This is a Crazy-Ass Local City Council Meeting Rant of Supreme Excellence

Yeah, by the time I got to the stuffed monkey toy, I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. She’s obviously upset, and obviously having trouble communicating why she is upset.

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Not even a ferret could ferret that out.

Really, one can not trust one thing she said. She was just as angry about the “scratchy toilet paper” as she was about some alleged event at an alleged concrete factory. (And it doesnt even makes sense: unless the house is right next to an industrial-zoned property, a concrete factory will never be built next to a residential house.)

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The question is, did the council have a clue what she was talking about?

Let’s all make fun of the mentally ill.

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Actually, like all people’s claims, a little research and investigation could determine whether her complaints are merely insane or have real world support. It’s unfortunate that we let a little wild mannerism allow us to dismiss even the possibility of fact.

Howard Dean lost all support because he bellowed at just the wrong moment. Meanwhile Donald Trump can go full Nazi and only garner love. We, as a species, are not rational in how we respond to our world. So this woman rambled; most people seem fairly insane to me and, I suspect, to one another if you really think about it. Is there a corrupt city council there selling out to a cement maker? It might well be. Why not check it out before just dismissing this woman, and if we’re all too lazy to investigate then please, don’t blame her for our short comings.

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EDIT- In conclusion (thus far) I would say that if I was in her position (Teri Pope-Gonzales, the women in the video) I’m not sure I would have been quite as civil or coherent as she was. Not to mention that my presentation may have involved a firebomb instead of a bag of marbles, seriously.

Soooooo I did some minor research and it definitely looks like some serious shit is going down here… I would not be surprised if this woman’s speech was so incomprehensible only because she had been fucked nine ways to sunday (Possible eminent domain, city corruption, abuse of power by authorities, etc.).

Info found so far:

This is it, this is definitely it. If you are going to read any of these links read this one:

-Gonzalez has called every city official she can think of to try to get the plant to put up a wall to block noise and dust and limit its hours of operation, to no avail.
-She says plant employees have retaliated by shining lights into her house at night and calling her names. She says she found a chunk of concrete next to the doghouse in her backyard a few months ago."
-Police were recently called by both sides after Gonzalez said she was blocked in by three of the company’s vehicles at the intersection of First and O streets.
A dust up over South Bottoms concrete plant

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I think I’ll make a snap judgement of PatrickD based on a snippet of him I’ve seen on the internet. He lacks compassion, he has no sense of empathy. He displays an inability to comprehend the possibility of a wider context, he also believes in the infallibility of the state.

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Angry Birds for community council, or something.

Seriously, though: less like this this, please. I am trying to reduce the level of angry people in my life.

I did watch part of the video, just to confirm that it’s the kind of icky that I want to avoid – the icky of someone who has a cause, and is right, but who is offensive and unpleasant, and whose story isn’t benefiting me.

The problem is that now I’ve got a bit of that angry stuck on me, Tar Baby style.

I really hate how she says “Please don’t be angry with me” as a preface to another barrage of thoroughly aggressive statements.

From the start, she came in literally swaggering. Swaggering! Like some hardened cowboy gunslinger dead-set on hunting down that no-good saloon scoundrel.

And the sarcastic tone of voice? The snarl, the innuendo, another snarl … and then a little quiver of … self-reflection, or the failure of same, or something? It’s impossible to tell if this is involuntary emotion – or the calculated effect of a sociopath! A masterpiece!

Getting the face musculature to form those hard lines for minutes a time? Commitment!

Ugliness like that doesn’t happen by itself, or overnight – it’s a lifestyle! a career!

One the other hand, she must have good reasons to be who she is.

Don’t we all?

Why am I not surprised that someone with the suffix ‘-tard’ in their screen name thinks that identifying someone as dealing with mental illness is the same as insulting them?

Sorry I interrupted your ridicule of the mentally ill. Please don’t let it ruin your day. Maybe you’ll run into someone with a speech impediment you can laugh at later. You can always hope, right?

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So we’re still using “crazy” to describe and laugh at what appears to be mental illness?

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I am out of likes, but really, your post deserves more than a click anyway.

Excellent sleuthing!

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I struggle with depression (turns out that there’s a long, hidden history of it in my family,) and I also have diabetes. The big difference in the two is that I’ve never had anyone try to suggest that diabetes isn’t real just because they themselves don’t have it.

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Never?

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This needs to be appended to @xeni’s post.

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Also amazing, the city declared 200 blocks to be blighted, used eminent domain to clear out miles for a rec path (and possibly this new cement factory), and then got into bed with a shady contractor who was also tasked to be the fox watching the henhouse.

All point to some super shady dealings going on in town.

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Exemplary work, TailOfTruth! I have to admit I was inclined to jump to the conclusion that Ms.Pope-Gonzalez was delusional in some sense, but it appears as though she may be having a justifiable reaction to a very real injustice and by the looks of it possibly some intentional gaslighting. In any event, holding her up as an object of ridicule is inhumane.

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Having worked at a concrete plant, the noise and dust they throw up is no joke. Cement dust is nasty stuff on car paint and even worse stuff in the lungs. Add to that the constant din of large diesel trucks idling while being filled or as they work out the proper water ratio in the load, and the likelihood of soon-to-harden concrete being splashed around the local streets (if not on vehicles in the area). Beyond that, between the massive amounts of groundwater they use and then the environmental waste they generate…concrete plants are not pleasant places to be.

EDIT: @TailOfTruth, well done on that research!

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Reminds me of how the Story of Killdozer started…

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