There is a saying: “kicking the can down the road,” which means procrastinating and delaying tough decisions in the hope that it’s someone else’s problem. But the Martinsville accusers are actually playing the age-old game of Kicking the Can. This game involves politicians, attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and ad hoc citizens.
Kick the Can is a tag-hide-and-seek game. It tries to jail players by tagging them near a central can, while others try to free them by kicking the can. The game ends when all players are jailed or the seeker runs out of time. Sounds political, not criminal?
In this political situation in Martinsville, how many have entered the game now? It just keeps growing because it’s nothing but a game with no end in sight. Just like when you were kids playing the game until everyone got tired or your mother said it was dark, it was time to come inside. Now it looks like Mother Richmond may have to take over the game because the Martinsville accusers have run out of players. Also, people need to remember that the game was started by one politician.
The people playing the game forgot that Martinsville is hilly, so if you kick the can uphill, it’s just going to come back down, maybe back to them. But there will be a day when they will have to write some big checks, because they have said they don’t care what it costs to play this game. The money will come from the city taxpayers. This is an expensive game that is running Martinsville’s reputation into the ground. In November 2026, the taxpayers should remember the people associated and sympathetic to this game. On election day, vote for the right people to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Lawrence Mitchell,
Martinsville
