Enough With The Witch Hunt – We're Better Than This

Dear San Ramon residents,

We're all an intellectual bunch, which I've observed in my 20 years of living here in San Ramon. Yet a local blogger for the San Ramon Express – Roz Rogoff, who's armed with a Ph.D – has managed to put into peoples' minds that I am the witch city leaders are hunting for. 

All .

Roz made me the subject of some controversy (click through the link to read about that), if only for the fact that our city government doesn't like to be questioned or challenged. My friends, my neighbors, my coworkers, my peers ... we are not a community made up of people who stand for a "Lord of the Flies" mentality. We are hard-working, family loving, friendly, spirited, volunteer minded, take care of our neighbors people.

We're too good for a mob mentality.

Some of my favorite City Council members do not share my political values – yet I have cared for their children (little Meredith Perkins who was entrusted in my care for one week while her parents, Elizabeth and Scott Perkins, left to the East Coast to visit their son). 

I worked side-by-side with Councilman Dave Hudson during last year's election season – we shared many laughs. 

Mayor H. Abram Wilson has honored me with an award for my volunteer work in the community.

And yet we – such an inquisitive, intellectual, critically thinking, independent-minded bunch – have joined the witch hunt spearheaded by Roz.

And many of you fell for it!

Today I am sad. I am ashamed of you who pointed the finger at me, who smeared my name in the press as the "chief suspect" and of those of you who bought into it, because I had a few opinions and facts to share. 

Roz wrote a fine column, she very articulately wrote suggestively and used enough of my words to convince reasonable people that I had committed the crime ... even though there was no crime all along.

She used the persuasive language that, I'm sure, she mastered via higher education.

But she was cruel and uncaring with those same words. She left out the words I've spoken that would have without doubt invalidated her story. She all but called me a liar, although that was strongly enough implied to hurt me.

Beyond that, she used an innocent party to build herself up, to bring shameless publicity to her own writing and to convince you that there is a witch to burn in San Ramon.