FACEBOOK: Cindi Laws makes the point that the candidate forums have “gone off the rails.” Moderators are frightened of activists who come not to encourage speech but to dominate it.
This results in boring meetings, so controlled that candidates do not even get to answer each others’ questions. Monday in the District 3 forum, the effort to get Sawant to answer questions was suppressed by this tactic. All she did was read from prepared talking points, rarely on point and never addressing the challenges form her opponents.
Even worse is the success the radicals tactics have in suppressing minority participation. Community members who should come, do not. Cindi reports on a debate in District 2: “African Americans and African immigrants are few in attendance and those who do attend are nearly all extraordinary respectful. In contrast, the rude and disrespectful are nearly all white and most are young. Many, talking among their group in the back, talked about their own neighborhoods – which aren’t in D2. If you ‘appreciate’ the anarchists who routinely destroy marches and demonstrations, you would ‘appreciate’ the tactics going on at these forums. Because their agenda isn’t democracy and policy, it’s disruption.”