Stewart Acuff’s has a regular column in The Spirit of Jefferson newspaper, Charles Town and Jefferson County, West Virginia. This was one was published on October 26, 2022

“It’s very hard for many of us to understand why the county commission would not be happy to condemn hate.“

Their steady steps on the Saturday sidewalk in downtown Charles Town tapped their own beat to go vote in the statewide symphony of defending democracy.

Registering voters, educating voters, getting our people to the polls; the Poor Peoples Campaign brought its voting mobilization to Jefferson County on October 15 with a march/walk on Washington Street and barbecue in Evitts Run Park.

Goodness knows there’s every reason and issue in the world for folks to address in this election.

The GOP dominated Jefferson County Commission has ensnared itself in scandal by refusing to condemn racism and domestic terrorism after Commissioner Tricia Jackson posed for a photo with men wearing Proud Boys gear and holding their hands in a white power salute.  

Led by long time NAACP President George Rutherford, upwards of 100 county residents have protested before and during county commission meetings through the summer.

It’s very hard for many of us to understand why the county commission would not be happy to condemn hate.  Their refusal to act is evidence of a deeper problem of a county commission acting or refusing to act against domestic terrorism and racism.

What does that say about our county leadership?

Our county commission is dramatically changing how emergency services are delivered in Jefferson County with a top-down process that hasn’t recognized our volunteer lifesavers and firefighters as critical and crucial to saving lives.  The fact that the county paid $40,000 of our tax money for a PR firm to tell us to support the county plan is a failure of the process for making public policy.  Millions of dollars will be moved and spent to expand county government and minimize volunteerism by county commissioners who claim to want smaller government.

Amendments put on the ballot by a GOP legislative majority would centralize more power in the laps of the legislature.  

Wake up and watch out when any branch of government tries to give itself more power.

It is evidence of the strength of America’s spirit of democracy that again at election time we are reminding one another over and over to go vote.

That democratic strength is desperately needed at this moment when the structure and foundation of the American government has been challenged for the first time since the Civil War.

One of the bedrock fundamentals of American democracy is the peaceful transfer of power from one administration/president to the next duly elected president.  Our last president blew that tradition up with a coup d’état attempt and a violent insurrection and riot at our nation’s Capital.

Every single one of our votes is an affirmation of our belief in democracy, our trust in the will of the people.  Now, as much as ever, we must vote.

Some of our own neighbors talk way too casually about the possibilities of civil war.  This land we stand on has carried the feet and blood of a civil war for greater freedom.  The steady expansion of freedom and Democratic rights is the source of American Exceptionalism.  Exercise that Exceptionalism.

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