I dunno, Jim. I think you need to reconsider. What is the purpose of this forum, and what effect do our posts have here?

I'm an activist in my local community, centering on the issues of incarceration, homelessness, and immigration. I'm past president and on the board of directors of a non-profit community organizing group that focuses on these issues. I attend every local public meeting that deals with these issues, and I write frequent letters to local newspapers and harass my elected representatives on a regular basis.

I use Mudcat for practice. In general, I feel I'm among friends here and in a place where I can say what I want to say, testing my arguments to see how they will work in a more public forum. Here is where I experiment with my thinking on matters, to see if my approach is workable.

This coming Tuesday, the right-wingers in my county are organizing an attempt to get the county Board of Supervisors to enact a resolution removing the county from California's "sanctuary state" law which prohibits state and local law enforcement from participating in Trump's crackdown on legal and illegal immigrants. Some California counties and municipalities have chosen to defy the state law and work to cooperate with Trump's immigration troopers.

Our county has a right-wing electorate, but the county Board of Supervisors chose not to include the anti-sanctuary proposal on this coming Tuesday's agenda. To my mind, this is a very courageous action on the part of the Board of Supervisors, but many of my colleagues don't think this is enough and want to use the Board meeting as a battleground for the immigration issue. I don't want to jeopardize what the Board has done by removing the issue from their agenda, so I find myself in opposition to many of my friends.

To me, the county board meeting is where the discussion has importance - not at Mudcat. I want a place like this to test my opinions, even if I'm wrong. And once I've tried my presentations here, I can show up at the county meeting on Tuesday and make my point in a place where it counts.

But for Mudcat to be worthwhile, it's important for us to see Mudcat for what it should be - a forum for free discussion among friends, even if sometimes people say things we don't agree with. If we are to be effective in our communities and our political bodies, we need a place like Mudcat where we can just bat ideas around, even if we're wrong sometimes.

-Joe-