Your Voice: June 1, 2022

Every day, I drive downtown and see a lot of storefronts sitting empty. Isn’t the purpose of Main Street to fill those vacancies in order to keep our downtown district vibrant and a busy destination for both local residents and visitors?

Additionally, if Main Street has any questions about the data supporting the return on investment of the chamber’s tourism and economic development efforts, there are plenty of reports and data charts demonstrating how much value our community gets from the efforts of the chamber.

Quite honestly, I am extremely disappointed in The Dalles Main Street’s lack of professionalism and transparency, and hoped that their efforts would be more partnership-driven and collaborative, versus combative, in order to truly serve our community.

Dawn Rasmussen

The Dalles

Denounce Fox News

In my last letter, I implored Fox News viewers to find a source of news that isn’t designed specifically to use fear to push them to reactionary politics, and now the hens have come home to roost.

On May 14, of this year, an 18-year-old white man, a child really, who I will not dignify with a name, walked into a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., and brutally murdered 10 Black people and injured three. On top of this, he live broadcasted the entire thing to the internet and despite the best efforts of social media platforms to scrub this video away, it remains. If you think that racist violence is a thing of the past, I highly recommend you Google the full video, without censors, like I did. I encourage you to watch the traumatizing brutality of it, the way he drops person after person with shots to the body before following up with shots to the head to make sure that they are dead. Watch it, internalize it, and then maybe you will have some sense of the fear and pain and anger that Black people live with on a daily basis. Then watch him apologize to the white person.

In the days since, we have found out that he spent months planning this, lying to his parents, and writing a manifesto citing “great replacement theory.”

If you don’t know what this is, yes, you do, because Tucker Carlson talks about it on a constant basis. He talks about how immigrants, “others,” are coming to replace you and to destroy your country and way of life.

This conspiracy theory is not new to anti-racists, of course, but it has been mainstreamed by Carlson and approved of by the heads of Fox.

If after all of this, you continue to watch Fox News, you are complicit in the murders of all of those people.

Or you can denounce Fox, Carlson, and racist violence, by joining us on the anti-racist side.

Benjamin Sheppard

Hood River

Editor’s note: Benjamin Sheppard works as a social worker.

Drug overdose death toll

From January to September 2021, the drug overdose death total in Oregon was 554. Only through September, that was a 19.9% increase over the whole year of 2020. The 2020 Oregon death total of drug overdose was 462. This was a 6.2% increase over the 2019 total of 280.

For those of you who voted for Measure 110, the decriminalization of many hard drugs, aren’t some of those death overdoses on your shoulders and conscience? Well, just maybe not your kids ... you hope. Still seems like a good idea?

Steve Nybroten

White Salmon

Tears of fury

I am writing this letter with tears of fury. Yesterday’s (May 24) massacre of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde Texas has broken the hearts once again of every American. Their blood is on the hands of every Republican senator who refuses to vote for reasonable gun control.

The second amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Where is such a militia when an 18-year-old buys a semi-automatic rifle and more than 300 rounds of ammunition? What purpose could he possibly have?

We need not just background checks. We need gun safety courses. We need everyone who owns a gun to be licensed and insured just like when you drive a car. And we need the Senate to act now. GOP senators who refuse to acknowledge their part in the proliferation of lethal arms in this country — the blood is on their hands. It is too late to save those 21 people. It is too late to save the 10 murdered in Buffalo. It is too late for the victims of 200 mass shootings this year. How many lives can be saved?

The time to act is now. No more thoughts and prayers. They do not bring back the dead. Action is required. Now.

Gigi Pomerantz

White Salmon

End gun violence

Have we had enough gun violence slaughtering our citizens and especially our children? Have we had enough thoughts and prayers and moments of silence?

We are the solution and we have the power to end this carnage. Locally, we can start by ousting Sheriff Songer, who refuses to enforce state gun laws. We should elect Doug White for Congress (CD4), who will fight to protect our children with common sense gun legislation.

Ninety percent of us support reasonable gun protections. Why do we keep sending people to Washington who won’t listen to us? Make it a priority to vote for politicians and local officials who will protect us and our children by enacting protective gun regulations.

Let’s end this insanity!

Sandy Montag

White Salmon

Wake up

As of today, May 25, the U.S. has had 213 mass shootings, and at least 13 have been in schools. Yesterday, an 18-year-old male killed at least 19 small children and two teachers. Others are severely injured, including his grandmother, so the numbers may rise.

You can say that it was a mental health crisis, but that boy was able to legally purchase two weapons of war, weapons that were more sophisticated than soldiers had in the Vietnam War!

