Letters to the Editor, June 17 edition

Jun 17, 2020
Jun 17, 2020

Commit to mask use

It seems to me that if routine mask use halves the replication of infections when compared to using masks only if symptomatic, we really need to commit to mask use until we have a viable vaccine. It should be made mandatory for users of essential services like grocery stores, including grocers and shoppers. Currently I see maybe 50 percent mask use in the grocery store, so those at risk who must fetch groceries have no great protection. When the federal government mailed out $1,200 in relief funds, they might have included a couple N95 masks per person to allow those who are at highest risk some option for greater protection. That we can fight high-tech wars around the world and fly missions to space, including private commercial missions to space, but not manage to get the U.S. public a supply of protective gear, let alone those on the front lines, speaks volumes about our priorities. It seems to me testing does minimal good late in the game without addressing basic protections. That countries that committed to mask use early on faired much better than ours should be looked at objectively, and not with an eye for global political positioning. We are a world community in this pandemic; let us share the best of each others solutions.

Commentary: Why dredge up a racist past?

By Mark Gibson, Columbia Gorge News

At least one reader of the Columbia Gorge News questioned last week's “Verbatim” story on the History page, which ran under its original headline “Pleaded Guilty To Wrong Offense.”

The reader suggested that the description of the Native American defendant, as presented on the front page of the newspaper in 1910, would be considered racist by today's standards.

That reader is absolutely correct.

Indeed, the story is racially offensive on many levels. It was clearly “reported” at a time when Native Americans were fair game for institutional injustice and public ridicule, a time when their legitimate outcry against an unjust criminal prosecution was flippantly rejected by the dominant culture. It illustrates, for those able to read between the lines, the institutional racism of both the legal system and, I'm sad to say, the newspaper journalists of the day, as illustrated by the tongue-in-cheek mockery written into the report.

The article also hints at how unjustly women were treated in Oregon and the Columbia River Gorge at the time, when the legal consequences for driving drunk far outweighed those of beating your wife.

So why run such a thing today, historical or not?

Racism runs deep in Oregon's history, and ignorance is not bliss. No historical portrait of a time and place can be complete without including such stories as they appear in the relevant archives. Whitewashing history, so to speak, is dishonest.

That is especially true now, as citizens march in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in the Gorge.

Injustice has always been hard for the dominant culture to recognize, and stories like “Pleaded Guilty To Wrong Offense” can shed light on where today's injustice springs from and how to recognize it in our own time as well.

Perhaps in a hundred years or so, some editor will thumb through last week's issue of Columbia Gorge News, trying to understand our time.
Perhaps they will, like myself, read the 1910 account on the history page with disgust and horror. But they will also see, in the very same edition, the photographs and stories of our time: People lying in the street to protest unjust racially biased killings; people uniting across the boundaries of color and creed in search of justice and a better America; people reaching out to help one another — irrespective of race — during a global pandemic.

They will look back and see our times, the roots of their own present, whatever that present may be.

And they will judge our words and actions just as we now judge those who came before us, good and bad alike.

Mark Gibson is an editor of the Columbia Gorge News, and is specifically responsible for the History page at this time. He served as editor of The Dalles Chronicle from 2016, and as staff photographer since 1997.