Shawn Vestal

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Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: A mother’s journey from Honduras to Spokane – ‘I’m going to carry my girl’

Sun., April 18, 2021

A normal girl. That’s what Danna wanted to be, the people who knew her say. But that was not what she was.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Our ‘red-hot’ housing market is freezing cold at the bottom

UPDATED: Mon., March 29, 2021

There are a lot of dramatic numbers involved in Spokane’s “sizzling hot” housing market.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Again and again, Ferguson puts forth assault-weapon ban and the Democratic Legislature ignores it

Fri., March 26, 2021

Step back in time to September 2016, when Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson first proposed legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

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Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: ‘This isn’t who we are’? EWU president takes on the twin plagues of racism and equivocation about racism

UPDATED: Tue., March 23, 2021

When David May, the interim president of Eastern Washington University, put out a powerful statement last week condemning racist graffiti at the apartment of an African American student, he also unequivocally denounced the Atlanta shooting as a racist act and placed it in the context of a surge in outspoken racism nationwide.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: A year haunted by all that we did not do

Sun., March 21, 2021

Talk about cancel culture.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Racist groups ramped up a ‘barrage of propaganda’ in 2020

Sun., March 21, 2021

When a neo-Nazi spray-painted Spokane’s Temple Beth Shalom with swastikas and other hateful graffiti, he said he was trying to recruit more people to his cause.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Portraits of a community emerge from recent obituaries

Fri., March 19, 2021

One obituary is a portrait of a life. Several obituaries, taken together, form a portrait of a community.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: The evolving Riverfront Park is grand – and a bargain, too

UPDATED: Wed., March 17, 2021

It was a beautiful sunny day – one of many in our recent windfall of beautiful sunny days – and we were walking through Riverfront Park.

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Shawn Vestal: Latest police-bias study full of data, if not clarity

Sun., March 14, 2021

In the latest report evaluating racial disparities in stops, arrests and uses of force by the Spokane Police Department, the authors note that officers are much more likely to search the cars of Black and Native American drivers than other motorists.

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Shawn Vestal: No mask-burning, no firearms – just citizens calling on their leaders to do the right thing

UPDATED: Wed., March 17, 2021

You might not have heard much about it, but there was a very important protest on the steps of the Idaho Capitol in Boise last week.

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Shawn Vestal: Our matching death rates suggest we’ve already had plenty of Idaho influence

Wed., March 10, 2021

Mayor Nadine Woodward, along with 20 other Eastern Washington mayors, is asking Gov. Jay Inslee to take their suggestions for reopening businesses.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Duncan, on death row, now facing aggressive brain cancer

Sun., March 7, 2021

Joseph Duncan may not receive the death penalty after all, but not because he’s won an appeal.

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Shawn Vestal: It’s not the main reason to open schools, but a bit less family togetherness will be wonderful

Wed., March 3, 2021

It was not even 8:30 in the morning and the kid was already wearing clothing, for heaven’s sake.

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Shawn Vestal: A war over words sits at the heart of a court ruling over racist covenants

UPDATED: Fri., Feb. 26, 2021

What does it mean to “strike” a document from the public record? To “remove all remnants” of it?

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Crisis puts brighter spotlight on sports spending at WSU, EWU

UPDATED: Thu., Feb. 25, 2021

The faculty at Washington State University is trying to conduct a very modest, very gentle intervention with the school’s drunk uncle – asking the administration not to expand its subsidy to the deficit-spending athletics department by another few million dollars per year.

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Shawn Vestal: Police contract better, but remains far from the spirit of voters’ call for independent oversight

UPDATED: Tue., Feb. 23, 2021

“The police ombudsman and any employee of the OPO must, at all times, be totally independent. Any findings, recommendations, reports, and requests made by the OPO must reflect the independent views of the OPO.”

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Shawn Vestal: Prominent African-American architect did his first work in a modest West Central home

Sun., Feb. 21, 2021

Julian Francis Abele among the first Black architects in America, whose portfolio includes the Philadelphia Museum of Art and he famous chapel at Duke University. But his earliest design was for a house for his sister, in West Central.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: In a time of false patriots, Herrera Beutler showed she’s the real thing

Sat., Feb. 20, 2021

The word “patriot” has fallen into egregious misuse lately.

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Shawn Vestal: Neo-Nazi leader who bought 30 acres near Republic worked for Homeland Security

Fri., Feb. 19, 2021

The leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group who bought 30 mountainous acres of land outside Republic in 2018 once worked for the federal agency dedicated to… fighting terrorism.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: From an unforeseen corner comes a push to return dam-breaching to the discussion

UPDATED: Sun., Feb. 14, 2021

Redfish Lake is one of the most beautiful places in the Rockies – a classic mountain lake, icy and deep blue, surrounded by the lush green slopes and distant rocky peaks of Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness.

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Shawn Vestal: Reform will require blocking police unions from impeding accountability

UPDATED: Thu., Feb. 11, 2021

If you’re hoping to see shackles placed on the ability of police unions to hamper officer misconduct investigations, then I suggest you get to grips with an excellent slice of legislation: Section 3 of Senate Bill 5134.

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Shawn Vestal: The synagogue vandal grows from an entire ecosystem of hatred

Wed., Feb. 10, 2021

People say it was shocking that a racist vandal spray-painted swastikas and defaced the Holocaust memorial at Temple Beth Shalom this week.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: After a rough COVID-19 winter, glimmers of optimism appear

Sun., Feb. 7, 2021

There is, as Dr. Francisco Velázquez likes to say, light at the end of the tunnel.

Opinion >  Column

Shawn Vestal: Matt Shea, the Redoubt rock star, keeps riling up his followers for ‘total war’

Fri., Feb. 5, 2021

Less than a month after the fatal Capitol takeover by self-described patriots battling supposed tyranny, Matt Shea stood before an adoring crowd in North Idaho and told them to prepare for “total war.”

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Shawn Vestal: Unemployment chief’s terrible, horrible, very bad year somehow lands her a federal appointment

Wed., Feb. 3, 2021

Anyone who has found themselves waiting – and waiting, and waiting, and waiting – for unemployment benefits might be puzzled to learn that the woman in charge of them in Washington has been scooped up for a job in the Biden administration.