Update: 1/12/12 at end
Beginning tomorrow night, January 11, 2011, the challenge begins to all Encinitas residents. Which community can fill more seats each city council meeting or
Butts in the Seats Competition for short? During the open mic portion or oral communications, if using its official (nineteenth century sounding) title, a selected public speaker will ask the audience to raise a hand as each of five community names is called out. Maybe we’ll ask another volunteer to get a quick count for each of the five communities, since
we can't rely on press to get numbers right. Oh, and we've learned something from the night activists protested Mark Muir being selected for Maggie Houlihan's seat. We shall first ask for a count of the people at the meeting from outside Encinitas. (Staff too?)
We’ll try to keep as accurate a tally as possible here at “Our Mayor” blog. Technically this has nothing to do with our mayor or the city council members per se. The super majority is just not that into us. As stated before, no matter which town you live in, there are these two rules:
1. There is a club.
2. You are not in it.
But, until we elect a more representative council, we are still Encinitas residents with everything in common. We're connected; be it our parks, our beaches, circulation, natural resources, infrastructure, schools, food centers and commerce. We get involved in city governance because we love the characteristics of our own neighborhoods and towns. Here is a way for all of us in Encinitas who gather at places like city hall to proudly represent the community where we live.
Secret Hand Signs
You don’t have to say a word. Picture yourself in a crowd, like the city council chambers or at the local store. Here’s how you can represent your home town, the American Manual Sign Language hand alphabet system. Millions of people already know it or use it, some of you may never have heard of it. The original English version has been around about 400 years, so it works.
Cardiff by the Sea – Using curved hand to form a
C, shown in the illustration turned to the side, it technically is made with the palm facing forward. It is fitting that the curved hand and thumb resemble a wave and beach relationship. This hand sign is also used in the Occupy Wall Street general assemblies when asking for “clarification”. This too befits the Cardiff character of high expectations and point of pride for information clarifications.
Encinitas’ historic coastal center - Made with fingertips bent along the length of the thumb, just like the coastal corridor, forms an
E. The land, the roads all converge on the coastal origins of our historic downtown. It’s the size and shape of a human heart and you've just got to love it. It’s often called Old Encinitas or Historic Encinitas to differentiate it from New Encinitas.
New Encinitas – Hug the thumb with two fingers on each side curled into the palm to make the
N sign. It looks like new growth emerging, with the tip of the thumb just visible between the fingers. With Leucadia and Olivenhain to the north, the east and Cardiff with old Encinitas to the south, the west; the hand symbol reinforces activist support to new volunteers: “We've got you covered.”
Leucadia –
L is one of the easiest hand signs and one of the most assertive points up with the pointer finger and juts out with the thumb. This is a confident sign that is palm facing and disarming. Disarming? Pointed differently it’s a gun. (Leucadian activists are labeled threats by our mayor.) There is some retribution in this ubiquitous “L for loser” being wielded by Leucadians – not at them by smug critics. Careful out the Leucadians, don’t bully the bullies.
Olivenhain –
O is like the C, but the fingertips touch the thumb. And like the C, it’s shown here turned to the side to see the O shape, but should be made with the palm facing forward. Think of lots of zeros – representing large numbers of acres for this rural community, large numbers in income for these residents. Unlike the C -Cardiff or the L-Leucadia, it's not open sign. Like Olivenhain a closed or contained community.
The musing about these signs is a way to help remember them and make using them playful. Sadly, a fatal flaw for community conscious people is the trap of taking ourselves too seriously. There are so many serious issues, it's easy to confuse the work and goals with our personal identities. These past several months exposure to the Occupy Wall Street movement helps provide a breath of air in the standing up for our beliefs in unconventional ways and respectful support of each other. We have hundreds of hours of city council videotapes with citizens earnestly and succinctly speaking out and being summarily ignored. We can occupy our council chambers by communicating with each other in many ways, even when the majority of the people on the dais ignore us.
Here are a few of the hand signals used by Occupy General Assemblies each and every day all across the nation to conduct business and communicate feelings without disrupting an ongoing meeting.
So, the challenge,
Butts in the Seats Competition, is to fill those seats with our community members. Ask a neighbor to join you. Hey, ask a different neighbor each week. Have fun with some of these secret hand signals. Our mayor Stocks and councilman Bond will both be bound to come up with some reason it isn't okay to use our hands. Let’s fill those seats and give Councilwoman Barth some company, some eye contact and friendly faces to see instead of empty seats and sheriff deputies in back. It’s got to be lonely for this champion of the one vote most consistently in our favor.
Update: 1/12/12 -No volunteer for hand counts of people, no secret hand signs. But there was the great, good fortune of Council Chambers being packed. The Girl Scout Brownies filled the front and a dozen cops were at the back when the meeting started. Following presentations the front emptied. This was a good start to the year.
