highly objectionable. Especially objectionable is the argument that
some of our employees, because of their race, are less
(09:55):
qualified than others. This proposal is completely contrary to the policies,
the culture, and the character of AT and T. It
is in the proxy only because we could not convince
the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow us to drop it,
and their proposal was voted down by the company's shareholders
in nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and again in
(10:17):
nineteen ninety. In a later interview about that nineteen ninety
shareholders meeting, National Alliance member and convicted pedophile Kevin Alfred
Strom claims that he got a standing ovation after his
presentation of the proposal, and he says he gave a
rousing speech about the rank injustice and insane business practice
(10:38):
of discriminating against whites. Strom complained that despite broad support
from a very large portion of the shareholders, the proposal
only failed because a handful of establishment hacks who hold
the majority of shares, voted against it, and, much like
the AT and T board chairman's denunciation of the Nazi
(11:00):
proposal in nineteen eighty eight, Costco's board of directors were
clear and their rejection of the twenty twenty five version
of the same idea, writing, we welcome members from all
walks of life and backgrounds. As our membership diversifies, we
believe that serving it with a diverse group of employees
enhances satisfaction. The board devotes a portion of their statement
(11:24):
to discussing the ways in which diverse hiring practices are
beneficial to the bottom line. Having employees from diverse backgrounds
informs their purchasing choices, allowing them to offer products that
appeal to all kinds of customers. And customers quote like
to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses
with whom they interact. But the board statement doesn't just
(11:47):
hide behind shareholder value. It isn't just about the bottom line.
They firmly believe it makes good business sense, of course,
but it's also a moral imperative. The board rights, this
is our code of ethics, our focus on diversity, equity,
(12:07):
and inclusion is not, however, only for the sake of
improved financial performance, but to enhance our culture and the
well being of the people whose lives we influence.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Look.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Am I a diehard Costco fan? Yes? Am I wearing
my favorite sweatpants as I type this. Yes. I write
every episode of this show in my Kirkland signature brand
sweats with the Costco logo embroidered on them. Would I
be thrilled if Costco offered to sponsor the show, Buddy,
(12:40):
I'd be over the moon. But I don't want to
get carried away praising any corporation, especially one that doesn't
actually have a great track record when it comes to
union organizing. I'm not so naive as to think very
many truly moral stands have ever been taken in corporate boardrooms.
(13:00):
But this statement is a bold one, and it's one
I think they can really be proud of. They take
aim at the authors of the proposal, calling out their
feigned concern for shareholder value that they've couched this policy position.
In writing quote, the proponent's broader agenda is not reducing
risk for the company, but abolition of diversity initiatives and
(13:25):
they make it clear that they are very aware that
this think tank has published a document called Balancing the Boardroom,
which describes its shareholder activism as fighting back against the
evils of woke, politicized capital and companies. And just like
the early similar proposal put forward by literal neo Nazis
(13:46):
thirty seven years ago, this one failed to except no
one's laughing this time. In nineteen eighty eight, the press
covered National Alliance's efforts as a side show those Nazi
freaks from a compound of the mountains didn't belong in
a boardroom. Today, that same idea is taken very seriously.
(14:12):
Not long after Costco's shareholders voted down the proposal, the
Attorney's General in nineteen States penned a letter to Costco's
CEO warning him that he had thirty days to end
the company's DEI policies. There is a heavily implied threat
that those state attorneys general would do something to the
(14:33):
company if they failed to comply, but there's no clear
explanation of what, if anything, the company has actually done
that would allow any legal action to be taken. The
President's avalanche of executive orders attacking civil rights don't have
the force of law behind them that would actually outlaw
(14:54):
a private company's HR policy. It's not clear yet how
this is going to play out, but I'm willing to
bet it involve some questionably legal state level enforcement actions
and a lot of lawsuits. The story I sat down
(15:25):
to write, though, is about Scottsdale, Arizona. When I finished
that five part series of episodes about Dennis Mahon, I
was ready to be done with him. I never expected
his story to spin out in so many directions, but
once I started writing it, there was no way to
condense his life into anything less. For more than a
(15:48):
month on this show, we followed Dennis Mahon all over
the country the world, even from his childhood on a
farm in Illinois to his rise to prominence as a
regional clan leader and his years as Tom Metzger's right
hand man in the White Arian Resistance. He won a
lawsuit against Kansas City for his right to broadcast a
(16:08):
racist public access TV show, and he lost a lawsuit
to Fred Rogers. He was deported from Canada, banned from
Germany and the United Kingdom. He was investigated as a
suspect in a male bombing that killed a federal judge
and accused by a federal informant of helping plan the
Oklahoma City bombing. After a lifetime as a self professed
(16:31):
serial bomber, he was finally caught in two thousand nine,
and he'll spend the rest of his life in prison
for the two thousand and four bombing of the Scottsdale,
Arizona Office of Diversity and Dialog. Through the lens of
Dennis's life, I learned some history that I would never
have otherwise encountered. In the third episode in that series,
(16:53):
I talked about a lawsuit his twin brother, Daniel, filed
against American Airlines after he was fired for creating a
hostile work environment. Daniel had been involved in the company's
Caucasian Employee Resource Group, an employee affinity group for white people.
The issue wasn't that employees were organizing around whiteness. The
(17:14):
company actually had no problem with that. The problem didn't
arise until Daniel wore a Nazi T shirt to a
meeting with management about the clan inspired pamphlets he made
for the employee Diversity Fair. In my research for that episode,
I explored the kind of surprising history of employee Resource Groups.
(17:37):
It sounds like corporate hr hot air, but they originated
in nineteen seventy with the National Black Employee Caucus at Xerox.
After the Rochester Riots in nineteen sixty four, the president
of Xerox invested years and millions of dollars in diversifying
his workforce, eventually leading to the creation of the first
(17:59):
corporate employee group. I didn't set out to learn about
a photocopier company's radical investment in black community development in
the sixties, but it's a history I'm grateful to know now,
as the modern employee resource group is on the shopping block.
Like corporate diversity initiatives, ergs are under attack after Trump's
(18:21):
executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Just last week,
the Seattle Times reported that the employee resource groups at
the shipyard in Bremerton, Washington had been suspended in response
to those executive orders. Mark Layton, the president of the
Bremerton Metal Trades Council, said that those orders were demeaning
(18:42):
and a little derogatory, and he told the paper quote,
we don't have any token people here. You can either
turn a wrench or well adjoint do the work. Required
or you don't work here. At an event last year,
Shipyard Commander Captain J. D. Crinklaw praised the employee resource groups, saying, quote,
(19:04):
these groups allow us to build better teams and increase
our ability to contribute. They are critical to who we
are as an organization, and Mark Layton emphasized to the
Seattle Times that those affinity groups don't give their members
any special workplace privileges or advantages. They only exist as
(19:24):
a way from employees to network and support each other.
A recent article published by the Society for Human Resources Management,
a professional association for people working in HR, indicates that
there is a growing anxiety in corporate America about how
to comply with these confusing, questionably legal missives coming out
(19:47):
of the White House. Their advice is that ergs that
are open to all employees likely do not violate these
new White House policies, but some private companies are too
using to end these programs out of fear and confusion.
For federal employees, those groups are gone, not just the
(20:09):
ones centered around race, all of them. Ergs may have
started with the Black Employee Caucus, but in the decades since,
the idea has grown to encompass a wide variety of
shared characteristics and interests. A lot of them are still
centered around protected class identities like race, gender, disability, and sexuality,
(20:34):
but most companies with ergs also have groups for working parents,
groups for veterans, groups for new hires, people with particular hobbies,
or things like people who want to get together after
work and clean up litter. I hope these affinity groups
will continue their work, continue supporting and advocating for one another,
(20:58):
even if they aren't allowed to be listed on the
company website anymore. And I guess I can't talk around
it anymore. I've been avoiding getting to the thing. I
sat down to write the story. I spent all those
weeks writing all forty some on thousand words of it.
It all led up to one thing. The bomb. A
(21:22):
lifelong racist, a man who claimed to have bombed abortion
clinics and synagogues, a man who ran hotlines and newsletters
dedicated to spreading the word of white supremacy, took drastic,
violent measures to end the work of diversity, equity and
inclusion in Scottsdale, Arizona, in two thousand and four. He failed.
(21:45):
The bomb went off. Yes, Don Logan and two other
employees in his office were injured. Logan's injuries required multiple
surgeries and skin grafts. Rinne de Lnyard would later testify
that doctors had been unable to remark a piece of
shrapnel that had entered through her eye and lodged itself
in her brain. But the people Dennis Mayhon tried to
(22:09):
intimidate with that bomb said no, they didn't back down.
They wouldn't let a klansman's bomb dictate city policy. They won.
Dennis Mayhon went to prison, and Scottsdale, Arizona, maintained its
commitment to being a more inclusive city. Like I said,
(22:31):
most of these stories don't really have happy endings, but
that part at least was as close to one as
I'm likely to get. So it hit doubly hard when
that turned out not to be the end at all.
