Letters to the Editor

We Need to Talk about Texas

These past few months have seen some disturbing news in Texas, with legislators using their power to marginalize LGBTQ+ youth.  Last week, Governor Abbott went all-in with an Executive Order to criminalize parents for supporting their transgender children with transition therapies. But not only parents would be targeted for legal action: anyone who helped them could be included, such as teachers, social workers, and medical professionals.

Families of transgender children are already struggling to make difficult parenting decisions in a society that devalues and debases them.  Powerful people in their own state further subjecting them to public scrutiny, threatening to remove children from their families, and forcing them to consider moving out of state to avoid arrest are far from the ‘family values’ we should be upholding.

What does all this have to do with Winthrop, you ask?  Right now, our LGBTQ+ youth are reading this news. How can this possibly make them feel? Do they feel protected by us?  Do they know we are on their side?  What is our silence telling them? LGBTQ+ youth already have high rates of depression and suicide. The discourse and legislation in Texas makes it clear why: the most powerful people in our largest state saying, in essence, “You don’t belong”.

As parents, residents, and community leaders, we have the power to send the message to our LGBTQ+ community that we stand by them, that we are here to support them, and we will do our utmost to ensure that what is happening in Texas will not happen here.

Fortunately, a lower court found Abbott’s executive order to be illegal.  But Texas is not the only state on the offensive:  over 20 states have dozens of bills in process trying to infringe on freedoms of LGBTQ+ youth, including Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Rest assured that Texas will find another way to continue along this hateful and ignorant road.  We must be clear that we will not join them.

Sincerely,

Leonora Foley

Barbara Carter

Kelly Gaule-Clark

Julie Clark

Julia Wallerce

Lydia Edwards, Senator, First Suffolk and Middlesex

Debbie Kneeland Keegan

Stephanie Recchia, MSW, LICSW

Donna Reilly

Sylvia Whiting

Devorah Linn

Ruth Bernstein

Suzanne Leonard

Alexis Teevens

Katie Belle

Deborah Scearbo

Michael Bacon

Timothy Burgers

Susan Postell

Rev. Terri Powell Bracy

Kay and Theresa Herbert

Dr. Elizabeth Pufall Jones

Atty Peter Christopher

Laura Barrett Christopher

Joseph Aiello

Mary Mitchell

Jamie Rosencranz

Kim Buono Rogers

Alyson Casey Dewar

Lisa Alberghini

Marcia Langbort Shulman

Carina Campobasso

Justin Pasquariello

Vanessa Fazio

Ralph Tufo

Amy Farrell

Erica Foley

Wendy L. Millar-Page

Ian Page

Heather Engman

Mary Lou Osbourne

Jeannette Roy

Leah Hart Tennen

Alicia DelVento

Suzanne Hitchcockbryan

Lisa Plotnick

Alyssa Gamble

Jessica A. Dahlquist

Joe Boncore

Todd McKay

Daniela Foley

Brenda Curry

Some Thoughts Re: Russia vs. Ukraine

Dear Editor,

The most recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia would have come as no surprise to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who declared in his brilliant prescient speech in 1946 in Fulton Missouri, in the aftermath of World War 2:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Eu-rope. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these fa-mous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.   …Whatever conclusions maybe drawn from these facts-and facts they are-this is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.”

”From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations charter, their influence for furthering these principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If however they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.”

But even before World War 2 Russia had committed an egregious act of terror against Ukraine in the form of Stalin’s policy of deliberately starving the country’s peasant population with his agricultural collectivization program, between 1931 and 1933. Of the five million people who perished from this sadistic deliberate policy, three million were Ukranians. A never-to-be forgotten Ukrainian Holocaust.

Since Mr. Churchill’s remarkable speech Russia has demonstrated a voracious appetite for Europe-an domination by military conquest, as indicated in 1956 with its suppression of the Hungarian Uprising with tanks and other means. The Hungarian Uprising started as a student protest, evolved into a broad-based revolution led by Imre Nagy pledging to establish free elections. The USSR intervened with its full military apparatus and overwhelmed the Uprising, killing 2,500 Hungarians in the process.

Then, in 2014 Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine by massive military force, without provocation.

The current unprovoked attack on Ukraine has killed vast numbers of innocent civilians, not surprisingly due to the intense indiscriminate missile attacks on densely populated population centers.

I was stationed in Germany for 3 years (1961-1964) during the Cold War, serving in the Air Force. I was on duty during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) when, for the only time in history, we armed our aircraft with nuclear warheads and stood on alert for the order to respond to a Soviet attack, a 15-minute flight from our base. Of course, we were the same distance from them, a sobering realization.

Millennials, European and American, have no memory of past conflicts which have lessons for today. The Ukraine crisis is the WW2 Sudetenland tragedy writ large, with a similar potential out-come if appeasement is the primary Western response to Russian aggression.

George Santayana’s dictum is as applicable as ever. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Thank you,

John Vitagliano

Stand with Ukraine

Dear Editor,

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has unfolded, so too has a humanitarian crisis that has forced civilians to flee their homes, take refuge in bomb shelters and subway stations throughout the country, or leave their country entirely.

As we watch on our TVs, computers, and smartphones, it is important that we, as citizens of the world, help in some way.

Here is a list of 10 charities that have been suggested by several news organizations that are asking for assistance to help those in need.

I hope you will consider donating to one or more of them as I will be doing.

Donations can be made on their websites or social media pages.

1.      CARE – provides immediate aid and recovery, food, water, hygiene kits, psychosocial support, and cash assistance – prioritizing women and girls, families, and the elderly.

2.      Save the Children – works in the hardest-to-reach places to make sure the children get the essential humanitarian aid they need such as food, water, and cash assistance.

3.      Voices of Children – provides psychological and psychosocial support to children and helps them overcome the consequences of armed conflicts.

4.      Doctors Without Borders – is working to assure access to health care and medicines.

5.      International Committee of the Red Cross – delivers emergency assistance such as food and hygiene items, fuel for heating, medical supplies, and support for housing.

6.      Sunflower of Peace – prepares first aid medical tactical backpacks for paramedics and doctors on the frontlines.

7.      UNICEF – supports health, nutrition, HIV prevention, education, safe drinking water, sanitation and protection for children and families.

8.      UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) – provides life-saving emergency protection for families forced to flee their homes such as shelter and cash assistance.

9.      International Rescue Committee – is on the ground in Poland supporting displaced families needing help.

10.    Project HOPE – is shipping essential medicines and medical supplies.

Thank you,

Bill Schmidt