Sign Stealers

Here’s my letter to the editor for tonight. (And we got the last yard sign at the Obama office.  They promised me more tomorrow, so I’m going to get as many as they will let me.)

We moved to Indiana from Arizona after the second time our home was broken into and things were taken.  We felt violated, for sure.  I didn’t think I could find any worse.  Until tonight.  In the twelve years we’ve lived in Northwest Indiana I have had three items stolen from my yard.  One was a bicycle that my daughter left out. 

 

The next thing was stolen in front of my watching eyes.  Standing in my own living room, in my bathrobe, with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand, I glanced out my window and watched a woman get out of a van and step into my yard, taking my “Out of Iraq” sign from my yard, then dash back into her van.  She was gone before I could get outside, but I screamed at her from my doorway in the early morning hour:  “I saw you,” I yelled.  Tonight, the latest stolen item was our Obama yard sign.

 

You can take my things.  I can’t stop you from that.  Take the bike that we have left out for you—I’m sure you need it more than the reckless child who left it out. But you cannot take my voice.  And you cannot take my vote.  

 

What America is it that you long for, I want to ask the people that take my signs.  What dream of America do you have that is threatened by opinions other than your own?  Disagree with me.  Put your own sign up in your own yard. Write your own letter to the editor.  But stealing my signs only steels my resolve to be the voice of my own conscience.  You may steal my signs, but you will not take my voice, my will, my desire.  THAT is the America I long for, the America where we are not afraid of ideas, of opinions, or dare I say, of hope.

 

What America do you long for?