(22:58):
Last week, I was rolling idly past the daily parade
of horrors on my social media feed when I saw
a post from a friend of mine. I wasn't trying
to see the news. I was trying to avoid the news.
I just wanted to see silly little posts from my friends.
A feudal endeavor, really, because a lot of my friends
(23:20):
are people like me, journalists, researchers, collectors of terrible facts
about terrible men. And the post that caught my eye
was from Nick Martin, a journalist who has spent years
researching and writing about right wing extremism. He also happened
to work at the East Valley Tribune back in the
early two thousands, so at the time of the bombing
(23:42):
he was covering news in the Phoenix metro area, and
by the time Dennis Mahon was brought to trial, Nick
was covering the story for Talking Points Memo, and it
was from Nick that I first got this news. His
post read. In two thousand and four, white supremacists bombed
the city Diversity office in Scottsdale, Arizona, in an attempt
(24:04):
to destroy it. Last night as part of the new
anti diversity panic, the Republican led city council finished the job.
I saw that post on Wednesday night, which is coincidentally
usually the part of each week when I realize I
do need to figure out what next week's episode is
(24:25):
going to be about, so I really had no choice.
Twenty one years after that bomb went off, the Scottsdale
City Council did exactly what that bomb was meant to do.
In a five to two vote, they passed an ordinance
stripping all city funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, ending
(24:47):
the work that Don Logan nearly died for. So I
watched the meeting and I read every email sent by
Scottsdale residents to their city council about that agenda item.
Fifty one people spoke at the meeting. Only two were
in favor of ending the diversity program. Two hundred and
(25:08):
twenty three emails were sent about the ordinance. Only twenty
seven were from people in favor of the proposal. Two
of those emails were actually identical messages sent a day
apart by one man who also spoke at the meeting.
I listened to every one of those comments. I read
(25:30):
every one of those emails, and I wept. People from
all walks of life showed up to speak out against
the ordinance. The CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce made an economic argument. Former city councilor Betty Janek
said the ordinance was unnecessary and mean spirited. The city
(25:52):
code already requires merit based hiring. This wouldn't change anything.
A rabbi reminded the councilors that loving your neighbors as
a mitzvah. The city's LGBTQ liaison, an army veteran practicing
attorney and transgender woman, seemed to almost dare them to
tell her to her face that she's a dei hire.
(26:15):
And then a dozen or so comments in someone mentioned
the bomb. Neil Shearer had been the city's human resources
manager back in two thousand and four. This was personal
for him.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Almost twenty one years ago today, a man affiliated with
the White Aryan Resistance sent a pipe bomb through the
mail addressed to my friend and colleague, Don Logan, the
first director of the Office of Diversity. In dialogue, Don
was seriously injured when he opened the package, as were
two of his coworkers. It strikes me beyond ironic that
(26:51):
a convicted felon white supremacist, through hate filled and violent means,
could not succeed in silencing the office, Yet the city
Council could accomplish the same end by shutting down the
office through a simple majority vote of the Council in
your first thirty days in office.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
And then a few minutes later I realized Don Logan
was there. He was in the room. He first appeared
on camera standing behind Jen Dolan, who'd been the city
manager at the time of the bombing. He placed a
hand reassuringly on her shoulder as she approached the microphone
to speak.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Don Logan, who was the diversity director when I was
the city manager, who they tried to kill. I ask
you do not try to kill diversity and its efforts.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Logan flashed a bright smile when she said his name,
but it vanished a millisecond leader as Dolan reminded council
that he'd nearly died for the office they were killing.
Speaker after speaker urged council to rethink this course of action.
There had been no study done to evaluate the claims
they were making about the negative consequences of the city's
(28:16):
diversity program. A pastor who had, in her prior career
worked as a corporate employment lawyer, asked where their evidence
was that the city had ever hired a sub standard
employee simply because of their background. A member of the
city's Environmental Advisory Board said that he had called the
diversity office himself to ask if any member of city
(28:38):
council had even bothered to speak with them about their work,
and the only one who had was Marianne McAllan, who
voted against the ordinance. Many of the commenters who identified
themselves as Jewish had words specifically for Councilman Adam Quasman.
Coasman is Scottsdale's first Orthodox Jewish councilor. Last month, he
(29:01):
tweeted a photo of the front desk at City Hall,
and in the photo he circled the Scottsdale for All
pamphlets that are available to visitors. His post read, you
can't walk into Scottsdale City Hall without being bombarded with
d ei. This poison will be rooted out of our
beautiful city. One speaker gently reminded Quasman that the Torah
(29:26):
commands them to treat strangers with kindness. Others asked him
if he would be sitting up there wearing his kippa
if not for the work that had been done to
make the city a more inclusive place. Another sharply asked
Quasman if he recalled a certain man in Germany who'd
used the word poison to describe their people, and then
(29:48):
Don Logan himself spoke. Speakers were only given a minute each,
cut down by the mare from the usual three, so
he didn't have a chance to give the comment he'd prepared.
This message was clear.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
This is personal for me. People have moved on from
the bombing of February twenty six, two thousand and four,
but every day I'm reminded of what happened that day
and why it happened, and it happened because of how
I'm packaged an anti diversity extremists who I never talked to,
(30:26):
never knew that attacked me and my colleagues because of
what we represent. Now I read this packet here, there's
nothing in this packet that suggests to me that diversity, equity,
and inclusion is a threat.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
For over an hour, the people of Scottsdale pleaded with
their city council. Don't do this. There's no reason to
do this. The proper steps haven't been taken to adopt
an ordinance like this. Council hasn't thought through what will
happen next, who will manage the city's compliance with the
Americans with Disabilities Act? And what about the serious potential
(31:07):
economic side effects that a decision like this might have.
Several commenters warned that the city would take a massive
hit if Major League Baseball were to take this as
a sign that they should move spring training to a
more progressive city. Councilwomen Solange Whitehead gave a passionate speech
laying out the facts. This ordinance was brought before council
(31:31):
without going through the typical process, avoiding any input from
the public or city staff before it came up for
a vote. If it had gone through the usual steps,
it probably would have been clear that this is a
solution in search of a problem. The city code already
requires merit based hiring, and the city already complies with
laws prohibiting hiring quotas. Council members Maryann McAllan and Solange
(31:56):
Whitehead fought to defer the ordinance to a work study
session to do the work that should have been done
before the ordinance came before council, but they were outvoted.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Well, let me let me speak to that.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I do you all want to do this over again
and do a work study. I don't.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I don't see the point of that. You've all been here.
I think that would that would not be a good, good,
worthy use of your time or the city's resources. Mary
Lisa Barowski dismissed the Booze and Jeers, saying it wouldn't
be a good use of city resources to follow that
(32:39):
standard procedure, which would have included a work study, and
then with very little discussion, they adopted the ordinance over
the dissenting votes of Councilors McAllen and Whitehead. Councilors Barry Graham,
Kathy Littlefield, and Jan Duboscis said very little during the meeting,
(33:00):
but something about the way Mayor Lisa Browski and Councilman
Adam Quasman spoke made me a little curious about their backgrounds,
And wouldn't you know it, Adam Coasman is no stranger
to making loud and wrong assumptions when it comes to
being kind to our neighbors. In twenty fourteen, when he
(33:23):
was serving as an Arizona State legislator and running for Congress,
he attended an anti emigration protest in Oracle, Arizona. The
Panell County sheriff had whipped up a social media frenzy
claiming that he had obtained leaked information from the federal
government that illegal migrant children were going to be bust
into their small town. Quasman was eager to make a
(33:46):
scene to exploit the suffering of these children to make
a political point, but it turned out those children were
actually just fine.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
Adam Quasman was making a speak the reason why Lady
Justice holds a blind fell over, but then the Republican
congressional candidate suddenly stopped. He got wored a bus was
heading down the road and took off for it. Anything else,
Thank you for listen. It's what Coassman and the Oracle
protesters were waiting for a confrontation with a bus full
(34:20):
of migrant children. Coassman tweeted from the scene, bus coming in.
This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the
rule of law. He included a photo of a yellow
school bus.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
I was able to actually see some of the children
in the buses and the fear on their faces.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
This is not compassion, that fear on the faces of
migrant children. Coassman told me he saw an oracle. There's
just one problem. Those weren't migrant children on the yellow
school bus. They were YMCA campers from the Marana School district.
