[Vision2020] Obama sign replaced with rebel flag

[Saundra Lund]

For those who don't know, our little corner of heaven isn't safe from this
kind of vandalism and intimidation this election  :-(  Moscow and our
neighbors in Whitman County have experienced horrifying vandalism and theft
of Obama signs.


Obama sign replaced with rebel flag
Chesterfield probes theft of political sign from minister's yard
 
Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008 - 12:09 AM Updated: 08:51 PM
 
By OLYMPIA MEOLA
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Leroy C. McLaughlin finished his workday on Friday and was cooking dinner
when a family member phoned.

The 4-foot-by-8-foot Barack Obama campaign sign that McLaughlin had posted
in the front yard of his Chesterfield County home was gone.

A Confederate flag hung in its place.

Surveying the scene that night, McLaughlin, 78, a Baptist minister and an
Army veteran who lived to see the first black person nominated to a
major-party ticket, had a message for whoever left the flag, viewed by many
as a symbol of racial oppression: "I love you, and God does, too."

That same night, someone drove by honking and shouting, according to
McLaughlin's family.

Yesterday morning, in the 15 minutes that a reporter and photographer were
inspecting a new sign with McLaughlin, a small car sped back and forth past
his house three times. Occupants rapidly beeped the horn and appeared to
shout "No change," apparently a reference to McLaughlin's new sign. Like the
one it replaced, it says: "Vote for Change, November 4th."

McLaughlin seemed unshaken.

"I've been praying for them, because we're all going to be charged with what
we do," he said. "It's sad that we've grown and we want to keep fighting
with something and can't be peaceful and thankful."

Sometime Friday between 7:30 and 9 p.m., someone ripped the sign from its
wooden posts just a few feet off Bailey Bridge Road near Manchester High
School.

A family member returning from Manchester's homecoming football game saw the
Confederate flag and alerted McLaughlin. He was fixing dinner near a
tapestry montage that features the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., between
the Statue of Liberty and a waving American flag.

McLaughlin went outside to find an outraged neighbor on his front lawn
tugging the flag down. He told him to leave it, and they called police.

Chesterfield police spokeswoman Ann Reid confirmed that police are
investigating the sign's disappearance as a larceny. She said the sign was
taken Friday night and replaced with a 3-foot-by-5-foot Confederate flag.
Chesterfield police are holding the flag as evidence.

Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for Democrat Obama's campaign in Virginia, said
there have been other incidents in Virginia and across the country "that
have had racial overtones."

"I think on both sides we see overzealous supporters," he said. "We urge
both our supporters as well as those of Senator [John] McCain to disagree in
a respectful way."

Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Republican McCain's Virginia campaign, said:
"We have had reports of vandalism and theft of both McCain and Obama
campaign signs on personal property throughout Virginia. It is sad and
disappointing that this has happened across the state, and the McCain
campaign strongly condemns these actions."

McLaughlin's 4 acres along Bailey Bridge Road are a wooded holdout among
sprouting subdivisions. Since 1964, he has lived in the house he partially
built by hand, and he still grows vegetables in rows alongside his home. He
has trimmed hair in the same Richmond barbershop for 50 years and served as
pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Cumberland County for two decades.

He said yesterday on a break from making pear preserves that he isn't
pushing for a particularly severe punishment for the perpetrator. He didn't
raise his voice when discussing it; now that he has replaced the yard sign,
he'll be watchful.

He says he wants whoever took the sign to get a talking-to about trespassing
and taking property that doesn't belong to them -- and about the
significance of the symbol they left behind.

"I feel like this is somebody with a lot of hatred in their heart," he said.
"It's our job to help the guy try to do better in life." 

Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola at timesdispatch.com.

Staff writer Michael Martz contributed to this report.

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-10-2
1-0105.html