As Paula Cleanthous was out on her morning walk on the Monroe Street Bridge Friday, she remembered thinking, “Somebody has taken care of that graffiti.”
But when she reached Riverfront Park and the street cleaners were in the process of washing away paint splattered all over the rainbow crosswalk on Howard Street, it was another letdown.
Spokane woke up to a string of anti-LGBTQ+ vandalism on Friday morning, with white paint strewn across rainbow crosswalks that were meant to represent LGTBQ+ pride. The Pride flag crosswalk was painted in June as the result of inclusive efforts by Spokane Arts and City Council Member Zack Zappone. A report was filed with Spokane Police Department, and they are currently investigating the vandalism.
“I think Spokane is a great city. This is the kind of stuff that I just don’t get,” Cleanthous said.
To her, these things seem to happen so often now that the vandalism of the LGBTQ+ crosswalk didn’t send many shock waves.
“It’s so common, and this happened to be a big one. But it’s still not a shock,” Cleanthous said.
Street cleaners were able to clear the paint, but it wasn’t the only incident. The rainbow crosswalk on South Perry Street was also vandalized overnight outside of the Odyssey Youth Movement, an organization meant to provide resources and a safe space to LGBTQ+ youth. The organization’s sign was covered in even more paint, and the vandals left their paint-covered footprints on the outside steps, making this the second time in less than a month that the crosswalk outside was vandalized.
Odyssey’s executive director, Ian Sullivan, said the two incidents were obviously targeted and meant to make people feel unwelcome, but the organization will remain open for drop-ins and calls in case anyone feels unsafe.
“Pulaski High School and Pulaski School Board, we’re coming for ya. This is not going to end very well for you, trust me,” Rodriguez said in the clip.
He later posted another video in which he searched for the teacher at the 2023 N.E.W. Pride festival in De Pere, Wisconsin. In the post’s caption, he repeated the debunked claim that the teacher had encouraged students “to visit his sexually explicit” social media pages.
While Rodriguez neither lives in the Pulaski Community School District nor has a child attending a district school, the district claimed that his threats were “calculated to incite others to join in his harassing, intimidating and threatening conduct.”
Rodriguez denied threatening the school district, telling the Press-Gazette that he was merely using “internet lingo” in his posts.
“That means that we have you on our radar. We know what the accusations are. We’re watching to see what happens,” he said. “My translation of it, that I was hoping people would get, was that taxpayers are going to hold you accountable. Parents are going to hold you accountable.”
But a Brown County Circuit Court commissioner disagreed, granting the district’s request for a temporary restraining order last week. Rodriguez is ordered to stop harassing the district and its staff in person, by phone, in writing, or online. The order expires on October 13, when an injunction hearing is scheduled.
The World Bank has revised down its estimates for growth in Iraq.
In its MENA Economic Update (previously known as MENA Economic Monitor), it says the forecast for GDP growth in Iraq for 2023 has been updated to -2.3 percent, 5.1 percentage points less than the forecast in April 2023, and significantly less than the 7.0 percent observed in 2022. It projects a figure of 4.3 percent in 2024.
Growth in real GDP per capita in Iraq is projected to fall to -4.5 percent, markedly less than the 4.7 percent increase in 2022.
By the end of 2023, real GDP per capita is expected to be 15.3 percent below 2019 levels.
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