2/12/2023
Channeling my thoughts with you, from my heart to yours. I am angry that YOU have been disrespected.
People who made decisions for decades don’t see you. Haven’t considered you.
Don’t want to know you. Don’t care about your lives, your individual lives do not, and have not mattered. Your fears, your anxiety, your hopes for a just and equitable life have no place for them.
People in agencies that could have, and corporations and authorities kept and used their authority to keep you exposed to the toxins in our floods and on the occasion, even left you wet and your rooms and possessions ruined.
You have the right to pretty things. Nice things and long lives -- and deep sleep when rains come.
We should know that the gauges are out there and the decision makers will keep you safe through the night. You have a right to the dignity of living your one precious life.
You deserve to have nice things. Simple things like picnic tables in your beloved park. Finding frogs along Tar Creek. Dipping your toes in our creek and wondering if the fish will kiss them. You deserve fresh air in the morning –walking your dog and lingering to smell the fresh breeze.
Agencies and corporations and farms and commissions and authorities have used all their authority against you. Your lives don’t matter to any of them but YOU matter to me. And I want you to load yourself and your friends, get yourselves up on your feet. We have a fight to go to. A fight for your life. A fight for the life of this town.
Bring your signs – use one of LEAD’s, wear orange. Be BOLD channel your anger – But muster some up, some well-earned from long-suffering. We have work to do. You can also pick up your pens and do what a bunch of your neighbors and leaders have done and write the Commission who might decide to care and help us. WRITE like your homes depended on it. Because it may make the difference.
Your postcards are being posted on FERC’s website the day they arrive, if you have remembered to mail yours. If not, perfect time to send them a Valentine. That’s what I am sending to FERC tomorrow, a postcard with hearts and hopes.
As for the other entities of power, you can bless them and all their loved ones if you care to.
But I haven’t.
Their inaction makes me angry and this inaction very directly has affected you.
I care deeply and in my life’s work and after in my years of “retirement” I have not tired of thinking – plotting and staging events to gather and garnish the spotlight on the inequities you have and have been harmed by. Whether by how the lake has been managed or mismanaged, or by an EPA that has spent their whole time at the Tar Creek Superfund site to only now have finally found an officer in Dallas plotting real action to stop the bleeding waters that spread heavy metals right through the heart of this town and more so in our floods.
Meet me at the Coleman on February 16 and later dates at Tar Creek and at Riverview Park. Show up. Show them who they are harming and that you are taking a stand.
You have a right. You are innocent. There is not a thing you have done to cause any of the harm that comes to you, that floods your home. The only part of this drama you have experienced is the one that has been assigned to you, and that has been as the VICTIM. We have all been delegated to that role.
But let’s see what it might feel like to shake that off. See you at the Coleman for the Town Hall on Flooding on February 16, and for any more that follow after that date. LEAD Agency will be parked with our DON’T FLOOD US signage and extras for you.
Over 700 of you have heard us knocking on your front doors asking you to take the Flood Survey and many of you are taking time right then, others are finding our cards and taking the survey on-line. If you live in the floodplain we are coming. What has happened to you should be recorded and we want to know how you feel about a buy-out should you be offered one. The other question you will be able to answer is what is your opinion of raising the lake level.
You have a right to answer and to be heard.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
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