A moment in the sun (literally)

As you may have heard, a certain elected official of the United States paid a visit to Huntington, WV last week. When I heard that the ACLU was sending people there to be legal observers, I tagged along as an unofficial volunteer.

The job for the day was not to participate in any of the rallies or protests, but to monitor conditions with the goal of ensuring that people of whatever viewpoint were able to exercise their First Amendment rights, documenting things as necessary.

I think the subtext  for me anyhow was to pay attention in case the situation started to get out of hand.

Mostly, I walked around in the heat for five hours getting my brain baked. And fortunately things didn't get out of hand. The police were generally very professional. There was some screaming back and forth from supporters and protesters but I only saw one person being escorted out by police and no serious violence, even though the potential was definitely there.

There were people across the spectrum who seemed intent on stirring things up. There was even a group of armed militia-type people standing where the protesters were. Fortunately, they were fairly laid back.

The thing that struck me the most was that, although the lines were clearly drawn, most people walked past each other without incident when it was over. There was some give and take, sometimes heated. And at times people seemed to be honestly baffled with how people on the opposite side could think and feel the way they did. Then they went home.

In the end, I found all that to be oddly reassuring.

From the horse's mouth

The city of Huntington is ground zero in WV's opioid crisis. When 26 people there overdosed in a few hours, the story made headlines nationwide. It was nice to see this editorial in that city's Herald-Dispatch about how to respond. Here's bit:

If locking up users and dealers were the "silver bullet," we would have won the war on drugs years ago. Largely because of tougher penalties for drugs, the American prison population rose from 400,000 in the 1970s to record levels of 2.3 million in recent years....

Local, state and federal government has spent billions fighting drugs for the past 50 years. A reasonable investment in prevention, treatment and recovery is long overdue.

The rest is here.

This is a much more productive approach than more mandatory minimums as proposed by Republican candidate for governor Bill Cole.