Gun violence can be stopped by We The People: Voices to eradicate hate

File this opinion letter under the subject of Oh My God!

By John Nave, published in the Topeka Capital-Journal online:

We the People can use our voices to eradicate hate, bigotry, racism and discrimination. Gun violence is targeting racial minorities!

America continues to witness heinous mass school shootings.

Working families send their children to school, not knowing it would be the last time they kissed their cheeks or hugged them.

Teachers who unconditionally committed their lives and love to students and profession, not knowing this would be their last day to teach.

Twenty-one people are dead — 19 students and two teachers — after a shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

I don't know a single person in this country who has not been affected by the senseless act of extreme violence against innocent children and teachers, like what sadly occurred in Uvalde, Texas.

It is beyond my imagination that an 18-year-old, on his birthday, had the ability to purchase weapons, ammunition and then react to his world this way. It appears that he hated life, himself and took his anger out on his community and innocent people and innocent children of his community, which didn’t deserve it.

Uvalde is a community made up of working families, much like the communities across Kansas and our nation. These communities are working to create the American dream. Sadly, these families now endure unimaginable pain that will never go away.

Many will look to their elected officials for answers. All will ask questions: Are the laws and regulations about gun safety already on the books being followed? Are they strict enough! Are they appropriate for each state, city and community?

Now is not the time to point fingers. Now is the time to learn and understand all aspects of the Uvalde Texas massacre and the other terrible tragedies — then work together to ensure it never happens again. That it cannot happen again.

As a labor leader, I witnessed sad days, but nothing in my memory can compare to the pain my family recently experienced. Last month, my granddaughter graduated from the Marine corps and, while home, became an innocent victim of a drive-by shooting.

Gratefully and by God’s grace, she survived and lives with the impeded bullet as she continues to serve our country.

While I cannot honestly know what the families in Uvalde are going through, I understand it.

Today, as I share my thoughts and sadness, I speak for the Kansas AFL-CIO and our close-knit members as we mourn and offer our prayers to the Uvalde community and other communities who have also experienced senseless violence.

We the People must, as a whole, accept the responsibility to address hate, bigotry, racism and discrimination in all forms. It is time to use our voices to eradicate and prevent this from happening ever again.

• We the People can look at what we can do to prevent this violence. 
• We the People have the opportunity to be part of the solution. 
• We the People have to work together to to protect our communities.
• We the People need to do whatever is necessary to stand up and make sure our laws and regulations are more effective, so our communities can prevent these types of horrific tragedies.

The clock is ticking for the people of Texas and our nation. The time is now to call upon our officials and our citizens to set aside politics and work together to come to the proper solution, no matter what that may be!

• We, the people must and can do this! 
• We, the people must and can do better!

John Nave is the executive vice president of the Kansas AFL-CIO.

Demonstrate compassion - People wear masks to prevent COVID pandemic spread

Wearing a mask is unselfish

Echo opinion letter published in the Dodge City Daily Globe and the Topeka Capital-Journal, in Kansas. This letter was published in 2020, but the message continues to be urgent.  COVID-19 is not going away. Masks will protect the wearer and the public against becoming seriously ill with COVID and the Delta variant 

My brother, Danny Dougherty, passed away Oct. 27. He had underlying conditions and contracted COVID-19. He was on the COVID ICU floor of the Salina Regional Health Center for 16 days. The nurses, doctors and staff on that unit were fantastic — he got the best of care.

Danny knew the risk if he were to contract COVID. He went only a few places and wore a mask when he did. I have heard all the reasons people have for not wearing mask. Their “rights,” their “claustrophobia.” They “are young and therefore immune.”

There is no good reason for not wearing a mask. Perhaps you are asymptomatic and you pass someone like my brother in the grocery store (who is wearing a mask to protect you) and you are not wearing a mask. Perhaps you sneeze or cough on them and they get COIVD.

It is not that hard; just wear a mask. Do it because it’s the unselfish thing to do. Do it so the staff members of the ICUs are not overworked, exhausted and sick at heart because they have lost so many patients.

Do it so there is not an empty chair at someone’s next family gathering and a hole in their heart because someone they dearly loved died from COVID.

Bonnie Daley, Salina Kansas

Trumpziism - racism is democracy suppression

Opinion echo letter published in the Kansas newspaper:

Topeka Capital-Journal

Martin Luther King 

I have struggled with this question for going on five years: How can people support Donald Trump when they are hearing and seeing exactly what I am hearing and seeing? He is an unapologetic fascist authoritarian racist. Democracy can no longer be taken for granted. He is full of lies and contradictions. Freedoms of speech, press and religion have been well on their way to the endangered species list.

Now I think I know the answer. Donald Trump is saying what his base of supporters wants to hear. Up to now, I have given them the benefit of a doubt — that is, even though they supported a racist, they weren’t necessarily racist themselves. I now believe that they really are racists, aka white supremacists.

I heard a pundit wiser than I am declare that white supremacists do not like democracy. They see democracy as too hazardous to their health; people of color might actually get elected when elections are fair and open. Voter suppression isn’t just about suppressing voting rights, it’s about suppressing democracy itself.

It appears that white supremacists fear losing their self-deluding white superiority. Ironically, racists are inferior beings. The mere fact that they are so full of irrational fear and hatred makes them so.

Terry Larson, Topeka Kansas

Republicans and the irresponsible Donald Trump have taken a wrecking ball to America's public health system

Echo opinion editorial published in the Topeka Capital-Journal submitted by Tomari Quinn:

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases saved to Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director
NIAID supports World Health Organization’s SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign. Proper #HandHygiene can help to prevent #AntibioticResistance.

