I'm making three blog posts about the two Concord Journal
articles (here and here) published last week about what they frame as "communication failures"
between townspeople and Town government. I am going to publish them
backwards for how blogs usually work (last in the series first) because
they will go online within seconds of one another, and that way they
will be read from top-to-bottom in order."Shadowy" -- Yes, that is what one of our current selectman called the 12-year old, 750 member Concord Discussion List (though he seemed to call it a blog, too) -- "shadowy". I am sad that the Concord Journal article didn't point out the fact that this list's archives are open to the public, and have always been. (If indeed he meant the Concord Blog, this too, is fully accessible to the public -- you're reading it right now, in fact!) The discussion list is more widely and fully accessible to scrutiny than is any other public meeting of townspeople. In fact, it's more accessible than the Concord Journal itself, which only has a portion of its content online -- which doesn't have these articles online. Every one of our posts can be seen by the public anywhere in the world that has internet access.
There is a direct accusation that what we do on that discussion list involves "keyboard courage," and that we are cowardly for not addressing the government in person. I want to point out that I did -- and as a result, I was publicly rebuked and called names for stating an unwanted opinion. So citizens have no other recourse than to either face that kind of treatment when they have a complaint, or talk amongst ourselves.There is absolutely no obligation any of us have to privately or in person address our government -- and absolutely tremendous history that the opposite is a long and highly effective practice. Government officials have for millennia been the object of public
discussion and dissection, including satire, plays, street theater, public demonstrations, songs, paintings, drawings and poetry. Literature is FILLED with such examples, as are our newspaper with editorials, letters to the editor, op-eds and political cartoons (such as the one at right from 1869 -- click to see a larger view launch in a separate window). How come this is acceptable in the rest of the democratic world, but not to Concord's government?
There are a several other missed opportunities and missing facts, one of which I feel it important to point out. I am quite disappointed that the reporter of the piece did not mention that he himself was one of several witnesses to the "confrontation" of the elderly citizen by a selectman. Sources of information are important, and in fact, they are an expected standard.
I am sad that the journal never reported it as a news item when it happened, because it was a very unusual, notable occurrence indeed (I have heard what happened directly from two witnesses and the person who was "confronted" and in my opinion it was more newsworthy than the reporter implied from his own single point of view).I am grateful to the Journal for working with this topic as hard as they did. I was quoted accurately and in context, and in a complex work with many moving parts written over several weeks, that is a task. I don't want it to seem that I find the piece only to be lacking, because I don't. I am glad they worked with thin resources to produce it, because it involves some very important community issues with which we must now come to grips.
