Turtleboy: What’s Councilor Rushton Thinking?

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Friday, January 16, 2015

Turtleboy

So last week Worcester’s gang of ten protesters came down to the City Council meeting to voice their opposition to a resolution proposed by Councilor Konnie Lukes. In a nutshell, the resolution said that in light of all the protests all over the country, the Worcester Police stood tall as a beacon of professionalism. Councilor Lukes purposely timed this resolution on a night in which officer Justin Bennes was recognized for his heroic policing two months ago when he disarmed a known criminal without using deadly force. It made perfect sense.

But of course when it comes to the protesters, nothing makes sense. That’s why they stood in front of traffic, cemented to some barrels on Interstate 93. That’s why they disrupted a 100-year-old World War 2 hero’s award ceremony in Oregon. That’s why they generally think that any commendation to the police is somehow an insult to people of color.
 
Now obviously this is insane and ridiculous. Obviously. So I assumed after the protesters had their say at last week’s meeting they’d vote 11-0 to pass this common sense resolution. And everything was going fine at first. Konnie said her piece and challenged the protesters to run against her if they didn’t like it. Very 'Cowboy' of her. But of course we all know that none of them will actually do that because it requires work.
 
The rest of the councilors took 15 minutes each to explain why they agreed with her, and it looked like the night was coming to an end. Then Councilor Rick Rushton stood up and started talking. And when Freddy Rushton starts talking, everyone loses. After babbling on about….something, for about 15 more minutes, Rushton announced that he would be holding the resolution until the next meeting so that both sides could be heard.
 
Wait….what? Everyone was heard. That was the whole point of the meeting. Then everyone was heard AGAIN a week later when the council finally voted on it. Of course Freddy voted against it, but it passed anyway and the protesters started singing koom-ba-ya.
 
My question is, what is wrong with this guy? What exactly is his motivation here? I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a combination of stupidity and politics. But mostly stupidity. My theory is that Rushton thinks the protest movement is bigger than it is because they make so much noise. So he did this as a way to try to pick up some new voters in November. He’s going to be very disappointed to find out that the protesters, a) will likely be distracted by four new causes between now and then and won’t remember his name, and b) don’t vote. If anything it’s going to cost him hundreds or thousands of votes from average people who now realize that they are represented by a really, really dumb individual.

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