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May 12, 2025

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Point of View Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Pack, Lesher Show Courage on ‘Talbot Boys’ by Peter Franchot

June 19, 2020 by Opinion

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The past several months have brought momentous change in our country and our state, as we all have grappled with a global pandemic that sadly has claimed too many lives, made so many people sick and brought our economy to a halt.

For some weeks now, we also have been confronted with the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and that of Rayshard Brooks by an Atlanta police officer at a Wendy’s drive-thru.

Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot

Those horrifying incidents, which stirred painful memories of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and too many others, serve as a devastating reminder that institutional racism is still a corrosive reality in our country, and that not all Americans enjoy the same equal rights and protections under the law.

A few weeks ago, Easton was the site of a peaceful protest in front of the Talbot County Courthouse. The protesters gathered to express their anger and frustration with the racial discrimination that continues to divide this amazing community, and did so in a true spirit of peace.

Since that memorable event, the Talbot Boys Monument — both the mere fact of its existence and its prominent location on the Talbot County Courthouse lawn — has once again become a focus of public outcry.

As many of you already know, I have called for the removal of this awful statue, which was dedicated at the height of our nation’s “Jim Crow” era and romanticizes white supremacy and an act of treason against the United States.

Talbot County is one of my favorite places to visit. Over the years, I have attended many meetings, events and special occasions in your thriving towns from Oxford, Easton, and St. Michaels, to your prosperous farms and waterways from Tilghman, Trappe, and Cordova.

Talbot has so many centers of commerce and economic activity, cultural and educational offerings and medical facilities. It is a magical place of beauty, recreation and open spaces. I also have met so many wonderful people — of all ages, races and creeds — which for me and others makes the Talbot Boys Monument stand in stark contrast to the community I have come to know and enjoy.

There is no place in Talbot County, in Maryland, or our larger society for statues embracing heroes of slavery, violent white supremacy and treason.

People of all colors throughout the country are speaking out.

They are tired of being subject to the remnants of a time when human beings were allowed to be bought, sold and traded as the property of others, and were subject to the worst possible forms of physical abuse, sexual assault and emotional ruin, simply because of the color of their skin.

They are tired of living with harassment, abuse, economic discrimination, violence and murder because of the color of their skin.

They are tired of the endlessness of it all.

Placed on the courthouse lawn in 1916, the Talbot Boys Monument is not an historical edifice and its supposed educational value is that it has served as a propaganda tool to romanticize white supremacy, to legitimize acts of treason and to civilize the brutality of slavery.

If you want to experience a real hero, take a few steps to the other side of the courthouse lawn and admire native son, orator, writer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who fled his years of enslavement on a Talbot plantation to freedom and to become a true statesman.

I am in full support of the bipartisan effort by Talbot County Council President Corey Pack and Talbot County Councilmember Pete Lesher in drafting a resolution to bring down the Talbot Boys statue. Both men have shown strength and courage in standing up for what is right for all citizens of Talbot County.

Their beliefs mirror the community’s resolve. I would urge the remaining council members to consider their careful and thoughtful arguments and to listen to the expressions for justice and equality by the protesters.

This is a time of moral clarity for our country. It is a time to do away with symbols that treat men and women differently simply because of the color of their skin. It is time to blot out images that conjure hurt and fear.

I believe Talbot County is up for the challenge of doing what is right.

I have faith that the voices of this community will be heard.

Peter Franchot is comptroller of the state of Maryland. He plans to run for governor in 2022.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Op-Ed Tagged With: jim crow, Op-Ed, Opinion, peter franchot, removal, Talbot, talbot boys

Opinion: A Demented President by Steve Parks

June 7, 2020 by Opinion

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My wife and I attended a rally in front of the courthouse in Easton on Saturday. At one point each of the thousand or so at that June 6 rally were asked to take a knee. As I knelt on the ground for not nearly as long as the eight minutes, 46 seconds the cop charged with murder pressed his knee to the neck of George Floyd, the literal gravity of the crime became demonstrably apparent to me. The weight of my adult male body, if pressed by one knee long enough, could kill. If held longer, it could kill the grass beneath my knee. I can’t imagine the pain and fear and suffocation that flowed through the body of Mr. Floyd in the last moments of his life.

That same day, Team Trump 2020 sent out emails imploring his supporters under the subject line of NO KNEELING! Well, great. I’d sign that petition. No kneeling on anyone’s neck. But, no. This had nothing to do with crime and punishment. Nothing to do with justice. As usual, Donald Trump doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want to get it. He has no clue and never will. No empathy. Not a shred of human decency. The no-kneeling he refers to is football players taking a knee a couple of years ago when the National Anthem was played. This form of protest was led by NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick whose intent was to call attention to the injustice of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and many other black men at the hands of cops. Kaepernick meant no disrespect of the flag. He followed the advice of veterans he knew who told him it was the custom of soldiers to take a knee when “Taps” or the National Anthem is played for a fallen military hero. As a result, the Super Bowl quarterback’s career is done. Politically blacklisted by the NFL.

“The American Flag is to be revered, cherished, and flown high. We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart,” Team Trump proclaimed in its June 6 missive. 

