My community is ground zero in the fight for America’s future. We affectionately call our home “Happy Valley.” It surrounds Penn State University (where I work). A blue dot in the middle of red counties, we believe in the promise of a democratic republic rooted in freedom, individual dignity, environmental integrity, innovation, and equal opportunity. We are also a little old school, agricultural, surrounded by thousands of acres of woods and miles and miles of cold water trout streams. This community has faced the MAGA-captured GOP and its addictions to resentment, to misogyny, to vengeance-fueled readings of the Bronze Age prophets, to devastating restrictions on your right to vote, and self-defeating economics.
Last week the “Blue Wall” Bus Tour came through town. Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro was joined by Democratic governors Gretchen “Big Gretch” Whitmer of Michigan, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Janet Mills of Maine and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. They were joined by State Rep. Paul Takac* (D-HD 82), State College Mayor Ezra Nanes, Centre County Commissioners Amber Concepcion and Mark Higgins, and Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania attorney general, Eugene DePasquale. To a tee, they spoke about the value of a woman’s right to make choices about her own body, about the need to rise to the challenge of climate change, and the sacred right to vote in a secure election. They know that the choice is clear–we have to elect Kamala Harris.
Yesterday, the Nuclear Dumpster Fire Tour for Trump ’24 came to Penn State. The incompetent Orange Menace was joined by Marjorie Taylor Green, our own Congressman Glenn Thompson (who can’t get a Farm Bill out of his own GOP-controlled committee), and a local pastor, Jody Reese.
Reese is the pastor of the Nittany Baptist Church in Boalsburg. He led a prayer to open the Trump rally and followed it up with a chant of “We are…MAGA!” with the crowd of MAGA students there. Reese can fairly be put into the bucket of white Christian nationalist pastors. His church was a rallying point for anti-Semitic PA gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in 2023. Reese is also a supporter of would-be book banners who ran for school board here in 2023..
On April 10, 2o23, reactionary school board candidate Megan Layng and her husband, Ken, entered the State College High School after hours. With no appointment and no stated legitimate district business, the Layngs proceeded to the library where they were observed taking pictures of books. Staff in the library notified security and the couple were escorted out of the building. The administration immediately updated security protocols.
Layng had been running on a slate of White Christian nationalist school board candidates called United 4 SCASD (U4S). After the Layngs trespassed, the U4S removed her from their slate within a couple of days. But they maintained their political alliances.
I serve on the State College Area School District’s Board. The day after the trespass, I received security video footage of the Layngs in action. As I wrote in The Centre Daily Times, “Citizens deserve to know these facts. So shortly after viewing the footage…I shared [it] with a Centre Daily Times reporter. My actions respect the rule of law, the voter as the source of our decision-making, and our institutions as the means for our democratic republic to function. They increase sunshine for citizens.” But the regressive Christian right didn’t see it that way.
On June 5, 2023, members of U4S and their allies came before the Board. I saw them standing in a circle outside, praying, before the meeting. U4S candidate Nathan Bish kicked off public comment, telling the public I had given the footage to the reporters. (Thanks?) He was followed by Centre County GOP chair Michelle Schellberg as well as Pastor Jody Reese. Schellberg had come before the Board multiple times previously, peddling all manner of lunacy including the litter box hoax and, on Feb. 21, 2022, a statement castigating our superintendent for calling swastikas anti-Semitic. In her racist opinion, saying swastikas are anti-semitic is “subjective.” That’s something a Nazi would say to get you to think they aren’t a Nazi while telling you they are a Nazi. Make sense?
Reese and Schellberg were also supporters of extremist far-right gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano. If you don’t know, Mastriano allied with so-called “Christian” Reconstructionists whose goal is to transform America into a brutal theocracy. According to their own writing, women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who hit their parents, and gay men should be stoned to death. Folks in this vain like Joel Webbon are advocating for us to repeal the 19th Amendment. When Christian Nationalists take over–read: MAGA and Project 2025–women will be represented in government by men (men who “love” them, of course).
Take their word for it: restricting abortion is only the beginning for the American Christian Taliban. Mastriano ran on a total ban on abortion. Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was written by Trump appointee Roger Severino. Severino says, HHS should “maintain a biblically based…definition of marriage and family” and act accordingly. He forwards an extreme system to restrict doctors from providing effective care to women and to prevent women from traveling across state lines to access care. Severino outlines the requisite surveillance apparatus. Purely ideological, it has nothing to do with improving HHS’s mission to enhance sound medical science, health or well-being. While he downplays Project 2025, we have every reason to suspect that Trump will create a surveillance bureau to monitor women like the Iranian Guidance Patrol.
In the madness of the last weeks and months, it can be hard to place Trump’s rally in context. In 2016, the Ku Klux Klan’s Daily Stormer endorsed him. In 2017, white nationalists held the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, chanting “Jews will not replace us.” One of them murdered Heather Heyer. In 2018, an anti-Semite used Gab to foment hatred before murdering 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue. One of Unite the Right’s offshoot, Patriot Front, vandalized the Bellefonte Pride Wall on Jan. 7, 2021. On January 10, 2021, white supremacist stickers were placed around State College. A month later, someone attempted to burn down the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County that displays a Black Lives Matter banner. On Feb. 21, 2022, Schellberg defended swastikas. McInness came almost two years ago. Mastriano was known to have ties to Gab, In the summer of 2023, more white supremacists fliered a State College neighborhood with anti-semitic pamphlets.
Ever since, Trump has been calling for violence. Most recently, Trump said “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen” (emphasis mine). Trump now routinely uses language reminiscent of Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler, a dictator on day one who will root out those who oppose him. Brigadier General John Kelly, who was the Director of the Department of Homeland Security and served as Trump’s Chief of Staff told The Atlantic and The New York Times Trump has praised Hitler. Kelly–like a sane American–is alarmed by Trump’s new fascist language. He labeled him a fascist. As I shared a couple days ago. Kelly joins an ever-growing list of Republicans and former Trump staffers saying he is completely unfit to hold office because he hates our democracy and our freedoms.
To date, may well-intentioned and caring people have balked at confronting white nationalism. This is a mistake. As Josh Inwood and I wrote, “History reveals ignoring fascism in the United States and elsewhere, to pretend it isn’t dangerous, or to negotiate with fascists, only allows fascists room to grow.” If you ever wondered whether you would hide Anne Frank, join the White Rose, register voters during Freedom Summer or join Black brothers at the lunch counter, now is your time.
Some of you already have. Our community has stood up for freedom. In 2023, Megan Layng, U4S, and Reese by extension were defeated handily at the polls by a slate of Democrats who stood for pragmatism and the care of each and every child. In the previous off-year elections of 2021, I was elected in a local election that saw the first black woman (and Haitian immigrant) win election to our school board. In the municipal races, we also elected a Jewish woman and a Black woman to the Ferguson Township Board as well as a Jewish mayor, Indian man, and a Black man to State College Borough Council. In Pennsylvania, our first Jewish Governor Josh Shapiro has been a pragmatist who’s taken none of Trump’s garbage, routinely telling Trump to “stop shit-talking America.” Shapiro demolished Mastriano in the race for the Governor in 2022. We are in this together.
If Pennsylvanians did not want an anti-semitic Christian nationalist governor and regressive Christian nationalists taking over their schools, I don’t think they want one in the White House either.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. If you want freedom, then you have to vote for it. I know you understand the assignment. Get your family, your neighbors, your friends, and vote. Your nation depends on it.
Peter Walks for Democracy 