Political Gumbo: Nothing to Say

The right to self-expression, along with the right to express opinions and convictions is one of our most precious freedoms.

I despise these letters.

You know, where one person types up a badly written trope and emails it to 50 or more people and everybody co-signs on it.

After I read them at some point, all I see is: “This is Bob, Bob’s name is spelled the same frontwards and backwards,” signed ______ (insert name here).

No one wants to read that letter twice. Even Bob can’t get through it, backwards or forwards. 

Even more sad than Bob, instead of embracing that freedom and using their voices, dozens of locals parroted a form letter on an item in Monday’s City Council agenda. 

The letters were correspondence to Monday’s City Council meeting on the zoning code amendment that would allow housing on church property.

You probably heard about this by now.

These folks want an amendment that would allow the housing to be built by right without many of the oversight processes put in place by the city’s zoning code.

That’s the recap.

It’s an important issue, but most of them just signed a form letter.

Seriously, you can’t think of anything original to say.

All you can do is fill out a space on a letter where you named your councilmember, some people could not even get that right. One person apparently thinks they live in the Honorable Felicia Stewart’s district.

Someone else listed Chris Holden’s name and then crossed it out.

Sheesh.

Signing on to a form letter is your right. You can do it if you want, but I can’t take you seriously if all you can do is co-sign because you don’t know the issue deep enough to form and express an opinion or you are too lazy to say something,  

Councilmembers receive their packets and spend a lot of time reviewing the items on important matters. The last thing they want to do is read the same letter over and over. 

You’re not showing support for the item, you are showing that you had nothing to say.

If I saw a grip of form letters in my council agenda, I’d probably vote no on the item. 

Then again, now we know why I’ll never be on the City Council. Then again, that might put me on the City Council if I ran for office. 

Come up with something to say, because a form letter does not make you part of any conversation.