You can say that we need “more good people with guns,” or that teachers should be armed. Teachers? That’s ridiculous. No teacher should have to be armed. We should not have to exist in a constant war zone!

So now, we can no longer be safe in schools, in churches, in grocery stores, at musical events, or even walking down the street. We have more guns than people in our country. Other first world countries have made laws to keep their citizens safer. They can still hunt, and frankly, they think that we are nuts!

We’re gearing up for this fall’s midterm election. Are you going to vote for more angry lunatics who refuse to pass laws to keep us safe, who are more interested in personal power and money than legislating intelligently to make this country better?

We’re on the cusp of destruction, unless you wake up, pay attention, contact your legislators and vote intelligently.

Gretchen Olsen

Goldendale

Gun laws needed

A very limited law was passed in 1994 banning the manufacture and “transfer” of 118 firearm models and all magazines holding more than 10 rounds. It did not have any effect on such weapons that were already owned, so all it really did was make it a little harder for someone to easily acquire a new weapon. This law, however, would have kept the Uvalde murderer from acquiring the weapons he used.

That law expired in 2004, and since that time there has been a dramatic increase in the number or assault weapons in private hands and a dramatic increase in deaths from mass shootings. Assault weapons are a threat to public health and safety and should be banned. In my opinion, we also need a mandatory buy-back of assault weapons, as was done in Australia, but a ban on manufacture and sale would be a good start.

It is trite but true to say that we have an epidemic of gun violence. The statistics on firearm deaths and injuries overall are poor, since collection of data was prohibited for many years but we do know that firearms now kill more children than do motor vehicle crashes. Guns are used in about 5% of suicide attempts, but account for nearly 50% of suicide deaths.

The perversion of the Second Amendment to justify these death tolls is unacceptable. Public health and safety are way more important than the “right” to purchase and own guns, especially assault rifles. We do not need to “harden targets.” We need to stop thinking in these gun terms, and start thinking about living our lives in peace without the threat of gun violence.

Patricia Arnold

Trout Lake

Pro-life?

In less than two months, the U.S. Supreme Court will release a ruling which effectively grants full legal rights to a fertilized human egg. This week, 21 human beings capable of praying, thinking, walking, and breathing are dead because conservative pro-life supporters lack the courage to admit out loud that our gun laws are quite flawed. Meanwhile, the national news confirms this on an almost weekly basis.

Overreaching conservatives demonstrate extreme hypocrisy when they demand the government stay away from their military-grade weapons while simultaneously demanding the government take over women’s bodies.

Steve Kaplan

Hood River

Regulate guns

The repeated mass slaughter of innocents by fellow Americans is unacceptable. The killers often use legally purchased assault-style semi-automatic guns with high-capacity magazines. Advocates of these guns generally cite “Second Amendment rights” as justification for their unrestricted availability to almost anyone.

In its entirety, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The amendment makes no mention of guns, but instead refers to “arms” that a militia might use in order to defend a free nation.

Today the arms of national defense include hand-held Javelin missile launchers, supersonic jet fighter planes, and intercontinental ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. Why aren’t individual Americans entitled to own such killing machinery, given that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t prohibit it?

The reason, of course, is that previous generations of U.S. lawmakers passed responsible legislation. They recognized that it is not in the public’s interest for individuals to own weapons of mass destruction, whether they’re intercontinental ballistic missiles or assault rifles.

But some current U.S. lawmakers are different. They simply follow the money wherever it leads them in their quest for power and wealth. The 50 current U.S. senators who affiliate with the Republican party march in lockstep with gun lobbyists because it’s in their personal interest to do so. They do not represent the interests of the majority of American people, who express a strong preference for stricter gun control.

By the way, neither major political party has ever suggested taking away guns designed for legal hunting of animals. I own two such guns myself, and I have never feared that the government might take them away.

Richard Iverson

Hood River

Legal purchase

“The gun was purchased legally.” Again.

And so we grieve another mass shooting. It is obvious that for the Republican Party, the unregulated right to kill is more important than the rights of Americans to live in safety. Don’t expect that to change; NRA blood money provides such a lucrative addition to their bank accounts.

As payment, perhaps GOP legislators should be required to visit the scene of a mass shooting. Smell the blood, the feces and urine. Look at the mangled remains of the victims, some so torn apart they can only be identified through DNA analysis.

Then share thoughts and prayers with surviving families while refusing to do anything to prevent these massacres.

The NRA is proud to present today’s Republican Party. Bought and paid for, legally, and yielding a great return on their investment.

Larry Jacoby

Hood River