A victory that rings hollow
I have been an LGBTQ+ activist for 15 years, but today, my heart is full of complicated feelings about the Title VII Supreme Court ruling protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The reason? Black lives matter.
There’s a special kind of irony that this ruling comes from the Civil Rights Act 1964. In more than 50 years since its passage, people of color are still vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. Marriage equality was granted by the court on June 26, 2015. Two years before that, it also effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act. Today, the court quietly freed cops from accountability (again) by declining to reexamine qualified immunity while the media celebrated LGBT equality.
I am white, queer and femme — I have the privilege to “pass” in majority culture and choose whether to claim political identities that correspond to who I am. This is one of many privileges not afforded to people of color, and lethally stolen from George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Tony McDade and Breonna Taylor.
If the plaintiffs were black — would they have received dignity and a national stage? I think about trans women of color forced to work in the informal economy without any protections and who are exponentially more vulnerable to violence because of it.
For me, this victory rings hollow. I do not trust laws that do not protect black lives. I reject their authority to decide who to protect, who to serve, and who should fend for themselves.
Tess Macoy
Auburn
Masks and caring for everyone else
Wearing a face mask in public is not about “rights.” Wearing a face mask in public is about caring for others and for our community.
When you wear a face mask, you’re protecting others from any viruses which you may be knowingly or unknowingly carrying. You’re telling everyone that you care about them, and that you care about our community. You’re protecting the vulnerable in our community (and you can’t always tell who’s vulnerable just by looking at them).
When you don’t wear a mask, you’re telling others that you don’t care about them. That you don’t care if they get sick, or that they may carry your viruses home to someone vulnerable who may in turn get sick and possibly die. You’re saying that you don’t care about our community.
Please wear a face mask in public. It’s not about you. It’s about caring for everyone else.
Mary Warner, MD
Holden
Redesign don’t defund
I’m writing in support of Cary Weston’s OpEd on June 11 in the BDN, in regard to what we ask of law enforcement. I have been in the provision of health care services for over 50 years, at most levels of care. During that time I have witnessed the deinstitutionalizing of mental health contribute, in a large way, to the creation of the homeless, because of the failure to produce adequate community supports. I have seen our jails become overwhelmed by people desperately needing mental health treatment, because of the lack of proper community services. I have seen state funding, slated by law to communities, reduced by state actions, because the state felt the communities were overfunded and should reprioritize.
The point here and, I think, in Weston’s OpEd, is we have overwhelmed our law enforcement by having them defunded by federal and state cuts to other agencies, that have left them trying to perform duties they were never trained or funded to perform. I will not try to justify what happened in Minneapolis based on funding, there are bad performers in every profession but, I think it’s time for the public to stand-up and demand adequately funded and trained professionals, to take the stress off of our overburdened law enforcement.
Our system needs to be redesigned, not defunded.
Ken Huhn
Bangor
Vote for Victoria Kornfield for state Senate
Victoria Kornfield has spent her entire professional life in public service.
After 30 years as a beloved Bangor High School teacher, she could have retired. Instead, she knew that her service to students and teachers was not complete, so she ran for and won the opportunity to represent District 125 in the state Legislature; she has been doing that with great distinction for the last eight years, chairing the Education Committee for six of those years.
We are very pleased that Kornfield is now running to represent Bangor and part of Hermon in the Maine state Senate, as she brings to that position a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience to ensure that all of our schools have the support they need to be models of excellence and achievement.
Please join us in voting for Victoria Kornfield on July 14, so she may continue her work on our behalf.
Carol and Bill Farthing
Bangor
The medium is the message
Marshall McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message” discredits the claim that historical methods of protest are necessarily as effective today.
When confronted with the racial justice/equality riots and protests, many automatically hail peaceful protest as the answer. I am not writing to agree or disagree with this notion, but to offer an explanation to why and how peaceful protest has become more of an invisible effort than what was seen in the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The early television that documented Dr. King’s speeches did not give everyone a platform. It was an exclusive right to appear publicly, whereas it is an expectation today to have an online media presence; everyone has a platform.
I believe this has ironically made it increasingly difficult to be heard on a larger scale as an individual due to the sheer amount of competition to one’s message. Applying this to modern racial tensions illustrates that it is far harder to obtain a strong, central leader to a widespread movement, because the movement encompasses individuals who all have competing platforms.
Ultimately, the mediums we use today impact how our messages of protest are received. To protest peacefully is often to blur into background noise. This is not a justification for undue death, but a cry for recognition. Peaceful protest cannot simultaneously be encouraged and ignored. Awareness of how modernized media influences the impact of methods which may have been historically efficient, allows for growth and change rather than silencing.
Willow Wind
Orono