New Searchable Minutes for Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board and an update on Mayor’s upcoming update / Noisy Waters Northwest

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September 1, 2024

First things first

Here is a link to a document that allows readers to search and browse minutes for all meeting dates of the three and a half years of Bellingham City Council’s Immigration Advisory Board:

June 2020 through January 2024 Immigration Advisory Board Meeting Minutes

[Note: the links were corrected above because the first document linked to was missing content]

Also, folks can also access these minutes, along with other year-long searchable versions of local government meeting minutes, along with details on how to interact with them, on this website’s Searchable Minutes page.

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Evidence update on Immigration Advisory Board information void and Police Chief remarks / Noisy Waters Northwest

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July 24, 2024 Dena Jensen

For the last six and a half months, the majority of my research and writing time has been focused on matters leading up to and including the Bellingham City Council’s February 2024 suspension of their Immigration Advisory Board’s meetings.

It may look a little like a lonely obsession at this point. There isn’t much material in local media or public government conversations about the sidelined body which had 8 of its 12 seats filled at the time meetings were halted, with 7 of those 8 positions being filled by people of color.

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‘Things are trying to suppress it, right?’: 2021 Camp 210 sweep letter from Immigration Advisory Board, a year-long timeline / Noisy Waters Northwest

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Click the image of various annotated pages of Bellingham Immigration Advisory Board minutes to view a selection of individual pages

June 19, 2024 Dena Jensen

“Things are trying to suppress it, right?” That was a remark made by a Bellingham City Council Member to the City’s Immigration Advisory Board members back in 2021. The context and specific timing will be made clear later in this post, but the question evokes an atmosphere of oppression that too many members of marginalized communities dwell within.  

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Still no movement from Bellingham toward dignity for Immigration Advisory Board members / Noisy Waters Northwest

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March 27, 2024 Dena Jensen

During her Mayor’s Report at the March 11, 2024 Bellingham City Council meeting, Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund had announced that at the next City Council meeting the Administration was going to bring forward a Boards and Commissions Expectations document “to establish clear expectations about the important work that these groups do.” At Bellingham’s City Council meeting this week on March 25, that did not happen.

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