Once politically marginalized despite their large numbers, both have a candidate in the race for Oregon House District 22, touting differing ideologies
Anna Kasachev thought she would spend this spring on the campaign trail, but instead she helps her fellow Russian Old Believers make face masks in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Old Believers in the Woodburn area have made roughly 1,000 masks for first responders and assisted-living centers. More masks are coming.
“We’re seamstresses in our community,” said Kasachev, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Oregon House District 22. “We make our own clothes. We are busy as a community around Easter, but we put things aside so we could help the world around us.”
The political metaphor is striking. Kasaschev and her community make masks while they increasingly show their own faces to the world.
North Marion County’s Old Believers descend directly from Russians who refused to accept Patriarch Nikon of Moscow’s changes in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1653, which resulted in the Raskol (or schism) within the church.
Groups of Old Believers began traveling the globe, from Romania to South America, in search of a home where they could worship in peace. A large group of Old Believers settled in the Woodburn area after living in Turkey and New Jersey in the 1960s and ’70s. Locals referred to them at first as “The Turks.”
Old Believers stayed mostly to themselves, concerned involvement in the wider world would dilute the culture they struggled to maintain for 300 years. Yet they occasionally asserted themselves politically as a group.
In 1989, Old Believers packed a Woodburn School Board meeting to demand their children be excused from state-mandated music education and that Russian language classes be offered for Russian students only. (This reporter was at the meeting, covering it for the Woodburn Independent newspaper.)
Music, many of them believed, should serve only a religious purpose. They also feared children risked losing their Russian language skills by exposure to American culture and might lose their ability to converse with their elders.
The board meeting lasted until 3 a.m. with no resolution. While prominent in the area as farmers and businesspeople, Old Believers have rarely flexed their political muscles as a group in recent decades.
Kasachev told Street Roots that’s changing.
Oregon House Bill 3063, which would have eliminated non-medical exemptions for vaccinating children against measles and other communicable diseases, incensed many Old Believers.
“We became politically involved during the debate over the vaccine bill,” Kasaschev said.
Although measles cases were rising in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown sacrificed the bill during the 2019 legislature session to bargain for the passage of the $1 billion-per-year corporate activity tax to help fund public schools.
The bill may have died, but Old Believers’ political activism flourished.
“We realize there were a lot of other political issues that affect the Russian Old Believer community negatively,” Kasachev said.
Old Believers have since emerged as a conservative political force in Oregon. Dozens of them, concerned about their business interests, testified during the Legislature’s short session this year against limiting carbon emissions through cap-and-trade legislation.
Dominika Boianoff, who works as a real estate agent in Lake Oswego, joined Kasachev and other younger members of the community to form Freedom Believers, a 501(c)(4) organization to promote policy changes.
“There’s been a lot of changes and a lot of things happening,” Boianoff told Street Roots. “It’s been a good year. In the past year and a half, we have taken a political stand.”
However, discontent among Old Believers has been stewing for some time.
They were upset in 2009 by House Bill 2509, requiring school districts to provide sex education in elementary and secondary schools. The bill was signed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.
They were similarly disturbed by House Bill 3391 in 2017, which required health plans sold in Oregon to provide coverage for several reproductive health care services at no out-of-pocket cost to the insured. Those services include abortions.
Kasachev echoed a claim by the bill’s adversaries that the legislation, which Brown signed into law, forces taxpayers to pay for abortions, but that’s not accurate. It requires people or companies that pay the insurance premiums — not taxpayers — to cover the costs. The law also exempts insurers from having to cover abortion services if the insurer’s individual and employer group plans sold in 2017 excluded abortion coverage.
Regardless, Kasachev said such policies eventually led to her to declare her candidacy for House District 22.
“Although we weren’t politically involved, it’s necessary now that the government passes laws that don’t jibe with our beliefs and Christian values,” she said.
No matter how her political positions play in a blue state like Oregon, Old Believer political involvement continues an evolutionary — perhaps revolutionary — change in north Marion County’s political landscape.
The area, and Woodburn in particular, has one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse populations in the state. Most of Oregon’s 10,000 Old Believers live in the area, many of them on farms in unincorporated areas.
Ripple effect in the Latinx community Latinx residents represent almost 60% of Woodburn’s population. While Woodburn officials had publicly touted the region’s diversity, Russian and Latinx residents were noticeably absent from government at all levels.
The city seal once proclaimed Woodburn the “City of Unity.” The iconography, however, depicted mainstream Anglos at the top of the seal, with Latinx people at the bottom and Russians and seniors off to the sides.
