The Oklahoman's pity party

An open letter to the OKC Council & mayor:

Dear Oklahoma City Council members and Mayor Mick Cornett:

“Pity the members of the Oklahoma City Council.” Thus began an editorial, stunning in its contempt for democracy, published today in The Oklahoman, which decreed that the location of the Crosstown is a done deal, and it’s a waste of time for the very important people running this city to bother themselves with the dissatisfaction of their constituents on the matter.

Since it is already all too easy to dismiss dissenting voices of the non-rich and non-connected that are shut out of any real input into decisionmaking around here, certainly council members can ignore without much discomfort or guilt those few tenacious souls who show up for their brief chance to make a last-ditch case at public meetings.

But the rabble does manage to find a few places to express its ire about the way things work around here. Ironically, the comment thread beneath the online version of today’s editorial became such a place.

I would strongly urge you city representatives to read every comment posted there — if, of course, you can bear to waste a few minutes of your time discovering what a large number of your constituents think. I hope that it is just the editorial board of the state’s largest paper that would entertain such an elitist attitude, and that someone like yourself, who does at least have to get elected occasionally, might not be so anxious to ridicule citizens who care deeply about their community.

Here’s the link.

The people of Central Oklahoma have again and again expressed their desire for decent and affordable mass transit, again and again, they have been ignored. I think it’s time that average people, and not just rich business owners, got what they wanted. A slight change to the Crosstown relocation would be a good place to start.

Serena Blaiz

6 thoughts on “The Oklahoman's pity party

  1. Rena Post author

    Not to mention that this is the same editorial page that, in a previous editorial about the crazy idea of saving Oklahoma City’s Union Station Railyard, accompanied it with a picture — of Union Station in Kansas City.

  2. Rena Post author

    Not to mention that this is the same editorial page that, in a previous editorial about the crazy idea of saving Oklahoma City’s Union Station Railyard, accompanied it with a picture — of Union Station in Kansas City.

  3. Steve Hunt

    You can’t get Cornett to do anything for the people anymore than you can salt salt.

  4. Rena Post author

    Of course not, but I sure in hell can try to shame him at every opportunity. Assuming he’s even capable of that.

  5. Rena Post author

    Of course not, but I sure in hell can try to shame him at every opportunity. Assuming he’s even capable of that.

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