Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Recap of Events, Oyster Festival And More

This week the Independent Party enjoyed its Third year in the Milford Oyster Festival. Morale was high and the Independent Party had a great deal of fun walking around drinking beer, eating oysters and greeting the public.

Joe Prisco (Featured Left) was in especially good spirits and as always carried his energy and enthusiasm in a message on his shirt "Let's Talk I'm Joe Prisco."  This year Joe has become an Icon with the Independent Party, at 86 Years old and a 54 year resident of Milford Joe has earned the respect of every one of our members. Even the local Party members "tip their hat" to Joe as he continues to be a fixture and a public advocate at City Hall.

Joe is best known as that person who has no shortage of words and is not afraid to speak his mind. Anyone who knows Joe will tell you that he fights for fairness and honesty in the city of Milford. What we all like best about Joe is that he takes on issues with  a great smile and an incredible and affable attitude.

While the Milford Independent Party is an organization aimed at getting common people elected, we found that most people this year are very supportive, while others were just out enjoying a fun family day. This year we quickly learned that most people do not go to the Oyster Festival to discuss Politics, and for that reason we kept ourselves available and chose not to be demonstrably pushy like our opponents.

In past years, both Democrats and Republicans forced stickers on the public garb, waved annoying campaign  signs and often engaged in loud disruptive flash mobs to get attention. This year things were equally amped up and the Democrats took the prize by positioning two booths on each side of the street. The Law Offices of Bercham Moses and Devlin hosted the Deep Fried Dough booth on their property and across the street positioned a second booth (near Party Member Mike Brown's office.) The Republicans were in the Middle and actively sticking campaign stickers on anyone they could get to wear one. Independents were in a small Ten by Ten spot with a very unhelpful and annoying tree right in front of us.

Some of our members speculated that the terrible spot was most likely the work of the Republicans. This they theorized was due to their disapproval of our Cross endorsement of the city Clerk to Suzanne Manning. Mannings Republican opponent Linda Stock and her sister Paula Smith is also a controversial coordinator of the Oyster Festival.

Without complaining about our spot, I will mention that the Smith/Stock Controversy started over the Festival Committee hijacking the Beer Sales for themselves. Some festival patrons dropped out because they argue that the loss of revenue from those sales was unjust and against the original mission of the festival to aid non-profits. However, the festival committee argued that last year the festival was in a crisis over funding and those revenues had to be made up in light of the fact that the Police and security services were no longer being provided free of charge by the city.

This year we are assuming that the proceeds from the beer sales were used to pay the Police and traffic control bills but as of yet there is no word on who paid those costs.

All in all, even with those difficulties aside all our members had an especially good time and thank the hard working people who made this successful day possible. The Independent Party would also like to thank all its members for their work and time in keeping our cause and mission alive and well in Milford.

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