Chamber comments outrageous
Having been homeless at one point in my life, I know the pain and shame connected to this experience. The recent comments reported in the BDN on Dec. 22 by the Portland Chamber of Commerce is truly outrageous.
They indicated in their 11-page report that Portland is too attractive to the homeless. Do the Chamber authors of this report realize that living in a shelter is miserable? There is very little privacy, very limited space to store belongings and living with total strangers can be alienating and frightening.
Do the Chamber officials know that it is nearly impossible to receive public assistance since the governor and republican legislators made extreme cuts to programs for the poor?
Instead of complaining about the “visible” homeless and how they are interfering with the number of tourists visiting Portland, they should focus on helping them by starting a fund in partnership with corporations from the Portland area that will begin to build affordable/supportive housing units. Rather than complaints and criticisms, Chamber personnel should try living in a shelter for several nights. Then maybe their tune will spark some empathy for those who are less fortunate.
Phyllis Coelho
Belfast
Remote control help
I believe lives could have been saved at the Sandy Hook Elementary School if the principal would have had a remote control with which, at the sign of an intruder in the school, she could have locked the doors of all classrooms, including the gym and lunchroom, with a click of the button.
This device would be analogous to your garage door or TV remote. All the locks would be programmed to the same frequency.The teachers and their students would be offered a second wall of security and may have been able to get out of the shooter’s line of fire by hiding in the corners of the classroom.
Paul Turcotte
Bangor
Stop the publicity
There may be no perfect solution to the frequent mass killing of our fellow citizens but we should absolutely stop making celebrities of these characters. Not celebrities by our definition, but by theirs.
We should stop putting their pictures on the front page of the newspaper and the 6 o’clock news. Don’t advertise their names, where they’re from or their dark past.
There will be protests of course from some who feel they have the right to know, but sorry, your morbid curiosity can’t supercede another person’s right to live another day. Some of these guys crave publicity.
We’ve all seen Jared Loughner’s sadistic grin as he smiled at the camera knowing the world finally knew who he was. James Holmes dyed his hair orange for his court appearance, and Timothy McVeigh felt it was his finest hour as the whole world hung on his final words as he became a martyr.
We need to show that senseless killing will only put them on the fast track to obscurity, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll look elsewhere for their fame.
Henry Deshane
Glenburn
Teachers protecting students
I would like to thank Dr. Erik Steele for writing the article published in the BDN on Dec. 21, “Honoring the teachers of Newtown who stayed with their children.” I am now retired from teaching for 40 years.
I was trained to do “lockdown drills,” and while watching the news about the terrible events in Newtown, I remembered a day at my school when we had a supposed intruder in the building.
We were alerted and followed lockdown procedure. My students and I sat in a corner of the room with lights off. We stayed there until the classroom door had been unlocked by school security and we were told it was over.
We left the corner of the room where we had been sitting silently. One of the students asked me what I would have done if someone tried to enter the room and succeeded.
I calmly said, “I would have to stand between the intruder and all of you.”
She asked, “You would give your life for us?”
I explained that all the teachers regarded the children in such a situation as if they were their parents away from home.
My 25 students then all came over and we had a group hug. I will never forget it. Steele and the BDN published a powerful and poignant tribute to all teachers who quietly with love and dedication stand up for children everywhere. It is what we have to do.
Karen E. Holmes
Cooper
Karen E. Holmes, in light of the tragedy in Newtown, it seems ironic that we have people screaming about teachers salary.
I can recall back in the 70’s reading about a teachers strike in the richest school district in the country (per capita income) in Maryland and a trash pick up workers in NYC. The trash workers won their strike and were going to be making 10 thousand higher than the teachers in Maryland who lost their strike.
Nothing against trash truck workers, it’s an honest living, but I do rate the responsibility of teaching children as more critical.
Sanitation workers in NYC had the Democrats in their pockets. Sanitation workers in NYC only go on strike in July when the temps hit 90+ for days in a row creating a stench and health hazard. Gotta luv unions!
Yes, they should be hauling off all your yuckies for minimum wage, in a perfect world.
Thanks for the worthless post. More liberal stupidity. The point is that you are paying sanit workers in NYC $80K a year for a skills free job. Wouldn’t some of that salary money be better spent on teachers?
