Clackamas County Commission
From the desk of Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull
Phone: 503 655-8581
E-mail: mshull@clackamas.us
On 21 September you may have seen this headline:
Mark Shull condemned for comparing COVID mandates, Holocaust: https://
This was followed with a press release by Clackamas County: Clackamas County Board of Commissioners’ Statement on Mark Shull’s personal Facebook post comparing vaccine verifications to atrocities of the holocaust
“Clackamas County Board Chair Tootie Smith and Commissioners Sonya Fischer, Paul Savas and Martha Schrader issue the following statement relating to a recent post by Commissioner Mark Shull on his personal Facebook account comparing COVID-19 vaccine verifications to the horrific crimes and atrocities the Jewish community faced during the holocaust.”.
The problem with the Board’s statement is that I made no such “statement”. What I did was post a single meme on my personal Facebook page. The meme was sent to me by a Jewish resident of the county after a discussion we had the day before about the importance of remembering history.
The meme was one that has been around for decades. It is from Steven Spielberg’s 1995 documentary, THE LAST DAYS. The meme contains a quote from that documentary. I doubt it has ever caused a negative reaction before.
I posted the meme without adding any commentary to it, no comparison to current events, no disrespect for the holocaust or for the Jewish community; no comments at all, just the meme. My fellow Commissioners had a preconceived notion that my intent was to cause harm. Nothing is further from the truth!
Moments after I posted the meme it was downloaded by political antagonists who have been busy doing this sort of thing since January. It was then that they added the ugliness; “anti-Semite”, “disrespectful to the Jewish community”, and “comparing the holocaust to a vaccine mandate”. That was all 100% their creative writing.
At the 10am, 21 September Commissioners’ meeting, the draft of the Board’s statement came up for discussion. I told the other commissioners what I just stated above. It went to deaf ears. A vote was called for by Chair Smith and the outcome was 4 to 1 to sign the statement and disseminate it.
This same conduct on the part of the other commissioners has happened twice before since January of this year. When the media is bearing down on the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners, the other Commissioners look not at the facts, but at how best they can deflect any media from them.
The media storm and the conduct from the other Commissioners have nothing to do with what I actually posted. It has everything to do with political antagonists feeding the media with misinformation to further their own political agenda. My fellow Commissioners then directed the media heat to the most expedient target.
No Comments
Leave a comment Cancel