“There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag—NO KNEELING!”

Nobody who takes a knee in protest of Officer Derek Chauvin taking a knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck is disrespecting the flag. The fired renegade cop disrespected the flag and all the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness it stands for. And so does Donald. 

At a Super Bowl party in February when he should’ve been paying closer attention to COVID, Trump mocked the National Anthem by waving his hands as if he were a military-band maestro while smirking, cajoling and backslapping political supporters. I saw no hand on heart. (Certainly, no taking a knee. That would’ve taken his face out of camera range.) This is respecting the flag? 

Donald recently visited Fort McHenry, disinvited by the mayor of Baltimore. A black Democrat, so he doesn’t care. Nor could Donald, I challenge him, recite the lyrics to the National Anthem. I’ve been to Fort McHenry many times. I know what the “O” in “O say can you see” stands for. I never mean any disrespect when I sing out that it stands for Orioles. The song was written in my city where the flag still waved the next morning. So, go salute yourself, Mr. President. 

As protesters in Lafayette Park near the White House took a knee or engaged in other such “terrorist” expressions of protest, Trump ordered military troops to disperse them by means of tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets just so he could stroll across the street and hold up a Bible in front of the boarded-up church next door, which he hasn’t visited since the required Inauguration Day ceremony. Are we to become a police state?

Donald didn’t bother during this stupid photo op to open the Bible and read an appropriate line or two regarding this occasion of national strife. It’s just as well. He probably would’ve picked, had he any knowledge of the Bible whatsoever, something inappropriate. Such as “an eye for an eye.” Under such biblical justice, Chauvin should die by someone taking a knee to his neck for, say, eight minutes, 46 seconds.

But Donald doesn’t care about justice—anymore than his lackey attorney general. He’s all about retribution and finger-pointing. Donald doesn’t like it that people who actually know what they’re talking about have called attention to his inattention to the onset of the pandemic. And that he will risk a relapse just so he can squeeze in a quarter of economic recovery before November’s election. (Who believes he won’t try to fix the numbers?)

Now he’s gotten his fondest wish—to take COVID-19 off the front page, off the round-the-clock cable news cycle. Now he can distract us with Law and Order while blaming Fake News for everything from the “Russian hoax” and impeachment—his excuse for ignoring coronavirus—to taking a knee on a black man’s neck.

I know something about news and about Donald the Derelict. We covered Donald for decades at Newsday on Long Island and New York City. He was a joke. A jerk. No one took him seriously until he screwed you out of millions he owed you. Which he did regularly, daring mom-and-pop companies to sue him. (He rarely hired, say, GE—they had more lawyers.) I listened to voicemail messages he left, claiming to be his own public relations agent. He fooled no one. It was good for laughs. The only question was whether he was faking it because he was too cheap to hire an agent or too narcissistic to believe anyone could do a better job. Ha!

As for “Fake News,” here’s what I know that Donald doesn’t. Yes, the majority of reporters and editors I worked with in more than 55 years in newspaper journalism were, if not liberal, at least sympathetic to the concerns of middle class and those not quite so fortunate. This ground-level tilt toward basic social justice was balanced by publishers and higher newsroom management whose influence kept us all in line with the realities of capitalist survival. It’s a kind of checks and balances on which the Constitution attempts to keep our government in line. Neither is a perfect system. But in the case of journalism—professional journalism as opposed to partisan propaganda—the result is truth, more or less, as we see it one day at a time. The news report of any single day may be proved wrong in the long run. And the wrongs are duly reported. One prime example is the New York Times’ verification of aspects of the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration deployed to justify its regime-change carnage in Iraq. It was a lie. We know better now because the Times itself, and other responsible media sources, corrected the historic record.

When was the last time Trump World admitted an error? Remember they’re still on the record that Trump’s inaugural crowd was greater than Obama’s in 2008. Who cares except Donald, who can’t get over that Americans voted twice to elect a black man president?

Whatever Fake News is out there comes from the White House, or more precisely, from the world of Trump Twit Nits—almost exclusively comprised of lies, incendiary retweets and disinformation owing to Donald’s boundless and often racist ignorance. The president is an idiot and a fool. The danger is we don’t know whose fool he is. Vladimir Putin’s is my guess. I suspect the Russians and Deutsche Bank own him. I believe Trump would resign before surrendering his financial records, which would surely ruin him. But he’s doing a pretty good job of that all by himself. 

I’m reminded now, again, of The Who song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” If we do, America, we deserve whatever further disaster befalls us. I believe any of us, no matter our political affiliation, can agree that this guy is a jerk. Even if you’re a devout racist, Trump is not favorably representing your demented interests. He’s making you look bad, which may be the only good thing about the Trump presidency. By accident, of course.

Steve Parks is a retired New York journalist now living in Easton.

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Op-Ed Tagged With: Opinion

Guest Commentary: Why Buttigieg?

January 15, 2020 by Maryland Matters

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It was June 27, 2019. The spotlights streamed down on 10 presidential candidates standing on the Arsht Center stage in Miami. NBC had brought in an A-List group of moderators and, as the evening began, it was clear they came prepared to lead the candidates through back and forth discourse on the issues one would reasonably expect: health care, the economy, and immigration.

