DISSENT: The foundation of progress

At the town hall on Saturday, Feb. 22, the KCRCC’s bully-in-chief Ed Bejarana, said the quiet part out loud: “Your voice is meaningless.” That sentiment has become the foundation of the KCRCC’s echo chamber, where dissent is not only unwelcome — it is silenced by unidentified thugs in black shirts. 

We see the same authoritarian mindset on display at the Community Library Network. Trustee Ambrosetti lectures patrons on representative government, implying that legislators dictate the will of the people and that dissent is somehow unpatriotic. Trustee Hanley dismisses opposing views with a flippant, “Suck it up and deal with it” (see the Feb. 20 meeting). 

By that logic, the suffragettes should have simply “sucked it up” and accepted their disenfranchisement. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow civil rights leaders should have abandoned their cause, recognizing that their voices were “meaningless.” The movement against the Vietnam War should have been silenced — oh wait, that was tried. And the voices refused to be silenced. 

The American Revolution, the abolitionists, the women’s movement, MeToo, Black Lives Matter — all of these movements arose in defiance of entrenched power structures. Dissent is not just American — it is the foundation of progress. What is truly un-American is the attempt to suppress it. 

MICHELLE LIPPERT 

Post Falls