Everyone wants to know, “Where O Where Have All the Protesters Gone?”

Can you believe there hasn’t been a protest in the City of Lake Worth since very early in 2016?

Hard to believe, but it’s true. Almost three years since there’s been a protest in this City.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane. . .

Do you recall the trailer park ‘forced relocation’ that wasn’t? The ‘curfew’ in January 2016 that never happened either? Read more about those staged protests that both failed spectacularly later in this blog post.

Note that prior to all these ‘protests’ Lake Worth’s former beat reporter, Mr. Chris Persaud, left the Post after being awarded multiple prestigious journalism awards for election reporting. After Persaud left almost a year passed before the Post sent another beat reporter to cover this City and then election reporting returned to normal once again: horrid.

However, the new news is Chris Persaud is back working again at the Post! We learned this just recently but it’s uncertain if he will return as the City’s beat reporter once again at Lake Worth City Hall.

And if you didn’t know The Palm Beach Post was put up For-Sale last year and earlier this year GateHouse Media agreed to buy the newspaper last May. Maybe GateHouse will bring on an ombudsman (public editor) which has been sorely needed for a very long time.

Anyhow, without further ado, always a big hit
with my readers: “Where O Where Have
all the Protesters Gone?”

To the question: “Where have all the protesters gone?” Our City hasn’t had a protest since early 2016, protests which began in January of that year and ended just prior to the elections. There hasn’t even been a protest by our friends who live in a local trailer park community in over three years! Is it because Mr. Snarky and all his friends have left town to stir up trouble somewhere else?

Then the next year, in March 2017, we all survived another election season. As you know, City elections can bring out the worst of some in the press and the media. Do you remember, “One of the ways you know it’s getting close to election season”?

There was never a “curfew” here in Lake Worth.
That was the Post’s headline editor trying
to stir up trouble:

The word “curfew” is an example of loaded language, “wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes.”

So what happened to all those protesters prior to our municipal elections in 2016? The signs, megaphone, bells, whistles, and banging of pots and pans? The answer to the question is, of course, obvious.

All of that silliness was about our Downtown Cultural Plaza being closed for certain overnight hours, ordinances created by cities and towns all across this nation every day. It’s not unusual despite what some protesters and others tried to claim and it certainly wasn’t “draconian”, or “criminalizing” people, or even as one protester said, “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Then a little later on the pictures began to arrive via email from all over the world. . .

Literal translation of sign in the image below using Google Translator: “Evacuation plan Vigipirate 4:30 p.m. 5:00 p.m. closed park”

A ‘curfew’ in France too?

And another one:

Translation: “Opening hours of the fountain gardens”. Again, no mention of a ‘curfew’.

Central Park CLOSED!

And remember the “trailer park” protest that turned into a dud? The advice for people back then was if they wanted to see what it’s like to be a protester, they better do it before Election Day. By the way, the next election of candidates in this City of Lake Worth will be held on March 12th, 2019.

You see, all those protests ostensibly about the homeless — who never did get any help from the protesters who were too busy protesting — the protests over trash pick-up at the trailer park, and all the others were just for show. It was all a stage act in front of the press, the TV cameras and the rest of the media who fell for it. Those protests were all about manipulating the results on election day in 2016. Period. And it all failed spectacularly as evidenced by the results: all the incumbents were re-elected by landslide victories.

To learn the truth about that “trailer park” nonsense The Lake Worth Herald explained it all quite well. Now. . . let’s take a look back at CBS12/WPEC’s hysterical take on what they thought that protest was all about:

“Seniors argue reduced city services all about forced relocation”*

This ‘story’ was by Israel Balderas in February of 2016, just prior to our City’s elections. Here is an excerpt:


LAKE WORTH (CBS12) — Hundreds [?] of senior citizens voiced their fears outside city hall Tuesday night over feeling pushed out of their homes.


“Hundreds”? There were about ten or so. But isn’t it interesting how much news reporting can change leading up to an election in Lake Worth? And lastly, then came that Palm Beach Post article from last year that had to be retracted:

Click on image to enlarge:

It’s because of reporting like this that some newspapers have what’s called an ombudsman,
or a “public editor”.

Anyhow, stay tuned. Maybe before long the entertainment will begin all over again when the 2018–2019 Election Season begins!

Remember, this is the “quirky” little
City of Lake Worth! 

*When you hear the words “forced relocation” what comes to mind right away? An excerpt from Wikipedia: “The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation [emphasis added] and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who had lived on the Pacific coast.”