Voices of Inappropriate Worth

We just finished the big PR campaign to inform the public about our new fare boxes.  By all accounts it seems to have gone well as we finish the first week of implementation with no major issues.  The effort however brought me into contact again with several people whom I absolutely loathe.  They cloak themselves in the mantle of “community activist” and seem to make it their life’s work to be contrarian.  They do this not because they honestly disagree with something but that whatever is happening, because it was not their idea, must be wrong.  The People’s Republic of Massachusetts coddles this type of individual and lionizes their sometimes idiotic posturing.   There are some very good people doing great things for the underprivileged as community activists, I’m not speaking about those heroes.  The people I’m talking about give themselves that title and because they are loud and willing to be incredibly rude they are given a voice in the process.  The rules of a democratic system allow this because excluding them would exclude some worthwhile contributors as well.  It’s incredibly frustrating to have to listen to the absolute garbage some of them spout and then have local politicians actually pander to them.  We have one lady who has serious mental (as well as personal hygiene) issues.  She’s lived in several other big cities until she found the fertile Taxachusetts ground for her special kind of crazy.  She’s obvious intelligent but chooses to use that intelligence to throw whatever kind of governmental process she can insert herself into chaos.  She’s against everything.  She crusaded against us, claiming we didn’t inform the people of the upcoming changes.  When we pointed out the massive PR campaign we were in the midst of, she just kept going on.  The ultimate justice was when she got another meeting and started her posturing there she made the mistake of thinking everyone agreed with her.  She turned to the audience and said, “Who agrees with what the transit agency is doing, by a show of hands”.  She was dumbfounded when 98% of the audience raised their hands.  Maybe there’s hope for us yet.