Marla Manda Johanssen, as pictured in today's press release.
As your 3rd Ward councilman, I must use this opportunity to appeal to your collective sense of reason as a community.
We are all very upset over the events of the Winter Parade acquittal, and no one is more upset than I am that Dr. Thomas Jefferson Harding has apparently absconded to Vietnam to hide from the forces of law and order. Still, there is no reason to believe that due process, extradition practices and solid diplomacy will not eventually work this situation out. Dr. Harding, dangerous radical though he may be, is a reasonable, respected man. Surely he will turn himself in, or at the very least be apprehended by legitimate law enforcement agencies.
There is no need for mob action. I say this only because I have received a "press release" from handgun activist and right-wing editorialist Marla Manda Johanssen, urging Armitage Heighters to join her immediately on a trip to Vietnam, leaving this weekend, to find Dr. Harding and, I quote: "bring his left-wing, urban-gardening, treasonous, candy-cane brandishing, atheistic Jane Fonda-loving old keister to justice -- by any means necessary."
Besides being unnecessarily inflammatory (I know for a fact, for instance, that Dr. Harding was a long-time member of Kendall Park First Unitarian Church, so therefore not "atheistic"), it's a dangerous idea. The idea of an elderly woman travelling to Southeast Asia in an obviously agitated state, possibly with a posse of some kind, and potentially carrying illegal weapons, is a very poor one by any standard.
Please, Ms. Johanssen, for the sake of the community: do not undertake this "mission." Let the justice system work it out safely and legally. Even at this early stage, community leaders such as the unlicensed, non-Muslim cleric the Ayatollah Martin Wisniewski have denounced Ms. Johanssen's poorly-conceived plan of action. Please let her know yourself by contacting her personally at her website: www.hardingmustpay.org/vietnam.html.
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