To be
ruled over by the absolute power of a few, or to be governed by WE THE
PEOPLE. The former is Tyranny over the
people and the later is freedom for the
people. To govern ourselves we
have a republic, in which we elect our own from We The People, to govern on our
behalf. It is the POWER of our VOTE which selects the type of person we think
has the integrity and skills to act on our behalf. Our freedom, symbolized by our individual
VOTE was given to us and protected for us by those who have fought for We The
People, since the birth of our country; and have continued to do so ever
since.
Honor
those who have served for us and particularly those who have died for us or who
have returned maimed or scarred for life, both physically and mentally. And also, all the families who have endured
the hardship of a loved one who is gone and many of which will never “Come Home”
(please visit the “Think About This” section of this website and the “Coming
Home” videos and pictures toward the bottom of the page).
If a U.S.
Citizen does not vote, it is a dishonorable act, which ignores the price paid
for this demonstrable act of freedom, in gratitude for those who have died to
give us this freedom. These irreverent
people enjoy the bounties of the freedom and our way of life in the United States
and take it for granted – unappreciative, at a very minimum. But there is an associated danger. The enemies of our freedom and way of life
can use the vote as a weapon against We The People. If citizenry is complacent and chooses not to
vote, when they are dissatisfied with our government or the choices of the
candidates, a motivated enemy masquerading as a U.S. Citizen can vote in mass and
get their candidate elected – one whose motivation is to transform our country
and way of life into something other
than what our founding fathers established.
The danger is we might lose our freedom.
The
following is an interesting scenario, a real-life story on how a town voted
itself out of existence. The power of
the VOTE can accomplish much, sometimes the results can be frightening. The story is copyrighted and printed with the
permission of the Omaha World-Herald.
How
tiny Seneca, Nebraska – torn apart by bitterness – voted itself out of
existence
POSTED: WEDNESDAY, JUNE
25, 2014 1:00 AM
By Matthew Hansen /
World-Herald columnist
Cheyenne
Rebello, left, and Dakota Lewis, both 12, horse around as they head over to get
their horses to ride in Seneca, Nebraska. The residents of Seneca voted last
month to unincorporate their small town, situated between Mullen and Thedford
near Nebraska Highway 2 in the Sandhills. A court will decide the validity of
that vote.
SENECA, Neb. — It feels so long ago
now, but the tiny town of Seneca used to get things done.
A little over a decade ago, the people
here sold raffle tickets and organized fundraiser soup suppers. They got grants
to fix the cracked ceiling, raised money to replace the wrecked windows,
donated their free time to redo the bathrooms and refinish the wood floors.
They worked and worked, and after five
years, the shabby old town gymnasium reopened as a shiny new community center,
a place where people from all over this remote western Nebraska county meet to
celebrate big events.
Wedding receptions. Family reunions.
Funerals. And, lately, a series of increasingly hate-fueled Village Board
meetings that have torn Seneca apart.
“We may be a one-horse town, but we
can all pull together,” says Sandy Hansen, who moved here in 1964. “At least we
used to be able to.”
Seneca can still get things done, but
what it does now is the sort of thing that would make Norman Rockwell shake his
head, pack up his paints and speed away down Highway 2.
In May, after a bruising campaign
marred by allegations of voter intimidation and fraud, the village’s residents
voted — by a single vote — to unincorporate their own town.
That’s right: A Nebraska town voted
itself out of existence.
Unless two pending court cases change
that outcome, the Village Board will be dissolved. The equipment the village
uses to plow its streets and mow its ditches will be sold at auction. The
streetlights may go dark. The water may be turned off in the city park.
And Seneca’s beloved community center?
Barring unforeseen changes, it will be sold to the highest bidder by
Thanksgiving.
“It makes me want to cry,” says
Hansen, a longtime postal carrier who now operates a small museum and workshop
in Seneca. “What I want to say about it is unprintable.”
You may be wondering why a town would
choose to become a non-town.
Let’s start with the horses.
A year or so ago, some residents
started to complain about six horses corralled in a resident’s backyard.
Horses themselves are nothing new in
Seneca: In the summers here, the children ride horses like they ride bikes in
suburbia.
But these particular horses were in
too small a space, some people said. They were up to their knees in muck. The
horses were in danger, they were sad to look at, and they were a bit of a
public health nuisance to boot because they were corralled near a town well.
Larry Isom, a retired physician’s
assistant who serves on the Seneca Village Board, decided to do something about
the horses.
He and several others called state
agencies. They called Thomas County officials. They called the Nebraska Humane
Society. People at each of those places told Isom and his allies the same
thing: This is an issue for the Village Board.
And so Isom began to mull introducing
a town ordinance to ban keeping horses and other livestock within the city
limits. The board discovered that an old town ordinance on the books did
exactly that — it just hadn’t been enforced in decades. They chewed over the
issue at several board meetings, in which Isom says the majority of residents
in attendance — though certainly not all — supported a change.