You know that was a bus with YMCA kids.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
They were sad too.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
Reporters at the scene saw the child Ldren laughing and
taking pictures on their iPhones.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
As for newly elected mayor Lisa Browski, she's actually served
on council once before, from two thousand and eight to
twenty twelve, and her interest in local politics began shortly
before her first run for counsel. She was inspired by
the experience of helping her brother Todd, wage a successful
effort to overturn a city ordinance. The ordinance in question,
(35:30):
a ban on lap dances, would have destroyed Todd's business,
a chain of strip clubs in the Scottsdale area. During
her most recent campaign for office, Barowski assured voters that
she had no business relationship with her brother. The question
was asked not because voters might take issue with the
(35:50):
nature of Todd's business, but because her brother, Todd Borowski,
is under investigation after a lawsuit was filed by multiple
men who claimed they were drugged in the club's VIP
lounges and they woke up to find that tens of
thousands of dollars for champagne and lap dances had been
charged to their credit cards. The Meyer's brother seems like
(36:15):
a real character. This has nothing to do with anything,
but as I was poking around, I did find that
Todd Barowski attempted to trademark a logo reading Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yes,
Tampa TMPA, not Tampa. I assume he had some kind
(36:36):
of plan to sell slightly misspelled Tampa Bay Buccaneers jerseys,
but it must not have worked out because the trademark
is dead. And despite her protestations that she has no
involvement in her brother's business dealings, she did fail to
mention during the campaign that she was employed by the
(36:59):
same law firm represents her brother in a lot of lawsuits.
This position doesn't appear on her LinkedIn page, and the
firm quietly removed her from the website sometime in June
of twenty twenty four. But in twenty twenty two, Lisa
Barowski was hired by Dennis Willencik to work in his
firm's new Scottsdale office, and her name still appeared in
(37:22):
filings for one of the firm's clients at least as
late as August of twenty twenty four, though I can't
find any filings that indicate she actively worked on any
of her brother's cases. Just last month, Dennis Willenchik helped
Todd Borowski settle a class action lawsuit brought by dancers
at his clubs alleging a variety of labor law violations,
(37:45):
and local news reports quote Dennis Willenchik as Borowski's lawyer
in that suit filed by the men who claimed they
were drugged and robbed. The only client at Willenchick and
Bartness whose case I did find Lisa Barrow's name on
is Ron Gould, a county official in Arizona who claims
he was threatened over his refusal to certify the results
(38:08):
of the twenty twenty presidential election. But the firm's ties
to twenty twenty election hijinks run pretty deep. They also
represented Alan Dershowitz in his efforts to evade sanctions ordered
by a federal judge after he was involved in a
failed lawsuit brought by Kerry Lake. And before Dennis Willnchik's son,
(38:31):
Jack passed away last year, he was heavily involved in
the plan to send fake electors to DC to derail
the certification of the twenty twenty election. In December of
twenty twenty, Jack Willnchik sent this email to the Trump
campaign team. Quote, we would just be sending in fake
(38:53):
electoral votes to Pence so that someone in Congress can
make an objection when they start counting vote and start
arguing that the fake votes should be counted. In a
follow up email, he clarified that alternative votes is probably
a better term than fake votes, and then he put
(39:15):
a little smiley face emoji. Jack Willnchik also represented the
Cyber Ninjas, the private company hired by Arizona Republicans to
audit the twenty twenty election. They hired Willnchick in their
battle to withhold company records from a congressional investigation, and
the firm represented Sheriff Joe Arpaio for many years. When
(39:39):
Trump pardoned our Paio in twenty seventeen, it was Jack
Wilenchik who accepted the pardon documents on ar Pio's behalf.
Like I said, Lisa Bowski's name only appears on filings
in the Ron Gould case, at least as far as
I was able to find. But it is worth connecting
the dots, I think because when Trump fired off a
(40:03):
half baked executive order banning diversity programs, one of the
first mayors to jump at the chance to performatively comply
had a history with a law firm that was deeply
connected to the effort to prevent the certification of the
twenty twenty election. After the city council meeting last week,
(40:23):
Don Logan spoke with reporters. He was disappointed, but not
surprised at the outcome, telling one reporter that after he
found out the city had refused to conduct a study session,
he knew how the vote was going to go.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
I gave my blood for the work that we did here,
and my message to them is shame on them.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
I won't claim to know very much about the inner
workings in Scottsdale City Hall in the present day. I
did look over some city budget documents and the city
web pages related to the work done by the Diversity Office,
but I couldn't tell you exactly what the Scottsdale City
Council might have learned from a study session about the
current state of affairs of their diversity office. But I
(41:10):
suspect they may not actually know why Scottsdale was one
of the first cities in the country to establish a
full time position of this kind. It wasn't because of wokeness.
This is one of the things that ended up on
the cutting room floor in those five episodes about Dennis Mahon.
But I did spend some time during my research back
(41:32):
in December learning a little bit about the political climate
in Scottsdale in the late nineties, the years leading up
to the establishment of the Office and Diversity and Dialogue
in nineteen ninety eight. It wasn't great. In nineteen ninety seven,
the city settled a lawsuit filed by former Scottsdale police
(41:52):
officer Jesus Torres. Torres claimed he'd been fired for refusing
to stay silent about racism within the department. In nineteen
ninety five, Torres said he witnessed white officers use excessive
force against three Hispanic men. One of the men had
a visible boot print on his back, which he claimed
was from an officer kicking him. Torres didn't witness the incident,
(42:17):
but he refused to cover for his fellow officers, telling them,
I won't lie for you, I won't cover up for you.
I don't believe in the Rodney King mentality. And after
that night, his performance reviews suddenly turned negative and within
a few months he was fired. In his lawsuit, Torres
(42:37):
claimed that it was standard practice within the department to
refer to upscale parts of town as the n n Z,
which stands for the No N Word Zone. The fact
that another officer confirmed under oath during the trial, a
female officer broke down in tears on the stand, sobbing
(42:57):
as she admitted that the department had a raceis problem.
The comments made both to the press and in court
by city employees were kind of shocking. A sergeant testified
that it was Torres who was racist, that he had
a chip on his shoulder and he was overly sensitive
(43:18):
about race. The city's own attorney smeared him as quick
to cry discrimination and soft on Hispanics, saying his actions
drove a wedge between himself and the quote Anglo police
officers because he was an advocate for Hispanics first and
(43:38):
police second. In just weeks after the city settled that
suit with Torres, they were back in hot water again
after a black woman was paraded through her apartment complex
and nothing but handcuffs and her underwear after police were
called to respond to a domestic dispute when she filed
(44:00):
against the city. The police department's own spokesman told the
paper that she was quote taking advantage of recent allegations
of racism in the department to gain financial advantage. In
public statements justifying their decision to force this woman to
walk outside barefoot, with her breasts exposed and menstrual blood
(44:23):
running down her legs, the department claimed it was a
matter of officer safety. This one hundred pound nearly naked
woman was so frightening to them that it wouldn't have
been safe to allow her to put a shirt on.
The department does not appear to have commented on the
(44:45):
decision to dispatch an officer with his own documented history
of domestic violence on a call for a domestic disturbance.
And then in December of nineteen ninety seven, so not
long after Torres settled his lawsuit with the city and
this new lawsuit was filed, Reverend Oscar Tillman, president of
(45:09):
the Arizona ANDAACP, was promising to disrupt the Phoenix open,
the third stop on the PGA tour and a massive
tourist draw that pumped millions of dollars into the local economy,
and Tilman said that he wanted proof the city wasn't
just paying Jesu's Torres that one hundred thousand dollars to
(45:30):
make this problem go away. He wanted them to promise
an independent investigation into the allegations of widespread racism within
the department. Just before Christmas, Tilman had a closed door
meeting with the mayor. Immediately afterwards, he called off his
planned protest without explanation, and as the calendar rolled over
(45:54):
to nineteen ninety eight, Don Logan, an assistant city manager
at the time, announced that the city staff had put
together a report recommending that the city council establish an
Office of Diversity to conduct community outreach to minority residents
and handle internal investigation and mediation of complaints of discrimination.
(46:15):
The city manager insisted that the report's timing and its
recommendations had nothing to do with the demands made by
the NAACP, but the timing kind of speaks for itself.
And when the city settled later that year with the
woman that cops had purp walked in her underpants, it
was their new diversity officer who spoke to the press,
(46:39):
not that foul mouthed cop who couldn't help but double
down on maligning the victim. Don Logan told the Arizona
Republic that the city's internal investigation had determined that the
officers acted improperly, though not because of her race, and
during Don Logan's first year as the director of Diversity
(47:00):
and Dialogue, the Scottsdale Police Department was facing the possibility
of not just more scandal, but federal indictments. In nineteen
ninety nine, the City of Scottsdale spent at least a
quarter of a million dollars on a high price defense
attorney to guide their police officers through the grand jury
(47:22):
process as the Department of Justice investigated allegations that officers
were engaged in tax evasion and civil rights violations in
relation to their off duty shifts working security for a
nightclub frequented by black patrons. In the late nineties, Club
Tribeca was the only club in the Scottsdale area that
(47:43):
had a hip hop night, which made it the only
club in the area with a majority non white crowd,
and for several years the club was locked in a
legal battle with the City of Scottsdale. Club owner George
Delk went public in nineteen ninety seven, not long ebens
after the Haesus Torres suit was settled, with allegations that
(48:03):
the offterty cops were demanding to be paid in cash,
and that they refused to fill out tax forms. Delk
also claimed that the officers routinely threatened, intimidated, and mazed
the club's black and Hispanic patrons, and that one officer
he spoke to told him outright that the department considers
(48:23):
any gathering of more than ten black people to be
a riot. End quote, we don't hesitate to use chemicals
on them. The department changed their policy on moonlighting after
these allegations were made public, but the city was determined
to force the club out of business, unsuccessfully going after
(48:45):
their live music permit and their liquor license. In the
city's effort to shut the club down, they cited police
department claims that the club's activities were generating a disproportionate
number of calls for police service. A legal battle ensued,
and when the club's lawyer finally got the city to
produce these actual police records that the claims were based on,
(49:09):
he says the numbers were wildly inflated and that they'd
padded the figures with a wide variety of unrelated nearby
incidents like traffic stops and citations that were issued in
the neighborhood. During the daytime when the club wasn't even open.
