"Where is the outcry for this issue?" She answers simply, "This is an issue because you can't get along." Kathleen Lees attempts to make a centrist, non-confrontive series of statements regarding the last minute agenda item tacked onto the July 11, 2012 Special City Council Meeting, the proposed ballot initiative for an elected mayor in Encinitas. At the core she was naming the problem.
One of the reasons a series of complex posts were presented this last week was this very comfortable, simplistic rendering of the majority's unacceptable treatment of their elected colleague, Teresa Barth, for years. This is a kind of incivility that millions of people around the country witness each and every day in our culture. It has become a culture of bullys and bigots. Right here in our council the regular attendees, advocates for their own neighborhoods and interest groups (like last nights skateboarders, dog owners, scientists, traffic critics, sports enthusiasts and league businessmen) all want their voices heard and documented. Even the most outspoken, the bossy, the curmudgeons, the preachers and the politically wonky are supposedly given that right in a democratic system's bill of rights.
The posts on this blog, the clips here and the archived hundreds all show a majority council made up of those who would deny a fully open government, who show intolerance for dissenting opinions, make false acusations and manipulate the process for political gain. The political goal of a zero sum game means a complete blackout of their opposition.
As the clip text states:
We must demand to be heard. Moreover, it is our moral duty to stand up to the bullying that our elected official is made to endure, despite her consistently respectful demeanor and robust support of the entire community. If we are attacked for supporting our own right to voice our opinions our defending our public servant we simply don't have to play along. Confrontation is our right, despite what Mayor Stocks or Deputy Mayor Gaspar may label it this week.Jerome Stocks and the majority on the council over the last six years have shown over and over again their utter contempt for Teresa Barth. Yet even today, with the simplistic "he said, she said" model of reporting by local news it is all too easy to see controversy and a parity in viewpoints that just doesn't exist. Stocks simply refuses to allow Teresa Barth any position, any voice or any credit as a colleague. She has been "othered" since the day she was elected. That is reprehensible, but even more unacceptable is that Teresa Barth represents the voices of the thousands and thousands of Encinitas voters who have had their votes erased by disenfranchising their choice, their elected official.
