Letters to the Editor for Feb. 18

Jerry Giarraputo

Hood River

Speak for housing

Calling all renters, business owners, and everyone concerned about housing!

I am asking you to join me on Tuesday, Feb 21 at 5:15 p.m. at the City Council Chambers. This is an important planning meeting and we need your voice.

Now more than ever we need to speak up and be heard by being active and involved. What better place to start than in our own community?

Housing: It has been identified as the number one issue in our community for the last two years. Anyone who has tried to find a place to live for an employee, child, themselves or a friend knows, housing is at a crisis level in our community. Whether we are 2000 housing units short, as Mid-Columbia Housing Authority has identified, or even a quarter of that number, not one single apartment has been added.

This is not a time to focus on banning plastic bags or saving the Frisbee area (this lot is not on the permanent or future inventory of the Parks and Rec District). This is a time to get busy — to remind our city and county representatives that we need housing for our employees and the future growth of our business community. We need housing so our kids could move back here. We need housing so we can have top-rated doctors and teachers and therapists. We need housing so our wait staff and servers can live in the community they serve. We need more housing so the people who pick our fruit and our grapes can live in dignity. We need more housing so we can support those in need in our community.

Please come. It is important and it is time to do something about housing.

Allyson Pate

Hood River

Save Morrison Park

I would like to add my voice to the opposition of the proposed rezone of Morrison Park. I photographed it on a beautiful, cold day in January, when the powder snow was deep and easy to ski. I was impressed by the park’s serene and natural beauty. One of my favorite spots was a knoll with huge boulders blanketed in snow and Oregon white oaks crowning the top. Elsewhere, animal tracks led into thickets near the stream. I never realized until that day how many large, old-growth ponderosa pines grow in the lower section of the park.

Morrison Park is truly a treasure for Hood River and must be preserved. It’s a very special and beautiful five-acre woodland that enriches the city in many ways. The park is one of the oldest in town and is especially important as a future link to the Columbia River Trail, Westside Trail and the waterfront trail.

Great cities of this country value their nature parks for future generations, wildlife and open space. Fortunately, as Susan Crowley pointed out in her op-ed piece on Feb. 10, Hood River’s Comprehensive Plan mandates the preservation of open space for lands zoned as such.

I intend to give a three-minute slide show of Morrison Park at the Hood River Planning Commission public hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 5:30 p.m. For more info and photos, check out HoodRiverParks.com.

Darryl Lloyd

Hood River

Divisive

This letter refers to the Feb. 8 letter from Alan Winans. I was quite taken aback by his comment about “… you Democrats and your fellow un-American …”

When I was growing up, my parents insisted that we be tolerant and accepting of others no matter how different. We were taught that it is wrong to exclude others based on skin color, culture, handicap or religion. Diversity enriches our lives. We were also taught to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Clearly, Trump and friends did not receive the same wise training.

Mr. Winans’ letter quoted some famous folk who stated that “Divided we fall,” and then proceeded to blame Democrats for the current divisions in this country. As near as I can tell, it is the (Republican) administration causing these divisions today. Sexism is divisive. Racism is divisive. Homophobia is divisive. Denying climate change is divisive. Lying is divisive.

Whereas, conversely, the Democratic party does not support or endorse these divisions — and has been working tirelessly to stop them. Peaceful protest, for instance, is done to point out inequities — but it does not cause them.

Since Trump’s election, I have signed hundreds of petitions, written dozens of letters and called my senators daily — as many of us have. Without exception, those communications have been in support of fairness, transparency and equality for all — and against a fascist regime whose greatest goal is to divide.

If “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” then I’d say Donald Trump’s goal is to bring this adage to full realization in this country, and the world.

Merriann Bell

Lyle, Wash.

Don’t just Tweet

In all the chaos of the election season and now the president’s first 100 days, one thing has become abundantly clear: The power of social media. We saw its positive power as it helped people communicate to one another and to the rest of the world during the Arab Spring in 2011.

We are seeing the negative power now. Facebook and Twitter should not be where you get your news. If you base your understanding of what is happening in the world through your Facebook feed, I guarantee it will only be through the lens of people with views similar to yours.

What we really need is to seek multiple perspectives to get a clearer picture of what is actually happening. For example, I read two articles regarding the Women’s March. One only focused on Madonna’s crude speech and protest signs that were far from family friendly. The other focused solely on millions of women, peacefully marching with their babies and friends. Two sides, both correct in the facts they reported, but incomplete reporting the entire picture.

What actually happened was millions of women joined together to march in peaceful protest for a myriad of reasons, expressing themselves in many different ways, all while representing an intersectionality of causes.

My point is simply this: Think for yourself. Read real news. Know and consider the source of the information. Follow people and organizations on social media with different perspectives than yours. There are journalists who, despite Sean Spicer’s plea to only report positive news items and Kellyanne Conway’s proliferation of alternative facts, continue to report the whole picture honestly and without bias.

Megan Sheffels

White Salmon, Wash.

Education or indoctrination

We can either have education or we can have indoctrination.

We cannot have both. Education is basically critical thinking.

Indoctrination is basically marketing. Science and education rely on neutral (public) funding. The 1 percent is the direct result of successful marketing: the rich deserve to be rich (they work hard), and the poor deserve to be poor (they do not work). The 1 percent has labored long, hard and successfully to remove public funding for science (climate change is a hoax). Our newly minted secretary of education is fanatically devoted to the privatization of public education (to replace it with indoctrination). These trends do not bode well for our future.

David Warnock

Hood River

No outrage?

My family moved to Oregon because of its liberal tendencies and obviously because it’s one of the most amazing places to live for outdoor activities. It didn’t surprise me to see in the past six months, protests over water, equality, discrimination, LGBT rights, presidential candidates, etc.

Except one of the biggest concerns/outrage is what is going on locally and no one is discussing — the discrimination and equality of our children. How so? This country prides itself on providing free public school education for all. Well, that is, if you don’t live on one street vs. another or live outside the city. In that case, I will need to pay $9,000-plus per year for my child to attend a Hood River school of our choice.

Think about that: If I want my child to get a better education or attend a class not provided at another school, well, tough luck, unless you’re wealthy. You’re more than welcome to attend our school — that is the feeling I get — so what happened to the anti-discrimination groups and equality for all people in this town?

This is happening in your local town. Where’s the outrage for our children being discriminated and not being provided equality? Unless you agree with segregating poor families from richer families? How is this different from the segregation we saw pre-1960s?

Chris Schoenen

Hood River