Join us July 29 @ The NC Legislative Building in Raleigh, North Carolina
Since July 3, 2013 it has been exclusively featured on the front of Durham Against Fluoride that I would be appearing at the Durham City Council “Work Session,” on July 25th where I would formally appeal the Public Board of Health’s recommendation to continue medicating our public drinking water. To make such an appearance, citizens must first register with the city 10 days in advance in order that the council have time to review the citizen’s concern and prepare a response if needed. For the board of health’s recent egregious error of recommending the continued medicating of our water supply, 4 citizens & myself had registered properly by the due date to protest & appeal this decision before the Durham City Council. That is until this writer received the following unsolicited mail from the agenda coordinator, Terry Capers, who works in the Durham City Manager’s office:
I am writing to inform you that our office has received your request to address the Durham City Council about water fluoridation at its Thursday, July 25th Work Session. This topic will be discussed at a future Work Session when the Public Health Director will be presenting recommendations to the Mayor and City Council. The future meeting date has not been identified but our office will contact you as soon as we become aware of it.
Please be advised that this matter will not be included on the City Council’s July 25th Work Session agenda.
Feel free to contact the City Manager’s Office if you have additional questions.
Thank you!
Since I had never before heard of a city actually preventing a citizen from petitioning when he/she has correctly registered with the city to appear & be granted a meek 3 minutes – it just so happened I did have additional questions. I quickly replied to Terry in an attempt to garnish some clarity on this strange process:
Terry,Thank you for this pivotal update. I have two basic questions if this is the direction the City of Durham would like to go, and I would appreciate a response as soon as possible since it will have dire ramifications for how those of us opposed to this practice react to this decision:1) What is the format of this to be announced work session? Is it simply a reading of the recommendation already issued or will the ethics & science also be discussed among the council?
2) Will the citizenry be invited to participate in the discussion IE speak, ask questions, interact with those making the recommendations? If so, what format is the City intending to permit?
Thank you for your answers
What ensued was a series of phone conversations with one Karmisha Wallace, an assistant to the Agenda Coordinator Terry Kapers, who together ostensibly “manage the agenda” for the city council work sessions. I called in to get as much clarity about what was truly meant by this odd e-mail and why exactly the city would not allow the properly registered citizens to speak on public water fluoridation July 25th.
In summation of my multiple phone conversations, it was being asserted that the public health director, Gayle Harris, had not yet formally provided the recommendation to the City Council due to staff vacancies. According to Gayle, these critical staff members were needed to perform the last edits & finishing touches on the recommendation before submitting to the Durham City Council. Gayle said she had no intentions of appearing to present anything, only that she would be providing a written recommendation to the council. This assertion is inherently hilarious, and an obviously false one, considering that the recommendation was formally issued on their own website June 14, here:
DURHAM, N.C. – After nearly ten months of study, the Durham County Board of Health voted unanimously Thursday evening to accept the recommendation of a water fluoridation ad hoc committee, chaired by Dr. F. Vincent Allison, to continue the fluoridation of Durham’s drinking water supply at current levels.
This recommendation is deemed effective for prevention of tooth decay and for promotion of good oral health by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (US-DHHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The issue originally came before the Board of Health in August 2012; after Durham City Council asked the board to investigate its merits, in order to address complaints made by a citizen of Durham that fluoride is harmful to our health and therefore fluoridation of drinking water should be discontinued.
Why it has taken more than a month for Gayle Harris and her public health fiefdom to e-mail this link to the city council members is a rhetorical question who’s answer should be obvious to anyone who is not cripplingly naive. It is ludicrous to suggest that the City Council is not aware of this subject or the details of the recommendation made by their own ad-hoc committee since I am not even an employee of the government & I was aware of it a full month before I was informed by the bluffing city manager’s office that the City Council has not yet been told.
I say so vehementaly due to the irrefutable fact that electronic communications is ubiquitous among these bureaucrats and therefore have instantaneous access to not only their own internal communications but the obvious & numerous related articles which appeared immediately before & after the public health board made their decision:
June 12, 2013: Fight against fluoride in water comes to Orange and Durham counties
June 13, 2013: OWASA (and Durham) Vote to Continue Water Fluoridation
Around the same time, my letter to the editor was published in the Herald Sun, in response to Gary Slade’s fallacious statements on this local controversy:
July 1, 2013: Fluoride, A Drug Illegally Added To Our Water
Given this context it became immediately apparent to me that this was just an effort to dissuade me and the other activists from appearing and making this whole government-theater look silly which we inevitably would do. So I challenged Terry Caper’s e-mail by requesting to appear, despite the fact that it was not officially on the agenda, a message best described in its own words:
Terry,I do not plan to wait for the public health director to formally present this recommendation to the mayor and city council, as these recommendations have already been publicly distributed and published on the county website.
If water fluoridation is not an agenda item tomorrow, that is ok, I would still like to speak at the council tomorrow.
Can you confirm that I will be acknowledged and allowed my time at the podium?
Thank you,
Corey
What happens next should alarm every single man woman and child in the City of Durham, as it clearly demonstrates that William Bell has apparently been declared King, King of Durham – and has the power to flip on or off the free speech of the citizens:
Hi Corey,
Tomorrow’s City Council Work Session agenda has been established and water fluoridation is not included. It is up to the Mayor to permit individuals to speak at Council meetings, so I’m unable to confirm speakers.
I understand you spoke with Karmisha Wallace yesterday and I should let you know that Mrs. Wallace and I both work in the City Manager’s Office and on managing the City Council meeting agendas.
Have a good afternoon!
Undeterred & banking on the off-chance that the City Council would actually demonstrate some quantity of integrity, I appeared and prepared to speak exposing in 3 minutes or less why the public hearing which Durham worked so hard to produce was a total fraud & red herring. After sitting silently for more than 1 hour, I realized that not me or any one else who signed up to appear would be called. I subsequently left, resolving to expose this would-be King Bill Bell as soon as possible.
Incidentally, the recommendation I intended to appeal was made based on the hearing which Public Health Director Gayle Harris had me removed from, thanks to the efforts of a Durham Sherrif’s deputy, for exposing the fact that Durham medicates our water supply with a corrosive industrial byproduct called Hydrofluorosilicic Acid – a powerful neurotoxin & carcinogen.
Like all of the government’s recent pathetic & despicable behaviors we have exposed, the idea of King of Durham William Bell having the power to permit or not permit, as he sees fit, the citizens of Durham from petitioning their government is a peak example how debased & corrupt our society has become. To suggest that Mr. Bell has the god-like power to stifle the truth & our voice on a whim, for the sake of delaying the inevitable dirty truth about water fluoridation ever coming out, is a funny suggestion that I will soon destroy with gusto.
For starters, I will be appearing tomorrow at the Moral Monday protests to expose fluoride & will be handing out literature. I will be carrying this – so look out for me!!
Join us July 29 @ The NC Legislative Building in Raleigh, North Carolina