In the end, after an eighteen month grand jury investigation,
(49:32):
no one was charged, but the allegations alone underscored the
need for the kind of public relations boost their new
Diversity office could provide. The City of Scottsdale was one
of the first cities in the country to establish a
full time diversity director because they needed one. Their police
(49:54):
department couldn't go a month without not only violating someone's
civil rights, but running their about it in the paper.
What may have started off as a necessary compromise to
prevent protesters from upsetting golf fans and put a friendlier
face on the city's constant press releases about settling civil
rights lawsuits really does seem to evolve into something meaningful,
(50:19):
and for just two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year,
which is even before you adjust for twenty five years
of inflation, less than the price tag for the lawyer
they had to hire to dig their cops out of
a DOJ investigation. The Office of Diversity oversaw the city's
federally mandated ADA Transition Plan, addressed complaints about violations of
(50:41):
the Americans with disabilities Act, oversaw the city's compliance with
federal civil rights laws, investigated and mediated complaints of discrimination,
provided staff support to the city's Human Relations Commission, oversaw
the city's Employee Resource Group. Provided voluntary trainings for city
departments on topics like inclusion and civility, organized community outreach
(51:01):
and cultural celebrations, provided professional development for city staff, and
secured the grant funding for a scholarship program for students
with disabilities. They put on Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations and
programming during Black History Month. They didn't hire and fire.
They didn't force white men to sit through mandatory white
(51:22):
guilt seminars like a clockwork orange Nightmare, or whatever imaginary
horrors the Republican Council members pretend goes on in DEI workshops.
By all accounts, it seems as that the city councilors
who voted to abolish the office never actually bothered to
find out what it does, and now city staff will
(51:42):
be in a bind trying to reassign staff and ensure
the federally mandated elements of the office's work are still
getting done because for now, at least someone still has
to file Title six compliance reports. Some one still has
to manage the city's eighty A transition plan. The Scottsdale
City Council jumped on the Trump train, and they made
(52:04):
a big symbolic gesture. Those executive orders taking aim at
diversity programs in federal workplaces didn't require the city to
roll back their own diversity programs. They didn't just comply
in advance. They performed. This was a show. Councilman Couasmon
(52:26):
tweeted last month, you can't walk into Scottsdale City Hall
without being bombarded with DEI. This poison will be rooted
out of our beautiful city. The poison they're trying to
root out isn't DEEI. Diversity, Equity and inclusion is today's branding.
(52:48):
But they can call it whatever they want, affirmative action, wokeness,
reverse racism, anti white discrimination, whatever. What they mean is
civil rights, and what they want is segregation when every woman,
black person, or trans person they see is a potential
(53:09):
DEI hire. What they're really asking for is a return
to a world without the Civil Rights Act. Call it
whatever you want, but I'm begging you to see it
for what it is, an attempt to eradicate whole swaths
of the population from public life to make boardrooms and
(53:29):
classrooms and legislatures the exclusive domain of white Christian men.
Dennis Mahon didn't build that bomb because of some carefully
considered ideas about municipal hiring practices. He did it because
he saw a flyer for Hispanic Heritage Month, just like
councilmen cousman walking into city Hall and getting worked up
(53:53):
about seeing the Scottsdale for All pamphlets. Six months before
the bombing, Dennis Mahon called the office. He'd seen an
advertisement for upcoming events celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, and he
couldn't stand it. He left a voicemail mocking the office
or putting on the events, and he used racial slurs,
(54:14):
and he laughed at the very idea of celebrating Hispanic culture.
And the message ended with a warning, We've got lots
of support. The White Arean resistance is growing in Scottsdale.
There's a few white people who are standing up. Dennis
(54:35):
Mayhon's idea of standing up for the white man in
the face of the poison of diversity was building a bomb.
And today, twenty one years later, five members of the
Scottsdale City Council finish what he started. They didn't do
it with racial slurs and pipe bombs this time around.
(54:58):
Sitting a medias in city Hall gavel in hand, Scottsdale
Mayor Lisa Barowski presided over a meeting that used city
ordinance to do what Dennis Mahon failed to do with
explosive ordinance. He tried to kill Don Logan, but they
(55:19):
killed the city's diversity office. Weird Little Guys is a
production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written,
and recorded by me Cally Conger. Our executive producers are
(55:40):
Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by
the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed
by Brad Dickert. You can email me at weirdlu Guy's
podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,
but I probably will not answer it. It's nothing personal.
You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show other listeners
on the Weird Little Guys, Sup, right, head, Just don't
(56:04):
post anything that's going to make you one of my
Weird Little Guys.
Col Zone Media. On February eleventh, twenty twenty five, the
City Council in Scottsdale, Arizona wrote an epilogue to an
episode of this show that I thought was already over.
On February twenty sixth, two thousand and four, a bomb
(00:24):
went off in Scottsdale. A pipe bomb concealed an inconspicuous
looking brown box exploded in the hands of the man.
The package was addressed to Don Logan. Inside the box
was a note one he didn't get a chance to
read that day. The bomber demanded that Logan, the director
(00:45):
of the city's Office of Diversity and Dialogue, cease and
desist his corrupt activities, but he didn't. Don Logan carried
on the work of trying to make the city of
Scottsdale lay safe and welcoming place for people of all races, genders,
and sexual orientations, and after he retired in two thousand
(01:06):
and seven, the office continued that work under a new director.
A poster printed last year for their Scottsdale for All
campaign showed Scottsdale residence of all backgrounds smiling under the
hot desert sun. A sek in his turban A woman
in her hijab, a man in a wheelchair, black and
(01:27):
Hispanic residence, visibly queer and gender nonconforming people, all working
together to make their home and more inclusive place. With
a shoestring budget of a fraction of a percent of
the city's overall operating expenses, the office put on community programming,
did outreach to underserved communities, and provided trainings to city employees.
(01:50):
Until last week, just two weeks shy of the twenty
first anniversary of the bombing that nearly killed Don Logan,
the Scottsdale City Council voted five to two to finish
the job, closing the Diversity Office and ending all city
funding for programming and training related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
(02:11):
The weird little guys of decades past may be in
federal prison for their crimes, but their ideas are alive
and well. And you don't need to don a pointy
white hood or a swastika armband to force hateful ideas
on a city. A smart pantsuit will do just fine.
I'm Molly Conger and this is Weird Blue Guys. This
(02:53):
episode is not about a new weird Blue guy. We
are unfortunately revisiting the aftermath of the actions of a
guy we've already spent a few episodes discussing. Back in October,
when the show was still pretty new, there was a
week where I didn't quite get it together to have
a full episode ready to go in time. I was
(03:15):
in court for a trial for a couple of days,
I had a death in the family, I had to
travel out of state for a wedding, and the sixty
plus hours it takes to put an episode together just
weren't there. So one of the episodes that month was
a sort of cobbled together collection of personal reflections on
(03:35):
the work so far and pat it out with some
odds and ends, things that hadn't made it into past
episodes that I thought were interesting, and updates on some
stories that had come to light after the air. Things
like that, and the episode actually came out pretty good,
I think, and I decided that the format could be
(03:56):
useful for future emergencies. You know, every couple of months,
I could revisit past episodes and tie together loose ends.
Maybe there were new developments in old cases. It would
be a good release valve for me, and I think
it's something you all would still enjoy. I keep a
document where I add those odds and ends as they
occur to me, but I haven't needed to use it.
(04:20):
I don't actually need it. This week, I find myself
writing an update to an old episode, not because I
had to fall back on my emergency plan for a
filler episode, but because we all find ourselves in something
of an emergency. I prefer to write stories about the past,
(04:42):
stories that are over. They don't always have happy endings.
In fact, they rarely do. The good guys don't always win.
