My name is Robert Samuel White. I am a U.S. Forest Service volunteer caretaker on the Oregon Coast. I am writing to you because what happened to me at Oregon State Parks exposed a structural gap in volunteer protections that exists in every state — and closing it requires legislation.

I am a gay man. I mention it not to center it, but because it is part of the documented pattern — a park supervisor who sat silently while her manager mocked my sexuality, a volunteer coordinator who extracted personal disclosures in confidence and delivered them to management, a regional coordinator with an explicit DEI background who weaponized those disclosures to construct a narrative of instability and justify permanent expulsion. A gay governor who has been silent through all of it. The full context is in the archive.

In February 2025, I was a volunteer at Honeyman State Park on the Oregon Coast. I sent an email at 6AM asking for operational clarity during a power outage. My supervisor responded dismissively. I named her tone in a follow-up email.

That email became the origin of everything that followed.

Over the next two months, Oregon State Parks subjected me to a systematic pattern of abuse and retaliation:

They sat me down at a public picnic table for over an hour. The park manager told me to chew glass and swallow it. He admitted I was never given the benefit of the doubt from day one. He suggested repeatedly that I leave. He framed my emails as unprofessional and my interactions with everyone as problematic, while never once engaging with a single fact. I recorded all 62 minutes.

While I was cleaning yurts alone — while all rangers were away at a regional event — an unidentified man arrived out of uniform, with no credentials, in an unmarked state vehicle, with the demeanor of an off-duty law enforcement officer. He interrogated me about how leadership was treating me. He reframed the questions each time I refused to answer them. I documented the encounter the same day.

They dismissed me by phone six days before my scheduled completion, citing a homeless man's lost journal. One hour later the park manager arrived at my RV to collect the keys and admitted on camera that no formal documentation existed. I immediately recorded a video recounting the retaliation I experienced over the previous two months and posted it online.

The following day, their regional coordinator called to contain the situation. She weaponized personal disclosures I had made in trust to paint me as unstable. I recorded 30 minutes and 56 seconds of that call.

The day after, they permanently expelled me from every Oregon State Parks volunteer program in the state. The expulsion letter — on agency letterhead, signed — cited my public documentation of the abuse as the sole reason.

That is First Amendment retaliation. In writing. On state letterhead.

I spent a year trying every legitimate channel available to me. Every one failed.

Direct correspondence to every named individual. No response from any of them.

Escalation to Director Lisa Sumption with full documentation. Ignored completely.

A comprehensive public records request. Oregon State Parks remained silent for 90 days in violation of state law. The cost estimate for the records: tens of thousands of dollars.

A formal open letter to the Director. She closed communication by calling my comprehensive documented evidence emotional processing.

Formal complaints to Governor Tina Kotek's office. Never responded. Not once.

Formal §1983 notices citing personal liability for First Amendment retaliation. They sent a deputy director to characterize documented constitutional violation as dissatisfaction with a volunteer management decision.

Then they went silent. For a full year.

On March 24, 2026 — the one year anniversary of my dismissal — three officers arrived at a locked federal gate on restricted federal land where I serve as U.S. Forest Service caretaker. They told me they were concerned about what I was posting online. I declined to speak without an attorney. The visit is documented.

There was no mechanism that kept me safe in their parks.

That sentence is the whole story.

Volunteers have no protection from institutional retaliation anywhere in this country. No HR. No grievance process. No due process requirement before removal. No mandatory reporting channel. No whistleblower protection. No recourse of any kind.

A state agency can sit an unpaid laborer down at a picnic table, tell them to chew glass and swallow it, expel them for speaking publicly about it — and then send police to their door a year later on the anniversary of their retaliatory dismissal — behind a locked gate on restricted federal land.

This is not an Oregon problem. This is a structural vacuum that exists in every state. Every institution that depends on unpaid labor operates inside it. Most simply don't exploit it to the degree Oregon State Parks did under the leadership of Director Lisa Sumption.

But the gap is there. And it will be exploited again. By other agencies, in other states, against other volunteers who have no idea they have no rights until the moment those rights are needed.

At minimum, volunteers serving state agencies need:

• A mandatory grievance process before removal or expulsion
• Whistleblower protection for reporting abuse, retaliation, or unsafe conditions
• An independent reporting channel outside the agency chain of command
• Due process requirements proportional to the duration and nature of service
• Explicit First Amendment protections for public speech about volunteer service conditions
• Prohibition on retaliatory expulsion from statewide programs based on speech

None of these protections currently exist for volunteers in Oregon or in most states. The absence is not an oversight. It is a design choice that serves institutional convenience at the expense of the people who serve for free.

I am asking you to change that.

Everything described above is documented, independently verifiable, and publicly accessible.

The full archive: oprdvolunteerabuse.org