Lost land
Re: “Rancho Cordova residents rally to save one of the city’s last pieces of open space” by Scott Thomas Anderson (News, Jan. 27):
I thank the good residents of Rancho Cordova for trying to save this amazing piece of land for future use by their children and their children. Land lost is lost forever! This is a quote from Gary Mann, one of Folsom’s past park commissioners.
Jennifer Lane, via sacramento.newsreview.com
Protect Native heritage
Ridiculous. I sure hope they will find a way to spare this land. The fact that there are remains on the site of our First Nations people bothers me. They should not be disturbed.
Jason Hanson, via sacramento.newsreview.com
Treatment, not jail
Re: “No reason to expand human cages” by Tifanei Ressl-Moyer (Essay, Jan. 25):
We need mental health facilities! Jail should not be how these people are treated. Also, if you want to help the homeless, a good majority of them have mental health issues and that is why they are homeless. People automatically say it’s from drug and alcohol abuse, but that is not true. These people have no way to receive the care and medication that they need.
Krista Haun, via Facebook
Biden and jobs
Re: “‘We will not heal and unify with words alone’” by Foon Rhee (Editor’s note, Jan. 19):
He’s already eliminating jobs, 11,000 on the chopping block just from the pipeline. If minimum wage increases, more than 3 million jobs gone, at least.
Mark Gardner, via Facebook
Root causes of Trumpism
Re: “Letters: Biden, Trump, inauguration, insurrection, COVID” (Letters to the editor, Jan. 22):
Caitlin Johnstone has the right idea: Counter Trumpism by ending the conditions that created it, not with authoritarian policies. Everything else is a distraction.
Adam Eran, via sacramento.newsreview.com
White supremacy
Much to unpack in that letter about white supremacy. Phew. I will just say that if you’re ever tempted to refer to your own race as “non-diverse,” it might be useful to examine why you assume that you are the standard/baseline variety of human.
Ali Brimhall, via Facebook
Money for homeless
Re: “Sacramento’s latest death of man living outdoors echoes in City Hall” by Scott Thomas Anderson (News, Jan. 13):
All levels of government have surplus agencies that send old or even brand new unused equipment to to be resold at an extreme discount to the public, or even given to other agencies on a signature request. My point is that all of these items should go through a review to see what could be used to help the homeless. And with proper promotion, these items could be used to help raise money to ease the problem.
Kelvin K. Harris, via Facebook
@Ali Brimhall “I will just say that if you’re ever tempted to refer to your own race as “non-diverse,” it might be useful to examine why you assume that you are the standard/baseline variety of human.”
That was never stated in the letter nor in the original post appearing in the story about unity. What was stated was simply that the logic of: If increased diversity is a good thing, then the existing group (pre-increased diversity) is a bad thing. This is Logic 101. My letter then touched on the fact that if you are part of that existing group, the natural reaction is to feel like you are being treated as lesser than the diversity group being sought. Again, this is a logical argument. I know people on the left side of the aisle often times have a blind spot for their internal hypocrisy so I will present you the exact same scenario in which you will argue that increased diversity is a bad thing.
Suppose we have a poor area of the city which is predominantly poor and black. Then, one day, you have people with better socio-economic prospects start to move in and start to re-develop the area. Those new people may have a different skin color or even sexual orientation. When this happens, those on the Left look at it as an evil and label it Gentrification. They hate that it displaces the current residents – despite the HUGE increase in diversity – and not just in the most superficial of ways that the Left usually sees as they tend to only focus on skin color. So, when it comes to this diversity – diversity is evil. Now, explain to me how a working class American citizen should feel when the country is flooded by foreign workers willing to work for less? Tell me how a tech worker should feel when their job is given to an H1B visa worker constantly being brought in by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Intel?
The reality is that there is no real difference in terms of a native population being displaced – and that native population should feel anger as a result. However, unlike gentrification which tends to raise the overall quality of life in a neighborhood, the diversity the Left promotes reduces wages with their foreign worker reducing the overall quality of life in favor of the 0.01% super-rich. That, and by ignoring merit in favor of promoting diversity, it lowers the overall productivity of a country.
This response is already long so I will leave you this this – and this was the core of my argument – STOP focusing on skin color and calling it diversity. It is the most superficial of traits. Diversity of thought, economic class, and life experience is 100% more impactful if your goal is to bring benefit by increasing diversity. Also, I think you will find a lot more common ground as the daily grind for a poor white, poor black, poor Latino has way more similarities than the daily grind of rich vs. poor of the same race.