That was how it went for nearly an hour. Then, Rachel Maddow directed a question specifically to Mayor Pete Buttigieg. It was a custom-crafted zinger of the sort that haunts and keeps elected officials up at night. The kind that focuses everyone in the room and draws a bead of sweat even from those who didn’t have to answer. It was the kind of question designed to hold someone accountable for something unpleasant.

Political campaigns reveal character in two fundamental ways. First, in Presentation: the stories candidates tell about themselves and their platforms. Second, in Reaction: how candidates respond to unanticipated circumstances and things over which they have no control. Most do a pretty good job at the former. It’s the latter that separates the good from the great.

Before that debate, I was only marginally aware of Pete Buttigieg. But what I knew seemed solid. There was the resume, including Harvard, the Rhodes Scholarship and time at Oxford. There was the meritorious service in the U.S. Naval Reserve. Productive experience in the private sector. And there was the mayoral service. (Slight digression: Not only does mayoral service offer legitimate executive experience, but I’d argue, it’s an even more immediately-accountable situation than serving as President. Most mayors are accessible to their constituents almost all the time. Mayors don’t get to seclude themselves in the White House. They’re in line at the grocery store, at the next table at the local watering hole, cutting a ribbon at the town center.)So, when Rachel Maddow posed the question, I was generally inclined to like Mayor Pete – and I would’ve given him solid high scores on how he’d presented himself.And then there was Pete’s message and delivery — unifying, remarkably articulate. Even those of us in the political class, for whom oratory is a stock-in-trade, regard Mayor Pete’s skill as extraordinary.

Maddow spoke of festering racial tensions spurred by a recent officer-involved shooting in Buttigieg’s jurisdiction of South Bend, Indiana. She pointed out that, although African Americans comprise 26 percent of the city’s population, only 6 percent of South Bend’s police force at the time was black

“Why has that not improved over your two terms as Mayor?” Maddow asked.

“Because I couldn’t get it done,” Mayor Pete began, “my community is in anguish right now… A black man, Eric Logan, [was] killed by a white officer. I’m not allowed to take sides until the investigation comes back. The officer said he was attacked with a knife, but he didn’t have his body camera on. It’s a mess. And we’re hurting. And I can walk you through all of the things that we have done as a community – all of the steps that we took, from bias training to de-escalation – but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan. And when I look into his mother’s eyes, I have to face the fact that nothing that I say will bring him back.

“This is an issue that is facing our community and so many communities around the country. And, until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular issue teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem: the fact that there’s a wall of mistrust, put up one racist act at a time; not just from what’s happened in the past, but from what’s happening in the country in the present. It threatens the well-being of every community. And I am determined to bring about a day when a white person driving a vehicle and a black person driving a vehicle, when they see a police officer approaching, feels the exact same thing; a feeling not of fear, but of safety. I am determined to bring that day about.” (Crowd applauds)

I had to rewind and watch it again. “Because I couldn’t get it done.” Did he just say that? Now he had my attention.

This was probably not Pete Buttigieg’s favorite moment of 2019, but I found it remarkable. I can’t recall seeing anything like it in such a high-stakes presidential debate in recent history. Why? Because Mayor Pete accepted accountability.

There it was. On this debate stage, during the course of several hours of candidate-after-candidate pivoting and launching into poll-tested talking points all specifically designed to channel those bright, streaming stage lights and reflect themselves in the most perfect possible radiance – and after decades of debates just like it: Pete Buttigieg was different.

He didn’t cast blame. South Bend has a police chief, a human resources office, a strong City Council and other layers of oversight of their police department. We heard none of that from Mayor Pete.

He didn’t point to some other jurisdiction, or someone from a different political party and say ‘well, what about them, and how they handled (insert similar situation) poorly?’

He didn’t pivot into a discourse of programs that he’s brought about to help turn South Bend around, although there’s plenty to point to on that score.

And he didn’t make excuses.

Mayor Pete acknowledged an uncomfortable truth. He took responsibility. The buck stopped there. That’s what leadership looks like.

Leaders embrace accountability, even when things don’t work out the way you’d want them to. They reflect. They listen. They learn. And they become better leaders.

(In fact, only a couple weeks later Pete rolled out his “Douglass Plan,” a set of initiatives meant to dismantle historically racist structures and systems, particularly in the areas of health, education and criminal justice. No other candidate has put together anything as thoughtful or comprehensive on the subject.)

That’s the moment when Mayor Pete caught my attention, and everything I’ve seen since has served to underscore these truths about his character.

My fellow Marylanders, we have the opportunity to support a rare and exceptional candidate in Pete Buttigieg. I hope you’ll give him a good look and join me in supporting him in the Democratic Primary here in April, and then for President in November.

— JUD ASHMAN

The writer is the mayor of Gaithersburg. Note: This piece reflects Ashman’s personal viewpoint and is not an official position of the City of Gaithersburg or the Chestertown Spy.

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The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 8 Letters to Editor, Archives Tagged With: Chestertown Spy, Opinion, politics

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