The Attack on Citizen Participation in Civic Life
Starting in the spring of 2002, local property rights activists have come under fire in statewide media for publishing information of a private nature about private citizens in direct mail campaigns and websites, including homes addresses and photos of their properties. Citizens targeted in these mailings had endorsed Smart Growth 4th District candidate Izzy Martin.
Although this kind of intimidation can cause many citizens to drop out of civic life, others are defending themselves by filing police reports and harassment charges to protect their privacy and right to participate in community affairs without having to pay a personal price.
Other recent examples of harassment in Nevada County include: In October 2002, a Rough & Ready resident filed a police report after an eviscerated cat was left on her porch, the day after she participated in a local radio call-in show with candidates. Two weeks earlier, a candidate running in the 4th District race, filed a police report after someone had driven nails into the inside walls of his back tires while he was participating in a debate.
Intimidation tactics are hardly unique to Nevada County, as other rural communities around the country have had to deal with their own groups that engage in reckless, anti-government rhetoric that divides the community, whips people into an emotional frenzy and can encourage fragile people to go over the edge and commit acts of violence. Fortunately, citizens in Nevada County are banding together to insist on civility in public discourse while condemning acts of intimidation.
Stale blog offering Perspective on ideas, issues and life from Nevada County, California - belaboring the obvious since 2003
Sunday, December 07, 2003
The Attack on Citizen Participation in Civic Life - Yubanet article excerpt
From the Jan 7, 2003 Yubanet article, Property Rights Politics In Nevada County, CA:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome, and thanks for caring enough to donate your time and thoughts toward greater collective wisdom...
Terms of engagement:
* Please be civil.
* * * * Please do not post anonymously * * * (I'd remove this choice if I could, and I may remove your comment if you do) - instead, do this:
Click on the 'Name/URL' radiobutton, then enter your real name (if you're brave) or a pseudonym (if you're not). (You can leave the "URL" field blank.)
Or go ahead and click "Anonymous", but put your name in your comment.
* The Management reserves the right to delete comments (Moderation Certificate can be found here). You can always post it on a blog of your own.
If you run into technical difficulties, please a) accept my apologies, then b) email your comment to aherror2011 at gmail.com with "Comment for [name of this blog]" in the Subject line.
New policy re climate contrarianism comments as of 11/11/2009:
Comments questioning the climate science community's understanding of climate change (97% of active climatologists now believe that the earth is currently warming and that it's human-caused - link) will be deleted unless the commenter:
a) is local
b) uses his real name
c) provides link(s) to substantiate his claim(s)/inference(s)
d) is willing to collaborate on constructing an argument tree, to get us past the usual sterile point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint.
(For people who can't read the above, a summary:
1) Be civil;
2) Don't post w/o giving at least a pseudonym;
3) Don't espouse climate-denial crankery unless you're local and willing to stand behind it.)
Caveats:
1. Comments could be delayed: they are being moderated, and I'm sometimes away from the computer for a day or more.
2. : Perfectly legitimate comments are sometimes miscategorized (by the blogging platform) as spam, & not published. If this happens to yours, please notify me, else I might not notice for a day or two.