By Riley Eynon-Lynch, Iowa City
A recent op-ed claimed that Oliver Weilein “prefers violence against the government to thoughtful action.” The claim was based on social media posts, and broadcast publicly without nuance, investigation, or compassion. This particular letter was one of many that use a shallow analysis of some tweets to disqualify a candidate, and we need to cut it out. We need local solidarity more than ever before and we don’t have time to exclude each other with under-researched opinion pieces.
We could be asking, “Oliver, when you posted a burning cop car, were you expressing your frustration at a system of oppression? Or did you literally mean that as city councilor, you would direct the city manager to blow up our police cars?” From there we could contextualize his responses with his leadership experience and policy ideas. But all these social media letters avoid discussion and skip straight to othering and ostracizing.
Enough about twitter [sic] already. Oliver’s ideas to increase city revenue sounded pretty reasonable at the League of Women Voters forum. What do you think about those? He listed several towns similar to ours that are doing interesting things, and said he would like to explore doing those things here. What do you think about them? He seems to have successfully organized many groups of people to make positive change in Iowa City. What do you think about that?
What are you using to inform your own ideas for systemic change?
We can’t kick people out of our tent because we don’t like every single thing they say, so from our leaders, I want guidance for how to embrace our differences and stick together. We need our leaders to foster solidarity, not spend all day repeating tired jabs against hard-working and well-meaning neighbors. It’s clearer than ever that we are who we’ve got.
Enough about twitter already!
