The FreeWA tour was a fun opportunity to travel around Washington state and meet other activists. Everyone I talked with was interested in transparency—even the likely union spy who showed up to record our meeting in Bellingham.
The Jan. 6 event was my first opportunity to speak on behalf of the Freedom Foundation, and as everyone was taking their seats and we got ready to start, a young gentleman walked in and, instead of sitting on the side of the room everyone else was, he sat in the front and off to the side (all the better to set his phone on his knee to record the meeting).
He clearly stood out in a room where everyone seemed to know each other. Jami Lund greeted the young man, who claimed his name was Gary Gordon and explained that his father was a Freedom Foundation member and he wanted to get more involved.
It seemed pretty obvious “Gary” wasn’t who he claimed, but our meeting was open to the public, unlike public sector union negotiations involving your tax dollars.
After the presentation he immediately approached me asking how he could get more involved. He wanted to know if there was going to be an opportunity to gather signatures for an initiative.
One of our members at the meeting came up to warn us that Gary had been a provocateur and disrupter at past conservative events in the area. But today he had a different mission – to sit close, secretly record the meeting and find out what the Freedom Foundation’s plans are.
After getting back to the office, I pulled Gary’s connect card and we looked up his name, email and address.
The name and email given were fakes, and when we followed up with the address provided, the employees at the coffee shop had no idea what we were talking about.
From the looks of things, it appears Gary is very involved already.
Quick Recap:
- The Freedom Foundation holds a public meeting discussing the need for transparency with public unions.
- The unions send an undercover spy who lies about his identity and secretly records the event.
Unlike the unions, which are exempt from public records requests and hold secret meetings to negotiate how taxpayers’ money will be spent, the Freedom Foundation is very transparent about its mission and we do not hold meetings in public buildings excluding the public.
P.S. A special thank you to Gary for keeping up with the union tradition of secrecy. I, too, would be ashamed to admit my real name if I was infiltrating meetings and recording them while being a part of an organization that strictly prohibits any transparency.