I’m not sure he’s a liberal…
So… they are just proving that infact there job my be yucky and seem unimportant, but leave some trash out in the middle of summer and all of a sudden people realize just how important they are.
Are you being intentionally obtuse?
no but paying people 80k to remove that stench seems pretty reasonable during the summer, you know when tourist come and spend a lot of money in new York city. How much money would they lose in tourism in New York if trash was everywhere? It doesn’t make sense to pay people minimum wage to do a very important function. Yes its unskilled labor, but its incredibly important unskilled labor, its vital to the function of the city. You not only pay by skill level, but by importance as well.
My grandfather died in a copper mine when my mother was a little girl, and my uncle lost an eye in an industrial accident. I don’t begrudge any working people who organize for safe working conditions and a living wage.
I especially appreciate the important work that teachers do. The education of our children should be a top priority.
I agree, but the santitation contract in NYC is nortorious even among organized labor. And they are hardly working in a mine.
Mr. Turcotte, why would the shooter not shoot the door open? This is what the killer did in Newtown to the locked exterior door. Do you think making the weapon and the magazines he was using illegal would have made a difference? His mother would not have been able to buy them and likely never would have tried to buy them illegally.
I am uncomfortable with the increasing calls for us to cower and hide while some monster roams around with illegal weapons picking us off one by one like fish in a barrel. Sure, we follow the law and don’t have guns where they don’t belong, but that doesn’t save us as the man who doesn’t care breaks the law and murders us. Talk about being bullied.
Why? Yes, lets have multiple people running around with guns looking for a person that they have no idea what they look like, but all they know is they have a gun.
Beats cowering in a corner waiting for someone to come put a gun to your head and murder you.
Should everyone be armed? I’m imagining a shootout in a dark and crowded movie theater — and how safe that would make everyone feel.
Put armed guards in schools? Then what about all of our theaters and restaurants? Do we need armed guards at every intersection and in every office building? That’s nuts.
No one outside of the military and law enforcement needs these high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons, although they do make big money for the weapons industry and their spokesmen at the NRA.
I think that if I had been in the theater, I would have wanted SOMEONE to try to fight back. I think I would have felt better knowing that we all weren’t sitting ducks and there there might be a chance that someone could stop him before he kills me.
A school or a school district and the community should make the decision as to whether or not there should be someone who is armed on campus. I don’t believe that decision should be made by the state or the federal government. I also know that there are some places in this country where there ARE armed guards at malls and the theaters there. We already have armed guards at sporting events and banks and even at pharmacies. I think that there should be armed guards at locations where they are wanted. And I think that there people who have the right permits should be able to carry their guns with them wherever they go. A gun-free zone is just feel-good window dressing that does NOTHING to protect the people.
The high-capacity magazine is a distraction. And ban it all you want-you’ll just be left with law-abiding people not having it and the criminals who already ignore the law being the ones who possess them.
I, too, want armed guards in certain places. Just the same, the idea of arming everyone sounds just a bit nuts to me.
If someone starts shooting in a darkened movie theater, and everyone is armed, and everyone starts shooting at everyone else, how can you tell who the bad guys are?
That’s a valid point and I don’t know anyone who’s advocating that everyone be armed. *I* don’t even want to be armed. However, I do know some people who are responsible and well-trained with firearms. If someone like them is around when the lunatic starts firing, then I think that would be better for everyone. Do these monsters even shoot back? They’re there to pick us off one at a time but do they ever plan on anyone fighting back with their own gun? I wonder if it would really be a shoot out or if the murderer would show himself as the true coward he is and run off. I would rather take the chance with someone who’s qualified carrying a gun in that theater than someone who isn’t. And a qualified person probably wouldn’t just start shooting in a darkened theater unless he or she were sure of the shot.
I would agree with you that this is a sad, vexing, and frustrating situation. People around the world are calling these shootings “the American disease.” How can we be safe from heavily-armed people who (for whatever reason) wish to commit mass murder? I don’t claim to have the answer. It’s heart-breaking. I just think that more and more weapons are not the answer.
