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Within the hours earlier than 98-year-old Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer died — of a damaged coronary heart, a lifelong pal informed me in a letter — she requested her son Eric time and again, “Where are all the good people who’re speculated to cease this from taking place?” The place had been the nice folks, she questioned, who might and will have stopped a cop with something to hide from raiding her paper, seizing her possessions and attacking her function?
Although she didn’t reside to see it, they did present up.
On the Jost Funeral Home memorial page for Mrs. Meyer, somebody who recognized himself solely as “Above the Fold” — an previous newspaper time period for a narrative with high billing, on the highest half of the entrance web page — wrote this:
“The place are the nice folks, she requested? We’re on the best way, ma’am. Whole strangers who’ve by no means heard of Marion earlier than are mobilizing to defend your legacy. Skilled journalism and a free press will quickly illuminate each darkish recess of your hometown. Relaxation straightforward. We acquired this one.”
Mrs. Meyer’s pal and former colleague David Colburn mentioned he cried when he learn that, and although I by no means had the pleasure of assembly her, I did, too.
Within the days after the raid, free press advocates (although not the governor of Kansas, who if she’d mentioned boo might need scared herself) roared till the prosecutor revoked the unwarranted warrant, which ought to by no means have been issued within the first place.
Greater than 1,000 of those that consider in Mrs. Meyer’s constitutionally protected life’s work subscribed to what one such one that wrote to inform me about it known as “the little paper that might.”
Some, like Rusty and Paula Leffler of Mission Hills, drove all the best way to the newspaper workplace in Marion to enroll, present solidarity and pay their respects in particular person.
None of this, after all, undoes the hurt inflicted. None of it lessens Eric Meyer’s loss, or adjustments the truth that Mrs. Meyer spent her remaining hours in ache over what she rightly known as the “Hitler techniques” of a bully with a badge.
However a free press did, as “Above the Fold” wrote on Joan Meyer’s tribute web page, illuminate each darkish recess of her hometown.
And one of many many classes right here for aspiring fascists is that if the previous Kansas Metropolis Police Division captain (and hopefully soon-to-be former Marion police chief) Gideon Cody had not overreacted so badly and overreached so dramatically, the world may by no means have realized why Cody, who knew that the Report was wanting into why he’d left the KCPD to take a job at half the pay in Marion, had actually come to city.
(As my Star colleagues Glenn Rice and Luke Nozicka reported, he left Kansas City while facing possible demotion over a “hostile work environment” complaint that Chief Stacey Graves, to her credit score, took critically.)
If Justice of the Peace Choose Laura Viar hadn’t signed the warrant authorizing the unlawful raid, supposedly due to allegations that the newspaper had improperly obtained details about the DUI of a neighborhood restaurant proprietor making use of for a liquor license, the world would by no means have realized from our sister paper, the Wichita Eagle, that Viar simply may relate to that restaurant proprietor as a result of Viar herself has been arrested not less than twice for driving below the affect.
And if that Marion restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, hadn’t seen the Report’s completely normal try to take a look at a tip about her DUI as a prison endeavor, the world wouldn’t know that, like Choose Viar, Newell at one level had her license suspended and stored driving anyway.
All of which is one thing that the following thug who thinks he can shut down a newspaper to maintain the reality from popping out may wish to suppose on, after which suppose once more.
Somebody I’ve written about who has little or no motive to consider in justice however does anyway at all times quotes Luke 8:17 to me: “For nothing is hidden that won’t be made manifest, neither is something secret that won’t be identified and are available to mild.”
I consider that, too, although it’s the timing that’s so unsure. And sorry as I’m that what was hidden didn’t come to mild in time for Mrs. Meyer to see it, the secrets and techniques that the Aug. 11 police raid had been supposed to maintain out of view are identified now, and the nice folks did present up.
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