In about thirty minutes, the Common Council meeting for October begins. About thirty minutes ago, thehudsonwail posted the following on Instagram.
Between all the spam texts and social media ads in the post above, it's hard not to notice that Hudson is becoming a battleground for larger, big-monied interests. One method used is using autogenerated form letters to spam elected officials. Being that one can send a pre written letter with a click of a button (slacktivism), and more interesting, there is no way to confirm who is sending the letters. This means that any well motivated group can influence our representatives by autogenerated grassroots support (astroturfing). As an experiment, we sent two extremely exaggerated letters to the Hudson Common Council, each on opposite sides of the Good Cause Eviction debate: from one "Feather" and another from "John Q. Landlord."
Besides the laughs, I would hope that actual Hudson residents pay more attention to local government and get involved, because others will happily speak for you. Write your own letters, and if you feel strongly about it either way, you can attend the meeting tonight at City Hall, 6pm
The Feather letter is a masterpiece of satire. The landlord letter is too on the nose. But the Wail’s point is both valid and well taken. Hudson politics is needlessly Byzantine and the shameless attempts at social engineering on all sides is disappointing. It’s unfortunate that, as a polity, we’ve lost all pretense of rationale thought, of wisdom from knowledge and, worst of all, common sense.
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