Following the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden decisively won the electoral college and more than 5 million more popular votes than Trump, the few Trump voters that I’ve spoken with seem incredulous that Trump lost the election. They deny he lost and parrot his baseless claims about widespread voter fraud, even though national, […]
The following commentary appeared in The Roanoke Times on June 15, 2020 – By Colleen Redman, a poet and writer from Floyd County. Who are the smiling people who posed at lynchings from the end of slavery to the 1960s? They are still here. Where are the churches that went as congregations to watch the […]
I’m suffering from PTSD. It began with the unlikely election of Trump, which brought about an inability to trust polls and voting machines at risk of being hacked, and has been triggered nearly every day since. For two years I’ve been unable to appeal to logic in Trump’s supporters. I’ve watched the dismantling of Democratic […]
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on November 2, 2017. “I’m running on a platform that starts with a foundation of revitalizing and rebuilding our economy,” said Anthony Flaccavento. The Abingdon farmer, author, small business owner and sustainable economic development consultant is seeking the 2018 Democratic nomination for Virginia’s 9th Congressional District. He […]
-The following first appeared in The Roanoke Times newspaper on January 17, 2017 HERE. To those who insist that I get over Trump becoming our next president, I want to state that it’s not going to happen. Never before have we had a president-elect so inexperienced, one whose election win was knowingly helped by a […]
Below are some comments made to WSLS TV’s Katy Love by members of Citizens Preserving Floyd County on the recent development that the Mountain Valley Pipeline proposed by two partner companies would not be coming through Floyd as had previously been announced. “We’re so happy that we were able to stop this pipeline and I […]
At least that would be my preference and is what polls are predicting. The Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, Terry McAuliffe, called Floyd the “real capital of Virginia” when he spoke at the Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store. I arrived late, after babysitting my grandsons all day, and missed his brief stump […]
Out of a sense of helplessness after the mass shooting of little children in Connecticut, I posted some links and quotes about gun control on my Facebook wall. I was surprised at how easily I got sucked into the polarizing dialogue about gun control and how often I saw the line “guns don’t kill people, […]
We couldn’t believe our ears. An elderly stranger stopped my sister Trish and me at the Nantasket Beach seawall and told us he had a song he wanted to sing. We agreed to hear it, but before he took us by surprise with his “Oh-bama, Oh-bama, how you can love,” refrain, to tune of ‘Oh, […]
When Ralph Nader ran for president in 2000 a number of progressives voted for him because they didn’t like the system politicians work within and the way the country/world is run. Understood; but what we got by losing those third party votes was eight years of George Bush, a phony elective war waged for the […]
It was standing (or dancing) room only at the Floyd Country Store for the visit of Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, Friday night. Some Friday Night Jamboree attendees wore stickers, announcing their support for the former Virginia governor and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. Others weren’t aware that Kaine was scheduled to […]
The following was written by guest blogger Michael Kovick and first appeared as a letter to the editor in The Floyd Press, July 26, 2012. Kovick is a musician and an active member of Floyd UBAN, a citizens formed group named for the goal of keeping a 30 year statewide ban on uranium mining in […]
