Warner: Hartford Has An Activist Problem – Now They Know About it
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said:
“Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’
Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’
Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’
But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’
There comes a time when one must make a decision that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must make that decision because their conscience tells them that it’s right.”
Monday night in the embattled town of Hartford was held a Budget and Meet the Candidates night held once a year. The several hour meeting allows town members to hear the upcoming budget and ask questions regarding appropriations or express concerns over potential mismanagement. Following this are speeches given by candidates for school board and select board. Candidates typically offer a brief introduction followed by vision casting for their plans to serve the needs were they to be elected.
The town of Hartford has seen many shakeups and resignations over the past few years especially at the select board level. At one point the board had four black citizens in a town that is 90% white and still saw members step down over cries of racism or similar complaints. For a town that’s elected Kevin “Coach” Christie, the beloved former coach and automotive teacher at the local tech center (who is black) it can’t seem shake this popular accusation. One prominent citizen, Joe Major, also black, sits as the executive director of the largest non-profit in town, the Aquatic Center, a massive complex visited by hundreds each day. Despite these votes of approval in town the Robin DiAngelo “find racism everywhere” gambit seems to be a steady diet.
One citizen, namely myself, has studied the culture closely over the past ten or so years. In a town that is clearly welcoming of all, in a state that ended slavery in 1777, in a country that established civil rights and put a black man in the oval office the cry of systemic racism, led by the Black Lives Matter movement-turned-craze, resounded like a clanging gong. The sum total of BLM’s activist led riots saw the destruction of billions of dollars in American property and the killing of more than twenty-five innocent people reverberating nearly everywhere from overseas to my tiny hamlet of Hartford.
I visited my home town of Portland, Oregon late in 2021 only to find it in shambles. Tent cities littered the neighborhoods, burn marks covered the walls of buildings with boarded up businesses closed after 100+ days of rioting led by Antifa and Marxist revolutionaries (who had managed to get S.E. 39th street in my neighborhood renamed to Cesar Chavez Blvd), and the smell of marijuana was ubiquitous. Black Lives Matter signs were found in nearly every yard, not due to supporting the cause but from fear of property damage if one did not comply. A ghostly pall hung over the many colored faces of the people in my neighborhood. The tension was palpable as I walked the streets and entered both old and new haunts and shops. The once genial and friendly Rose City confines felt more like an open air prison being run by activist psychopaths who had taken over.
Talking with friends they said the same. Most everyone they knew hated what was happening but were afraid to speak up thanks to the thuggish attacks from Antifa radicals who were known for acts of violence sparing no one. Antifa even attacked a church rally on the Waterfront park pepper spraying children and assaulting women.
Antifa, the unregulated and radical enforcement arm of the new cultural Marxists, have also been seen around the country standing armed outside of Drag Queen Story Hours intending to intimidate parents and citizens who show up to object to these blatantly sexualized performances designed to groom children into queering their minds. By “queering” is meant to break from cultural norms, in this case American, replacing them with Marxist boundary-less tendencies known as “liberation” rising all the way to sexual liberation of, yes, children.
Hartford recently held a Drag Queen Story Hour that was the subject of controversy among the select board. Self-avowed activist Ally Tufenkjian decided to speak on the topic during a board meeting stating it was a “positive experience” despite including a hoax bomb threat that sent a shock wave through the town still reeling from the many shock waves our country has a steady diet of thanks to constant media messaging of the latest existential threat (COVID lockdowns, climate change, school shootings, rioting, wars, Jan 6th, etc.). Fellow board member Lannie Collins responded on behalf of the town members who did not view it as a positive experience, which includes me. I would expose the event for its patently sexual grooming of children at a board meeting two weeks after more activists showed up to denounce Mr. Collins for being “insensitive”.
My familiarity with all of these things led to my declaring a run for one of the open two-year spots on the select board. Candidates are expected to introduce themselves and cast a vision they have for the town. My conscience declaring it the right thing to do, I warned them of the road we are headed down with the proof being the state of my former city.
Of course, activists showed up to the meeting to denounce my warnings as “hate speech” rather than discuss the merits of my claims. If it’s hateful to warn a tiny Vermont town to take a closer look at the source of its sudden social problems and rising incompetence at the local government level then I plead guilty. In fact, I’ll happily declare I hate the deceptive tactics of Marxist activists, I hate their plans to abolish property rights, the nuclear family, our national boundaries and most of all their promoting the sexual grooming of our children.
For me, this is a hill worth dying on.
(To listen to my speech at the town meeting fast forward to the 1:53:00 of this video)