I’ve blogged under my name on this site for some time, and I am not one to duck hard posts and controversial issues. Recently, in response to an anonymous post and the continuing presence of an anonymously authored blog, I responded anonymously myself.

I’ve now been “outed.”  In hindsight, I think that is probably good — my comment was harder and more direct than I would generally say, but I don’t regret the point.  It is my personal view, and I’ll stand by it.

I’ve posted a few anonymous comments on blogs (pretty rarely — most in the last few days).  I think there is a valid role for anonymous blogging – it lets comments stand on their own as the identity of the speaker can sometimes be illuminating and sometimes obscuring.  But I think that for controversial posts, it probably is a mistake.

So, here is the initial anonymous comment, and I am reposting my response under my name.

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SaveLakeIB says: Without getting into the perennial quality vs. quantity debate, authentic community engagement isn’t a numbers-of-meetings issue. There are many community voices, and one of the things that has emerged in the discussions about northwest Denver is the large amount of common ground among these different voices. There are a lot of great models of how you authentically bring community together and have conversations, not presentations, and reach common ground. The Save Lake IB blog did a posting over a month ago with a youtube clip of one of Richard Harwood, a guru on this stuff. View the clip and let’s start thinking again about how we do this.

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Alexander Ooms: Nothing should surprise one any more in this dispute, but the claim that the SLIB blog has been calling for “common ground” with “many community voices” is a stunner.  I was late to this dispute, but  SLIB is, to my mind, the single most intolerant, abusive and divisive participant in this dialogue.

Time after time, the SLIB has dismissed any other opinion that does not support their point of view for a variety of claims: people were not “from the neighborhood,” activists who were “paid,” and the claim that anyone who did not agree with both you and “Arthur” Jimenez was motivated by race and ethnicity. DPS Superintendent and A+ committee were compared to Enron.  Anyone who who cited another opinion were “anti-union” and “against teachers,” claims that this was a schools “privatization” effort.  Stoking up fears that “your school may be next”. Rampant intentional errors of fact, as was your photo display on the “basement” classroom at Lake – which it turns out are at ground level and wonderfully light.

And now, suddenly, you have cleansed your site and your comments of all the vituperative bile, and are claiming to want “common ground” as casually as a teacher cleans a chalkboard after class.  The damage this bitter divisiveness of your comments and site in the NW  ”community” is likely to linger for years. To drape yourselves in the cloth of common ground after erasing your blog pages accusatory invective is perhaps the most cynical and disgusting act yet.

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