I’ve name changed but have been a regular poster for almost a decade.
I’ve unwittingly got myself involved in local community politics 🙈 (it was a slow Friday 😂) and keen to know what people might suggest I do next, if anything. My husband is already tired of hearing about it 🤣
Our local community association posted across social media a few days ago about how they’d had to cancel a planned once in a lifetime event. Much was made of what a disappointment was, how hard everyone had worked for months etc etc. For some reason, they decided to call out the group of residents who had objected to the council so, unsurprisingly, people have piled on and made a number of unpleasant comments about this group of residents to the point where it’s verging on online bullying. A few of the residents concerned have come on to say they were always supportive while a couple of the others have highlighted that they were given next to no warning about the event and the matter was not dealt with very well….there’s obviously two sides to the story as always.
My argument is the association should never have named and shamed - it goes against the whole premise of their organisation and the event in question. It smacks of someone who is using it for a personal vendetta or, if you want to give people the benefit of the doubt, someone who clearly has no idea how social media works. I posted very nicely and highlighted all the names that these residents had been called, the association’s response was to say it wasn’t all the residents on the road in question. There’s since been no attempt from them to ask people to stop posting abusive messages or to introduce any kind of moderation or even to distance themselves from the comments made.
The association do have form for this…they posted quite aggressively about another initiative they’d introduced that a small group of residents didn’t agree with a few months ago and were called out on it by a few people who reminded them they should be impartial and serving the community as a whole.
I’m clearly a bit too invested in this but the whole thing just saddens me because the association do amazing things for the community but clearly one or two bad eggs are using it for other purposes. And it comes off the back of Covid where they were instrumental in pulling the community together. I’m not one of the residents being targeted but the comments that have been made are also quite personal and actually are making me feel quite unwelcome.
I was thinking of writing to them directly but maybe I just need to wash my hands of it 🤷♀️