Dear Editor,

Friday night last, someone removed two of my front yard signs protesting oil and coal trains and deposited them flat on the yard across the street. He also removed a peace flag from the front porch and dropped it on the driveway. Let’s see: trespass, theft, destruction and littering. He didn’t show enough courtesy to leave literature or DVDs. In the past, most homes in the neighborhood received one or both of those items, except us. I feel much better now.

Back in the 1970s, I was an ACLU board member who voted with the unanimous decision to support the New American Nazi Party in its constitutional right to march peacefully in Skokie, Ill. Skokie was a famous, and infamous, Supreme Court decision in part because Skokie had a large Jewish population, including many Holocaust survivors. There were a number of Jews on the board, who had to make an awful decision based on the law and not on an emotional desire to shoot the bastards.

I wish our local coward would knock on my door and ask permission to do what he did. I would deny him that privilege and then explain how he can make himself heard in a completely legal way. Otherwise, if I were to catch him (them) again in the act, it might make him wonder if I’m just a crazy, dangerous bastard myself.

Lawrence Blakey
Sandpoint