More often than not, there aren't really any good guys
at all. Even when the story ends with some federal
prosecutor putting a violent white supremacist in prison, there are
(05:04):
usually uncomfortable questions about why it took so long, why
certain co conspirators weren't charged, how much information law enforcement ignored,
or how complicit their informants and undercover agents were in
the harm that was done. But at least at the
end of the episode, the story is over, a case
is solved, someone was held accountable, and maybe we all
(05:28):
learned a little bit of history. Lately, though, I've grown
increasingly uncomfortable with just how contemporary my stories of the
past are starting to feel storylines are recurring. Fringe ideas,
ones that I had to dig for hours through decades
(05:49):
old forum posts to find are now coming out of
the mouths of elected officials in the evening news every day.
It feels like I'm reading executive orders that it sound
like they were written by a stormfront poster who graduated
last in his class at law school. I don't like it.
I'm much more comfortable digging through the archives than i
(06:12):
am talking about current events. There's another show in the
cool Zone media family that does incredible work compiling a
weekly roundup of the terrible news coming out of the
White House. It could happen here puts that ongoing series
out every Friday, But I've been hiding from the calendar.
Invite our producer Sens for that. I don't want to
(06:32):
talk about the president Unfortunately. I think I have a
responsibility to explicitly connect these stories from the past to
their present day consequences. So this episode is a sort
of coda to a series of six episodes that ran
in December and January, beginning with the episode called Ku
(06:55):
Klux Cable Access TV that originally ran on December fourth,
All the way through the five part series on Dennis
Mayhon ending in mid January. I know it's a big
ask to expect you to be familiar with the storylines
running through nearly six hours of old episodes, so I'll
try to jog your memory as we go without repeating
(07:17):
myself too much. Last month, Costco shareholders rejected a proposal
from the National Center for Public Policy Research, a right
wing think tank, that attacked the company's diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies. What goes on in corporate boardrooms isn't really
my wheelhouse, but I know this kind of shareholder activism
(07:41):
isn't exactly novel, and it certainly wasn't the National Center
for Public Policy Researches first foray into shareholder activism. Far
from it. The think tank founded something called the Free
Enterprise Project in two thousand and seven, a nonprofit whose
whole mission is filing right wing shareholder resolutions. On their website,
(08:03):
they claimed that ninety percent of all right of center
shareholder resolutions are brought by their organization, and they've spent
nearly twenty years attacking sustainability efforts and diversity initiatives at
companies like Apple, Microsoft, target, Progressive Ups, IBM, Ford, Coca Cola,
Bank of America, Best Buy. The list goes on, but
(08:26):
this particular shareholder proposal felt nauseatingly familiar. The National Center
for Public Policy Research was trying to do in twenty
twenty five exactly what the neo Nazi group National Alliance
had done in nineteen eighty eight. And that's a strange
side story I covered in the episode called Ku Klux
(08:49):
Cable Access TV back in December. To refresh your memory
a bit on that side plot. After a Nazi terrorist
cell stole four million dollars from a rings truck in
California in nineteen eighty four, some of that money made
its way into the hands of National Alliance leader William
Luther Pierce, and with that stolen money, Pierce bought a
(09:12):
large tract of undeveloped land in the mountains of West
Virginia where he would establish his Nazi compound. But he
also bought one hundred shares of stock in AT and
T and in nineteen eighty eight, the group made their
first of three attempts to force the company to end
their affirmative action program. At that meeting. In nineteen eighty eight,
(09:33):
Chairman of the board, Robert Allen, denounced the proposal, saying,
as a shareholder of a sufficient number of AT and
T shares, this organization has a right to offer a
shareholder proposal, but we find the intent and wording of
this proposal highly objectionable. Especially objectionable is the argument that
some of our employees, because of their race, are less
(09:55):
qualified than others. This proposal is completely contrary to the policies,
the culture, and the character of AT and T. It
is in the proxy only because we could not convince
the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow us to drop it,
and their proposal was voted down by the company's shareholders
in nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and again in
(10:17):
nineteen ninety. In a later interview about that nineteen ninety
shareholders meeting, National Alliance member and convicted pedophile Kevin Alfred
Strom claims that he got a standing ovation after his
presentation of the proposal, and he says he gave a
rousing speech about the rank injustice and insane business practice
(10:38):
of discriminating against whites. Strom complained that despite broad support
from a very large portion of the shareholders, the proposal
only failed because a handful of establishment hacks who hold
the majority of shares, voted against it, and, much like
the AT and T board chairman's denunciation of the Nazi
(11:00):
proposal in nineteen eighty eight, Costco's board of directors were
clear and their rejection of the twenty twenty five version
of the same idea, writing, we welcome members from all
walks of life and backgrounds. As our membership diversifies, we
believe that serving it with a diverse group of employees
enhances satisfaction. The board devotes a portion of their statement
(11:24):
to discussing the ways in which diverse hiring practices are
beneficial to the bottom line. Having employees from diverse backgrounds
informs their purchasing choices, allowing them to offer products that
appeal to all kinds of customers. And customers quote like
to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses
with whom they interact. But the board statement doesn't just
(11:47):
hide behind shareholder value. It isn't just about the bottom line.
They firmly believe it makes good business sense, of course,
but it's also a moral imperative. The board rights, this
is our code of ethics, our focus on diversity, equity,
(12:07):
and inclusion is not, however, only for the sake of
improved financial performance, but to enhance our culture and the
well being of the people whose lives we influence.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Look.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Am I a diehard Costco fan? Yes? Am I wearing
my favorite sweatpants as I type this. Yes. I write
every episode of this show in my Kirkland signature brand
sweats with the Costco logo embroidered on them. Would I
be thrilled if Costco offered to sponsor the show, Buddy,
(12:40):
I'd be over the moon. But I don't want to
get carried away praising any corporation, especially one that doesn't
actually have a great track record when it comes to
union organizing. I'm not so naive as to think very
many truly moral stands have ever been taken in corporate boardrooms.
(13:00):
But this statement is a bold one, and it's one
I think they can really be proud of. They take
aim at the authors of the proposal, calling out their
feigned concern for shareholder value that they've couched this policy position.
In writing quote, the proponent's broader agenda is not reducing
risk for the company, but abolition of diversity initiatives and
(13:25):
they make it clear that they are very aware that
this think tank has published a document called Balancing the Boardroom,
which describes its shareholder activism as fighting back against the
evils of woke, politicized capital and companies. And just like
the early similar proposal put forward by literal neo Nazis
(13:46):
thirty seven years ago, this one failed to except no
one's laughing this time. In nineteen eighty eight, the press
covered National Alliance's efforts as a side show those Nazi
freaks from a compound of the mountains didn't belong in
a boardroom. Today, that same idea is taken very seriously.
(14:12):
Not long after Costco's shareholders voted down the proposal, the
Attorney's General in nineteen States penned a letter to Costco's
CEO warning him that he had thirty days to end
the company's DEI policies. There is a heavily implied threat
that those state attorneys general would do something to the
(14:33):
company if they failed to comply, but there's no clear
explanation of what, if anything, the company has actually done
that would allow any legal action to be taken. The
President's avalanche of executive orders attacking civil rights don't have
the force of law behind them that would actually outlaw
(14:54):
a private company's HR policy. It's not clear yet how
this is going to play out, but I'm willing to
bet it involve some questionably legal state level enforcement actions
and a lot of lawsuits. The story I sat down
(15:25):
to write, though, is about Scottsdale, Arizona. When I finished
that five part series of episodes about Dennis Mahon, I
was ready to be done with him. I never expected
his story to spin out in so many directions, but
once I started writing it, there was no way to
condense his life into anything less. For more than a
(15:48):
month on this show, we followed Dennis Mahon all over
the country the world, even from his childhood on a
farm in Illinois to his rise to prominence as a
regional clan leader and his years as Tom Metzger's right
hand man in the White Arian Resistance. He won a
lawsuit against Kansas City for his right to broadcast a
(16:08):
racist public access TV show, and he lost a lawsuit
to Fred Rogers. He was deported from Canada, banned from
Germany and the United Kingdom. He was investigated as a
suspect in a male bombing that killed a federal judge
and accused by a federal informant of helping plan the
Oklahoma City bombing. After a lifetime as a self professed
(16:31):
serial bomber, he was finally caught in two thousand nine,
and he'll spend the rest of his life in prison
for the two thousand and four bombing of the Scottsdale,
Arizona Office of Diversity and Dialog. Through the lens of
Dennis's life, I learned some history that I would never
have otherwise encountered. In the third episode in that series,
(16:53):
I talked about a lawsuit his twin brother, Daniel, filed
against American Airlines after he was fired for creating a
hostile work environment. Daniel had been involved in the company's
Caucasian Employee Resource Group, an employee affinity group for white people.
The issue wasn't that employees were organizing around whiteness. The
(17:14):
company actually had no problem with that. The problem didn't
arise until Daniel wore a Nazi T shirt to a
meeting with management about the clan inspired pamphlets he made
for the employee Diversity Fair. In my research for that episode,
I explored the kind of surprising history of employee Resource Groups.