On “Fox News Sunday” this past week Representative Louie Gonmert (R – Texas) said the Sandy Hook principal should have had “an M-4 in her office” and should have taken his (the shooter’s) head off. I understand the frustration, but is that what we expect elementary school teachers to be doing?
Rep. Gonmert went on to say that the reason we have the 2nd Amendment is so that the government will “know that the biggest army is the American people” so that they can stop “tyranny.” So it sounds as though he wants an armed populace so that they can overthrow the government. Some people might just call that treason.
Whenever a Republican is in the White House, Democrats worry that the president is violating the Constitution (like the wiretaps and torture under President Bush the younger). And whenever a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans also talk about how the president isn’t obeying the Constitution (like President Obama targeting Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was an Al Qaida leader). Neither side trusts the other side.
When the Constitution was adopted, the most fearsome weapon was a single-shot musket. So now should every citizen have a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile to reassure Rep. Gohmert that we are ready to overthrow the government?
Is this what we have come to? Are we arming to the teeth so we can overthrow the government whenever we don’t like the results of the most recent election? How can we de-escalate all this talk about arming ourselves more and more?
And who is to say a teacher or student would not get locked OUTSIDE their room, upon activation of such a remote control?
A silly response to a serious, complicated set of problems. We need dedicated support for mental health work, and true weapons control.
I’ve always thought about a similar situation with banks and their glass “bandit barriers.” Sure, the people on the inside of the barriers are safe, but what about the other customers and the employees at their desks?
Mr. Turcotte, your idea sounds good. However, it would also set the stage for even more horror if an intruder were to set fire to the place.
Phyllis Coelho- You hit the nail on the head with one word, empathy. They have none. They have no intention of getting any either. The distinguished members of the chamber are still outraged at having to pay minimum wage. Do you really think they care about the homeless?
Mrs Holmes,
I truly appreciate your dedication to your students. However if you have no means of defense, standing between the intruder and your students simply means you are the first to die. This noble gesture does nothing to improve the safety of your students.
How about designing all classrooms with a door to the outside and fire escapes for second floors so students and teachers don’t have to sit helplessly in a corner waiting for a lunatic to pick them off.
Mr. Deshane, the courtroom publicity probably appeals to rampage shooters and bombers once in custody and medicated so they are minimally sane. I doubt if thoughts of publicity enter into their deranged thinking as their mental illness usurps their thought processing and causes them to turn to violence.
That being said I agree, less focus on the grizzly details of the shooting and more rational discussion on the mental health, social, parenting and gun control issues surrounding these events would help the public gain some understanding instead of simply selling news through titillation.
Mr. Turcotte – The doors to the school itself were all locked. He just shot out the door with his assault rifle and extended magazine.
As for extended magazines, how long would it take for someone to replace a shorter magazine?
I have no idea. It didn’t happen. So what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
Well, to answer your snide question, some people think that banning magazines that have more bullets than other magazines will somehow reduce the carnage caused by these lunatics. It seems that all one would have to do is just keep replacing the magazine until the door is shot out. Talking about extended magazines is pointless. That’s what it has to do with price of tea in China.
It seems to me, since ALL of these, as you call them lunatics, chose to use it, along with an assault rifle designed and manufactured to be a killing machine for our armed forces and our true militia, it is relevant. They MIGHT have used something else, like a smaller magazine, but they didn’t. They MIGHT have used a different rifle, but they didn’t. They MIGHT have used a handgun like the ones he had on him in Connecticut, but they didn’t. They MIGHT have used a grenade launcher, but they didn’t. I don’t see the relevance debating what they MIGHT have done.
Isn’t all this debate about what MIGHT have happened and what MIGHT happen in the future?
I believe it’s more like what DID happen and what WILL happen in the future.
I know that what WILL happen in the future tonight is that glass of spiced rum and coke with lime!!!
When a shooter opened fire in a church in Tennessee a couple of years ago, killing an usher and a visitor, he was subdued when he stopped to change the magazine. Smaller magazines mean more opportunities to stop the shooter. So it’s not pointless at all.
H. Deshane: granted those perps of mass shootings seem to bask in thier ill-gotten glory. However, someone else pointed out that many of the killers are actually suicidal and hardly able to bask in glory and see their ill-gotten publicity.