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Get involved in
anti-frack efforts
In July, I traveled to Washington with a busload of other local people for a rally to help convince our government to protect its people for the devastating assault on public health and safety that is called hydrofracking. This national effort drew about 5000 people.
Ten years ago, when I went to DC to protest against the looming Iraq war, the Mall was filled with 300,000 people.
It could be argued that the Iraq war was a less immediate threat to Americans than the destruction of our drinking water by hydrofracking, which affects potentially millions of people.
Nothing impacts human health more immediately and profoundly than access to clean, potable water. We are literally fighting for our lives against a giant polluted wave of greed, money, and ignorance that is the gas industry.
It makes no sense to go on about the war on drugs and the war on terror if we allow our own corporations to kill us. If we are to put the fear of God into those charged with protecting us, we need to have more than 5000 people. Get involved.
JOHN KASTNER, ROCHESTER
A Canadian
perspective
on poverty
While visiting the Finger Lakes from Ontario, Canada, I saw the headlines: "All this money and students can't read: what?!" (I'm a teacher) and "Organic Farmers Continue Fight with Monsanto" (we're farmers), so I decided to pick up the paper. Turns out the most interesting article by far was the interview with Rev. Marvin McMickle.
That man certainly has his head screwed on correctly. He speaks so eloquently and passionately about societal problems, which are pretty much the same in our rural Ontario community. We don't have race problems, yet I see white students daily exhibiting the same "hopeless" behavior as the young black male population in the US.
In my opinion, the most interesting point the Reverend made was when he said: "The hearing is not the issue. It's the surviving after having been heard that's the issue." We can get the disadvantaged to speak up, but without a plan to help both the advantaged and disadvantaged, we cannot progress.
Somehow we need to make kindness and caring "sexy" and "cool" again so that people will do it. Luckily, caring and kindness are self-seeding. The more you show it, the better you feel and the more you want to continue doing it.
Rochester is indeed lucky to have such a wonderful man as one of her citizens. We need more people like Rev. McMickle, who are not afraid to discuss these politically charged issues, who are not interested in laying blame, but want to look at the reality of the situation and speak openly and honestly about what needs to be done to change direction.
JAN DUFFIELD, FORDWICH, ONTARIO, CANADA
Guns and rights
On a reader's comment linking violence in movies, on TV, and in video games to gun violence (Feedback): The impact of violent movies, TV shows, and video games on "sick individuals" is open for debate. But what is not debatable is that James Holmes was a law-abiding citizen who acquired his guns legally. As did Seung-Hui Cho of Virginia Tech infamy.
So do we sit around debating who or what is more to blame while the body count rises?
CHAIM DELOY
Posted on rochestercitynewspaper.com
The gun-nuts interpret the Second Amendment as seemingly the MOST important amendment and believe that it should apply to everyone no matter what the case. Really, it should be a privilege to have a gun after you have proved that you aren't a crazy person, or even just someone who has any idea what they're doing. That it took me a year to get a driver's license, yet I could buy a gun without any training is ludicrous.
HAVAHD ST
Posted on rochestercitynewspaper.com
Mt. Morris's
good old socialist
I was glad to see the name of Francis Bellamy in the caption below the photo of Mt. Morris storefronts at the head of the article "The Mt. Morris Miracle" (July 18). That lets old socialists like me write in to remind readers that Bellamy was more than the writer of the Pledge of Allegiance.
In this fractured time in our country, mention of the author of the Pledge is a grand opportunity to remind some and inform others that Bellamy, born in Mt. Morris, was a socialist. "Socialist" has not always been a dirty word in these United States, and it shouldn't be today.
DENNIS WIENK, ROCHESTER
Romney vs. Obama
How about discussions about what government is not capable of providing? ("Romney and Ryan," Urban Journal). Obama made more promises in 2008 than any presidential nominee EVER (over 500).
Look at his biggest promises:
To cut the deficit in half; he has nearly tripled it. To be a unifier; things are undeniably more divisive. Health care reform; premiums are already up between 8 and 9 percent, more than a million have lost their insurance provider, doctors hate it, most of America doesn't want it, not to mention it was rammed through after no one read it. And the economy! All we have heard is excuses.
This is a bloated, unreliable mess of a government, with arrogance to boot. Democrats are giving away other people's money and then acting as if they are generous and caring because of it. It's not generosity when it's not your money.
CHI
Posted on rochestercitynewspaper.com
The "most right-wing presidential administration in modern American history"? After four disastrous years of the most extreme far-left regime in history, that sounds like progress!
J.A.M.
Posted on rochestercitynewspaper.com
We just had the most radical administration in our history – the Bush Catastrophe. Obama as some extreme left-winger? Right – like he borrowed his health bill plan from that Marxist think tank, the Heritage Foundation. And he even mimicked Romney there. It's to the right of Nixon's health plan – but I guess Nixon was a radical left-winger, too.
And don't get me started on that Commie dupe, Eisenhower. I mean, just look at his marginal tax rates. Or how about that radical left-winger, Ronald Reagan. Obama borrowed his nuclear weapons sensibilities from Ronnie.
TROLL WHISPERER
Posted on rochestercitynewspaper.com
