Not sure what Lalley was getting at, but if I understand it just a little bit he may be asking advocates to sit down and shut up;
But there are rules, written and implied, that guide us in the public redress of grievances.
Civility, decorum, manners – call it what you wish – but we do ourselves no favors in support of our values by casting it aside.
Passion is human, it is admirable.
For me at least, roiling anger is destructive.
What’s become clear over the past several weeks, as the proposal for the city to lease the parking lot at Eighth Street and Indiana Avenue came to light, is that we need to take a breath.
Doesn’t matter who is president, governor or mayor of our fine city, I have always supported free speech rights, and I don’t care how those words come out. In a time where DC is trying to chill free speech rights, and we have a local governing body of total secrecy this is the most important time to be heard. Sure, I would agree, screaming at these people or dropping dirty words at the podium may not be the best approach to being heard, but difficult things must be brought up in these meetings in order to come up with the best solutions. Problems get solved with differing views and objectives. When 9 people on a body agree on something, it makes me a bit suspicious and a little concerned issues are not being fully vetted (well I know they are not being fully vetted).
As Lalley suggests, try to keep decorum when attending these meetings, but don’t hold back, speaking truth to power is the only way we take back our country and city and if enough of us are loud enough they will have no choice but to listen. Sorry Pat, the Kumbyah approach doesn’t work with these folks.
The real question is: How can a city that built the Steel District also have the Dudley problem? Until we are all honest about that question, solvency in terms of the Dudley and or civility when it comes to local government and how local government operates and prioritizes cannot seriously be addressed.
Scott, this is a great topic, and I know you and I have gone round and round over the decorum thing a time or two. My sense of all this is we are seeing a lot more new faces at city council meetings coming and providing their input. I have always said, we have Free Speech everywhere we go in public except where we create a set of rule stop control, well, a public meeting. I recall this issue a few weeks ago, and it was quite exciting at the time. It is fun seeing so many passionate people come before the City council. But how much is this built up anger in people a matter of the people not believing the city council, let alone our government is choosing to not listen to us? Whether it’s the Delbridge Museum issue, the $70,000 Bishop Issue (fence), or some street or rezoning issue. IF the people are believing they are not being heard, they are going to stand up and speak in such a manner to get the attention of the government. We have now had many hot topic items in the past month, and each one brought forward many issues with city government, a lot of it comes back to your #1 pet peace – Transparency. As I brought up last night, is it time to create a public office called “Government Financial Transparency” and appoint a few persons to go through and inspect, review, and audit every department, office, agency, non-profit organization connected to the city to hunt for abuse, waste, fraud, going line by line to look at every expense. Is it time to get rid of employees? Is it time to cut our city budget? When a city is big enough to allow a small group of people to donate their money to fund capital projects based on their political connections, and we do not have any private money or support, certain projects don’t get done, it makes the people believe the City government is not working for the people anymore. I like to think, the people are finally getting to see how corrupted our city government really is today.