2 weeks Ago By ELLA HUTCHERSON [email protected]
PHILOMATH Comments about the Nazi flag made by Philomath's top employee at a committee meeting over the summer have sparked a reaction from the community, as well as from those at the meeting. City Manager Chris Workman's comments — made during a larger ethical conversation regarding the "thin blue line" American flag — indicated that Nazis and white supremacists would be welcome to express themselves at a Philomath Frolic & Rodeo parade. The Frolic & Rodeo is an annual celebration and a crown jewel of Philomath's culture.
The comments came during a session of the city's Inclusivity Committee, which was formed in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd. The committee is made up of Philomath city councilors as well as citizen representatives, and its express goal is to support city leadership in fostering a just, equitable and inclusive community. Workman staffs the meeting and performs clerical duties, such as streaming and notetaking.
What happened At the end of the July 23 Inclusivity Committee meeting, Councilor Christopher McMorran, who also serves as the committee co-chair, shared that he'd received an email from a concerned community member. The email was in regards to a thin blue line American flag flown during the Frolic & Rodeo parade earlier that month. The email said that one of the lead riders representing the Frolic & Rodeo held an American flag, and the other held a thin blue line flag.
Recognizable in the United States, it's typically a black-and-white American flag with a solid blue stripe through the center. The resident who wrote the email said that while the flag originated as a symbol of support for police officers, it is now associated with opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement and is often displayed alongside the Confederate flag and at white supremacist rallies. The writer said many view it as a symbol of exclusion.
"While some might argue that the Philomath Frolic & Rodeo is a private organization distinct and separate from the City of Philomath, my 27 years of residency in Philomath have shown me that the two are closely intertwined and represent one another," the email read. Indeed, Workman has volunteered with the organization since 2014 and is a member of its board of directors. The resident requested that the Inclusivity Committee work with the Frolic & Rodeo to ensure that future events are, well, inclusive.
In the case of the "thin blue line" flag featured in this year's parade, it was flown to honor the Frolic & Rodeo queen, a high-schooler whose father was a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty. Because of their limited jurisdiction, Inclusivity Committee members discussed possibilities for reaching out to the Frolic & Rodeo, using the incident as an educational opportunity. They also discussed the context in which the flag had been flown, saying that was important to consider.
That's when Workman stepped in, and things started to get a little dicey. Workman shared his history with the Frolic & Rodeo. Not only is he on the board, he serves as the events committee chair.
He said the Frolic & Rodeo is not going to censor what flags can and cannot be flown in a parade — that is a First Amendment right, he said. That prompted Inclusivity Committee member Rose Bricker to ask: "So a Nazi flag would be flown?" "A Pride flag, a Nazi flag, if you want to fly a flag, it's your First Amendment right to fly a flag in a parade," Workman responded. "As much as I might disagree with somebody's opinion, I will fight for their ability to express that opinion, every single day.
" He believes a flag's meaning is determined by its viewer. As for the person flying the "thin blue line" American flag, "maybe they're a white supremacist, and again, they should be allowed to express that opinion if they are," he said. He went on to add that a 17-year-old girl participating in a rodeo parade is "more than likely not" a white supremacist.
The flag in the parade was not flown by the rodeo queen herself, but rather flown in her honor, Workman later told Mid-Valley Media. She was photographed in practice for the rodeo carrying the flag. "I've been offended by things as well, right?" Workman continued at the meeting.
"I've seen things, and they are very offensive." He did not specify at the time what those things are but said when it happens, he goes on with his day and does not take it upon himself to educate the person committing the offense. He suggested it would be more appropriate to pass on the email from the individual to the Frolic & Rodeo, rather than have the committee step in.
Speaking out Nathan Waugh, a Philomath resident who uses they/them pronouns, was watching the inclusivity meeting on YouTube when they heard Workman's comments. They said it's a common phenomenon for those who don't have any stake in the matter to seemingly compare the Pride flag to the Nazi flag, but they were shocked to hear such rhetoric from the city manager. Their reaction was "anguish.
