Cleveland Park Devolves Into Terrifying Banana Republic Before Its Listserv Readers' Very Eyes
Nothing breathes a little life into a slow news week like some neighborhood listserv drama. The comments and tips line have been buzzing about the Cleveland Park Citizens Association turning the area into a "banana republic." How? Well, let's start from the beginning.
>A while back, there was a proposal for a new Giant to move into the west end of the neighborhood. As any reader of DCist knows, fights over grocery stores can be bitter, vicious, and lengthy. When one pro-Giant member of the Association felt his views weren't being represented by the CPCA, he started recruiting members in an effort to vote out the current leadership. This blatent power grab was described thusly by President George Idelson:
Normally, competition for leadership is healthy and our nominating process is wide open. Demonizing an association and encouraging a chaotic election is hardly normal. This is Cleveland Park, not some third world country... We need some time for cooling off [from the Giant debate]. Time to reflect on the issues. For these reasons, CPCA's Executive Committee has executed the emergency powers granted in our bylaws to postpone the election of officers until the Fall. This is clearly an emergency.Oh burn! Nice try with your coup there, dissident. Why don't you shove this state of emergency in your pipe and smoke it!
So yeah, the ensuing rage has filled many a Cleveland Parkers' inbox the last few days, with one side defending the many hours of volunteer work Idelson has committed to helping neighborhood businesses, and the other wondering when CP turned into Germany, circa 1933 (can you start a comment thread with Godwin's law?). Some of our favorite quotes are after the jump. Do tell us, CP-ers, how do you feel about this mess?
From Peter:
If fearing electoral defeat is cause enough to delay an election, we may have never had elections in 1992, 2000, 2004, or 2006.
From Warren:
While you speak about the "divisiveness" that is resulting from the normal election process, you ignore the fact that the position taken by the CPCA in its February 2009 resolution, namely, to require full financing in place before the procect is commenced, and to oppose the project in its current form and argue for its rejection to the Zoning Commission, was the original action that has led many in the community to question whether you actually represent the views of Cleveland Park as a whole, rather than a small group of people in control of the Association. By postponing the election, we will not get an answer to this question.
Ana gives her characterization of the debate:
What I am reading is the equivalent of "road rage" on the internet.
And an important history lesson from David:
Our nation's elections were contentious at least since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams ran against each other in 1796, and probably before that back to the first Congress, not to mention state legislatures and town meetings back to the founding of the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies. When the Democratic-Republicans disagreed with the Federalists about the nation's direction, the Federalists didn't say that Jefferson's "wild claims" were going to "tear the nation apart." Or maybe some did, but elections went ahead just the same, and in 1800, Jefferson beat Adams... Postponing an election is far more evocative of a "third world country" than running a voter registration drive to democratically change
policy.