By SUZANNE DOWNING
On Wednesday, every Alaska House representative got to have his or her say: Did Rep. David Eastman violate the rules of decorum set forth by the body, while he spoke about child abuse in the Judiciary Committee?
Thirty-five said yes, one said no.
Eastman was allowed to stand and explain himself, but he didn’t. Instead, he referred to procedure.
He should not have to explain himself for badly communicating in a committee meeting on Feb. 20 — that is his right, protected under the First Amendment. It’s also the right of all the other legislators to say he stepped over a line.
Eastman pointed out that “we are a deliberative body, we do have a deliberative process, that is not been followed in this case.” And yet, as a deliberative body, the House as a committee of the whole has the right to also deliberate on comments made that are deliberative.
Years ago, when Eastman made comments about Native women coming to Anchorage to get abortions, he was not on the floor or in committee, but speaking to the press, which willingly spread the words far and wide. The House censured him for those remarks in 2017.
Unfortunately, no one in the House Chambers on Wednesday called a point of order on the maker of the motion to censure Eastman. Freshman Rep. Andrew Gray, who stood at his desk, and nearly yelled and cast aspersions.
Gray should have been censured for linking Eastman to the Nazis, implying that because he posted a photo of himself standing next to a quote by Adolph Hitler at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., that somehow that means he supports the extermination of people. It’s a willful misunderstanding of Eastman’s social media photo, and it impugns his character.
There was free speech breaking out all over on Wednesday in the House of Representatives. It boiled down to this: “I don’t like what you said.” “You didn’t express something the way I would have expressed it.” “You embarrassed all of us with your comments.”
That’s all in the realm of free speech, and they’ve had their say, all 36 that were present for the vote.
Ironically — and this energy expended in the House is full of irony — Rep. Gray’s words in defense of abused children could be said about the unborn, which was the point that Eastman had been trying, clumsily, to say in committee.
Gray said: “It is incumbent upon all of us to do something. We cannot allow such atrocious, indefensible language to go un-denounced. We must speak out in defense of the dignity of this body but also as a parent, I must defend the value of all those children like mine, whose lives are valuable, whose deaths are not in the best interest of the state.”
There, Gray said it better than Eastman: Lives do matter, and that is the pro-life logic that Eastman was not effective in stating in the Judiciary Committee.
Now that everyone agrees on the value of life, it’s time for the House minority caucus to stop acting like children and get back to the work of the people. If members don’t stop with this Gray histrionics, they’ll be censuring each other all day long, and that is not what we sent them to Juneau for.
If legislators would allow Must Read Alaska to suggest a topic more important than censuring Eastman, we call their attention to the 300 Alaskans in Tuluksak who are still waiting for running water at the school, which hasn’t had water since Feb. 9. It’s time for the Legislature to, as it is permitted, to step up to its role as the borough for the unorganized Bethel Census Area, which has a community that is in dire straits.
Rep. Gray, as we know from his dramatic readings at the Anchorage Assembly, can get his feelings hurt by walking out the door each morning, but there are people in Alaska that need the Legislature to convene as their borough assembly and solve a real life-and-death situation.
Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska.
