Disappointed with the fake “Fiber Plan” the city voted on recently?

Most were. So, what is the establishment’s response going to be? The “Democrats” are considering running Party Chair Andrew Reding for Lilliquist’s seat. [editor note: Reding has now filed with the state PDC to run for the 5th Ward Bellingham City Council seat that Michael Lilliquist will seek reelection to this year.] Consequently, it’s now important to talk about my experiences with Andrew while working on policy for the public good.

I am not a Democrat or Republican. It’s obvious to me that both parties hate workers, love the status quo, and just want power. However, Cascadia Daily News just can’t help but be the mouth piece for the Corporate Democrats, printing whatever they tell them to print, including an article where Andrew Reding talks about “holding people accountable.” to make him appear like a real leader. He is not, as we'll explore here.

Democrats have recently been advised to largely do nothing and our local Democrats are taking that advice. But what about the rallies Jon? Listen, we’ve had enough rallies. We need real policies with real teeth that benefit the other 90% of us and that is not what we get from the Republicans or the Whatcom Corporate Democrats.

So let's talk about what happened in the background while I was working on the TAGNW Broadband Strategy Document that Reding went out of his way to sabotage on behalf of special interests. My story can be backed up by the others there, including a very decent man and father, TAGNW Director Michael Gan, whom Andrew got fired! We should note that Andrew was NOT in charge of the committee, NOT a TAGNW employee and NOT his boss.

I started out my conversations with Reding after years of him working in the background to try and cancel me on behalf of special interests. Commissioner Deshmane asked him to at least talk to me. Andrew would only do this over Signal, an application that encrypts and deletes all conversations. I also started meeting with Todd Lagastee of the Whatcom Corporate Democrats, who also wanted to meet via Signal. Todd and I did meet once in person too at which time Todd would reveal his connections to many others in the area including Assistant Superintendent of Bellingham Public Schools (BPS) Arionda Feeney. In short, the Dems feel they control everything in this town and, if Reding doesn’t like you for any reason, then good luck working here. They will make sure you can't.

Along the way our community group decided to meet under the umbrella of TAGNW led by their then new director Michael Gan, who really did want to involve all of the voices in the community, and come up with a real broadband strategy document as it was clear that the Broadband Advisory Group was too influenced by big telecom to do. So a core group of 3 of us got to work on it.

Michael was the director, Erik and I wrote it, and Jamie Douglass (Chair of the 42^nd Democrats) and Andrew Reding insisted on being there to babysit us on behalf of special interests. Jamie and Andrew offered no real insights or anything useful. Andrew especially wanted to make sure we understood that it was not a Democracy and that the beliefs and interests of the oligarchs he knew would be represented, or else. This is known as bullying. We generally ignored him and produced an excellent document, the version that I linked to above, and that’s when things got weird.

We were ready to release the document and be done with it. However, Andrew and Jamie had been working with special interests in the background, especially from big telecom, and they insisted that the document be opened for a totally unnecessary “review period” during which Andrew started to inject their interests into the document. When I stood up against this, Andrew started to spit in the face of the very important policies marginalized communities have fought for over generations. He pretended that anyone, who did not agree with his edits, was “creating a non-safe space” for his oligarch friends.

Now, I want to talk about how personally offensive this is to me. I went to arts school and I have a lot of LGBTQ+ friends who have fought hard, along with their allies, to make terms like “safe space” mean something. They need to know they can go to work, school, out in their communities, and more without being discriminated against. Andrew was misusing the term to try to create an anti-discussion space to protect his oligarchs. You know, the same guys from big telecom that removed Net-Neutrality, essentially censoring the data of the poor. This is also why the upcoming BAG “broadband equity and equality” discussions are a joke.

So those who needed the safe spaces, according to Andrew, were not people but corporate entities like Verizon, Comcast, WAVE, etc. To Reding AT&T is a person with more rights than a homeless person here. If you disagreed with him about how great of a company WAVE was, and held him accountable for it, well then you were creating a non-safe space for poor, helpless, Corporate Citizen WAVE. Whenever someone does something like this to an important concept it cheapens it and spits in the face of the many wonderful members of our community who have struggled for equity and equality over the years. Holding Comcast accountable is ok. It is not unsafe. They are not a person! But Andrew has stuck up for Starbucks in my presence before for threatening people that tested their awful internet connections. So what do we expect?

