For readers and activists looking for quality, well-documented research on far right and nationalist efforts to undermine democracy and advance an agenda at odds with treaty rights, environmental justice and civil rights, IREHR recommends that you check out Noisy Waters Northwest and The Searchlight Review.
Noisy Waters publishes the results of investigative journalism by Sandy Robson and Dena Jensen of Whatcom County, Washington, while The Searchlight Review highlights work by Robson. In 2018 the two received the Seeds of Justice Award for “Speaking Truth to Power” from the Bellingham-based Community to Community Development. In 2017 Jensen and Robson were named “environmental heroes” by RE Sources for Sustainable Communities for their cutting-edge work documenting SSA Marine/Pacific International Terminals’ effort to build a coal terminal at Cherry Point in the heart of the treaty-reserved usual and accustomed fishing sites of the Lummi Nation.
In 2016 Robson received the Paul deArmond Citizen Journalism of the Year Award, conferred annually by community news outlets in Whatcom County and named for the late anti-fascist researcher who so many of us (including this author) worked with and admired.
In 2014 the duo of Jensen and Robson formed Coal Stop to published their research on fossil fuel industry impacts on the Whatcom County community and the Lummi Nation. They later created Noisy Waters and Searchlight Review, expanding their focus, but continuing to deliver the kind of meticulously documented and sourced research that it takes to break through the fog of far right rhetoric and strategic messaging.
On the pages of Noisy Waters, readers will find documentation and analysis of industry organization campaigns to undermine environmental health and Lummi Nation treaty rights; Common Threads Northwest’s attempt to maintain Tea Party-style politics in the wake of the 2017 collapse of the Whatcom County Tea Party; issues facing immigrant families in the community; coverage of the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights’ relationship with national anti-Indian leader Elaine Willman; and misinformation about the Swinomish Tribe by a local public official, among many other things.
Likewise Searchlight Review, where topics of interest to IREHR readers range from the development of the social media platform We Speak by a Bellingham, Washington-based Christian Right activist; to Tim Eyman and Glen Morgan’s 2018 anti-labor “Full Contact Activism Tour;” to human and labor rights issues confronting farm workers.
Throughout, when you read the investigative journalism published at Noisy Waters Northwest and The Searchlight Review, you can count on three things. It is well researched and documented. It is hard hitting. And it is the kind of deep, background research on far right and nationalist organizing, and the threat they pose to treaty and human rights, that we need to inform our struggle for multi-racial democracy.
Addendum: October 26, 2019. IREHR wants to clarify that The Searchlight Review described in this article is unrelated to Searchlight Magazine. Searchlight Magazine is a UK-based magazine, and longtime friend of IREHR, that since 1964 has investigated and opposed fascism, anti-Semitism and racism in Britain and abroad.
