[Vision2020] Obama sign replaced with rebel flag

[No Weatherman]

This is true.

And certain LOUD and dishonest persons in an allegedly free republic
have tried shout me down and intimidate me with unkind name calling.

Oh.

I get it.

It's because I'm a racist.


On 10/21/08, Saundra Lund <sslund_2007 at verizon.net> wrote:
> For those who don't know, our little corner of heaven isn't safe from this
>  kind of vandalism and intimidation this election  :-(  Moscow and our
>  neighbors in Whitman County have experienced horrifying vandalism and theft
>  of Obama signs.
>
>
>  Obama sign replaced with rebel flag
>  Chesterfield probes theft of political sign from minister's yard
>
>  Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008 - 12:09 AM Updated: 08:51 PM
>
>  By OLYMPIA MEOLA
>  TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
>
>  Leroy C. McLaughlin finished his workday on Friday and was cooking dinner
>  when a family member phoned.
>
>  The 4-foot-by-8-foot Barack Obama campaign sign that McLaughlin had posted
>  in the front yard of his Chesterfield County home was gone.
>
>  A Confederate flag hung in its place.
>
>  Surveying the scene that night, McLaughlin, 78, a Baptist minister and an
>  Army veteran who lived to see the first black person nominated to a
>  major-party ticket, had a message for whoever left the flag, viewed by many
>  as a symbol of racial oppression: "I love you, and God does, too."
>
>  That same night, someone drove by honking and shouting, according to
>  McLaughlin's family.
>
>  Yesterday morning, in the 15 minutes that a reporter and photographer were
>  inspecting a new sign with McLaughlin, a small car sped back and forth past
>  his house three times. Occupants rapidly beeped the horn and appeared to
>  shout "No change," apparently a reference to McLaughlin's new sign. Like the
>  one it replaced, it says: "Vote for Change, November 4th."
>
>  McLaughlin seemed unshaken.
>
>  "I've been praying for them, because we're all going to be charged with what
>  we do," he said. "It's sad that we've grown and we want to keep fighting
>  with something and can't be peaceful and thankful."
>
>  Sometime Friday between 7:30 and 9 p.m., someone ripped the sign from its
>  wooden posts just a few feet off Bailey Bridge Road near Manchester High
>  School.
>
>  A family member returning from Manchester's homecoming football game saw the
>  Confederate flag and alerted McLaughlin. He was fixing dinner near a
>  tapestry montage that features the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., between
>  the Statue of Liberty and a waving American flag.
>
>  McLaughlin went outside to find an outraged neighbor on his front lawn
>  tugging the flag down. He told him to leave it, and they called police.
>
>  Chesterfield police spokeswoman Ann Reid confirmed that police are
>  investigating the sign's disappearance as a larceny. She said the sign was
>  taken Friday night and replaced with a 3-foot-by-5-foot Confederate flag.
>  Chesterfield police are holding the flag as evidence.
>
>  Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for Democrat Obama's campaign in Virginia, said
>  there have been other incidents in Virginia and across the country "that
>  have had racial overtones."
>
>  "I think on both sides we see overzealous supporters," he said. "We urge
>  both our supporters as well as those of Senator [John] McCain to disagree in
>  a respectful way."
>
>  Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Republican McCain's Virginia campaign, said:
>  "We have had reports of vandalism and theft of both McCain and Obama
>  campaign signs on personal property throughout Virginia. It is sad and
>  disappointing that this has happened across the state, and the McCain
>  campaign strongly condemns these actions."
>
>  McLaughlin's 4 acres along Bailey Bridge Road are a wooded holdout among
>  sprouting subdivisions. Since 1964, he has lived in the house he partially
>  built by hand, and he still grows vegetables in rows alongside his home. He
>  has trimmed hair in the same Richmond barbershop for 50 years and served as
>  pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Cumberland County for two decades.
>
>  He said yesterday on a break from making pear preserves that he isn't
>  pushing for a particularly severe punishment for the perpetrator. He didn't
>  raise his voice when discussing it; now that he has replaced the yard sign,
>  he'll be watchful.
>
>  He says he wants whoever took the sign to get a talking-to about trespassing
>  and taking property that doesn't belong to them -- and about the
>  significance of the symbol they left behind.
>
>  "I feel like this is somebody with a lot of hatred in their heart," he said.
>  "It's our job to help the guy try to do better in life."
>
>  Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola at timesdispatch.com.
>
>  Staff writer Michael Martz contributed to this report.
>
>  http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-10-2
>  1-0105.html
>
>
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