Letter to the Editor
A group of concerned residents of the city met a City Hall on Tuesday evening for an update on the project of repairing the dike on the river at the south end of town.
Commissioner Lowell Moore has gotten a set of plans from an engineer for the repairs and is in touch with the Corp of Engineers and FEMA.
We are asking everyone living in the City of Parsons (not just Pulp Mill Bottom) and everyone in the County, who has an interest in the city and county, to call our Congressman and “beg” for their support in getting this dike repaired before the winter comes. Also ask for any monetary help (such as grants, etc.) that they could help us with.
Below are the names, phone numbers and addresses so please help us by getting in touch with each one of them as soon as possible.
The Honorable Joe Manchin III
303 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
1-202-224-3954
Fax: 1-202-228-0002
The Honorable David McKinley
412 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
1-202-225-4172
Fax: 1-202-225-7564
The Honorable Shelly Moore Capito
172 Russell Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
1-202-224-6472
Fax: 1-202-224-7665
The Honorable Earl Ray Tomblin
State Capital
1900 Kanawha Blvd. E
Charleston, WV 25305
1-304-558-2000
Fax: 1-304-342-7025
Mary Moore
Parsons, WV
Every Vote Counts
In many conversations during this contentious election year, I have compared this cycle to the Presidential Election of 1968, mainly for the benefit of those to young to remember it or those not even born then. It was a crazy time. A sitting president LBJ decided not to run for his third term, probably because of the national uproar about the Vietnam war which was going poorly. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both assassinated that year. Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic Senator from Minnesota, ran on an anti-war platform, promising to get us out of the war. He garnered almost three million votes in the primaries, more than Kennedy, and more than Hubert Humphrey who arrived at the Democratic Convention with less than 200,000 votes. Long story short, Humphrey won the party nomination. Talk about rigged?
Anyway, after McCarthy had the nomination stolen from him in Chicago, I could not bring myself to vote for Hubert Humphrey, no matter what, even though I had liked his political stance and considered myself a Democrat after John Kennedy. The Republican candidate, back from the “Checkers” disgrace and his upset 1960 presidential defeat, Richard Nixon, the self proclaimed “law and order candidate,” was not an option for me. Even less of a choice was George Wallace, the openly racist ex-governor of Alabama, who was running as a third party candidate. So, I cast my vote for the Peace and Freedom Party, a Democratic Socialist Party, running Dick Gregory as President, and Benjamin Spock, as Vice-President, to protest the whole illegal process of “party politics as usual.” Sound familiar?
Well, what did it get me? Us as a nation? Nixon, a serious hawk, did get us out of Vietnam. However, the “law and order candidate” Nixon ended his political career as an impeached president when he wantonly, knowingly broke all kinds of laws to improve his position and popularity with his supporters. What’s the point?
Even though I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary, even though I’ve liked Libertarian Gary Johnson since he was Governor of New Mexico, even though I’m a tree hugging environmentalist, I’m, first and foremost, a Democrat, the party of the people, the working people, all people of all colors and genders. I’d like my younger friends, who are still “feeling the Bern” and the sting of a hard fought primary loss, to seriously consider the consequences of casting a protest vote to demonstrate their displeasure. Take it from me; it won’t get you what you think you want.
Vote for your future.
Rich Spence
Davis, WV