The people of Dallas vote to elect city council members that will represent their interests in government, and these elected officials are supposedly accountable to the people who elected them. When they fail to do the job they were positioned to do, voters have the right and responsibility to voice their concerns, hold them accountable, and when necessary, remove them from office at the ballot box.
Yet, our current Dallas City Council has repeatedly shown that they do not actually care what you, nor your fellow voters, have to say beyond the election. In fact, they would rather use government force in the form of manipulative policies to mute the voices of Dallas’ citizens and businesses who attempt to address vital and pressing issues in the presence of those they elected. The members of the city council don’t care about their constituents, just themselves and their own comfort level.
Under the protection of our current city charter, residents of Dallas are permitted to speak about anything that concerns them at city council meetings. However, Mayor Eric Johnson and other council members want to restrict, or outright eliminate, the ability of Dallas residents to be heard on matters that are uncomfortable for the council, in order to avoid shedding bad light on the city’s failures or forcing awareness of topics of accountability into the public eye.
Discussions that began in June around this issue of censorship have produced a number of alarming “solutions” for silencing the public: limiting the number of meetings residents can speak openly at, restricting speech to only “approved” subjects on the meetings’ agendas, and creating new subjective rules on “disruption” to empower the council to silence and remove residents voicing their concerns from meetings.
In essence, these “proposals” would give the council full control over what you are allowed to speak about. This sounds less and less like a representative government, and more like a socialist democracy.
The mayor says these measures would prevent so-called “trolls” from disrupting meetings, but in reality, residents of Dallas are deeply frustrated with the actions of their city council, and this proposal is simply a way to silence them. The council wants to defund the police, ignore the vagrancy crisis, and give themselves shady pay raises without residents being able to say a word in protest.
Dallas was once a great city. For nearly two centuries, residents and businesses have worked to make it one of the most desirable locations in the nation to live and work, but rising crime and unchecked homelessness have placed Dallas on a dismal course to become exactly like the cities that have experienced large exoduses in recent years. If circumstances continue trending at this pace, our city will soon look like San Francisco, Chicago, or a number of other once-great American cities.
While this decline has been disturbingly persistent, Dallas’ demise is only inevitable if we do nothing. We can save Dallas, and it starts with holding our city council accountable. Dallasites must act and contact their councilman and tell them that these proposed ideas are unacceptable.
As community members of Dallas, we must not forfeit our constitutional right to speak freely before our elected officials. We are the taxpayers who fund their municipal projects. We are the voters they made commitments to uphold the best interests of Dallas’ economy, safety, and legacy for future generations to come. We deserve better.
How do you get anything done if you can’t control who sucks up the Council’s time with crazy rants and trolling the Council? I’m painfully aware of watching people trying to have discussions online only to see someone hijack their conversation and change the topic to their own political agenda. People are sick of listening to crazy political rants filled with disinformation. I wouldn’t let these people and groups eat up my valuable time either.
If “kindness” and courtesy practices were followed while addressing the Dallas City Council then perhaps the City Council wouldn’t be considering methods of restricting our free speech. Unfortunately, our culture today allows for blatant aggression, coarseness, and arrogance when it comes to expressing our opinions. What happened to give honor to those who occupy honorable roles? We are too busy thinking about our selves and our rights to take the time to consider others.
Have to agree with Jack. Everything appears to be an outrage these days and some truly are but there are better ways to express that outrage than what we have been seeing lately. It is hard to remove emotion from causes that people are passionate about but emotion almost always diminishes the cause because emotion often takes a civil conversation to an uncivil conversation.
Kindness is given when it is deserved. The council members are Elected and paid very well to do a job. If the people of Dallas really knew what goes on at city hall they would burn it to the ground.
I was a friend of Starke Taylor, two-term mayor of Dallas in the eighties. You should have heard the stories he told of the incivilities he had to endure 40 years ago and he would never have considered silencing the voice of the people. You gotta take the good with the bad when you sign up for that job.
Honorable roles should be occupied with honor. Unfortunately, when they are not, people act without civility. Why are the citizens held to a standard that those occupying ‘honorable roles’ are not?
I would say “expectedly”, not “unfortunately”.
When are the citizens going to act honorably? They act like animals.
If they would stop making decisions that make people angry, people would stop being angry. Actions have consequences.
Make them angry? Lol. Most of these people STAY angry. A large majority of them didn’t even bother get informed before they blew a gasket. Getting upset without even knowing ALL of the facts is BS. Get yourself informed!
Great article, Jake. The average person doesn’t understand how restrictive our government has become – silencing its constituents is their first and most powerful step. Thank you for being a voice for the people.
Pretty communistic. We will tell you what you can say and when you can say it. As for those council members, “If you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen.”
I wonder how you would handle it if you were being disrespected by a bunch of people who couldn’t be bothered to even learn the issues.
Just as repealing bad laws should be easier than passing them, recall of corrupt or just ineffective office holders should be easier than electing them.
My sentiments exactly! Whenever a city starts going blue, it fails. It started with tearing down statues and trying to erase history.
You can leave any time. Russia will accept you as long as you don’t spout your opinions.
Says the poster who posted here at least 6 times in favor of shutting people up.
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