Thank you, city council, for doing the right thing

By Mike Weland

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met with U.S. President Donald Trump in England recently, and demonstrating superhuman control and dignity, politely told Trump to his face he is wrong in his condescension of our nation’s greatest friend and ally.

On Tuesday, the Bonners Ferry City Council in one small but profound gesture threw down the gauntlet against the stupidity that is the radical right’s anti-woke agenda, establishing a year-around celebration proudly proclaiming this city’s appreciation for our neighbors to the north and even more proudly hoisting the Canadian flag back to its place alongside the U.S. and Idaho flags across the street from city hall after a threat by the Idaho Freedom Foundation-controlled Idaho Attorney General’s office ordered Mayor Rick Alonzo to take down the flag or face lawsuit for not complying with a new law to come out of this years legislative session, already ranked as among the least productive in Idaho history.

Taken up largely with performative “ooh, look at me! I’m more conservative than you are” tripe, House Bill 96 is one of the most egregious to come out of this radical session, introduced solely to diss the libs and force the removal of an LGBTQ rainbow flag from Boise City Hall.

To its credit, the City of Boise is fighting back against the idiocy as well.

On December 29, I wrote the editorial, “I humbly ask forgiveness, I may have been wrong,” in which I speculate on the downfall of the Trump regime and MAGA, and on the catharsis that will hopefully ensue.

Tuesday night’s action by the City of Bonners Ferry was but one small act of defiance, an acknowledgement that the promises of the radical right are incompatible with the values that we hold dear … we are at last beginning to see beyond their words and discern clearly that what they do is just the opposite, instead of endowing freedom and liberty, they take it away, instead of promoting unity, they sow division, instead of fostering prosperity, they upend the economy while pilfering the nation’s wealth to themselves.

Instead of embracing all citizens and their beliefs, they seek to exalt one small faction as superior in a nation founded on the ideal that all men, all people, are created equal.

I express thanks to Bonners Ferry Mayor Rick Alonzo, city council members Brion Poston, Val Thompson, Adam Arthur and Ron Smith for doing the right thing, to Gerald Higgs, Gray Henderson, Craig Kelson and Nancy Wycoff for speaking up, to Bonners Ferry Police Chief for assisting the mayor in raising the Canadian flag to its rightful place immediately after the Tuesday council meeting adjourned, to KXLY and KREM for sharing the news to a wider audience and to Cal Russell for so eloquently representing our community in his interview to that wider audience.

And I’d like to extend a special thank you to city attorney Andrakay Pluid for her analysis of IC-67-2303A and her eloquence in crafting, at the behest of the mayor and city council, City of Bonners Ferry Resolution 2025-006, memorializing this community’s appreciation for our Canadian friends and neighbors, and declaring every day a day to commemorate that amity by proudly flying the Canadian flag alongside our own, just as our Canadian neighbors stood with us in so many of our nation’s most trying times.

May these small acts of standing up and doing the right thing proliferate from sea to shining sea, may the promise of our constitution weather this tempest, and may we once again, with malice toward none, with charity for all and with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, strive on to bind up the nation’s wounds and rededicate ourselves to the proposition that all people are created equal, and in so doing may we as citizens of this nation, already great. commit ourselves to the never-ending task of working together to ever perfect our union.