Google it

Cathy McMorris Rodgers has launched a "Red Scare" attack about Lisa Brown, arguing that Lisa sympathizes with Russian communists because she wrote about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman in her economics doctoral dissertation.

Had Cathy bothered to "google" their names, she would have found that in the early 1900s, Elizabeth and Emma spoke and wrote about women's rights, birth control, women's right to vote and workers' right to organize. Elizabeth was a founding member of the American Civil Liberty Union which continues to defend the Constitution in the courts, most recently by bringing the lawsuit that ended the policy which separated children and parents at the southwest border.

At the turn of the century, there were many voices advocating social change, and the communist party was one of these groups. To research this topic, McMorris Rodgers need only "google it".

I don't think that Lisa Brown would have found "Socialist, communist, and anarchist inspiration" from her study as CIVIR charges, but rather inspiration from the lives of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman, who believed in equality and justice for all and were willing to spend their lives in pursuit of the common good.

--Carolyn Cress, Pullman