LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

People of color still persecuted

4/28/2014

In your otherwise excellent April 12 editorial “Civil society,” there is a serious and historically relevant omission. After praising the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the editorial correctly points out that “the nation has yet to fulfill the promise of equal rights for all” and mentions that “discrimination still hounds same-sex couples, immigrants, and others.”

The omission is that in many respects, there has been no progress for African-Americans. If slavery and Jim Crow can be viewed as the first two eras of subjugation of Afrrican-Americans, then present-day mass incarceration completes the historical trifecta.

In America, about the same percentages of whites and people of color use and sell drugs. The tragedy is that in recent decades, the war on drugs has been used to put unprecedented numbers of black and brown people into prison. Often the jail terms are long. The negative effects are usually lifelong.

America leads the world in the number of citizens it incarcerates. The war on drugs is a failure — unless the unstated purpose is to incarcerate people of color.

JIM BAILEY
Fostoria 

Museum board is too male
Of the 24 people on the board of directors of the National Museum of the Great Lakes, as listed in your April 20 advertising supplement, not one is a woman.

Because this museum was constructed with substantial investment of public money, shouldn’t the makeup of its board better reflect the public and include some gender diversity?

BARBARA FLOYD
Middlesex Drive

 

Fill potholes, but not with cones
Once the snow stopped, I was certain we would see Toledo’s potholes repaired daily. I have called the city’s pothole hot line and have used the online report form, and still nothing has been done about any of the streets I have reported. Because I drive in many ZIP codes, I have reported many problem streets.

In talking with others in my neighborhood and elsewhere, it seems that many people are convinced that the city is no longer filling potholes. In lieu of fixing them, it appears city crews are filling them with orange cones. There are four large craters on my street alone.

I understand the city is busy, but this is getting ridiculous. Is it permissible for private citizens to fill potholes and bill the city? That seems like a better option than replacing my tires.

ERIN THOMPSON
119th Street

 

Poor women have privacy rights
Poor women are not being railroaded into having abortions. They are exercising their constitutional right to privacy and self-determination, everyone’s basic freedoms.

Using back-door legislation to close urban abortion clinics denies access to the most vulnerable poor and disfranchised women. Wealthy and well-connected women always have been able to have an abortion. They could travel to states where it was legal prior to Roe vs. Wade, and they had access to doctors.

It is unconstitutional and immoral to use a narrow, religious belief to deny the same health care to the poor.

SALLY KELLER
Sabra Road