{"id":1734,"date":"2011-07-20T08:22:41","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T12:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/to-pacify-the-community-susan-leavens.html"},"modified":"2011-07-20T08:22:41","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T12:22:41","slug":"to-pacify-the-community-susan-leavens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/to-pacify-the-community-susan-leavens.html","title":{"rendered":"To pacify the community? &mdash;Susan Leavens"},"content":{"rendered":"Received yesterday on <a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/07\/arrests-for-speaking-in-an-arizona-town.html\">\nArrests for speaking in an Arizona town<\/a>. -jsq\n<blockquote>\nI really feel like the Lowndes County Commissioners meetings are more\nto pacify the community then to actually listen to the concerns of\nthe citizens which I\u2019m sure most counties are the same. I feel quite\npositive matters of concern actually never leave that room, I\u2019m pretty\ncertain if the room were full and more individuals showing concern for\ntheir community maybe things could change slightly. I have gotten the\nimpression that they really don\u2019t want to hear people\u2019s opinions. I\nwas once under the impression that there job of commissioners where\nto also hear from the residence of the county. It certainly has shown\nme how transparency issues and intimidation also go hand in hand. When\nyou think of a member of county government it\u2019s a position of power\nand power some obviously let go to their head. But after reading the\narticle it appears no matter where in this country when you oppose them\nyou obviously could be removed in handcuffs. You\u2019re only allowed to have\nyour 3 to 4 minutes to speak after interruptions and snide remarks. First\nAmendment right allows us to have freedom of speech\u2026 but broken down,\nit allows us our time at the podium less freedom of speech if Mr. Paulk\ndecided to stop us. I wonder how the rest of the commissioners feel about\nhis antics toward people being heard. Maybe they don\u2019t have concerns\nin the matter but you have to wonder if they feel intimidated as well\nand just choose to say nothing.\n<p>\n-Susan Leavens\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Received yesterday on Arrests for speaking in an Arizona town. -jsq I really feel like the Lowndes County Commissioners meetings are more to pacify the community then to actually listen to the concerns of the citizens which I\u2019m sure most counties are the same. I feel quite positive matters of concern actually never leave that [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,48,40,2,20,88,3],"tags":[1273,3532,8701,7,8734,4089,8700,6],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-government","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-public-comment","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-rY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}