This morning I was riding east from Lancaster toward New Holland borough, one of the towns that ring the city of Lancaster. As I rode I passed several political signs, all of them were for Doug Mastriano, the Army officer who brought busloads of Pennsylvanians to Washington DC on January 6, 2020, to overthrow the government.
Then I saw the sign above. I first thought 'Oh, they have a 2024 sign.' Then I wondered why it had a hyphen. Then I saw the "years in prison." I turned around to take a picture of the sign. When I did, the woman who put the sign in the middle of her front yard on the south side of Pennsylvania Route 23, walked up and introduced herself.
Tracy is a smiling, blue-eyed, pretty woman in her mid-thirties. She was trimming the shrubs next to her house when I pulled up. I asked her about the sign. She said, "I can't just stay quiet."
Tracy said she knew it would cause trouble, but she thought it was important to stand up and say what is right. She has one child, a 13-year-old son. She knows her family and the house could be targets for insults or egging or something worse.
She said that a lot of people honk. Some wave and cheer, some make their disagreement well known. Three miles west of her house is The Worship Center, a prosperity gospel church of the kind that are the most likely to believe Trump was chosen by God to make America a Christian nation. Lots of true believers pass by Tracy's home.
I love meeting people who are truly brave and are willing to stand up for what they believe in a very public way. I have met people who are true heroes and I met another hero today.
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(I would not post a picture of Tracy or her home. Whatever trouble she brings on herself, I did not want to add to it.)
