COMensarations
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The Crushing of Dissent, Pueblo City Government Style
Tired of listening to the little people? Squelch Em!
Used to be that the City Council of Pueblo welcomed the public airing of grievances the citizens who elected them had. They liked it so much that they would let everyone who tuned into City Council public meetings see and hear them over the local cable television lash-up with Pueblo Community College.
That’s all changed now. I guess too many of them were coming forward with things that were somewhat embarrassing.
Now, there IS a ‘public forum’. But it is no longer televised.
Admittedly, some of the ‘regular’ participants in the public forum were some two-legged form of gadfly, but still and all, they all went through the processes to get in the limited slots for the public forum portion and they held to the 3-minute limit. But that doesn’t mean the City Fathers and Mothers had to silence their public decrying of what they perceived to be ‘wrong’.
I’m reminded of a low-grade form of what Chavez is doing down in Venezuela or Putin in Russia.
You people who sit on the City Council knew the job was dangerous when you took it.
That doesn’t mean you’re right in squelching the public airing of perceived problems.