By Tara McGovern, Coralville
Oliver Weilein is not scary but you are scared. This is a you problem.
You are being manipulated by your own discomfort at the state of our crumbling world and by your participation in it.
You are also being manipulated by a handful of establishment politicians, some of whom are currently in office and some of whom merely pull the strings of their dancing puppets.
The old guard is by necessity changing. We the people are finally arriving at a collective belief that it is not enough for liberation to belong only to cishet white property owners.
The time for change was yesterday but the people in power are obstructing the message.
Oliver is smart and kind and connected to solutions. The people in power are uncomfortable because some of the solutions are a threat to their power.
But the tweets! But the guns! Yes, I’ve seen them and not because they were trotted out as a weak effort at criminalizing Oliver. I’ve seen them because I care about Oliver and the work that he’s been doing in the community for years and when he has something to say, I am interested in listening.
Responsible gun ownership is not even on my long list of concerns about a candidate. Many of us were at the candidate forum where Oliver’s opponent acknowledged that he is also a gun owner.
Oliver’s posts about police overreach and about the failures of establishment leadership qualify him even more as a candidate to me and to the many others in our community who have suffered from respectability politics wielded as a weapon against those of us who do not comply.
They can keep up with their nonsense straining to illustrate Oliver as a criminal of their own design, but before they pour even more money and time into it, I hope they pause to consider that it’s not working the way that they hope it is. Money and time are resources that our community could use in many more constructive ways such as by donating to Emma Goldman Clinic, Shelter House or the Immigrant Welcome Network of Johnson County.