The fact that he was harming the larger community in the long run just didn’t matter to Andrew or at least it wasn’t more important than protecting his oligarchs and making sure they ran the show from the shadows. When I continued to point out that he was modifying the document against the public interest, he tried to have me removed from the group in a manner as embarrassing as possible, unless he received a written public apology that he could post on the Democrats page and use against me in the future. What was I apologizing for? Not doing what I was told to because my “owners” said so. Well, don't hold your breath waiting for that apology Andrew. I don't apologize to fascists!

Still this wasn’t even possible because I didn’t work for TAGNW. He tried anyway because he is that much of an elitist and silver spoon fed. Being challenged by someone more intelligent than he is, even in the public interest, and not getting his way, are things he simply can't handle without having a psychopathic response. The other group members just asked that we cool off. Reding then demanded many additional secret meetings with the other members of the group in an attempt to get his way. When he didn't get his way, Reding moved onto having that aformentioned very decent family man, Micheal Gan, fired. Remember, TAGNW is pretty much run by big telecom. So he met with them in the background and did this. I want to note that PogoZone had NOTHING to do with it. Every other telecom that is a member of TAGNW did to some extent, but Reding and WAVE were the worst.

The catalyst to all of this?

Around the same time, while doing some research, I linked a local big telecom donor to a couple of the Whatcom Corporate Democrats. Andrew was outraged that I would try to hold any Democrat accountable even if they behaved exactly like Republicans when it came to telecom, housing, medical care, etc. So no, no matter what he said in CDN, he will NOT HOLD DEMOCRATS ACCOUNTABLE, unless he personally dislikes them or they stand up for workers. Then his reaction will be to try to ruin their lives. Here's the proof.

After that it was open season on me. I received many calls from concerned citizens, even other Democrats, to watch out because Andrew had attacked other good people in the past too. I lost out on several opportunities around this time, which was especially hard while my kids were very young. At this point Todd Lagestee tried to step in to “broker a peace deal” between Andrew and me, to which I was amenable since I actually care about the community. Reding refused. To him the slave had committed the unforgivable crime of disobeying its master, so it was time to try to destroy my life! Todd admitted that there was nothing he could do because everyone was so afraid of Andrew and at that moment, I knew why.

So, I published the original version of the TAGNW document online and moved on. 

Later this tradition would continue. For example, Several substitute teachers who made political commentary against some Corporate Democratic party candidates, OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL, would find their contracts rescinded by Arionda Feeney the good friend of Democratic Party officer Todd Lagestee. Powerful Democrats are always attacking workers for “wrong thinking.”

In the age of Starlink this tradition continues. The same big telecom donor referenced in the Shewmake article above is also a big Starlink investor as he was or still is a big 5G investor. On top of this most of our politicians are telling people to consider Starlink as an option although they are well aware that it has data caps, is very expensive, unreliable, awful for the environment, unaffordable and more. “Democrat” Satpal Sidhu is especially pushing it hard even after losing $2 million on it in a failed Nooksack Tribe project. So, it’s a local issue. That’s why I wrote an NWCitizen article on it. But when a fellow journalist posted my article on Nextdoor, Starlink investors shutdown the conversation down by claiming that it was somehow not a local issue and demanded it be removed to protect not just their own interests, but the interests of one of Reding’s favorite Democratic party donors.

Former TAGNW director Michael Gan really believes in free speech, and wanted to facilitate the creation of the best document possible. He is also a wonderful father and family man. Yet, just like Reding didn’t care what happened to me or my family when I got in the way of his oligarchs, he didn’t care about what he did to Gan and countless others too.

So, while Lilliquist threw us under the bus many times to protect special interests, I can’t recall him literally attacking hardworking people and families directly like Reding has done countless times.

Please Democrats, choose an actual progressive instead. We need you to do better than this. We need to move beyond policies with no teeth that accomplish nothing. We need something better than either Reding or Lilliquist. Or, really most of our “leaders.”

“But Jon, he does great research. Remember that jail article?” Again, CDN printed that article without checking the data in it. Sources tell me that it lives on Redings' laptop and no one has ever seen the data in its entirety. Reding cooked the books to tip the scales in favor of building the jail that some of the big Corporate Donors to the Democrats wanted. He lied on their behalf for the jail, he is lying on their behalf when it comes to telecom, and he will not stop, especially if we give him more power.

Remember, as Psychology Today reminds us, “A Bad Leader Consistently Lies, Cheats and Bullies to get ahead.” Andrew is exactly like all of the things he accuses Trump of being. He's a Trump Democrat.

Workers Remember Both Major Parties Hate Us And Don’t Want to Hear From Us!