And then the board voted unanimously
to ban livestock in Seneca.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
You would think that the opponents of
the new ordinance would respond by trying to get the ordinance changed, maybe
by narrowing the wording so that it affected only endangered horses or
livestock kept in a tiny area. Or you would think they would respond by waiting
until the next election and then throwing the Village Board members out on
their keisters.
You’d be dead wrong.
Instead, they circulated a petition in
town that called for the unincorporation of that town. They got 13 people to
sign it, enough to get it on the ballot.
Instead, they portrayed the Village
Board as autocratic and rule-happy, though when questioned, many couldn’t name
a single other bothersome ordinance that the Village Board had passed.
“We just don’t want people telling us
what to do,” says Terri Hartman, a Seneca resident who grew up here, graduated
from high school here and now lives with her mother in town. “It was bound to
be this and that (from the Village Board). ... We just want to be left alone.”
The petition stoked red-hot anger on
both sides. Conversations became yelling matches. Lines were drawn in permanent
marker.
People who signed the petition think
the Village Board and its allies condescended to them after those signatures
became public and retaliated when they could. Hartman says she lost her job as
a waitress at Cattleman’s, Seneca’s restaurant — a job she held for five years
— in part because she signed the petition.
“There has been quite a bit of
bullying,” says Hartman. “I love this town as much as anyone. It’s my home,
too.”
Bring these bullying complaints to
residents who want to keep the town a town, and watch their eyes bulge wide and
their cheeks redden. They are trying to preserve a town that is cut into a
picturesque valley in the Sand Hills, wedged between the beautiful, winding
Middle Loup River and the train tracks that once provided Seneca its jobs.
They are trying to save a town that
has existed since the covered wagon.
And they are the bad guys?
“On some level, it’s like, ‘What do
you want?’ ” Isom says. “Look, there are speed limits in our world. There are
stop signs. There are county laws, state laws, federal laws. Without a shared
set of community rules, these rules that we have as a society, what you have is
anarchy.
“And that’s just silly. It’s silly.”
On election night, the residents of
Seneca drove their pickups and SUVs to nearby Thedford to cast their ballots.
They watched the county and state election websites late into the evening.
And when it was over, 17 people had
voted Seneca out of existence, while 16 people had voted to keep it a town.
Two court cases now challenge that
vote.
One is a felony charge against
Jacqueline Licking, the 80-year-old who circulated the petition, alleging that
she didn’t witness all the signatures being signed on the petition, as is
required by state law.
The other is a request for a delay on
the dissolution of Seneca, as county officials investigate whether everyone who
voted in the May 13 election was a legal resident of Seneca at that time. Even
one incorrectly counted vote could swing the result of the election and keep
Seneca a town.
As Seneca waits, many residents on
either side of this civil war have simply stopped speaking to each other, which
isn’t easy in a town that covers only one-eighth of a mile. When they pass each
other in pickup trucks, they do not wave. And when they are among like-minded
friends and neighbors, they throw around accusations that would make the most
hard-edged D.C. operative squirm.
While in Seneca, I heard people on
both sides say the following things about their neighbors: drug addict, drug
dealer, welfare queen, verbally abusive, physically abusive, sexually abusive,
creep, jerk and much, much worse.
The acrimony fogs everything, making
it hard to see what Seneca once had and now what it stands to lose. It makes it
hard to see that, even if the community center is sold to someone who gives it
back to the local historical society — that’s a potential Plan B if the
election isn’t overturned in the courts — and even if Seneca residents figure
out how to pay for their own streetlights and plow their own roads, they will
still lose something. Maybe they already have.
This town used to be the place that
banded together and built something. Now this town is in danger of being the
place that butchered off its collective nose to spite its collective face.
It reminds me of a miniaturized
version of Congress. It reminds me of the worst of modern-day America, a place
fueled by fury, where winning an empty argument always trumps the harder labor
of searching for common ground. It reminds me that when we do this, we do lose
something less tangible, yet still every bit as important as any streetlight or
park or community center.
Watch Sandy Hansen on a recent weekday
as she walks through her makeshift local history museum on the outskirts of
town and talks excitedly to two visitors about the exhibits. Many of these
things came from people in town, who before they died gave them to her to make
sure they would be remembered.
Here are saddles used by area pioneers
in the 19th century. Gray flannel baseball uniforms from the 1930s. Photos of
two area brothers, both wounded in the same World War II battle.
And many of these things came from all
across the U.S., mailed to her by relatives of onetime residents who figured
the town would love these artifacts more than California or New Jersey or Texas
could.
Here are old hats and old mugs and
yellowed newspaper clippings, all sharing a common history and a common name.
Seneca.
“Some part of me has to believe they
did not understand, that they don’t understand,” she says of the people who
voted to end Seneca as she walks through this tiny Nebraska town’s history.
“Because I cannot possibly believe that they understood exactly what they were
doing and still voted.
“I wouldn’t want to think anyone in
this town could be that ... wrong.”