" While Waugh had never heard something so egregious from Workman before, they said, he has made many comments in past inclusivity meetings that Waugh felt did not belong in that space. "The overall impression I get from him is that his perspective is everyone in the world is as safe as he is," Waugh said. The comments at July's inclusivity meeting were at another level, dangerous even, Waugh said.
They acted as a "blaring green light" for a white supremacist to come to an inclusivity meeting and spew violent rhetoric — or a message to neo-Nazis in Philomath that the city manager "has their back." "These things aren't disconnected," Waugh said. "Words lead to death, and that's been true throughout history.
" Waugh identifies as queer and disabled, both groups targeted by Nazis. Waugh said they were really disappointed that no one in the room interrupted the city manager. An inclusivity meeting should be full of people who shut down that kind of rhetoric unequivocally, they said.
If one identifies as an ally, Waugh said, the least one could do is interrupt pro-Nazi speech or Nazi equivocation. "To me, that's like the lowest possible bar," they said. "It's a bar that's underground in the center of the earth.
" Committee members react "I wish I would've said something in the moment," Philomath Councilor Jessica Andrade acknowledged when reached by Mid-Valley Media. Andrade is a member of the Inclusivity Committee and was present at the meeting. She herself was "shocked" by Workman's comments, she said.
She did respond to Workman during the meeting but kept her words in the context of the thin blue line American flag conversation. She said she felt he'd painted a different picture than what some members of the committee were actually suggesting, and was trying to clarify their meaning, while simultaneously processing the weight of what had been said about the Nazi flag. "That's just not an OK thing to be OK with, especially in this space.
This is an inclusivity committee; everyone is supposed to be welcome," she said. "Yeah, sure, individual freedoms, but when something someone believes is that someone else of another identity shouldn't be alive or should be less than others who are not of that identity, that's not OK, and counter to the goals of this committee," Andrade added. The intent of the conversation, to decide what to do about approaching the Frolic & Rodeo, got lost, she said.
Similarly, committee CoChair McMorran felt that the conversation was "derailed" and became "needlessly inflammatory" due to the city manager's comments, as well as comments from some committee members. Bricker, the citizen member of the Inclusive Committee who invoked the Nazi flag, said it was a "hyperbolic statement" and that she meant to say "Confederate flag." She said she was "shocked" by what Workman said in response, though, and hadn't expected it.
She can understand his viewpoint, she said, but believes he might have underestimated the depth and impact of his words. Regarding his comment about a hypothetical white supremacist, "I know that Chris works really hard at being a neutral party," Bricker said. "I think he was coming at it from an 'I want to be Switzerland, I don't want to choose sides' kind of thing, but I think sometimes that gets us into dangerous waters where we are allowing hateful rhetoric or that type of oppression to continue under the term 'this is their free speech.
' "Because I believe in free speech, but there's consequences for free speech." McMorran, too, was disappointed by the turn the conversation took, he said. He has since met with Workman to discuss his concerns with the language used.
He said Workman acknowledged that it was not the best word choice. "I think he understood that maybe he did not choose the words he meant to choose there, that he was trying to make a point about freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and not wanting the government to start telling people what they can and can't do, because that's a slippery slope," he said. "But any mention of Naziism or white supremacy is obviously not something that the city of Philomath endorses or would want in our town.
" This kind of language is not something he'd previously heard from Workman, either, McMorran said. "I do not believe that Chris Workman is a white supremacist," he said. The city manager's stance Workman believes in people's right to express themselves and to peacefully assemble, in a parade or elsewhere.
He said he does not regret the overall content of what he said in July's inclusivity meeting, and stands by it. However, he might rephrase aspects of it. "Given the chance, would I take that back and say the Nazi flag was probably a bad example? I do, because it was an extreme example," he said.
"However, it still expressed the point that people are free to express themselves." He continued: "If someone wanted to peacefully have a Nazi flag and walk through a parade holding a Nazi flag, I don't agree with that, but I don't know that the Frolic & Rodeo would step in and say, 'That's inappropriate, it's not family-friendly, it's not whatever.' "As ugly as that symbol is and what it represents, is it a crime to fly a Nazi flag in the United States of America?" The Frolic & Rodeo errs on the side of acceptance and allowance, he said, despite not being required to uphold the same rights that the city of Philomath does as a government entity.
