I recently invented a prototype high tech device called the Neg-O-Meter. The Neg-O-Meter operates much like a Geiger Counter only instead of measuring radiation, it measures human negativity.
I used a Homeland Security approved bungee cord to attach my Neg-O-Meter to a radio controlled drone which I flew over the entire city to determine where the strongest source of negative attitudes radiate from. I did not fly my drone over the kids playing soccer at Ft. Steilacoom Park, because it is dangerous and besides, kids playing soccer are not going to be negative.
The Neg-O-Meter superimposed a solid 10+ Bulls Eye on Tillicum.
On July 2, 2015, a wonderful historical article appeared in The Suburban Times titled, Galloping Gerties Galloping for 63 years.
Several of us could not help but notice a line in paragraph three that read, “Please note we still consider ourselves Tillicum and not Lakewood”
Those ten little words capture Tillicum’s longterm attitude.
The sentence caused one word to come to mind; ingrate. The dictionary definition for ingrate is “a person who does not show proper appreciation or thanks for something : an ungrateful person”.
While I support Tillicum having community pride and free speech, with community pride and free speech comes a responsibility to make a good faith effort to muster a positive working attitude and constructive working relationship with the City of Lakewood. Tillicum has been a part of our city from day one when we incorporated in February, 1996.
The City of Lakewood has reached out to Tillicum with helpful and kind hands in so many ways, including personal efforts, programs and a continual flow of truck-loads of money.
Tillicum soaks up a disproportionate share of police, fire, library and city services when compared to their contribution to the City’s income. While we never complain about subsidizing Tillicum, the only thanks we get is listening to Tillicum residents condemn, complain and criticize the City of Lakewood.
Tillicum constantly promotes the fact that Tillicum residents are poor. While not all Tillicum residents are poor, one advantage to being poor is you get free stuff that financially successful citizens pay for. According to the voice of Tillicum, the city, the city council, city staff and police department can never do anything right.
I think it is destructive when a few residents speak continuously and loudly for all the people of Tillicum promoting the idea that the City of Lakewood is always wrong and all city actions are suspect.
My years of experience with Tillicum force me to conclude that there are two, possibly three types of Tillicum residents.
Type 1. Silent residents who appreciate the City of Lakewood, but never voice any positive comments or thanks. It should be noted that the Type 1 Tillicum resident is much like the fabled Sasquatch. No one has seen or heard one up close so they may not exist.
Type 2. Silent residents who hate the City of Lakewood, but never say anything because there is such a strong voice of opposition and hate already in place speaking for them.
Type 3. The outspoken ungrateful residents who hate and complain about everything and everyone associated with the city over and over and over.
Tillicum, which is located in the South part of Lakewood, reminds me of the deep South. For many Southerners, the Civl War is not over. Their racial hatred continues to this day like a societal cancer. Adult haters brainwash their progeny to grow into future haters.
At onetime, when we first became a city, I thought when the old haters died off there would be peace and constructive cooperation between the city and Tillicum. We could work together like a team. That probably will not happen. I am witness to second generation city-haters taking over the roll of chief hater after the death of their city-hater parents. The replacement haters simply continue on with Hitler-like tactics of constant negative propaganda.
I am quick to admit that our city is not perfect. Free speech allows all of us to make critical comment about city actions.
Conversely, most individuals and departments in our city work hard to make our home, a better, safer and nicer looking place to live.
If Tillicum could secede from the City of Lakewood they could build a 12 foot wall around Tillicum known as the Great Wall of Tillicum.
Tillicum could form their own police department with an innovative policing policy called “Cops without guns.”
The Tillicum Police Use of Force Policy could read, “When our cops, without guns, are faced with life threatening situations that place cops and citizens in jeopardy, created by people who refuse to comply with laws, the cops are to retreat to the nearest donut shop and let the locals sort it out”
With the cops out of the way, the criminal element could take over Tillicum, again. Eventually Tillicum could disband their police department and their police complaints would be over.
Washington State annexation and incorporation regulations will probably prevent the Tillicum dream from happening.
