By Barbara Smith,
Blogger and Social Justice Activist,
https://www.facebook.com/HWdemocrats/
Communication between town officials is open to the public…..
There are thousands of emails between Hamilton Wenham School Board member, Anna Siedzik and Hamilton Town Manager, Joe Domelowicz on the town email servers. They are being widely distributed to provide transparency in our government and some have come my way….. Anyone can request them (for a fee) and the more requests the better…..
Anna has involvement in every aspect of Hamilton that involves wasting the time of our tax funded elected and employed town officials as she communicates on issues such as
- getting permits, for food and port-a-potties for her faith-based, political lobby called the Hamilton Wenham Human Rights Coalition (HWHRC) Pride Event…. not a town sanctioned event….
- grooming and training her followers to replace the Select Board members who refused to obey her demands
- controlling administrators of the Hamilton Wenham resident and community face book pages so that they can ban voices of dissent and truth.
- communications with Massachusetts tribes and then asking Joe how to create an acceptable Native American Proclamation to recite in School Board and other public meetings. How does this benefit the tax-payers/residents and ALL citizens of Hamilton, exactly?
- where to hang the Juneteenth flag and who will speak at the Coalition led event (a worthy cause, but still Anna controlled all aspects of it)
- She has her thumb in the Affordable Housing Trust (that the president of the North Shore NAACP, Natalie Bowers, consults for). Affordable housing in Hamilton should prioritize current residents and be environmentally sound without coalition influence….. Coalition followers such as Natalie Hildreth are on this trust. Natalie H. is also a Face book administrator who bans people like me from speaking out about conflicts of interests….. Natalie B. viciously attacked me via text…. (I have saved multiple screenshots) . Anna is employed by a church-based, Affordable Housing nonprofit Harborlight Community Partners. The Harborlight owner’s wife is a leader in the North Shore NAACP. (I still highly respect her work and the valuable work they do, but they need to disassociate from Anna Siedzik and her political lobby ….) How about telling Anna to resign????
- Anna decides what should go on the BOS agenda such discussing Pride flags or attacking other board members who refuse to sign off on Coalition demands.
- Hamilton Select board member, Jamie Knudsen is liaison to the Hamilton Human Rights Committee (HHRC) which is taxpayer funded. Yet, he was roommates at Gordon with Anna’s employer at Harborlight. Many communications are between Mr. Knudsen and Anna Siedzik, his so called “social justice warrior” that are related to Anna’s demands and mission instead of serving the residents who elected him. He was actually involved in providing legal work for the Coalition, that will be explored in another post…..
- Anna communicated with tax funded town officials on organizing rides from the Counsel on Aging (COA) to HWHRC events, even though the Coalition is a private political lobby.
- Zoom info and discussion for a HWHRC webinar on flying Pride and other flags
- Knudson’s wife, Katie Knudsen is on the board of the special interest HWHRC and has her finger in every pie related to Gordon College. She and others have signed anti-gay pledges in order to get a job at Gordon College.
- Nancy Stehfest is the chair of the Hamilton Democratic Town Committee and a longtime leader in the (HHRC).
- The common thread is Gordon Conwell Seminary and Gordon College, the local Christian Educational institutions. Many members of all of these groups (all mentioned names) are associated with the colleges via volunteer work, marriage, employment or having attended the colleges. There is no end to the web of connections ……. By the way, Gordon discriminates against the LGBTQ Community and the irony is astounding.
- There is no end to Anna Siedzik’ s control of every aspect of Hamilton government, the political lobby she leads (HWHRC) and all of the tentacles such as pro-Anna publicity from the Salem News editor who happens to be a Gordon graduate.
- Anna convinced Joe to let the church based organizations distribute the covid test kits last fall…. As a result, there were not enough kits for the vulnerable seniors in Hamilton….
If Anna manages to get her hands on Joe’s personnel records, she will see that removing town property (the covid test kits) from town property (town hall) did not go over well with the past Select Board. It was against the town bylaws and therefore, a crime. He should have been fired, but he is still there…..
Why did Anna Siedzik want to see Joe’s evaluation?
Actually, employment records are NOT public info, although the thousands of emails between Anna and Joe are. Why didn’t she simply ask Joe to show them to her? Could it be because he was too embarrassed to show his poor performance record? Again, Ipswich dodged a bullet by not hiring him. Yet, Hamilton continues to suffer the consequences of having a town manager beholden to a bully. She controls Joe and the current Select Board. Perhaps Anna was worried that his personnel files were so bad that he might get fired and then she would no longer have him available to answer to every whim, question and demand thrown at him via thousands of emails.
Hamilton taxpayers pay employers such as town manager- a huge salary and the token stipends paid to the members of the Board of Health, Select Board etc.
It is unethical for a town official, Anna Siedzik to be taking up the time of our tax funded Town Clerk to find information for a resident who should have no reason to want or ask for access to this private information. Hamilton Officials and employees must spend their tax funded TIME serving the people of Hamilton, NOT the political lobby. Of course, Carin, our hard-working town clerk should never have been asked to do Anna’s dirty work and she politely refused…..
After reading several emails, I understand that Anna believes she is entitled to do all of this. Its as though she thinks she is chosen by god to save Hamilton from all the “racists”, “bigots”, “classists” and “TERFs” she calls anyone who stands in her way. In fact, calling voices of dissent such names is one of the strategies of the radical, extremists that Anna learned, presumably at Yale. Anna and her cult use many of the strategies taught there… They want to get into gullible minds and like any religious cult, they are always right and the rest of us are wrong…..
Take Action
- Tell the leaders of the North Shore NAACP to disassociate from the faith-based, political lobby known as the Hamilton Wenham Human Rights Coalition. Other non-profits should do the same…..
- Tell Hamilton officials to stop allowing Anna Siedzik to bully them. They are afraid of what she can do to them because she has learned so well how to control other people. Just ask the politicians down in Boston, where Anna heavily lobbies to get her way at the state house.
- Support candidates for state office who are NOT endorsed by Anna Siedzik, as Jamie Belsito was. Belsito does whatever Anna requests, especially as relates to housing development…..
- I think that the Hamilton Human Rights Commission should be disbanded. Taxes should not pay for all of these conflicts of interest and under the radar, blatant anti-free speech, anti democracy actions.
- Be brave, recognize Anna and her followers for what they are, a faith-based cult functioning as a radical political lobby. Call them out. They will hate you and gaslight you as they have done to me….. but that’s the price of fighting for free speech and democracy.