Echo: America's nation’s public health system is a treasure.

It comprises multiple agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), some of which conduct original research and others of which inform the public about ways to prevent illness. 

Still other agencies make sure the medicine and vaccines we use are safe and effective.

That’s why it’s been so deeply distressing to watch the Trump administration take a wrecking ball to the integrity of this system and these agencies.

We don’t have the time or space to list all of the Donald Trump administration’s most egregious actions. We could start with the sidelining of Anthony Fauci, perhaps the nation’s most trusted scientific adviser during the COVID-19 pandemic. We could continue with efforts in the Health and Human Services Department to control regular scientific reports that come out of the CDC.

Perhaps most alarmingly, we could focus on the way that the president has urged the FDA to cut corners and accelerate the timeline on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, hoping against hope to deliver an October surprise and a presidential re-election.

In each of these cases, we see Donald Trump and an administration devoted to short-term political gain over long-term public health. The United States has paid a continuing price, as other nations have followed the science and kept their outbreaks under control. 

Our Trumpzi government’s decision to put the political ahead of the scientific has cost us all dearly.

And the trade-off hasn’t ended. Polling has shown that many Americans will distrust an eventual COVID-19 vaccine. If the president demands that the FDA approve a treatment before testing is conducted, how is the public supposed to react?

We have non-partisan public health institutions for a reason. They are meant to prevent exactly this kind of abuse. They are meant to be a trusted source of information for every American, Republican, Democrat or independent.

In attempting to break the mission of these institutions — which are still packed with incredibly talented researchers, scientists and public communicators — the president risks breaking trust with the American people.

This illness of governance was preventable. Curing it may take more aggressive treatment in November.

Proud to be an anti-Trumpzi - resister and truth advocate

An opinion echo letter published in the Topeka Capital-Journal, a Kansas newspaper

Donald Trump will do himself in

I’m responding to a letter in the March 14, Topeka Capital-Journal wherein the (defensive!) writer rages about “Never Trumpers,” a categorical label assigned to those who oppose Donald Trump and all of us Resisters who share one goal: “Get Trump out of office.”*

No matter what we’re called, we who are anti-Trump are, indeed, hoping for that goal to be realized. But we really do not have much concern; no need to speak out or take action. The president will self-destruct. The pandemic has a silver lining. It puts Trump more and more in the spotlight as he bungles the administration’s reaction to the crisis. Not to mention the catastrophe his entire time in office is.

The meltdown was inevitable. As a retired school psychologist, it is clear to me that Trump personifies a classic psychopath. To wit, one with no morals or values, conscience or empathy, who pursues immediate gratification, lies, exhibits sexual perversion and is guilty of criminal acts (bribery, trampling the Rule of Law, violation of the Constitution, etc.). Add an insatiable ego. Driven to do so, psychopaths always do themselves in.

Professionals in the mental health community have expressed themselves. I reference the letter from 350 such persons sent to Congress in December 2019, and the publication “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a compilation of statements and essays from 37 psychiatrists. A lengthy list of similar examples is available.

Donald Trump losing in November would be a long-awaited, welcomed gift to America and the world.

Stephen Ficke, Topeka Kansas

* Maine Writer post script - In my opinion, this March 14, letter referenced by Stephen Ficke might be a hopeful indication that our "resistance" is finally reaching the right ears. So let me get this right, the March 14 letter obviously "gets the point".  #votebluenomatterwho!  

Two echo opinions - Donald Trump is not qualified to lead

One letter is from the the Press Democrat in Southern California and the second was published in the Kansas newspaper the Topeka Capital-Journal. 

Press Democrat:  Trump’s failed strategies

EDITOR: Every American should Google the show, “Frontline: The Choice 2016.” It details the histories of then-candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Two things stand out in the Trump history. His father taught him to “win at all cost.” (Fred Trump had no tolerance for “losers” in the family.) Second, an old family friend, Roy Cohn told him, “If you don’t win, lie and say you did, and people will believe you.”

When Trump won the election, he started acting out on this advice consistently. He always pretends he is a winner, even when he isn’t. He tells huge whoppers that people actually believe, such as the “birther lie,” the denial of global warming, the lie that Trump is the top expert in every field, etc.

He added a third behavior: attack and blame your opposition when they expose your lies. When he claims “fake news,” look closer and fact check. You’ll find it’s his words that are fake, and the opposite of what he says is actually true.

It’s scary to realize the free world is run by a sociopath whose whole goal is to manipulate others, and that many do believe him. 

From: Susan Joice in Guerneville California

President shouldn’t ignore law

Richard Nixon, who at times seemed to be grappling with sanity while he lived in the White House, told a reporter early in 1974 that if the president does something then it cannot be against the law. In other words, Nixon was above the law.

Now we have another Republican who thinks he too is above the law. And he, evidently, is not alone in that belief. Just weeks after taking the oath in 2017, Trump asked his special counsel if he could pardon himself. Pardon himself for what?

Some legal scholars weren’t too sure that Trump could not pardon himself. Really? And what law school did these opinions develop from? Sometimes it is like living in a parallel universe where reality is being challenged at every turn. Have the Republicans forgotten there is something called the Constitution as Trump increasingly governs with executive orders?

All of this might lead us to believe that the old song in which Judy Collins says to send in the clowns had actually become the norm as the rule of law is being ignored by the president.

From Michal Betz, Wichita Kansas