To the editor:
I attended the West Stockbridge meeting (and others) regarding The Foundry, and the June 9 letter “Foundry Supporters’ virtue-signaling…is not a good look” is unfair; it is a mean mischaracterization of Amy Brentano and her supporters, as if she has perpetrated and organized their reactions to the goings-on. Nonsense. (I do concur that the gaveling seemed to be quick before an analogy could be expressed, though it insinuated MAGA-type behavior by the group and was therefore inflammatory.)
But mob? Ridiculous. The outrage the attendees expressed briefly was after they had patiently listened over many meetings. Their disgust was justifiable in response to the complaining owner’s harangues of unsubstantiated claims of harm and racial bias, of her refusing to yield for a long time to the gavel. As the only one to assert this complaint, has she herself done any sound-proofing to her own building? Taken any measures to deal with the few hours a year when she feels put upon?
Minions? Here is another word chosen to denigrate sincere supporters of a person whose comportment has been exemplary in the face of attacks by another who has publicly burst into long expletive-laden invectives.
But first things first: Shouldn’t it be incumbent on a plaintiff to prove “harm”—not in general, but specific to one’s physical, neurological, mental state—with medical records/documentation, before making a business that redounds to the cultural and financial health of a town spending time and money on fixing that person’s alleged harm?
As for “out-of-towners,” as pejorative, the implication that the far-away townspeople of, say, neighboring Lenox and Stockbridge, et al., have no say in a Berkshire business they frequent is classic provincialism.
Let’s be bigger than all this.
Mary Jo Maichack
Lenox
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