This letter to the editor by Bryan Twitchell appeared in the Toledo City Paper, September 12, 2018.
I’ve been working on the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) for about two years. I’ve gathered petitions regardless of temperature or weather conditions, in every social situation from massive parades to my local church. Over the course of these two years, I’ve gotten blisters, sunstroke, colds, frostbite, and heat exhaustion as a result of petitioning for extended periods of time. I gathered enough signatures in enough adverse conditions that my clipboard is now permanently warped into a shape that cradles the average person’s forearm as they write. When things got down to the wire and it looked like we might not have enough signatures to pass, I took a week off work to spend my days petitioning instead, because I knew that LEBOR was that important, and if I was willing to value a week’s salary over getting it on the ballot, then it simply meant that I lacked the conviction necessary to see things through. I say all of this, not to aggrandize myself, but to make sure that you, dear reader, understand the full impact when I say that I am probably one of the less dedicated members of the core group that got the signatures to get LEBOR on the ballot. MORE…