(17:37):
It sounds like corporate hr hot air, but they originated
in nineteen seventy with the National Black Employee Caucus at Xerox.
After the Rochester Riots in nineteen sixty four, the president
of Xerox invested years and millions of dollars in diversifying
his workforce, eventually leading to the creation of the first
(17:59):
corporate employee group. I didn't set out to learn about
a photocopier company's radical investment in black community development in
the sixties, but it's a history I'm grateful to know now,
as the modern employee resource group is on the shopping block.
Like corporate diversity initiatives, ergs are under attack after Trump's
(18:21):
executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Just last week,
the Seattle Times reported that the employee resource groups at
the shipyard in Bremerton, Washington had been suspended in response
to those executive orders. Mark Layton, the president of the
Bremerton Metal Trades Council, said that those orders were demeaning
(18:42):
and a little derogatory, and he told the paper quote,
we don't have any token people here. You can either
turn a wrench or well adjoint do the work. Required
or you don't work here. At an event last year,
Shipyard Commander Captain J. D. Crinklaw praised the employee resource groups, saying, quote,
(19:04):
these groups allow us to build better teams and increase
our ability to contribute. They are critical to who we
are as an organization, and Mark Layton emphasized to the
Seattle Times that those affinity groups don't give their members
any special workplace privileges or advantages. They only exist as
(19:24):
a way from employees to network and support each other.
A recent article published by the Society for Human Resources Management,
a professional association for people working in HR, indicates that
there is a growing anxiety in corporate America about how
to comply with these confusing, questionably legal missives coming out
(19:47):
of the White House. Their advice is that ergs that
are open to all employees likely do not violate these
new White House policies, but some private companies are too
using to end these programs out of fear and confusion.
For federal employees, those groups are gone, not just the
(20:09):
ones centered around race, all of them. Ergs may have
started with the Black Employee Caucus, but in the decades since,
the idea has grown to encompass a wide variety of
shared characteristics and interests. A lot of them are still
centered around protected class identities like race, gender, disability, and sexuality,
(20:34):
but most companies with ergs also have groups for working parents,
groups for veterans, groups for new hires, people with particular hobbies,
or things like people who want to get together after
work and clean up litter. I hope these affinity groups
will continue their work, continue supporting and advocating for one another,
(20:58):
even if they aren't allowed to be listed on the
company website anymore. And I guess I can't talk around
it anymore. I've been avoiding getting to the thing. I
sat down to write the story. I spent all those
weeks writing all forty some on thousand words of it.
It all led up to one thing. The bomb. A
(21:22):
lifelong racist, a man who claimed to have bombed abortion
clinics and synagogues, a man who ran hotlines and newsletters
dedicated to spreading the word of white supremacy, took drastic,
violent measures to end the work of diversity, equity and
inclusion in Scottsdale, Arizona, in two thousand and four. He failed.
(21:45):
The bomb went off. Yes, Don Logan and two other
employees in his office were injured. Logan's injuries required multiple
surgeries and skin grafts. Rinne de Lnyard would later testify
that doctors had been unable to remark a piece of
shrapnel that had entered through her eye and lodged itself
in her brain. But the people Dennis Mayhon tried to
(22:09):
intimidate with that bomb said no, they didn't back down.
They wouldn't let a klansman's bomb dictate city policy. They won.
Dennis Mayhon went to prison, and Scottsdale, Arizona, maintained its
commitment to being a more inclusive city. Like I said,
(22:31):
most of these stories don't really have happy endings, but
that part at least was as close to one as
I'm likely to get. So it hit doubly hard when
that turned out not to be the end at all.
(22:58):
Last week, I was rolling idly past the daily parade
of horrors on my social media feed when I saw
a post from a friend of mine. I wasn't trying
to see the news. I was trying to avoid the news.
I just wanted to see silly little posts from my friends.
A feudal endeavor, really, because a lot of my friends
(23:20):
are people like me, journalists, researchers, collectors of terrible facts
about terrible men. And the post that caught my eye
was from Nick Martin, a journalist who has spent years
researching and writing about right wing extremism. He also happened
to work at the East Valley Tribune back in the
early two thousands, so at the time of the bombing
(23:42):
he was covering news in the Phoenix metro area, and
by the time Dennis Mahon was brought to trial, Nick
was covering the story for Talking Points Memo, and it
was from Nick that I first got this news. His
post read. In two thousand and four, white supremacists bombed
the city Diversity office in Scottsdale, Arizona, in an attempt
(24:04):
to destroy it. Last night as part of the new
anti diversity panic, the Republican led city council finished the job.
I saw that post on Wednesday night, which is coincidentally
usually the part of each week when I realize I
do need to figure out what next week's episode is
(24:25):
going to be about, so I really had no choice.
Twenty one years after that bomb went off, the Scottsdale
City Council did exactly what that bomb was meant to do.
In a five to two vote, they passed an ordinance
stripping all city funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, ending
(24:47):
the work that Don Logan nearly died for. So I
watched the meeting and I read every email sent by
Scottsdale residents to their city council about that agenda item.
Fifty one people spoke at the meeting. Only two were
in favor of ending the diversity program. Two hundred and
(25:08):
twenty three emails were sent about the ordinance. Only twenty
seven were from people in favor of the proposal. Two
of those emails were actually identical messages sent a day
apart by one man who also spoke at the meeting.
I listened to every one of those comments. I read
(25:30):
every one of those emails, and I wept. People from
all walks of life showed up to speak out against
the ordinance. The CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce made an economic argument. Former city councilor Betty Janek
said the ordinance was unnecessary and mean spirited. The city
(25:52):
code already requires merit based hiring. This wouldn't change anything.
A rabbi reminded the councilors that loving your neighbors as
a mitzvah. The city's LGBTQ liaison, an army veteran practicing
attorney and transgender woman, seemed to almost dare them to
tell her to her face that she's a dei hire.
(26:15):
And then a dozen or so comments in someone mentioned
the bomb. Neil Shearer had been the city's human resources
manager back in two thousand and four. This was personal
for him.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Almost twenty one years ago today, a man affiliated with
the White Aryan Resistance sent a pipe bomb through the
mail addressed to my friend and colleague, Don Logan, the
first director of the Office of Diversity. In dialogue, Don
was seriously injured when he opened the package, as were
two of his coworkers. It strikes me beyond ironic that
(26:51):
a convicted felon white supremacist, through hate filled and violent means,
could not succeed in silencing the office, Yet the city
Council could accomplish the same end by shutting down the
office through a simple majority vote of the Council in
your first thirty days in office.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
And then a few minutes later I realized Don Logan
was there. He was in the room. He first appeared
on camera standing behind Jen Dolan, who'd been the city
manager at the time of the bombing. He placed a
hand reassuringly on her shoulder as she approached the microphone
to speak.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Don Logan, who was the diversity director when I was
the city manager, who they tried to kill. I ask
you do not try to kill diversity and its efforts.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Logan flashed a bright smile when she said his name,
but it vanished a millisecond leader as Dolan reminded council
that he'd nearly died for the office they were killing.
Speaker after speaker urged council to rethink this course of action.
There had been no study done to evaluate the claims
they were making about the negative consequences of the city's
(28:16):
diversity program. A pastor who had, in her prior career
worked as a corporate employment lawyer, asked where their evidence
was that the city had ever hired a sub standard
employee simply because of their background. A member of the
city's Environmental Advisory Board said that he had called the
diversity office himself to ask if any member of city
(28:38):
council had even bothered to speak with them about their work,
and the only one who had was Marianne McAllan, who
voted against the ordinance. Many of the commenters who identified
themselves as Jewish had words specifically for Councilman Adam Quasman.
Coasman is Scottsdale's first Orthodox Jewish councilor. Last month, he
(29:01):
tweeted a photo of the front desk at City Hall,
and in the photo he circled the Scottsdale for All
pamphlets that are available to visitors. His post read, you
can't walk into Scottsdale City Hall without being bombarded with
d ei. This poison will be rooted out of our
beautiful city. One speaker gently reminded Quasman that the Torah
(29:26):
commands them to treat strangers with kindness. Others asked him
if he would be sitting up there wearing his kippa
if not for the work that had been done to
make the city a more inclusive place. Another sharply asked
Quasman if he recalled a certain man in Germany who'd
used the word poison to describe their people, and then
(29:48):
Don Logan himself spoke. Speakers were only given a minute each,
cut down by the mare from the usual three, so
he didn't have a chance to give the comment he'd prepared.
This message was clear.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
This is personal for me. People have moved on from
the bombing of February twenty six, two thousand and four,
but every day I'm reminded of what happened that day
and why it happened, and it happened because of how
I'm packaged an anti diversity extremists who I never talked to,
(30:26):
never knew that attacked me and my colleagues because of
what we represent. Now I read this packet here, there's
nothing in this packet that suggests to me that diversity, equity,
and inclusion is a threat.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
For over an hour, the people of Scottsdale pleaded with
their city council. Don't do this. There's no reason to
do this. The proper steps haven't been taken to adopt
an ordinance like this. Council hasn't thought through what will
happen next, who will manage the city's compliance with the
Americans with Disabilities Act? And what about the serious potential
(31:07):
economic side effects that a decision like this might have.
