A Farewell, Local Hate Groups and a Whistleblower
This week, we bid farewell to our main reporter for the past 18 months, Richard Bednarski (right in photo above), who braved the pandemic, repeated police intimidation, harsh conditions and resistance from authorities to relentlessly report about sweeps, motel destructions, people being displaced, new luxury districts and the many heroes and sheroes of Reno trying to help those struggling as best they can amid our housing affordability crisis.
He wrote his own essay about his reporting, including unfulfilled promises to be allowed inside the Nevada Cares Campus. Our podcast this week is a conversation between Richie and Our Town Reno undergraduate reporter Catherine Schofield on his reporting and his future plans.
Our most commented post on social media was a query on our Biggest Little Streets Instagram about whether anyone had any information on existing active chapters of extreme right groups in our community. We received a disturbing photo of a local musician wearing a Proud Boys sweater at a recent gig in Verdi. There were other notices we will look into as part of our own coverage on exposing hate groups in northern Nevada. The comments on the post also devolved into name calling and worse, exposing deepening local fractures in our social discourse at the start of yet another election year. We aren’t in a civil war yet, but the tone for one is being set.
Our story about James Fleming a former statistician with the Community Health Alliance looked into all the public posts he’s been writing about his time there and how he’s sent information to federal authorities to get an official assessment on how grant money is being spent there and whether or not helping lower income populations is being prioritized. This comes amid community concerns about CHA and other COVID money funds elsewhere and whether we are getting adequate transparency and accountability for all this incoming federal money.
Next week’s meeting on the Jacobs Entertainment buyout spree is moving all online. Past Zoom community forums have turned into fiascos so it will be interesting to see how that plays out, but for many, it’s too little too late, as hundreds and hundreds of our residents have already been displaced from motels replaced by fenced off dirt lots. Articles often mention motels as “last resorts” but as our reporting points out these weeklies are also used as “first resorts” for many climbing out of difficult situations.