Only Hours Left to Save Anchorage From Save Anchorage
For over a year, right-wing radicals associated with the far-right Save Anchorage Facebook group have systematically worked to divide and conquer the city. They have assailed Anchorage Assembly meetings with debunked, categorically false information about masks, the COVID-19 pandemic, Anchorage's homeless situation, and many other issues.
Members of the group have threatened public officials, identified assembly members as enemy combatants, and made spurious claims that Felix Rivera was a pedophile who actively sought to add children to "the fresh meat stock."
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, group members compared the highly infectious virus, which has snuffed out the lives of over 981,000 Americans, to the flu while making wild and baseless accusations that the state was collecting the DNA of Alaskans and storing it in an unknown database.
At a series of Anchorage Assembly meetings last fall, we saw the hate and vitriol of the group manifest when some group members wore antisemitic holocaust imagery in protest of a proposed mask mandate. The images were made more prominent when far-right Anchorage Mayor David Bronson defended his clan's use of the faux Stars of David when he said there was nothing wrong with anti-vaxxers wearing Nazi-era symbols, calling them a tribute to Jews.
The headlines seen around the world nearly paled in comparison, however, to those generated by Save Anchorage cheerleader and Assemblygollum Jamie Allard, who defended Nazi terminology seen on Alaska vanity license plates last year, causing Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy to throw her off the Alaska Human Rights Commission.
If none of that has made you nauseous, remember that many Save Anchorage members supported Bronson's decision to turn off the system that provides fluoride to the city's water supply and made excuses for him when I revealed that Bronson's Communications Director Cory Young lied to the press about Bronson's order.
Perhaps most tellingly, Save Anchorage members largely support Mayor Bronson's second pick to run the Anchorage Public Library (APL) — Judy Eledge, whose ostensibly racist, transphobic, and homophobic social media posts should instantly disqualify her from serving in any official role in our city. She has craftily and silently worked to upend norms at the library by removing LGBT books from library shelves and has now influenced the resignation of two longtime employees of APL.
Don't worry about it, though, because Anchorage's power-hungry, unqualified, and unelected Mayor, Amy Demboski, took control of the library in February. Maybe she's been too busy running APL into the ground, which explains why she hasn't yet turned over a document related to the Municipality of Anchorage’s (MOA) lease/use agreement of the Golden Lion Hotel with WEKA Medical.
Assembly candidates Stephanie Taylor, Kathy Henslee, Randy Sulte, and Liz Vazquez are all longtime members of Save Anchorage and are backed by 'Big Lie' believer Mayor Bronson. Many have downplayed the violent events of January 6, which is to be expected given that a member of Save Anchorage was arrested for his alleged participation in those events. I mean, why wouldn't one want to be part of a group now listed in the ‘Insurrection Index?‘
Imagine an assembly taken over by these right-wing radical Save Anchorage members, and now imagine for a moment an assembly that lacks the necessary votes to override a mayoral veto.
As East Anchorage Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar put it so eloquently last week, if you care about maintaining any semblance of transparency from the Bronson administration, it will require the preservation of an assembly majority that isn’t an automatic rubber stamp for the mayor.
Put down your phone, step away from your computer, turn in your ballot, or vote in person. Do it now. Anchorage's future and direction quite literally depend on you exercising your constitutional right to vote.