Several commenters warned that the city would take a massive
hit if Major League Baseball were to take this as
a sign that they should move spring training to a
more progressive city. Councilwomen Solange Whitehead gave a passionate speech
laying out the facts. This ordinance was brought before council
(31:31):
without going through the typical process, avoiding any input from
the public or city staff before it came up for
a vote. If it had gone through the usual steps,
it probably would have been clear that this is a
solution in search of a problem. The city code already
requires merit based hiring, and the city already complies with
laws prohibiting hiring quotas. Council members Maryann McAllan and Solange
(31:56):
Whitehead fought to defer the ordinance to a work study
session to do the work that should have been done
before the ordinance came before council, but they were outvoted.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Well, let me let me speak to that.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I do you all want to do this over again
and do a work study. I don't.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I don't see the point of that. You've all been here.
I think that would that would not be a good, good,
worthy use of your time or the city's resources. Mary
Lisa Barowski dismissed the Booze and Jeers, saying it wouldn't
be a good use of city resources to follow that
(32:39):
standard procedure, which would have included a work study, and
then with very little discussion, they adopted the ordinance over
the dissenting votes of Councilors McAllen and Whitehead. Councilors Barry Graham,
Kathy Littlefield, and Jan Duboscis said very little during the meeting,
(33:00):
but something about the way Mayor Lisa Browski and Councilman
Adam Quasman spoke made me a little curious about their backgrounds,
And wouldn't you know it, Adam Coasman is no stranger
to making loud and wrong assumptions when it comes to
being kind to our neighbors. In twenty fourteen, when he
(33:23):
was serving as an Arizona State legislator and running for Congress,
he attended an anti emigration protest in Oracle, Arizona. The
Panell County sheriff had whipped up a social media frenzy
claiming that he had obtained leaked information from the federal
government that illegal migrant children were going to be bust
into their small town. Quasman was eager to make a
(33:46):
scene to exploit the suffering of these children to make
a political point, but it turned out those children were
actually just fine.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
Adam Quasman was making a speak the reason why Lady
Justice holds a blind fell over, but then the Republican
congressional candidate suddenly stopped. He got wored a bus was
heading down the road and took off for it. Anything else,
Thank you for listen. It's what Coassman and the Oracle
protesters were waiting for a confrontation with a bus full
(34:20):
of migrant children. Coassman tweeted from the scene, bus coming in.
This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the
rule of law. He included a photo of a yellow
school bus.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
I was able to actually see some of the children
in the buses and the fear on their faces.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
This is not compassion, that fear on the faces of
migrant children. Coassman told me he saw an oracle. There's
just one problem. Those weren't migrant children on the yellow
school bus. They were YMCA campers from the Marana School district.
You know that was a bus with YMCA kids.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
They were sad too.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
Reporters at the scene saw the child Ldren laughing and
taking pictures on their iPhones.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
As for newly elected mayor Lisa Browski, she's actually served
on council once before, from two thousand and eight to
twenty twelve, and her interest in local politics began shortly
before her first run for counsel. She was inspired by
the experience of helping her brother Todd, wage a successful
effort to overturn a city ordinance. The ordinance in question,
(35:30):
a ban on lap dances, would have destroyed Todd's business,
a chain of strip clubs in the Scottsdale area. During
her most recent campaign for office, Barowski assured voters that
she had no business relationship with her brother. The question
was asked not because voters might take issue with the
(35:50):
nature of Todd's business, but because her brother, Todd Borowski,
is under investigation after a lawsuit was filed by multiple
men who claimed they were drugged in the club's VIP
lounges and they woke up to find that tens of
thousands of dollars for champagne and lap dances had been
charged to their credit cards. The Meyer's brother seems like
(36:15):
a real character. This has nothing to do with anything,
but as I was poking around, I did find that
Todd Barowski attempted to trademark a logo reading Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yes,
Tampa TMPA, not Tampa. I assume he had some kind
(36:36):
of plan to sell slightly misspelled Tampa Bay Buccaneers jerseys,
but it must not have worked out because the trademark
is dead. And despite her protestations that she has no
involvement in her brother's business dealings, she did fail to
mention during the campaign that she was employed by the
(36:59):
same law firm represents her brother in a lot of lawsuits.
This position doesn't appear on her LinkedIn page, and the
firm quietly removed her from the website sometime in June
of twenty twenty four. But in twenty twenty two, Lisa
Barowski was hired by Dennis Willencik to work in his
firm's new Scottsdale office, and her name still appeared in
(37:22):
filings for one of the firm's clients at least as
late as August of twenty twenty four, though I can't
find any filings that indicate she actively worked on any
of her brother's cases. Just last month, Dennis Willenchik helped
Todd Borowski settle a class action lawsuit brought by dancers
at his clubs alleging a variety of labor law violations,
(37:45):
and local news reports quote Dennis Willenchik as Borowski's lawyer
in that suit filed by the men who claimed they
were drugged and robbed. The only client at Willenchick and
Bartness whose case I did find Lisa Barrow's name on
is Ron Gould, a county official in Arizona who claims
he was threatened over his refusal to certify the results
(38:08):
of the twenty twenty presidential election. But the firm's ties
to twenty twenty election hijinks run pretty deep. They also
represented Alan Dershowitz in his efforts to evade sanctions ordered
by a federal judge after he was involved in a
failed lawsuit brought by Kerry Lake. And before Dennis Willnchik's son,
(38:31):
Jack passed away last year, he was heavily involved in
the plan to send fake electors to DC to derail
the certification of the twenty twenty election. In December of
twenty twenty, Jack Willnchik sent this email to the Trump
campaign team. Quote, we would just be sending in fake
(38:53):
electoral votes to Pence so that someone in Congress can
make an objection when they start counting vote and start
arguing that the fake votes should be counted. In a
follow up email, he clarified that alternative votes is probably
a better term than fake votes, and then he put
(39:15):
a little smiley face emoji. Jack Willnchik also represented the
Cyber Ninjas, the private company hired by Arizona Republicans to
audit the twenty twenty election. They hired Willnchick in their
battle to withhold company records from a congressional investigation, and
the firm represented Sheriff Joe Arpaio for many years. When
(39:39):
Trump pardoned our Paio in twenty seventeen, it was Jack
Wilenchik who accepted the pardon documents on ar Pio's behalf.
Like I said, Lisa Bowski's name only appears on filings
in the Ron Gould case, at least as far as
I was able to find. But it is worth connecting
the dots, I think because when Trump fired off a
(40:03):
half baked executive order banning diversity programs, one of the
first mayors to jump at the chance to performatively comply
had a history with a law firm that was deeply
connected to the effort to prevent the certification of the
twenty twenty election. After the city council meeting last week,
(40:23):
Don Logan spoke with reporters. He was disappointed, but not
surprised at the outcome, telling one reporter that after he
found out the city had refused to conduct a study session,
he knew how the vote was going to go.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
I gave my blood for the work that we did here,
and my message to them is shame on them.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
I won't claim to know very much about the inner
workings in Scottsdale City Hall in the present day. I
did look over some city budget documents and the city
web pages related to the work done by the Diversity Office,
but I couldn't tell you exactly what the Scottsdale City
Council might have learned from a study session about the
current state of affairs of their diversity office. But I
(41:10):
suspect they may not actually know why Scottsdale was one
of the first cities in the country to establish a
full time position of this kind. It wasn't because of wokeness.
This is one of the things that ended up on
the cutting room floor in those five episodes about Dennis Mahon.
But I did spend some time during my research back
(41:32):
in December learning a little bit about the political climate
in Scottsdale in the late nineties, the years leading up
to the establishment of the Office and Diversity and Dialogue
in nineteen ninety eight. It wasn't great. In nineteen ninety seven,
the city settled a lawsuit filed by former Scottsdale police
(41:52):
officer Jesus Torres. Torres claimed he'd been fired for refusing
to stay silent about racism within the department. In nineteen
ninety five, Torres said he witnessed white officers use excessive
force against three Hispanic men. One of the men had
a visible boot print on his back, which he claimed
was from an officer kicking him. Torres didn't witness the incident,
(42:17):
but he refused to cover for his fellow officers, telling them,
I won't lie for you, I won't cover up for you.
I don't believe in the Rodney King mentality. And after
that night, his performance reviews suddenly turned negative and within
a few months he was fired. In his lawsuit, Torres
(42:37):
claimed that it was standard practice within the department to
refer to upscale parts of town as the n n Z,
which stands for the No N Word Zone. The fact
that another officer confirmed under oath during the trial, a
female officer broke down in tears on the stand, sobbing
(42:57):
as she admitted that the department had a raceis problem.