"Now, if you show up at an event and you're spewing hate and threatening, I don't care which flag you're carrying," he said. "If you're being hateful and not being family-friendly and you're being inappropriate, then you won't be welcome at Frolic & Rodeo events." He emphasized that he does not think that the flags discussed — the thin blue line flag, the Pride flag and the Nazi flag — are comparable, and did not intend to liken them in his comments.
In fact, it was just the opposite, he said. If anything, he was trying to draw contrast between those flags, to demonstrate that action would not be taken no matter what kind of flag was being flown. "I used an example of the Pride flag only because there were a couple Pride flags that were in the parade, and there were some comments made that that was the first time that we'd seen Pride flags go through the parade," he said.
"I didn't have a problem with it. Others didn't have a problem with it. Again, nobody wrote in and complained that somebody had flown a Pride flag through the parade.
" Workman said that at the Thursday night rodeo this year, the importance of the thin blue line flag to the rodeo queen was clearly understood. There was a lot of positive emotion surrounding her and her family, he said, and it set the stage for Saturday's parade. Those who put the two together would not identify any negative connotation with the flag that was flown, he said.
Some assumptions were made about why the flag was being flown that were "incorrect, and frankly, obviously incorrect," he said. "Any rational person would've looked at that situation and its context and recognized the value of that flag and the importance of flying that flag at that time in the way it was flown." He said he carried that sense of pride going into that month's inclusivity meeting.
"To have that attacked in any way or belittled in any way, yeah, I took some personal offense to that," he said. "It's really too bad, and almost kind of a tragedy, that we're having to have this conversation." The Frolic & Rodeo is in the process of putting out a statement about the organization and its values specific to the comments made, Workman said.
More work to do As disappointed as Waugh is that no one interrupted Workman during July's meeting, they are even more disappointed that no one addressed his words in a public and demonstrable way in the months that followed. But they did come up. During a September Finance & Administration Committee meeting, while discussing applications to receive transient lodging tax dollars from organizations that bring in tourism, Andrade suggested withholding the awarding of funds to the Frolic & Rodeo until organizers addressed the comments made at July's Inclusivity Committee meeting.
She also critiqued the organization's description of equity, inclusion and diversity practices in the application, which was one sentence long. Her suggestion to take a pause on funding, however, was unequivocally shot down. "Be careful," Workman told her following one of her statements on the matter.
The recommended amount of $15,000 in funding for the Frolic & Rodeo was moved forward to council. The content of July's Inclusivity Committee meeting was also addressed briefly at its following meeting. McMorran said the resident who sent the initial email about the thin blue line flag does not want the city to take any action yet, though McMorran has offered to be a conduit.
He's tried to respond to everyone who has reached out about the matter. "Folks are largely on the same page, that we want everyone to feel welcome and included and valued in Philomath," he said. "People are coming at that from very different perspectives, but that's the end goal that everyone shares.
" To be clear, he added, no one has been "overly positive" about Workman's comments as they related to Nazis. The diversity of perspectives largely comes from the issue surrounding the thin blue line flag. "I think that's kind of the eternal push and pull of this committee," McMorran said.
"The mission and the goal is to help foster inclusivity and a sense of belonging, and to make Philomath feel like a place where everyone's welcome and included, and that's really important. "But in order to be successful with that, we have to go about it in a way where people feel included, and we're not pushing away folks, because then we will never achieve that goal." Waugh said the Inclusivity Committee has been a positive force overall but still has a lot to do.
They said it spends a lot of time drafting proclamations and declarations, but tangible and actionable recommendations coming out of the committee are what's needed to make the city better. "It makes it worse when you're drafting a proclamation saying Philomath supports all these different people, but then you have the city manager saying he views Pride flags and Nazi flags identically," Waugh said. "That's two opposite messages, and the one I'm going to trust is the one the city manager said off the cuff from his own opinion.
" Bricker views what happened as precisely why the city needs an inclusivity committee. "I see this as an opportunity for Philomath to maybe continue some work that needs to be done," she said. Get local news delivered to your inbox!.
