The CWU community and Ellensburg residents held a meeting last Friday, Oct. 7, in response to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) fliers that have recently surfaced.

Over 50 students, staff, faculty and community members gathered in the SURC theatre to brainstorm and organize ways to protest any KKK presence in Kittitas County. Some community members plan to design and post signs in response to the fliers.  

The meeting was organized under the Not In Our Town (NIOT) movement a nationwide movement aiming to create safe and inclusive communities, free of hatred and bullying.

The meeting additionally served as a forum for ideas as community members organized on how best to design and distribute the NIOT signs and gather support.

“The more people we have to get the message out on campus and in the community and all over Kittitas County, the stronger our message will be,” said Marte Fallshore, meeting facilitator and CWU professor of psychology.

Autumn Robinson, a CWU senior and president of SISTERS, spoke at the meeting about the racial discrimination she has experienced since she transferred  in 2014.

“Immediately I saw some of these KKK fliers,” she said. “I’m kind of used to it because I always saw the Confederate flag where I’m from and [heard] people saying the N-word. And then I got here and it was just constant; I couldn’t walk around town with my friends without being called ‘N-word’ or called ‘B’ or being flipped off … I was scared to go out at night.”

Afterwards, community members attended the Associated Students of CWU public meeting to recruit more students and spread the word. Fallshore and Scott Drummond, associate director of campus life, spoke during the public comment section.

“Please join in,” Drummond said, “when you see the signs, grab a sign; when you see the programs, go to the programs.”

Drummond emphasized that the community should remain peaceful while opposing the KKK presence.

“We can do that peacefully; that’s the beauty of it,” he said, “we can match their violence with our peacefulness.”

ASCWU president Armando Ortiz called those who distributed the fliers “cowards,” and said that ASCWU doesn’t condone the distribution of KKK fliers.

Fallshore organized the meeting in a campus-wide email chain after suggesting the community unite under NIOT. She received an “overwhelming” number of positive responses from faculty and staff, which led to student and Ellensburg community involvement in Friday’s meeting.

“The concern is real,” Drummond said at the ASCWU meeting. “I know a lot of times, in terms of what we see or hear about the KKK, about neo-nazism, white supremacists, et cetera, we kind of have a disassociation and we think it’s just on tv. We think it’s just in the news or in a movie or something. It’s very real.”

Drummond went on to ask the community to stand together against the KKK, as they have with other issues in the past.

“The beauty of Central and the beauty of the Ellensburg community is we’ve always stood up,” he said. “Just because it gets driven under doesn’t mean it’s gone. It’s always there.”

According to a Facebook post by the Ellensburg Police Department, the fliers were left on resident’s lawns in rock-filled bags late last month.

“The City of Ellensburg is appalled by the recent abhorrent behavior exhibited by the Ku Klux Klan,” the post said. “The material in the fliers promotes divisiveness. It does not represent us at the City nor our Community.”

For information on the local Not In Our Town movement, contact Marte Fallshore at [email protected].