Mitt Romney, Postpone or Cancel Monday’s Orange County Fundraiser

UPDATE: Occupy has canceled its protest due to the Aurora shootings.  Mitt can do what he wants.

To:        Mitt Romney, Presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee
From:   Occupy Orange County
Re:         Please cancel your fundraiser set for Monday morning in Orange County

Governor Romney,

We are asking that you postpone or cancel your fundraiser currently scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday July 23 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Irvine.  We have plans to protest your visit to our county as we did last time you were here to suck up money from our local wealthy conservative , when we put together the well-received “Billionaires for Romney”  PROTEST!

We have had a really good protest in store for you this time, but then some fracking privileged 1%er* [see update] from San Diego decided to show how smart he was, despite having to drop out of his Ph.D. program, by devising an evil genius plan to kill a bunch of people in a movie theater in Colorado.

We find this massacre really depressing and as a result our hearts are not feeling up for protesting.  We’re in mourning.  You say that you are mourning too; if you are, you’ll listen to us and make us a deal.

Cancel your flight; cancel your event.  At least postpone it while the nation grieves.  Your donors should still be willing to send you the money you want from them, shouldn’t they?  You can always pose for pictures with them later, win or lose.  We have to show up if you show up — it’s our moral responsibility — but what should be a joyous moment of opposing everything that you stand for now looks like it will become a chore.  We don’t want to be thinking about politics at a moment like this.

What we want to do is to honor the dead and the wounded by staying away from politics for the next few days.  But you, unfortunately, are supporting policies so horrible that we won’t be able to do so if you do show up.  So please, have some consideration for us.  Stay at home.  See your wife and your sons.  Think through how you really feel about people being able to buy semi-automatic weapons and 6000 rounds of ammunition with no one batting an eyelash.  Have some fellow-feeling with other Americans, for once.

Please understand: we will show up if we really have to.  We’ll be in a foul humor at your forcing us to do so, but we’ll do it.  We’ll be more subdued than we were in Newport Beach, but more intent than ever on exposing you.  We’ll use the opportunity to ask why you don’t seem to have the respect for the everyday people — not your people, we understand, but still good people — who were targeted in this terrible slaughter.

It’s not particularly hard to make you look passionless, inhumane, and out of touch, Governor, but just this once we’d like you to make it less easy for us to do so.  Stay home.  Ask your contributors to mail your their checks, if that’s what they really want to do.  Mourn with the nation, Governor.  You do know, don’t you, that the nation is still mourning?

You see, we’re not yet over last Friday morning’s terrible events.  Why — how — are you?

*Several commenters have objected to my assertion that the shooter was a 1%er (or I had in mind from a 1% top income family, which represents income of approximately $300,000 per year.  That’s my inference from what I’ve learned of the family neighborhood and circumstances, but I can’t prove it and am not going to try.

What I will say is that taking out one’s frustrations at personal failure by coming up with an “evil genius” plan to kill large numbers of people is, among other terrible things, spectacularly arrogant and dismissive of others’ humanity and rights.  It’s not fair to impute such a worldview on all or most in the 1% category; we see good 1%ers all the time.  However, such arrogance and dismissiveness of humanity and rights is characteristic of the worldview expressed by some advocates of the cause of the 1% — although usually it is manifest in a willingness to see people suffer and die for lack of social services rather than in actively murdering them for sport.  I certainly don’t want to lose that distinction or to fail to note that the latter is worse and indefensible.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)