Kansas City: Obama Signs are Mutilated & Spray-painted along Ward Parkway

[protect our future]

One of the wealthiest sections of Kansas City, Missouri, is along Ward Parkway, a beautiful and well-traveled boulevard. Many of the homes along Ward Parkway are what I would call mansions. The sprinkler systems keep the grass forever green, the flowers are well-nourished, and the landscaping is professional.

Quite a few residents of Ward Parkway are Obama supporters. Quite a few of these Obama supporters have Obama yard signs -- usually more than one sign because the grounds are so extensive -- and several have oversized 4'x6' or 4'x8' Obama signs staked into the ground.

A day or so ago, these Obama signs were defaced, including the large 4'x8' Obama signs. They have been spray-painted, some just with blotches of paint, but others with symbols or letters such as "U.S.S.R." Someone told me there is a sign sprayed with a swastika, but so far I have not seen this one.

Homeowners along the boulevard are outraged, and so are passers-by. I was phoned this morning by a woman requesting a large Obama sign and some regular-sized yard signs to replace what has been mutilated. At Obama headquarters, I heard calls coming in from people who had driven by along Ward Parkway and were outraged. I took one of those calls myself. The caller was angry and phoned us to make sure we knew about the spray-painting.

The Kansas City Star is working on a story about it.

A blogger/photographer from the Huffington Post was at HQ today and learned about the sprayed signs on Ward Parkway. Whether he will report about it or take photos, I do not know.

The Ward Parkway homeowners I spoke with today all have agreed to keep their destroyed Obama signs on display in their yards. They feel that these signs serve to make a statement, and should not be removed.

These are good people. Some may be wealthy; some may be only upper middle class; all may have more than most of us. It is conceivable that some make over $250,000 a year and understand that their taxes will be increased. But what they also understand is how much this nation needs Obama.

One woman jogging along Ward Parkway stopped and talked with me. She told me that the defaced signs are "a symbol of why we must elect Barack."

I think she said it perfectly.

{edited to replace one word with a more appropriate one}

[Telly Savalas]

1. Whereabouts on Ward Parkway?

I drive pretty frequently on Ward Parkway and I haven't noticed this -- however I guess I'm not on it north of Gregory very often.

[protect our future]

2. Some of the worst examples are at the corner of Ward Parkway and 58th

(west side), also at or near Westover Road (east side). The painted signs are mostly along both sides of Ward Parkway in the 50s, and some of the side streets just east or west of Ward Parkway have been hit as well. Everything I saw south of Gregory was intact.

[KansDem]

4. Last night, I was driving south on Ward Parkway...

...and saw one of those huge signs (we're not allowed to have them on my side of the state line :( ) sprayed with red paint. The malcontents had sprayed "USSR" over the Obama name.

It was on the west side of the street, about 4-6 houses north of W. 55th Street (if I recall correctly).

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Yes you are allowed to have those signs

Banning them is a violation of the first amendment.

I have a friend in Leawood who has a huge Obama sign in her yard and is eagerly awaiting a letter from the city telling her to take it down. :)

[KansDem]

9. Thanks for the info!

And I was wrong about "55th St" It's actually 58th St. (or 59th?). Anyway, the big Obama signs on the other side of the street (east) have also been vandalized. I saw them as I was driving downtown this afternoon. Big "USSR" and the hammer and sickle image from the old Soviet days.

Pathetic...

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. We have been joined at our Tuesday war protest by McCain supporters

We are at 63 and Ward Parkway every Tuesday from 5 to 6 pm protesting against the war. Last week, a group of young kids from Pembroke stood across the street from us with signs supporting McCain and war. They came back this week. I tried to talk to them and they told me they HATED Obama because he is a socialist Marxist. They said they will be there every week from now on and if Obama wins, they will definitely keep coming back.

Anyway, I can't prove it but I would suspect those young thugs may know something about who defaced the Obama signs.

I will take their picture on Tuesday and post it here. I already talked to a guy on the KC Obama email list who thinks he knows them.

[TheDebbieDee]

5. Hi, Proud2blib........

I drove up Ward Parkway a couple of Sundays ago for the first time in a long tome and I was really surprised by the number of yardsigns, some of them really huge, along Ward Parkway.

Also on my way to work through Leawood and Prairie Village, the Obama yardsigns outnumber the McCain yardsigns by far. Obama may not win Kansas but I think Kansas will be closer than a lot of people expect.

[Telly Savalas]

7. Encourage the kids to go talk to a military recruiter. They should fight for what they believe in.

I'm also starting to worry that "Make Love, Not War" is going to have to be replaced by "Get a Job, You Lazy Spoiled Little Fuck" as the new anti-war mantra.

[protect our future]

8. Could this be the reason for the "USSR" and the Hammer & Sickle symbol?

I just found this. Disgusting, if indeed this is what led the haters to deface our signs, and if this is what Palin has been saying during her rallies prior to the Ward Parkway incident.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/palin-obamas-tax-plans-co_n_137851.html

By Sam Stein

PALIN: OBAMA'S TAX PLANS COULD MEAN NIGHTMARE COMMUNIST STATE

Sarah Palin had a few memorable moments during her campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. But the most eye-opening of them all came, it would appear, when the Alaska Governor somehow drew a connection between Barack Obama's tax policy and an encroaching, nightmarish, communist government. The Illinois Democrat, she hysterically suggested, would, through his proposals, create a country "where the people are not free."

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us."

--snip--