Confederate flag removal
We support Orland business G.M. Allen & Son’s Wild Maine Blueberries recent actions in requiring that a Confederate flag be removed from its blueberry field in Sedgwick. The flag was flown by a picker from Steuben, who has stated that he is offended that he was asked to remove his flag.
He has stated that it’s a symbol of Americans fighting for their rights. He either does not know, or does not care, that the “right” they were fighting for was to keep another human being as a slave.
We appreciate G.M. Allen & Son’s willingness to stand up for all the people who have fought to keep our country free from white supremacy. We appreciate their courage to stand for values we hold dear.
We are writing on behalf of the Alamoosook People’s Alliance, community members from the Bucksport Bay area who love our country and care deeply about our democracy and the dignity of every human being.
Joyce Schelling
Mary Jane Bush
Orland
Arpaio abused Latinos
My 84-year old-mother is frightened. She has learned that the president of the United States has pardoned a sheriff who kept Latinos captive in what he called “ concentration camps.”
My mother grew up in the shadow of Nazi Germany’s plan to exterminate all Jewish people. She was exhorted as a dirty Jew, told to go back on the boat and drown like the rat she was, and sniffed to see if she smelled like burnt flesh. Her memory is beginning to fail, but some things she will never forget.
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio defied a court order, detaining and jailing people who had done nothing wrong but had tawny skin or names ending in the letter “z.” He would round up Latino people like they were animals and keep them in inhumane conditions that he called “concentration camps.” He encouraged a police cadre that broke a man’s neck and laughed as a dog burned to death. He arrested reporters who wrote stories about his nefarious abuse of police power. President Donald Trump’s pardon of this man is unequivocal approval of official abusive treatment of Latinos. Undoubtedly, we will see incidents of violence against Latinos rise, for our president has told America that bullying people of Mexican descent is the right thing to do.
And in spite of my mother’s compromised memory, she recognizes this as a profound threat — if the government countenances the expropriation of civil liberties and the immoral incarceration of Latinos, or of any group of people, no one is safe.
Naomi Cohen
Hope
Redefining welfare
Let us accept that there is, and always has been, a social and political dichotomy in these “United” States. A democracy versus a republic; the definition of either depends upon the time and the definer. A republic exists to prevent the tyranny of the majority, while a democracy expresses the will of the majority of the people. But a republic may lead to balkanization, while a “pure” democracy may not only subjugate the minority, it allows the opportunity to create a “reich,” with the attendant centralization in control by a tyrant and an authoritarian cabal.
The extremists at either pole have many weapons in their arsenals, perhaps the initial salvos being words. George Orwell’s “1984″ gave us the term “newspeak” that transforms verbal dialogue into propaganda.
Leaving the entire land between Canada and Mexico for another day, let us focus upon the Pine Tree State. In 2014, the head Republican identified Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as “welfare.” A word that was once a benign term meaning “well-being” and was accepted to be a responsibility of a society toward its members in a general sort of way.
For Gov. Paul LePage and now Rick Bennett, as well as all acolytes of the right-wing, the word has a new definition: “welfare” is the sapping of resources and energy of society, and the recipients of government assistance of any kind are loathsome parasites on the body politic. Ayn Rand smiles from whatever circle in hell she dwells.
Peter Froehlich
Whitefield