Tillicum has technically and legally been a part of our city for close to twenty years. It is time for Tillicum to recognize that they are a part of the City of Lakewood and to stop the destructive divisiveness and hatred. If Columbia, South Carolina can remove their Confederate flag, Tillicum can take steps to become a positive part of the City of Lakewood.
If there are any silent Type 1 Tillicum residents out there who agree Tillicum needs to change their course toward a working relationship with our city along with a balanced flow of positive and negative free speech, please speak up.
Lastly, if you do not like living in the City of Lakewood, moving may be an alternative solution worth considering.
Can you give one example Boyle of an issue where the naysayers of Tillicum were wrong to be critical?
Your integrity is at stake here.
Stephen L. Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, writes in his book entitled “Integrity” that “the word integrity comes from the same Latin root as integer” so that as in “whole number” integrity has the same sense of “wholeness”. Based upon that understanding, Carter suggests that integrity “requires three steps”, none of which can be missing and still be “whole”. The first step, the most critical step, and the most difficult step, is to honestly take whatever the issue and think things through, to do the hard work, the thorough investigation of the facts.”
Carter is right when he wrote, “I am persuaded that nothing but an all-out effort to demand integrity of our political leaders will preserve democracy.”
So, Boyle, what issue and why was Tillicum wrong to address it?
Does Mr Anderson ever have an original thought, let alone a positive one? And as evidenced by his statements above he considers the neighborhood of Tillicum to be a totally separate entity. Maybe it’s time Lakewood releases this neighborhood from the burdens of being citizens of a dynamic and wonderful city, which is not without it’s flaws, and return to the idyllic life of unincorporated Pierce County. Pretty please.
I know you’re not going to like this Linell because the following references add support to my argument that Boyle addresses not at all, nor you for that matter: evidence, reasoning, thought processes that suggest the issue – whatever it is – can be thoroughly debated not broad-brushed or white-washed or cavalierly dismissed with the “pretty please” suggestion that Tillicum “return to the idyllic life of unincorporated Pierce County” which is to avoid any intelligent discourse altogether.
If it were, ideally, a debate we were having on matters of import, then yes, supporting documentation – the reasoned thoughts of others – have considerable merit.
Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement describes seven ascending stages of “rational approach” to issues, the first: “name-calling.” Second: “Ad Hominem – attacking the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument.” Third: “contradiction – which states the opposing case with little or no supporting evidence.”
The next three stages each requires a great deal of thought: “Counterargument – contradicts and then backs it up with reasoning and/or supporting evidence;” “Refutation – finds the mistake and explains why its mistaken using quotes;” and finally “Refuting the Central Point – explicitly refutes the central point.”
“Nothing tells us more about people than the opinions they hold and their reasons for holding them” (“The Aims of Argument” by Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell).
So, the ball remains in Boyle’s court. The question still unanswered is, “what issue and why was Tillicum wrong to address it?”
Point proven, just more quoted rhetoric. Mr Anderson, you obviously missed the point or have chosen not to address it. The ball is actually in your court. Can you name a single time when you have had a positive comment about Lakewood? Are you not one of those who continues to separate Tillicum from Lakewood and with every posting perpetuate the we vs them mentality that he so well described? Susan Rothwell address the very same issue but at least acknowledges that what the neighborhood of Tillicum needs is a POSITIVE (my emphasis) and dynamic leader. You sir are the equivalent of nails on a blackboard and what message you may actually have is lost in the negativity and divisiveness that you constantly demonstrate. But this is having the feel of wrestling with the pig. I’m just feeling dirty, so I will refrain from any further comments as I think I’ve said what I needed to already.
Before you abandon ship Linell, pick an issue Tillicum – myself or others – was wrong to address. Any issue of which evidently you believe there is no end. Pick one. Just one. And substantively (I know it’s hard for you) tell us why we were wrong concerning that issue to be critical?
f there are any silent Type 1 Tillicum residents out there who agree Tillicum needs to change their course toward a working relationship with our city along with a balanced flow of positive and negative free speech, please speak up.
