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HoCo APFO Leaves it All on the Field





I found the information I was looking for at the NBC News website. Take a look at the photograph.


Image from NBC News Website. Original photo in the Library of Congress.
 

Caption reads: This photograph of a scene in Antietam, Md., was taken by Alexander Gardner, who worked for a time as an assistant to Matthew Brady. Some felt that the bodies were possibly moved in order to keep the church in the background.  - - Library of Congress

Why was I looking? This:

Image taken from post by HoCo APFO Page on Facebook


Caption reads: The day after Howard County passes a general plan.Who won the battle over adequate public facilities? 

My first response to this post on the HoCo APFO Facebook page was one of revulsion. I commented, “This is a wildly inappropriate photograph.” That was four days ago. There has been no response. In the meantime, their most recent post shows a toddler stuck in a toilet. 

The image that HoCo APFO selected to communicate their message about the Howard County General Plan was a Civil War photograph taken after the battle of Antietam. 

The Battle of Antietam, or Battle of Sharpsburg particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union

Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek. Part of the Maryland Campaign, it was the first field army-level engagement in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to take place on Union soil.

It remains the bloodiest day in American history, with a combined tally of 22,727 dead, wounded, or missing. - - Wikipedia

The “bloodiest day in American history” and HoCo APFO thought it was an appropriate was to depict the work of Howard County Government - - in collaboration with the community - - to plan for the future. (One wonders which side of the Civil War these folks would have been on.)

The soldiers in this image were sons, brothers, husbands and they most certainly did not die so that HoCo APFO could use their lifeless bodies to mock people they don’t like in County government.

I wrote about the HoCo APFO Facebook account once before when they took aim at the Howard County Library System.

HoCo APFO has a website dedicated to “providing information on Howard County's Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance.” There are candidate interviews posted there in addition to the sorts of information found on their Facebook page. What I haven’t been able to find is a list of names. Who researches and writes HoCo APFO? One person? A team? Does it receive contributions to forward its mission? If so, where is that information? This is an account that is more than willing to spread doubt and distrust and yet it’s not willing to have the basic transparency of identifying who is behind it. This has always bothered me. 

But, more than anything else, the steady chipping away of public trust is what concerns me the most. Our local democratic process and the way we engage in community issues is poisoned and weakened by this approach. I don’t think it makes for more empowered activism. It fosters dependence on one source of information: acceptance without questioning. - - “Unreasonable Doubt”, Village Green/Town², August, 2022

I still don’t know who writes HoCo APFO. I have a few ideas. But this post is a vivid example of why I don’t want what they are selling. 

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