Some of my Democratic Activist Friends in Summerville with our Progressive Unity Flag
You, SC Governor Henry McMaster have told the people of my state that you look forward to the day when he can hunt Democrats with dogs because we shall be so few in SC.
As the first born son of the 15th generation of my family to have been born and labored as a contributing citizen in the Palmetto state, I rightfully demand the personal written apology of the Governor stated in terms that indicate he knows what my family has done for this state and he unequivocally assents to our right to be citizens of our nation within this state and to express our political efforts within it in the way God almighty counsels our conscience to do. In the alternative, you may make good your threat to hunt me.
My mother’s family landed at Georgetown in 1695 and moved upriver from there to settle and clear a plantation near the community of Pamplico in the Pee Dee. We fought the Indians, the Spanish, and the French. We “hunted” the British in force with Francis Marion. I do not know if my ancestors’ used dogs. They certainly did worse than that. Our patriot blood is mingled with that of forlorn redcoats in corners of those swamps no man or woman has visited since. It was my ancestors who emerged from those swamps alive.
When your state called, dozens of my ancestors took up its cause in 1861. When the fighting was nearly over at Saylor’s Creek in Virginia and the Yankees ran John Wesley Jones into the ground, surrounded by Lee’s disintegrating army, he was starving and had pneumonia. He was the last of my ancestors still fighting. All the others were in Yankee POW camps or dead.
He returned home after his release, an American again, and helped build towns and schools. His grandchildren helped build the state’s textile industry. Some of them answered the Nation’s call in WWI. One lays buried beneath the poppies in Flanders Fields. A generation later we fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, who did enjoy hunting people with dogs, including jews, the disabled, and political dissidents like myself.
My Grandmother was a WPA nurse who helped rid the Pee Dee of the scourge of Pellagra. My Great Grandfather was a founding member of the Myrtle Beach Fire Department.
My father rose from indebtedness to become one of the state’s most respected Advertising Agency owners. He helped build the state’s tourism and real estate industries in the 1970s. During the Tricentennial, he helped market the first fully integrated production of Porgy and Bess, using his creativity to create a Charleston where black and white people could sit together and enjoy their music. My mother was a teacher, den mother and reliable community volunteer.
In July 1977, when I was a Governor’s Scholar at the College of Charleston, your predecessor in office, James B. Edwards, a Republican, an honorable man who would never say the things you do, and a friend in my family came down to spend the day with what was believed to be the brightest of the State’s rising high school students. He asked me, personally, to stay in SC and make it a better place as my family had done. He asked the same of others, but he knew my family and our history. I foolishly took it to heart.
It was a request he was bound to make, but one I was foolish to honor.
I have been a Lawyer since being sworn into the bar on November 25, 1985. I have served this state as a pro bono attorney in over a hundred court appointed cases. In those cases, I have been forced to see the absolute worst that SC is and have seen it persist without any real effort to eradicate it for two generations. I have seen sickness, death, brutality, stupidity, drug addiction, poverty and above all, extending to every corner of life, willful ignorance iced over with a superficial Christianity which would be unrecognizable to Jesus.
I have spent thousands of hours working as a volunteer and leader in my communities. I have registered voters, picked up trash along the highways, been a scout leader, and built low-income housing with my own hands. I have helped produce over 150 free musical concerts. I have written over 1,000 newspaper and magazine articles. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars of my own money in these efforts.
For the past decade, I have been engaged in the effort to see that the Lowcountry gets a functional public transit system. This is an effort I took on at the request of Linda Page, former Mayor of Mt. Pleasant and, I believe, another Republican. My efforts saved East Cooper’s bus routes preserving paratransit services to 400 people who would have otherwise become shut ins, imprisoned by the auto centric landscape men like you carelessly build around them. We increased transit ridership in Mt. Pleasant to 308% of its previous level, an achievement believed to be impossible by the cynics who chuckle at people standing the the rain waiting for buses from inside their warm, dry cars.
In 2016, I led the effort to win the referendum to fund construction of the State’s first rapid transit system, at great personal cost to myself in terms of lost income and money spent out of my own pocket. With the help of others, over half of whom have since died or left the state, we won that referendum and there is a chance I shall live long enough to ride the LCRT which I’m sure you’ll show up in Charleston to cut the ribbon on.
Perhaps if you had successfully hunted me with dogs, It would have saved you the trip and the wear and tear on your ribbon cutting scissors. I’ll be there to greet you that day and remind you of who you are and what you have become with whatever surviving Democrats and Friends we have left.
My wife will not be there with me, after a lifetime of dedicated service to the community, mostly as a musician, she died. She was an utterly remarkable woman. She could sight read Mozart and Beethoven. She delighted people with her violin. She wrote political commentary in iambic pentameter. She proudly worked for Santee Cooper, helping preserve our state’s environment by doing environmental testing.
As I kissed Julia goodbye in the Hospital three years ago, I was struck by a profound sense of guilt. I had kept her here in SC, a place where she was not understood or appreciated. I watched her weep as the man you helped make President vomited hatred and cruelty upon our national character. I caused her to waste her life here in SC. Had she gone to a place where she was fully appreciated and understood, she would be living now. That sin is mine, but men like you have a hand in it. I am sure you are glad to know that Julia was, like most of us, a disappointed Democrat who is now gone, making the dog hunting of the decreasing number of surviving Democrats less of a challenge.
Unlike Governor Edwards so many years ago, I no longer commit the sin of encouraging bright, young people to remain here. I tell them to get out. I assure them that nearly everywhere is better than here. I have been involved with an effort to push back against the right-wing takeover of our school districts by the Moms for Liberty which you have encouraged. In that work, I end up speaking to student leaders in our High and Middle Schools. You’ll be glad to know nearly all of them plan to leave as soon as possible, even the conservative ones. You will have less Democrats in the future and worse Republicans.
I have resigned myself to a gradually diminishing calendar of funerals and going away parties. I have been to hundreds of the latter. Recently, they have included people who have come here to retire. After a few years, they leave. Most were Democrats. I’m sure you’re pleased.
If you want to hunt me with dogs, you are welcome to try. There probably isn’t a lot of sport in running a legally blind, overweight liberal lawyer down with hounds and shooting him, but I’ll accept the contest on your terms. I would propose the hunt be conducted in the big Swamp of the Pee Dee. My family has a good record of survival there. If the hunt goes against you, there are, after all, plenty of Republicans in SC. You can be easily replaced.
Within a year, your friend Donald Trump will likely ignite a national frenzy of violence. If you like watching Americans hunt each other, you do not have long to wait.
If, however, the challenge of a hunt isn’t appealing to you, my family is entitled to an apology. You are obligated to commit to leadership of a government that is just and extends equal protection of the laws to every citizen. You aren’t constitutionally obligated to lead a government which sees that its people have decent healthcare, housing, mobility, a living wage or more than a minimally adequate education, but you must dole out government sponsored misery on an equal basis. If you dog hunt Democrats, you must likewise sanction the dog hunting of Republicans. I would prefer something better, but as you and so many others point out, despite having been here 325 years, I should leave.
I will be staying. You can either hunt me or apologize. I will insist on one or the other.
It’s a great day in South Carolina.