The comments made both to the press and in court
by city employees were kind of shocking. A sergeant testified
that it was Torres who was racist, that he had
a chip on his shoulder and he was overly sensitive
(43:18):
about race. The city's own attorney smeared him as quick
to cry discrimination and soft on Hispanics, saying his actions
drove a wedge between himself and the quote Anglo police
officers because he was an advocate for Hispanics first and
(43:38):
police second. In just weeks after the city settled that
suit with Torres, they were back in hot water again
after a black woman was paraded through her apartment complex
and nothing but handcuffs and her underwear after police were
called to respond to a domestic dispute when she filed
(44:00):
against the city. The police department's own spokesman told the
paper that she was quote taking advantage of recent allegations
of racism in the department to gain financial advantage. In
public statements justifying their decision to force this woman to
walk outside barefoot, with her breasts exposed and menstrual blood
(44:23):
running down her legs, the department claimed it was a
matter of officer safety. This one hundred pound nearly naked
woman was so frightening to them that it wouldn't have
been safe to allow her to put a shirt on.
The department does not appear to have commented on the
(44:45):
decision to dispatch an officer with his own documented history
of domestic violence on a call for a domestic disturbance.
And then in December of nineteen ninety seven, so not
long after Torres settled his lawsuit with the city and
this new lawsuit was filed, Reverend Oscar Tillman, president of
(45:09):
the Arizona ANDAACP, was promising to disrupt the Phoenix open,
the third stop on the PGA tour and a massive
tourist draw that pumped millions of dollars into the local economy,
and Tilman said that he wanted proof the city wasn't
just paying Jesu's Torres that one hundred thousand dollars to
(45:30):
make this problem go away. He wanted them to promise
an independent investigation into the allegations of widespread racism within
the department. Just before Christmas, Tilman had a closed door
meeting with the mayor. Immediately afterwards, he called off his
planned protest without explanation, and as the calendar rolled over
(45:54):
to nineteen ninety eight, Don Logan, an assistant city manager
at the time, announced that the city staff had put
together a report recommending that the city council establish an
Office of Diversity to conduct community outreach to minority residents
and handle internal investigation and mediation of complaints of discrimination.
(46:15):
The city manager insisted that the report's timing and its
recommendations had nothing to do with the demands made by
the NAACP, but the timing kind of speaks for itself.
And when the city settled later that year with the
woman that cops had purp walked in her underpants, it
was their new diversity officer who spoke to the press,
(46:39):
not that foul mouthed cop who couldn't help but double
down on maligning the victim. Don Logan told the Arizona
Republic that the city's internal investigation had determined that the
officers acted improperly, though not because of her race, and
during Don Logan's first year as the director of Diversity
(47:00):
and Dialogue, the Scottsdale Police Department was facing the possibility
of not just more scandal, but federal indictments. In nineteen
ninety nine, the City of Scottsdale spent at least a
quarter of a million dollars on a high price defense
attorney to guide their police officers through the grand jury
(47:22):
process as the Department of Justice investigated allegations that officers
were engaged in tax evasion and civil rights violations in
relation to their off duty shifts working security for a
nightclub frequented by black patrons. In the late nineties, Club
Tribeca was the only club in the Scottsdale area that
(47:43):
had a hip hop night, which made it the only
club in the area with a majority non white crowd,
and for several years the club was locked in a
legal battle with the City of Scottsdale. Club owner George
Delk went public in nineteen ninety seven, not long ebens
after the Haesus Torres suit was settled, with allegations that
(48:03):
the offterty cops were demanding to be paid in cash,
and that they refused to fill out tax forms. Delk
also claimed that the officers routinely threatened, intimidated, and mazed
the club's black and Hispanic patrons, and that one officer
he spoke to told him outright that the department considers
(48:23):
any gathering of more than ten black people to be
a riot. End quote, we don't hesitate to use chemicals
on them. The department changed their policy on moonlighting after
these allegations were made public, but the city was determined
to force the club out of business, unsuccessfully going after
(48:45):
their live music permit and their liquor license. In the
city's effort to shut the club down, they cited police
department claims that the club's activities were generating a disproportionate
number of calls for police service. A legal battle ensued,
and when the club's lawyer finally got the city to
produce these actual police records that the claims were based on,
(49:09):
he says the numbers were wildly inflated and that they'd
padded the figures with a wide variety of unrelated nearby
incidents like traffic stops and citations that were issued in
the neighborhood. During the daytime when the club wasn't even open.
In the end, after an eighteen month grand jury investigation,
(49:32):
no one was charged, but the allegations alone underscored the
need for the kind of public relations boost their new
Diversity office could provide. The City of Scottsdale was one
of the first cities in the country to establish a
full time diversity director because they needed one. Their police
(49:54):
department couldn't go a month without not only violating someone's
civil rights, but running their about it in the paper.
What may have started off as a necessary compromise to
prevent protesters from upsetting golf fans and put a friendlier
face on the city's constant press releases about settling civil
rights lawsuits really does seem to evolve into something meaningful,
(50:19):
and for just two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year,
which is even before you adjust for twenty five years
of inflation, less than the price tag for the lawyer
they had to hire to dig their cops out of
a DOJ investigation. The Office of Diversity oversaw the city's
federally mandated ADA Transition Plan, addressed complaints about violations of
(50:41):
the Americans with disabilities Act, oversaw the city's compliance with
federal civil rights laws, investigated and mediated complaints of discrimination,
provided staff support to the city's Human Relations Commission, oversaw
the city's Employee Resource Group. Provided voluntary trainings for city
departments on topics like inclusion and civility, organized community outreach
(51:01):
and cultural celebrations, provided professional development for city staff, and
secured the grant funding for a scholarship program for students
with disabilities. They put on Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations and
programming during Black History Month. They didn't hire and fire.
They didn't force white men to sit through mandatory white
(51:22):
guilt seminars like a clockwork orange Nightmare, or whatever imaginary
horrors the Republican Council members pretend goes on in DEI workshops.
By all accounts, it seems as that the city councilors
who voted to abolish the office never actually bothered to
find out what it does, and now city staff will
(51:42):
be in a bind trying to reassign staff and ensure
the federally mandated elements of the office's work are still
getting done because for now, at least someone still has
to file Title six compliance reports. Some one still has
to manage the city's eighty A transition plan. The Scottsdale
City Council jumped on the Trump train, and they made
(52:04):
a big symbolic gesture. Those executive orders taking aim at
diversity programs in federal workplaces didn't require the city to
roll back their own diversity programs. They didn't just comply
in advance. They performed. This was a show. Councilman Couasmon
(52:26):
tweeted last month, you can't walk into Scottsdale City Hall
without being bombarded with DEI. This poison will be rooted
out of our beautiful city. The poison they're trying to
root out isn't DEEI. Diversity, Equity and inclusion is today's branding.
(52:48):
But they can call it whatever they want, affirmative action, wokeness,
reverse racism, anti white discrimination, whatever. What they mean is
civil rights, and what they want is segregation when every woman,
black person, or trans person they see is a potential
(53:09):
DEI hire. What they're really asking for is a return
to a world without the Civil Rights Act. Call it
whatever you want, but I'm begging you to see it
for what it is, an attempt to eradicate whole swaths
of the population from public life to make boardrooms and
(53:29):
classrooms and legislatures the exclusive domain of white Christian men.
Dennis Mahon didn't build that bomb because of some carefully
considered ideas about municipal hiring practices. He did it because
he saw a flyer for Hispanic Heritage Month, just like
councilmen cousman walking into city Hall and getting worked up
(53:53):
about seeing the Scottsdale for All pamphlets. Six months before
the bombing, Dennis Mahon called the office. He'd seen an
advertisement for upcoming events celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, and he
couldn't stand it. He left a voicemail mocking the office
or putting on the events, and he used racial slurs,
(54:14):
and he laughed at the very idea of celebrating Hispanic culture.
And the message ended with a warning, We've got lots
of support. The White Arean resistance is growing in Scottsdale.
There's a few white people who are standing up. Dennis
(54:35):
Mayhon's idea of standing up for the white man in
the face of the poison of diversity was building a bomb.
And today, twenty one years later, five members of the
Scottsdale City Council finish what he started. They didn't do
it with racial slurs and pipe bombs this time around.
(54:58):
Sitting a medias in city Hall gavel in hand, Scottsdale
Mayor Lisa Barowski presided over a meeting that used city
ordinance to do what Dennis Mahon failed to do with
explosive ordinance. He tried to kill Don Logan, but they
(55:19):
killed the city's diversity office. Weird Little Guys is a
production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written,
and recorded by me Cally Conger. Our executive producers are
(55:40):
Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by
the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed
by Brad Dickert. You can email me at weirdlu Guy's
podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,
but I probably will not answer it. It's nothing personal.
You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show other listeners
on the Weird Little Guys, Sup, right, head, Just don't
(56:04):
post anything that's going to make you one of my
Weird Little Guys.
Host
Molly Conger
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