Here's something you won't ever hear me say again: Don Peebles [1] is right. In his guest column last week, he said we opponents of Measure L [2] are just a "small group." [3] Yes, we are David to Don's Goliath. And our size is our strength. We are a handful, in the best sense of the word. We don't have much money [4]. We work for free. We are 100% local. We don't have fancy lawyers [5], P.R. hacks for hire [6], expensive TV commercials, or endless slick brochures [7]. We don't have a million bucks [8] to burn. We don't stay at the Mark Hopkins. We don't have earpiece-wearing aides who shadow us while we shop. We don't have out-of-town telemarketers [9] who call their own client "Mister Pebbles." (LOL, Barney Rubble meets Fred and Wilma Flintstone for a little Vision Quest party in the quarry. Rock on, Mister Pebbles, you get what you pay for.) In our materials, we don't publish statements by our own "top experts." We link you to well-researched stories published by the Pacifica Tribune's [10] parent ANG Newspapers [11], the San Francisco Chronicle [12], the San Francisco Examiner [13], the San Francisco Bay Guardian [14], Coastsider.com [15], et al. (see them all at PacificaQuarry.org [16]). We don't play astroturfing [17] games online with sock puppets [18]. We don't hit you with push polls [19] that defame Mayor Sue Digre and bully you with loaded questions. We don't threaten you with big-box stores [20] if you don't vote for us. All we ask for is a reasonable, sustainable plan for the quarry [21]-- a plan that everybody in town can support [22], not 355 trophy houses and a snooty luxury hotel [23]. Our "small group" is not knee-jerk [24] anti-development [25], despite the Big Lies being told by Mister Pebbles and his brand-new real estate pals. Small is beautiful [26], we say. We may be a small group, but just count the hundreds and hundreds of drivers who honk and wave and smile at our sign-waving volunteers [27] on Highway 1. Hear the sound of the people of Pacifica voting with their thumbs up, way up. That's huge, Mister Pebbles.

The above was printed as part of John Maybury's "Wandering and Wondering [28]" column in the Pacifica Tribune of October 18th, 2006, and is republished here with his permission.