To The Editor:

During a recent Wareham town meeting I rose from my seat and walked down the aisle to approach a microphone. My intention as a resident of Wareham was to ask four questions for the purpose of gaining additional information about Article 17 which was in the process of being debated.

As I descended the steps leading to the microphone, I felt someone following me down the aisle. The person walked past my left shoulder and crossed in front of the microphone and person currently speaking at the microphone. That person then sat in a seat which faced the microphone. When the person before me finished speaking, I stepped up to the microphone to ask questions. As I stepped up to the microphone the person who had followed me down the aisle (and who was not a photographer from the press) raised a camera to take my picture. I felt harassed and intimidated by the person’s action.

My spontaneous reaction was to prevent my picture from being taken.  I sought assistance from the town meeting moderator by saying “Point of order.”

When the moderator asked what my “point of order” was, I responded that I had approached the microphone to speak, that a person had a camera aimed at me, and that I felt intimidated. I also asked everyone in the room who found that person’s taking of pictures intimidating to please stand up. People responded by standing up.

In the process of the moderator addressing the issue of the person taking photographs, some members of the audience called out comments without following parliamentary procedure.

A Letter-to-the Editor, published online Nov. 1, 2010 and in this paper’s Nov. 4, 2010 edition identified to have been written by Cindy Parola began with the following paragraph.

“Board of Selectmen members on stage directing well-placed friends in the audience on how to make a motion, paparazzi-like photographers from both sides snapping away as though Lindsey Lohan was falling off the rehab wagon yet again, a correspondent from a ‘newspaper’ staging a deliberate (planned on the media outlet’s online chat site) scene to induce chaos, and a teller picking a fight with a town meeting voter – hallmarks of what Town Meeting in Wareham has come to represent.”

I am a correspondent for the Wareham Observer. I am the only Wareham resident who is “a correspondent” for a newspaper that spoke at the town meeting at which in the words of Ms. Parola “chaos” occurred. I identified myself by name and precinct during the time that I was at the microphone. The “chaos” (again Ms. Parola’s word not mine) transpired during the time that I was at the microphone. Therefore I wish to clarify the following.

I have been present during every single session of fall town meeting as a resident of Wareham, not as a correspondent of a newspaper. I did not stage “a deliberate (planned on the media outlet’s online chat site) scene to induce chaos” (quote taken from first paragraph of Ms. Parola’s published Letter-to-the-Editor.) I did not participate in any “media outlet’s online chat site planning of a “scene to induce chaos.” I stepped up to a microphone to seek additional information during a democratic process.

To everyone who has read Ms. Parola’s Letter-to-the-Editor, or has learned of the contents of her Letter-to-the Editor by word of mouth please be informed that I, Andrea Smith, have never stepped up to a microphone as “a correspondent from a ‘newspaper’ staging a deliberate (planned on the media outlet’s online chat site) scene to induce chaos.”

Andrea Smith

Main Street