I have been a citizen of Marion County, Georgia since August of 2020. If I wanted to know something about our county, the best place to go would by my neighbors, right? Maybe, unless you’re new and you haven’t made those connections yet. So, what did I do? I searched on Facebook for groups in Marion County. I found several groups, all which are administratively managed by two independent citizens, Molly Fuller Rudd and Marie Shearer Berlanga.

These groups are advertised as informational pages and watch pages, so if I needed to know something about the ins and outs of our county, I should be able to find those things there, and I have learned many things and found answers for those questions I had, but I have experienced that there are only certain things you can post and only certain things that you can answer. I have found that in these groups, only things in which these ladies deem acceptable to them, from my posting perspective, have they allowed through.

It is no secret that I believe in education about governmental goings on. It is no secret that I ask questions and some of those questions ruffle feathers. They aren’t usually meant to do so, but any time your question challenges an authority or a current standard, and asks why it is done this way or what can we do to change that, ego tempers flare, posts are muted or deleted, citizens mock and harass, and eventually those things that we should be questioning are no longer spoken of or allowed to be spoken of. Citizens now develop fear of exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. Citizens are exiled from receiving any information, from learning about their neighbors, from knowing when yard sales are being held, when the local gas station is out of gas, or when the Dollar General is closing for stock or power issues, etc. Citizens are shunned from their community in essence and they are labeled as troublemakers, smeared, refused any respect or humanity, etc.

Over the past months, I have been performing Open Records Requests to answer the popular question of “Why are our roads not being maintained,” “Why won’t the county fix our roads,” and “Where is the money going?” As usual, when you start asking these kinds of question, those who are tasked with managing our money get nervous, especially if they are up to no good.

In hopes to answer the collective question, I have been sharing those findings in the group managed by Molly Fuller Rudd, “Marion Co, GA Information Page (Formerly the REAL Marion Co, GA Watch Page),” because this group has the most citizens in it, and the more citizens who are made aware, the more we all know, and the more we can begin to understand how things in our government work, and the more we can stop placing blame where it does not belong, find solutions, and make the change. However, two days ago, I attempted to post new informational publications that were deleted by Molly and she gave me no notification. When I checked hours later to see if they had been approved, lo and behold, I could find those posts nowhere.

I sent a private message to Molly asking if she deleted my posts and why? She didn’t respond for a bit, so I went ahead and reposted them. A bit later, Molly responded and said that she denied them because they were political and she doesn’t allow political posts in the group. She referenced political posts as causing citizens to become mean and harassing. I sent a message back to her and mentioned that I was not promoting a candidate, and that this information was no different than the type of information that Richard Harris from The Journal posts and asked her to reconsider. As I expected, Molly gave no reply and she performed no action.

I thought about posting in the groups managed by Marie, but in my experience, she doesn’t fare well with political questions that may infringe upon her political connections in the Marion County government, and I can understand this because she is the host of our VITA program that is funded to assist citizens with their taxes, and she wants to be careful not to compromise that.

So, I started posting in the “Marion County Concerned Citizens” facebook page administratively managed by Christopher Sizemore, and I can say that I have found this group and Mr. Sizemore to be acceptable. None of my posts have been denied or deleted. None of my comments have been silenced or deleted. The citizens in this group seem to actually care about staying informed about what is concerning to our citizens. The only problem is that this group, as of April 9, 2026, only has 173 members compared to Molly’s group which has 4800 members.

So, how many citizens are actually being informed as to what is going on with their government, with elections, with financial matters, with when city and county meetings are being held, with what type of assistance our volunteer firefighters might need, etc? How are we being informed when an administrator can choose what we see and what we don’t because of their own biases and preferences?

As an alternative, we have our local newspaper, The Journal, in which Richard Harris writes about some interesting topics, and honestly, had he not written about our tax assessor retiring, a special election being held for her replacement, and the county manager resigning in July, we may not have even known about that, but I have also found this publication to be focused on things that don’t adequately inform us on things that could be considered political and concerning. In some cases, we cannot even afford to buy a daily paper nor do we think that we might need to buy one. Some of us cannot afford a yearly subscription, and if we are to view it online, we can only see part of the article before we have to pay for it. So, again, I ask, are we actually being informed as to what is going on in our county?

As an additional alternative, we have our city and commissioner meetings, but how many people know when those meetings are being held? It’s not published in any of those groups, I haven’t seen it published by The Journal, and the Marion County website is so out of date, expecting it to give us current meeting announcements is a unicorn’s glitter fart in the wind, at the current moment.

So, what do we do if we want to stay informed of the things that actually bring us concern? Where do we go to be heard when we cannot make a meeting or when our request to speak at a meeting is denied?

I suggest everyone jumping over to Chris Sizemore’s facebook group, which can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1ThkBh1uh5/. I also suggest creating a Virtual Town Hall group on Facebook where what is said in the group is truly censor-free, where citizens can have intellectual debate without name-calling, where the county public officials can see what the citizen concerns are (in addition to Chris Sizemore’s Marion County Concerned Citizens group) and where citizens feel comfortable using their voice. And additionally, I suggest us holding our own meeting once a month on a weekend when we can attend outside of our work schedules to get up to speed.

Ask yourselves, “How can a group administrator censor what is political, if our government (which is comprised of what we know as politicians) are making decisions about what to do with our money, our property, our inheritance, our judicial needs, and our future?

If you want drama, I, for one feel that Molly’s group is where you’ll find that. If you want some information and the ability to ask tax questions, Marie’s group is where you want to be too. And if you can afford to read The Journal’s online or in print subscription, you may find some of what you need to know, but what is written also seems to be only what Richard Harris feels we need to hear.

If you want honest information, and you want to address and converse about the concerns you have in the government, or any other concerns outside of the government, at the moment, you may want to scoot on over to “Marion County Concerned Citizens” group. If you want a truly censor-free option to discuss, cuss, and debate, so long as you respect your neighbor, I will be more than happy to build “The Virtual Town Hall of Marion County, GA.” I successfully established and admin’d a similar group called “The Virtual Town Hall of Columbus, Georgia” from 2018 to 2020, where no blocks, no mutes, no removals, or any censorship happened. When I came to Marion, I relinquished admin rights to another citizen to maintain. But, for now, let’s not fix what we don’t need to. I hope Chris Sizemore continues to allow this kind of conversation in his group, although he may need to appoint one or two more moderators to assist if the group gets larger.

If you have a story, have feedback, or questions, please feel free to contact me at Plumblyne Productions at 2293292179 or email me at plumblyneproductions@gmail.com.