Counterprogramming

This week is the Democratic Convention. Past presidents, other noteworthies, and balloons! What does the Donald Trump campaign plan in counterprogramming?

It looks like the theme will be “crime and safety.” J.D. Vance will hold a press conference Tuesday on crime and safety in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people at a protest against police violence. Trump plans a rally on the same subject in Howell, Michigan, a longtime home of the KKK, where last week saw a white supremacy rally.

Seth Cotlar, a historian of the right wing at Willamette University, Oregon, wrote a thread on Bluesky about Howell’s KKK history. I’ve taken pieces of his thread to assemble the summary below.

Howell has long had a reputation as a Klan town because the head of the Michigan Klan, Bob Miles, made that town his home in the early 1970s. In 1970 Robert Miles presided over a cross burning in Michigan. The issues he expressed concern about might sound familiar–college unrest, how history is taught, arrogant teachers, an anti-God government, etc.

In the late 1980s Miles threatened to retire to Coos Bay, Oregon. It was appealing to him because of how white the town was, and also this was the era when white supremacists were moving to the Pacific Northwest. I’m happy to say that my hometown newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal (17 April 1989), published an op-ed making clear that Oregon wanted no part of a racist like Robert Miles. Notably, they also didn’t try to whitewash Oregon’s history of racism in the process.

Cotlar includes newspaper clippings in his thread. Apparently Miles was a center of Howell’s racist reputation that has continued through today.

Big Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi, energy.