National conservative women’s network forms Newport County chapter. Who are they?

PORTSMOUTH – Jean Lehane and Geeta Chougule had all of the windows and the side door of the Portsmouth Free Library event room propped open in vain hopes of catching a cross breeze on a sweltering summer afternoon, greeting guests and inviting them to fill up a plate of snacks before the movie started.

Lehane and Chougule, co-founders of the Newport chapter of the Independent Women’s Network (IWN), were hosting their second screening of "Planet of the Humans," a controversial documentary directed by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore which levies a hefty dose of criticism towards the renewable energy industry writ large.

The IWN co-sponsored the screening along with the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a right-leaning think tank and member of the State Policy Network (a nationwide web of conservative think tanks linked to conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch) founded in 2011 with $218,854 in anonymous donations.

While founder Mike Stenhouse is the Center’s only publicly listed employee, Chougule told The Newport Daily News she has a contract position at the Center which predates her co-founding of the Newport IWN chapter. Chougule said the Newport chapter she and Lehane started is the first IWN chapter in New England.

According to its website, IWN, which currently has 21 chapters around the country, is a project of Independent Women’s Voice – a 501(c)4 public welfare organization that cannot accept tax-deductible donations – in partnership with Independent Women’s Forum – a 501(c)3 nonprofit which can accept tax-deductible donations, and made $6,569,955 in revenue last year according to ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer website.

The IWN website describes the organization as “a private online forum empowering conservative women to inspire, influence, and impact their communities.”

The Newport chapter’s website uses the following description for itself, which does not specifically label the group as conservative:

“…a dynamic group of women of all different backgrounds who value integrity, individual liberty and freedom – and we are growing! We tackle issues such as education, pending legislation, election integrity and more. We look forward to meeting the many challenges ahead with determination and decisive action.”

However, Lehane, Chougule and chapter member Kalen Arreola of North Kingstown all characterized the organization as conservative in conversations with The Daily News.

“Obviously, IWN is a fairly conservative-leaning group,” said Arreola. “Our goal is bringing all women together to talk about world events and issues impacting all of our families. Obviously, when you do a Google search about us we tend to have a conservative-leaning viewpoint, but that is not necessarily the intention; the intention is just to share the truth about things that are going on in the world.”

Chougule told The Daily News every local chapter has the autonomy to adapt their activities to the specific political and social reality of their particular state, but did say if the local Newport chapter ever had a serious departure from the national IWN platform on any given issue, they would likely defer to the national stance on the issue or simply decline to focus on it.

Arreola, one of the fledgling chapter’s 14 members, said it was her idea to screen the film, first at the Cranston public library on June 1 and then in Portsmouth on Tuesday, July 11. Lehane said IWN intends to screen the film a third time later this summer, either in Portsmouth again or in a third municipality.

“I don’t think that everybody knows where green energy comes from,” said Arreola, citing concerns about the impact of turbine construction on Rhode Island’s commercial fisheries and the cost to ratepayers of electricity produced by offshore turbines. “Even though everyone I talk to is excited about the idea of clean energy sources, they just want to make sure that they are truly clean energy sources and we’re not damaging the environment more than if we just stuck with what we’ve been doing.”

At the June 1 screening in Cranston, state Rep. Robert Quattrocchi attended as an audience member, and state Rep. Patricia Morgan led an audience Q&A at the end. Arreola said she invited elected officials to attend the Portsmouth screening as well, but none showed up.

According to IRS guidelines governing nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations such as the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Independent Women’s Forum, organizations can engage in “voter education activities,” as long as they do so in a nonpartisan manner. A recognized nonprofit cannot support or oppose a candidate or group of candidates or devote “a substantial part of its activities” to the cause of influencing legislation, or lobby for or against specific legislation.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Independent Women's Network forms in Newport, first in New England