Daniel Garcia
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “read” this way: look at and comprehend the meaning of written or printed matter by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed.
My headline for this blog is directed to Pacific County Sheriff Daniel Garcia and conerns Matt Winters’ editorial in today’s Chinook Observer. In clearly presented topic-by-topic style, Winters’ words offer some very specific suggestions to our young law enforcement leader — should Sheriff Garcia read them. And, more importantly, should he comprehend their meaning, pointed out by the OED as an integral part of the reading process. Or, as Nyel often said when flummoxed by the actions or comments by someone who should know better: “There’s no substitute for brains.”
Garcia’s recent interactions with the John Birch Society even caused a discussion here in Oysterville at last Friday’s traditional get-together — a group of friends and neighbors who have been informally gathering here each week for more than twenty years. No matter who comes — and there have been many with disparate beliefs and passions — we seldom, if ever, cross that socially acceptable line of discussion regarding politics, sex, or religion. Last Friday we did.
Shades of Yosemite Sam?
Mostly, remarks focussed on the John Birch Society (JBS) and our incredulity that they had apparently surfaced in Pacific County. I credit my cousins — both with California backgrounds — for remembering (along with me and several others in the room) the horrors brought about by the Birchers in Orange County in the 1960s. Perhaps you, too, remember their successful efforts to pass “Prop 14.”
Editorial – July 26, 2023
California Proposition 14 was a November 1964 initiative ballot measure that amended the California state constitution and nullified the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act. Prop 14 allowed property sellers, landlords. and their agents to openly discriminate on ethnic grounds when selling or letting accommodations, as they had been permitted to before 1963. Fortunately, in 1966, the California Supreme Court in a 5–2 split decision declared Proposition 14 unconstitutional.
Those of us who lived through those years in California — even in Northern California, as I did, hundreds of miles from the John Birch epicenter — will never forget. The thought of our sheriff (or any of our community members and neighbors) going to “private meetings” with JBS members is downright frightening. Bravo, Matt Winters, for your editorial! And even if our Sheriff can’t or won’t read it and take it to heart, I hope the majority of our citizens do!
t took just a few seconds before I did a double take! Barbara Bate had handed me a flyer about a Community Awareness Dinner but it wasn’t until I took note of the face and saw the words “Featuring speaker Mario Rodriguez” that I yelled, “Hooray!”
