Letter from Virginia Kennedy
Beware of the ‘Ugly Firsts’
Following the Sunday Hall of Fame Induction in Cooperstown, Cooperstown and Middlefield residents woke to find white nationalist recruiting posters hanging on the backs of stop signs and on utility poles. Both the Village of Cooperstown and Town of Middlefield told concerned residents that signs on telephone poles needed to be reported to NYSEG; otherwise, there was not much they could do.
Some of the almost 300 members of our Coopers-townOneonta Indivisible group helped take the signs down. Others offered good advice on whom to contact about the posting of the signs, including suggestions to report the signage to the New York State Office of Counter-Terrorism.
Many residents were understandably upset and unsettled about seeing these signs in safe, quiet Cooperstown and Middlefield. Maybe even more unsettling is the fact that every long-term resident I have spoken to since the signs were discovered has said some version of the same thing: “That has never happened here before.”
But now it has. It was inevitable. The posting of white nationalist signs in Cooperstown and Middlefield has followed other firsts for us as a country. Two examples of many: Mr. Trump’s pardon of violent cop-beating insurrectionists who viciously attacked our Capital to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and masked ICE agents taking a working father from his family in our small rural city of Oneonta, even as he was legally pursuing an asylum claim.
Every day, the media is filled with administration officials speaking of immigrants in the language of degrading and racist stereotypes. This language accompanies simultaneous stories of hardworking members of communities being dragged by masked agents often with no warrants, from their jobs as farm workers, landscapers, healthcare workers and more; some are snagged while attending their legally mandated court dates to properly pursue citizenship; at times, naturalized and U.S. born citizens are caught in the dragnet.
We live here where it is beautiful and peaceful. Many of us have the luxury of safe housing, good healthcare, solid schools, and caring neighbors. The temptation is to put our heads down and ride out this administration’s abuses and harms with our hands on our ears and a vow not to read the news. Sometimes we claim we don’t talk about politics.
But there is no “riding this out.” The passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill is coming for our region as it is for all citizens. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, changes to Medicaid and healthcare eligibility mean 15 million people will lose health insurance; thousands of them live here in Otsego County. Rural families—our neighbors—who depend on Medicaid and SNAP will go without healthcare and without food. Their lack of healthcare funding will lead to the closure of hospitals and nursing homes. Jobs will be lost. Lives will be lost.
Liz Fowler, a distinguished scholar in Health and Policy Management at Johns Hopkins University labels this, “the biggest cut to our social safety net in history.” Another first.
In the meantime, Mr. Trump and his minions are working hard in the plain light of day to undermine federal elections in 2026 with first-time mid-decade gerrymanders of Congressional voting districts and other unprecedented actions. They are putting their hands on the scale and attempting to destroy the integrity of our elections.
Martin Luther King wisely asserted that “every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
If you have not already, it’s time to stand up and be counted in actively resisting the harms being imposed on our communities, our neighbors, our children and our democracy. There is no way around it; we are all in this together.
Virginia Kennedy
Group Leader, CooperstownOneonta Indivisible
I hope many people will read this wake-up call. If you are not already doing so, please join the ranks of Indivisible. There are several Indivisible groups in our area: CooperstownOneonta has been leading the way, but there is also Butternut Valley Indivisible, Cherry Valley Indivisible, and Indivisible of Schoharie County. You may join up through the Facebook page of each organization. You may also consult the national Indivisible website at Indivisible.org. Virginia Kennedy is correct when she says it’s easy to go about living our “normal” lives as if these awful things weren’t happening — until we are directly affected. My morning coffee did not really do the trick to wake me up this morning, but this letter detailing the rapid fascist polluting of our society — both locally and nationally — prompts me to commit to doing more. Please visit the website of Cooperstown Oneonta, where you can find information sheets detailing the contents of the Big Ugly Bill and please find at least one action you can take to counter the undoing of our country by the evil forces that are in power now.
Cooperstown PD says “there is not much they could do.” Are they really that powerless to protect our community? There are security cameras all over the village. Did Cooperstown PD review the footage recorded by these cameras to see if the perpetrators of this vile act could be identified? Did they canvass the areas in which the offending materials were placed to see if residents there may have seen something? Did they put a call out to the public for information that might lead to the identification of the perpetrators? There is plenty Cooperstown PD could have done if they had wanted to. This shrugging of the shoulders in the face of pure evil is an expression at the micro level of the indifference that has seized so many in our country, greasing the wheels of authoritarianism and hastening the death of our democracy. Shameful.