Traveling from Latrobe to my house in Norvelt, I counted 26 Trump yard signs and three Biden signs, including mine. I had proudly pounded my Biden sign in my yard so all could see who I was supporting for president this year.
The next morning I woke up to find that someone had run their car into my yard and mowed down my Biden sign. As I passed all those Trump signs the day before, it never occurred to me to destroy even one of those signs, and I don’t know anyone who would.
This is not the first campaign in which I have had my yard signs destroyed. During the last presidential election, people ran through my yard and tore up and stole my Clinton yard signs several times. When Al Gore ran for president, my husband and I attended a rally at the Latrobe airport with a sign “Former NRA Member for Gore.” We came home to find a deer head in our yard with a note that said, “We know where you live.”
It saddens me that so many in my area are so taken in by what I see as rhetoric and misinformation that the Trump campaign is putting out. But I feel that everyone has a right to their opinion and that yard signs are a part of our freedom of speech.
What makes people do such things? Are the supporters for President Trump so insecure, so juvenile, so hateful that they must destroy our right of freedom of speech?
Harriet Ellenberger
Mt. Pleasant Township