It was the elderly residents who filled the 1,500 homes of the Senior Estates subdivision who represented the most significant local voting bloc for years. They traditionally voted down school levies and elected white retirees to the City Council, Planning Commission and other local governing bodies.
Latinx residents were a significant percentage of the population well before they represented the majority of the town. Yet they had no claim on political power. That changed one day, almost as fast as a speeding bullet.
On Oct. 21, 1983, Woodburn police Sgt. Kay Boutwell shot and killed 24-year-old Jose Inez Medina Munoz because he was sitting in a car that fit the description of a vehicle tied to a burglary.
Boutwell claimed his gun went off after Munoz grabbed his arm. The shooting, ultimately ruled an accident, ignited the Latinx community.
At the same time, the Willamette Valley Immigration Project, founded in 1977, began evolving into PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United). Although originally written off by many in the community as a group of agitators and outliers, PCUN has since developed into a major political force in Oregon.
The 1983 shooting, however, showed the most immediate ripple effect in local politics.
Elida Sifuentez worked as a nurse at the time at MacLaren School, the state reform school located just north of Woodburn. She joined a citizens review committee that was formed to air complaints about the Police Department and the city in the wake of the shooting.
She was the only Latinx person on the committee.
Sifuentez was born in the town of Asherton in southern Texas. Her cousin Albert Garza Bustamante was a four-term congressman for Texas’ 23rd District. Sifuentez moved to north Marion County in 1966. Her parents said they were just going to stay until September, but they never left.
Catherine Myers, the president of the Woodburn City Council, stepped down in 1985. Myers, a co-worker with Sifuentez at MacLaren, suggested she seek the appointment to fill the vacancy.
“She knew I had credibility with the Hispanic community,” Sifuentez told Street Roots.
When Sifuentez was sworn in as a councilor in 1986, she was the first Latinx woman to serve on any local board.
No one seemed to worry about recruiting another person of color for local government, she said.
“I guess they thought, ‘We have our token Elida.’”
Sifuentez said she never really saw herself in politics.
“Never in a million years did I think I would be nominated for that position,” she said.
She was up against Frank Lonergan, a prominent white business owner who had served on a number of city boards and commissions. When he presented his case to the council, he talked about being born and raised in Woodburn.
“If I had been on the City Council at the time, I would have chosen Frank,” Sifuentez said. “I just froze. I said, ‘I’m Elida Sifuentez, and I want to serve the community of Woodburn if given the opportunity.’ Maybe they were embarrassed that Hispanics didn’t have any representation.”
Sifuentez served on the council for 20 years. After she left, there would not be another Latinx face on the council for another decade.
Then Teresa Alonso Leon moved back to town in 2010. Born in Michoacan, Mexico, she grew up in north Marion County. She was appointed to fill another vacancy on the council in 2013, one year after becoming a U.S. citizen.
Meanwhile, other local Latinx residents were building their political muscles.
Following the 2000 Census, local activist Anthony Veliz helped legislative leaders draw a new House district for the Woodburn area, one that would give Latinx voters a commanding advantage.
He used software provided by the Juan Andrade Jr. and the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute to create what is now House District 22. Nonetheless, a series of mainstream white candidates filled the seat, starting with Republican Cliff Zauner from 2001 to 2005 and Democrat Betty Komp from 2005 to 2017.
Patti Milne was scheduled to be next.
The conservative Milne started off on the Woodburn School Board and represented the area in the previous House District 18 from 1993 to 1998 and was a Marion County commissioner from 1999 to 2014.
She had the experience and name recognition as well as considerable money and support from the Anglo section of the community. PCUN leaders, however, had a plan. They also had Alonso Leon.
“She was serving on the City Council at the time, and doing an outstanding job,” Veliz told Street Roots. “We had a conversation, and I said she should run. That may have been part of what sparked her interest.”
PCUN organizers helped Alonso Leon reach Latinx and Russian voters, going door to door and using a provision in Oregon’s vote-by-mail law that allows proxies to deliver ballots with the voter’s written consent.
“That really helped so many people who were maybe running late,” Alonso Leon said.
She ran the most grassroots campaign imaginable, she said.
“What really helped me win was that I grew up in this community, and I was the first candidate to run a multilingual campaign,” said Alonso Leon, a Democrat. “I don’t think any candidate had ever spoken to them in their own language.”
She even had material printed in Russian.
