Randy Blazak a sociologist, a scholar, and a researcher who has spent many years studying hate groups and militias will  be speaking  at Kol Shalom about the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 

Dr. Blazak was a Professor of Sociology at Portland State University for twenty years and he continues to teach at the University of Oregon. He is the chair of the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crimes and serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  He is regularly used by the national and international media as an expert on hate groups and hate crime. 

Randy wrote in his Jan 25th blogpost entitled What does the Bundy militia really want? 

 "We can make fun of these guys. We can see how they've trampled the rights of the people of Harney County while pretending to defend them. We can see them as little boy soldiers obsessed with guns and cowboy hats. We can see them as entitled whites who are the media-savvy face of a racist underground. We can see them as armed terrorists who would be dead by now if they were black or Muslim. Or we could see them as sparking a discussion about our faith in and fear of the government and what we should do about it.

....[A]s much as we might disagree with the macho tactics of the militia members, this issue about the power of the federal government to infringe on our personal liberties is at the core of the American conversation. It was in 1789 and it is in 2016."