We are a group of residents mainly from the Town of Essex (outside of the Village), but also working with folks from the Village of Essex Junction.
The Town of Essex is compromised of rural areas, urban areas, and suburban areas. Within the borders of the town is a municipality, the Village of Essex Junction. We believe that it would make for a more resilient community if the Town of Essex merges with the Village of Essex Junction to form one municipality.
While each of us believes that merger is in the best interest of our community, we understand that not everyone feels that way, and that’s okay! Even though we believe that merger would make for a stronger, more resilient community we do our best to stick to the facts.
We list the sources for all of our data so that people can look at the data directly and verify every detail for themselves. And when we do math, we show our work just like back in grade school, so that people can follow along as we go. We don’t want anyone to have to trust us personally to know the data is sound. YOU can judge that for yourself because we provide you with the sources of our information and describe how we get from that data to the conclusion that we make.
This is one of the many ways that we’re pushing back on the pervasive and intentional spread of misinformation in our community. Disinformation and conspiracy theories are used by people in order to distract from the real issues. You can spot them in a few ways:
(1) They focus on (or attack) the person or people delivering information, instead of engaging with the information itself. Frequently, they will go to great lengths to avoid engaging with the facts.
(2) They do not clearly cite their sources or explain their thinking. They intentionally leave many things unsaid and prefer instead to speak with vagueness and imply things (frequently that there is some kind of hidden impropriety).
(3) They imply, if not outright say, that there is hidden information that only they have access to. This tactic seeks to establish themselves as an authority without having to do any of the hard work of becoming a real authority on any topic. It is also meant to deflect any challenges to their self-granted authority since it’s hard to validate – or invalidate – secret information.
When people resort to these tactics it’s because they fear that if people had all of the information they would choose differently. Instead of allowing people to make up their own minds, they instead try to sow doubt about legitimate sources that they can’t counter, cause conflict, and undermine others. To be clear, if they had legitimate arguments and facts on their side, they would not need these tactics. Using these tactics is an implicit admission that they are on the losing end of an argument and deep down they know that.
This is why it is so important that we all work together to push back on the spread disinformation. If you would like to join us in that endeavor, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We would love to hear from you!