“Even if I couldn’t speak to them, I could leave something behind for them in their own language,” she said.
“When you see someone who looks like you and who speaks like you, it really helps,” she said. “It helped my campaign. My campaign resonated with the community.”
PCUN is no longer considered an outlier organization, Alonso Leon said.
“Like any organization, when it feels like and sounds like you’re against the system, it’s challenging to break through,” she said. “What they were able to do is develop strong leaderships with certain legislators.”
Conflict and common ground As the Russian and Latinx communities have come into their own politically, they find themselves at odds. Involved members of the Latinx community, at least politically, come from a progressive activist tradition exemplified by PCUN and other leaders.
Active Old Believers have a distinctly conservative attitude, especially on issues of individual rights as they affect LGBTQ+ people.
“We’re looking at the LGBTQ messages sprinkled through the curriculum,” Kasaschev said. “Our message is we can love you, but we’re going to ask that you don’t push your agenda on us.”
Old Believers and other Christians are truly the oppressed groups, she said.
“There’s no longer freedom for Christians and conservatives,” she said. “Our ancestors knew about oppression. They were persecuted, and they fled persecution. Many of our elders weren’t educated and didn’t know how to advocate for themselves.”
She and other younger members of her community are different, she said. “Having been born and raised here in the United States gives us a different perspective.”
Kasachev said she sees no conflict with the Latinx community.
“Many in the Latino community are actually American citizens,” she said. “They’re not liberal. They’re actually conservative. They don’t feel they have the representation with their current leaders.”
Although she may not see conflict, she acknowledges differences.
“There is a divide, but because of the way Oregon has been going, a lot of people are being ignored,” she said. “We need to have the right people to do the job.”
Just as Kasachev said not all Latinx voters are liberal, Veliz said not all Russian Old Believers are conservative.
“We have Russian Old Believer friends, and we will have them forever,” he said.
“We’re not talking about lots and lots of people,” he said. “They have their main issues, but I think if all of them were polled, they wouldn’t all be in line with the more conservative opinions. The social conservatives are the ones who are politically active and the ones who are talking the loudest right now.”
Common ground is easy to find in north Marion County these days. The area has been hit disproportionately hard by the coronavirus pandemic. State statistics show some 200 cases in the area as of April 12, while Marion County in general remains an epicenter for COVID-19. Only Multnomah County has more deaths and confirmed cases of the disease.
Woodburn Mayor Eric Swenson told Street Roots the numbers are misleading, though, because they are tallied by ZIP code.
“Our ZIP code is larger than the city of Salem — all the way to St. Paul and half the way to Molalla,” Swenson said. “It’s north Marion County as opposed to Woodburn.”
The city has also traditionally suffered the attendant problems of poverty. The archives of the Woodburn Independent newspaper show that the town grappled with street gangs and prostitution, as well as being a major depot for the importation of Mexican tar heroin in the 1970s and ’80s.
Those problems have been significantly alleviated, Swenson said. Yet having a large population of seasonal migrant farmworkers means poverty persists.
COVID-19: Farmworkers lack safety net as pandemic threatens jobs, health
Between the poor and the elderly, he said, Woodburn is vulnerable. Those populations were harder to reach, which meant they joined stay-home efforts later than most.
Different perspectives Kasachev said she and other Old Believers began making masks when asked by one of her family members in the medical field.
“She reached out and said doctors don’t have enough masks,” she said. “Dominika organized people in the community. We’re organized. That’s what we do.”
Nonetheless, she remains conservative on some issues related to the pandemic.
“We have to be careful about spreading COVID, but we’re still looking at Gov. Brown for real leadership and looking for real guidelines for reopening businesses,” she said. “We can’t afford to indefinitely remain without work.”
Alonso Leon said she prefers not to focus on divisions at a time when Oregonians should be united, especially in north Marion County.
“We all live in the community,” Alsonso Leon said. “Despite our differences, this is our home, and there’s no kind of rift, one against another. We all do the best we can to live with dignity.”
Sifuentez, the former City Council member, said she’s glad Woodburn and the surrounding area are evolving.
“It’s really changed,” she said. “Now several Hispanic people have come in and out of the City Council. They’ve been very active on local boards and commissions and have tried to get more Russians involved.”
Although she differs politically with the Old Believers, she said she’s glad to see them involved in the political process.
“I think it’s a new generation among the Russian community coming up and realizing the importance of getting involved in the politics of the town,” she said. “They wanted a piece of what everyone else has. That’s what we wanted. That’s what everyone wants.”
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