Protecting Maine children
What is the primary goal of Child Protective Services, safety of the child or preservation of the biological family unit? In some cases, these two are contradictory. A child may be removed from a happy, healthy foster care environment and put back into a dysfunctional and dangerous situation just to satisfy the CPS reunification mandate.
The bar is set too low with regards to bio-family eligibility for child placement. This has to change.
Rosemary Clowes
Sidney
We need to wake up
I hope I’m not the only one, but I am confused as to what constitutes racism, inappropriate contact or religious bias. It seems that no matter what a person does, someone comes out with an accusation of some kind of “ism.”
If we laugh with someone, some will say we are laughing at them. If we hug someone, some will say we are accosting them. No matter what a person does, someone will accuse him or her of a wrongdoing. It seems that the American people have lost the ability to see any good or sincerity in a person’s actions, and seem to be more interested in destroying others to get their 15 minutes of fame.
We have turned into a society, not focused on talent or ability, that puts people into positions of importance based on race or gender or sexual preference. I don’t care what color you are, or what gender you are, or who you want to be with. What I do care is that you have the qualifications to fairly and intelligently represent the people.
We should look closely at those making accusations, and not condemn someone just because someone else says so. We need to wake up before it’s too late.
Timothy Smyth
Millinocket
Opioid article fails to educate
An abhorrent, vacuous and deeply stigmatizing article was published by the Lewiston Sun Journal on March 20. Written by Mark LaFlamme, the article, titled “‘ Horrific. Staggering. Gigantic’: Panel discusses opioid epidemic” does everything that the AP Stylebook instructs journalists not to do. The title hypes the issue of undertreated and mistreated substance use disorder in our communities, and the text is littered with stigmatized language that journalists are supposed to know better than to use.
Most alarming though — and this is what all the speakers talked about the next day, we were all so dumbfounded — the article simply skips over the bulk of what was discussed that night: safe injection, needle exchange, and harm reduction. That’s censorship at work folks, and that’s why people keep dying: because of incompetent journalism and personal feelings get in the way of society’s becoming educated on evidence-based practices.
Jesse Harvey
Portland