Tag Archives: North Idaho

Last month, dozens of activists packed into a small room in the Post Falls library for a board meeting of the Community Library Network. Some came to defend the library, but video of the meeting suggests most were there to condemn administrators for allowing children access to what they insisted were “pornographic” books.

Earlier this month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, addressed the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, whose purview runs from this small resort city up along the Washington state border. Before she spoke, a local pastor and onetime Idaho state representative named Tim Remington, wearing an American flag-themed tie, revved up the crowd: “If we put God back in Idaho, then God will always protect Idaho.” 

Starting Sept. 8, “Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest” — a new six-session documentary and discussion series — kicks off at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Organized through a partnership between the Human Rights Education Institute, Museum of North Idaho and the church, the series is intended to create opportunities for thoughtful small group public discussions about realities, challenges and opportunities that are part of life in the Inland Northwest.

Idaho in the ‘80s and ‘90s and into the early years of this century became an “end-of-the-road” destination, the northern, western state where all roads metaphorically end, collecting the wackaloons and nutcases — and worse — who were fleeing other parts of the country in search of religious fundamentalism and their version of racial purity.

“Hindsight’s 20-20,” said Hegelund. “I think a lot of churches, if they had known that they were planning to shut us down, basically permanently, we would have never gone along with it. It wasn’t really about helping out the hospitals. It was about something else.”