OK I will:
Alas, there isn’t a dynamic leader in Tillicum. Boyle is right. We are all worn down, apathetic and being “poor” not into civil or community involvement. I am sad to say I am one who sees no real future for Tillicum to change much, if at all. Not unless some energetic positive neighborhood leader can unite Tillicum – and that hasn’t happened yet. I truly wish there was an answer. But it’s not me. I am old and worn down, too! Nothing would make me happier than to see Tillicum be real and vibrant and involved in their own future.
I have never had anyone from Lakewood visit my business out of the blue to say hi, how are things going? or to patronize our business(Gerties, yes me, who wrote about our history) They visit when they have road projects – need I point out how helpful the yellow curb is in front of our business, destroying access and business and my property value.
And you wonder why I hold no hope. I fear Lakewoods future for Tillicum is a Union Avenue full of fast food places – in and out for the troops during lunch – and little else. Great tax basis, and who can blame them?
So what is the answer?
Just a few thoughts before I bury myself in more debate!
PS: Lakewood has had twenty years to build bridges with Tillicum. There is failure on both sides. I think ‘haters’ is the wrong description: there are those who disagree but that doesn’t mean that they hate Lakewood. Tillicum can be rescued by a ‘civil rights leader’ and I think that is the end of the story.
I think you are right on here Ms Rothwell, There is failure on both sides and having a true leader step up on both sides to try to be inclusive would be wonderful. Are you sure you aren’t that voice to start?
Oh I wish I had that moxie and energy.
Love the article Joe! Right on the money. It is sad really, I remember when I was a small child how wonderful Tillicum was and how it was such a “Beach Town”, of course that was over 45 years ago. Miss that dearly.
Joe, I agree with you here. Those of us who spent years risking our lives to make Tillicum and better place go unnoticed. And that is fine. The City that has dropped Tillicum’s crime rate, abated derelict properties, added sidewalks, sewers, business improvements, etc., go unnoticed. And that’s okay. You and I remember Friday night fights at Gerties that spilled into the street, drug related shootings on a regular basis, people stealing Fire Department Aid cars, etc.But, you would think someone with even mediocre observational skills would notice an improvement. I guess Mr. Anderson prefers the pre-incorporation days. I am proud of what the City has done for the community. It’s so much easier to sit back and complain than to work with the system to make life better.
Boyle uses “hatred” 11 times in his hit-piece and in the process compares Tillicum residents to the “racial haters of the deep South” and further accuses those who disagree on particular issues with the City of Lakewood as using “Hitler-like tactics.”
Not once, certainly not in the history of our several complaints against the city of which I am aware, has hatred been ever used nor directed at the City of Lakewood.
There are those of us who’ve felt on occasion that there was just cause for complaint – but never hatred. For Boyle to so white wash and so tar and feather with so broad a brush those who take issue on matters of great concern is to say as much or more about Boyle and further erode any remote hope he might have had to bring Tillicum to the table.
The Lakewood Police Department’s Use of Force Policy is an important life issue. Boyle sits on the committee charged with review of that policy. But here in his article he has so mocked the process that, once again, any hope on my end that the committee on which he serves will seriously undertake a thorough review is rather hopeless.
I’ve asked Boyle in this thread to lay down his broad brush with which he has smeared Tillicum and instead take his pen and pick any – any – issue that has been addressed of Lakewood by Tillicum and share why that matter – and the concerns expressed regarding it – are not legitimate.
But he hasn’t. And won’t. Any more than he ever apologized let alone even responded to the complaints to yet another article he wrote (linked below) in which he stated he would supply the gunnysacks to be filled with rocks to drown youth in the river who had been found guilty of graffiti.
Even tongue in cheek that is a despicable, irrational, and unfathomable suggestion that anyone should make – let alone a writer who is acknowledged to be compensated for such trash by The Suburban Times.
http://thesubtimes.com/2012/12/10/westside-story-graffiti-rant/
Mr Boyle has sacraficed years of his life to make Tillicum and Lakewood a better place, as have many others. His opinion carries far more weight, in my view. This is America and you are entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to ignore it.