Stick to covid topic during updates
I know that the coronavirus is very serious, and we need to be updated. Our illustrious governor has given daily updates, which is needed. However, it has become very apparent that the updates have now become his opinions on how the government is not run correctly, the riots, the police, etc.
Please stick to the virus facts, I am not interested in your ideas on everything else. Please get off your soapbox, Andy. Oh, by the way, nice haircut. Who’s your barber? I need to know why you could get a haircut and none of us could.
Susan Tucci
Scotia
Don’t be duped by Stefanik’s duplicity
Elise Stefanik knows that the voters in her district are really stupid. She can tell them she’s fighting for them, right from Camp David where she was the lone, but stalwart, female.
Her invitation to join the other Trump sycophants was a reward for her shrill and cranky opposition to impeachment, where her school-girl countenance belied the venom from her lips. She knows that making Wall Street strong will resonate with the farmers in the North Country.
Mocking military leaders and asking them to fire on peaceful protests is exactly what the soldiers at Ft. Drum want to hear from their Commander in Chief, according to Elise. She’s free to say contradicting things because her voters won’t care or remember. She’s quoted saying “I support the constitutional right to peacefully protest” even as her hero Donald Trump orders the firing of tear gas and rubber bullets at a peaceful protest in front of the White House.
But we’re too stupid to see the irony. She has no problem with the brandishing of a Bible solely for a photo op, but she pretends to be a caring Christian. If only we were smart enough to see through her duplicity. If only …
Polly Windels
Milton
Grateful for city sanitation workers
I want to thank the Schenectady Sanitation Department for the fine job that they do.
They come out in the coldest part of our day to clear and clean our streets very efficiently.
Some things we take for granted. We pay our taxes. We live our lives.Again, thank you, very much appreciated.
Joseph Leva
Schenectady
Cartoon promoted stereotypes, lies
I strongly object to the Tom Stiglich cartoon in the June 9 Gazette at this moment of racial upheaval and crisis in our nation. It portrayed an African American thief snatching a purse from a blond white woman.
It perpetuates the lie that every black man you see on the street is likely a thief and probably violent, ignoring the fact that white women are most likely to be robbed by white people.
To publish this cartoon now is to further endanger the safety of African American men in and of all African American people.
There have been death threats on social media in response to people who have planned rallies in support of racial justice.
Several years ago I objected to another Stiglich cartoon spreading the lie that Latin American immigrants seeking asylum at the border were violent MS-13 hoodlums, using their children to get into this country to rip us all off and spread gang violence.
The Gazette tried to justify this by stating you hoped the response from readers would make the case against the message. It wasn’t the time then, nor is it now to provoke reader responses through negative means.
There’s way too many hair-trigger situations occurring all over the country. You’d do better by publishing op-ed pieces exploring what “Defunding the Police Departments” is all about. I’d like you to explore answers to the white racism and police brutality that have resulted in George Floyd’s and many other African American deaths.
Susan Spivack
Cobleskill
The writer sent this note after our editor’s note appeared: Thank you so much for acknowledging your error and for putting an apology for the cartoon in the next day’s paper. I am deeply grateful for your willingness to look again to see what I’m willing to bet all people of color saw immediately, and too many of us “well-intentioned” white people, like us, did not notice at first. I look forward to seeing what else you will be doing on the Editorial Page to further dialogue on race and what white people and all of us as a community must do to change the structures of our government/laws/cultural habits so all people have equal rights and opportunities, and the brutal murders of African Americans and other people of color can finally come to an end.
Categories: Letters to the Editor, Opinion
