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By DANIEL CANTOR YALOWITZ
Black Lives Matter. Yes, they do, and they should — without condition. All lives matter; there is no changing that sacrosanct truth. Despite all that this presidential administration seems to believe in and act on, the mattering of all humans is paramount in our democracy — no ifs, ands, or buts. That Donald Trump and his cronies cherry-pick who’s “in” and who’s “out” is an activated insult and outright affront to all that most of us believe and covet.
I am writing in response to the recent letter to the editor about Democrats and gang members [”Democrats and gang members,” April 24]. I agree with the writer that it is sad that no Democrats stood up to acknowledge the profound grief this woman is experiencing over the murder of her daughter. But I feel compelled to point out that the Republicans have time and again been uncaring towards victims of gun violence, in particular the mass shootings that have taken place in so many of our schools. I would also like to point out that it has not been proven that any of the men sent to the prison in El Salvador were gang members, indeed that there is no evidence that they are, regardless of what President Donald Trump and ICE officials have been saying. The fact that these men were denied due process means that no connection to gangs will ever be proven.
By ALLEN WOODS
Nearly all social thinkers (including the artificial ones of AI) emphasize that functioning, peaceful societies must agree on a group of shared meanings for communicating. These include gestures (a handshake, hug, tip of the hat, tap on the heart, etc.), images and symbols, and spoken and written words. They are “the glue that holds society together, enabling individuals to understand each other, cooperate effectively, and build a cohesive and vibrant social life.”
By MADELINE MILLER
Shortly after 7 p.m. on Friday, May 2, I received an email from the National Endowment for the Arts notifying me that Artspace Greenfield’s current grant in support of our community gallery had been terminated. This grant had helped fund our gallery for roughly a year so far, offering new and emerging Franklin County artists an opportunity to exhibit in a professional setting, and increasing the amount of art on view for local people to experience.
By RUSSELL PIRKOT
I had a dream the other day, and I want to tell you about it. I’d been reading The Diary of Anne Frank, which I do on occasion. I keep a copy of it on my nightstand, along with some other books that I find myself drawn back to, again and again. And lately, with everything in the news about Donald Trump and his authoritarian ways, I felt the need to revisit Anne Frank’s writing from the “Secret Annex.”
Having family near Greenfield, I read the Greenfield Recorder news item: “‘A pope of hope’: Local Catholic community remembers Pope Francis,” (Recorder.com, April 21). As a Roman Catholic myself, I was saddened to hear the news of the recent passing of Pope Francis at age 88. He was indeed a kind and compassionate Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. The word ‘pontiff’ literally means “bridge builder.” He was. Pope Francis reached out with the hand of friendship to everyone. I hope the voting members of the College of Cardinals would selected a successor in the same vein or mindset. If the pendulum swings back toward a rigid, dogmatic pit-bull style of Benedict the 16th, the worldwide Catholic Church would suffer a throwback to the ugly dark ages. Pope Francis knew he had a royal mess to clean up. The clergy sex-scandals which cost the sale and foreclosure and bankruptcies of dioceses was appalling. In my view, the faithful parishioners who attend a church Mass should not have their tithes (or investments from tithes ) to pay-off wrongdoing. The guilty priest or bishop who abused or covered-up needs prison-time. The other major scandal that was on the road to being fixed was the dubious Vatican Bank, which had amateurish priest running the show with sticky-fingers and shoddy accounting procedures. Millions of euros were unaccounted for from Rome to London. Francis was a breath of fresh air. Continue that.
By DAVID PARRELLA
There has always been a sentiment in our country to get small.
By JOANNA BUONICONTI
Two weeks ago, the life-saving medication that I receive three times a year was injected through a spinal tap into my cerebrospinal fluid. Call it women’s intuition, but my mom and I both had the feeling that something would be different this time. It could’ve been because the last injection I had in December was particularly brutal due to the build-up of scar tissue that had formed in the area of my spinal canal that they typically drill into. The doctor who does the drilling could feel the scar tissue and see the amount of pain I was in.
By ROB OKUN
Think resisting authoritarianism is too big of a lift? Think again. This spring, while the U.S. resistance movement may not be in full bloom, it is blossoming.
By WILLIAM LAMBERS
In the early hours of May 7, 1945, most people in the United States were probably asleep, but their prayers were being answered far away. For at 2:41 a.m., German forces surrendered at General Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters at a schoolhouse in Reims, France. The horror of World War II in Europe was over.
By MITCH ANTHONY
When I moved to Greenfield in the 1970s, downtown could have been a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting. Parking was free on Friday nights, and the stores on Main Street stayed open late. Boys bought their first ties at Bartlett’s Men’s Store, and picking up a mail order at the Sears catalog store was a routine errand for everyone. Sullivan’s Drugstore would even stay open just for you if you couldn’t make it before their usual closing time.
I wish we could trust the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to be tracking true antisemitism and not anti-Israelism. Likewise I mistrust State Sen. John Velis’ intentions in creating the Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism. For these reasons I am disturbed by the May 1 front page article in the Recorder, “Antisemitic incidents remain up,” with the subtitle, “Reports climb most steeply on college campuses.”
I support Marina Goldman running for the Montague Selectboard. A write-in campaign for her election is in the works for the May 20 special election.
I got behind on reading the Recorder so this comment may be a bit dated. I saw a recent column stating that columnist Al Norman’s concern about the possibility of ADUs growing at an alarming rate represented the “politics of fear.” Bringing up fear is awfully weak sauce.
By AL NORMAN
“Massachusetts has had a housing crisis for decades.”
By RUTH CHARNEY
They were headed down Route 91, almost to Deerfield, when he says, “You have your ID right.”
In protesting the calamities of Donald Trump, we risk becoming indifferent to the plight of Palestinian children. UNICEF reports, nearly 10,000 are experiencing acute malnutrition and among them many are suffering from “severe acute malnutrition.” This is only the tip of the iceberg of what is becoming a disastrous famine. In all our rallies and protests we must make it clear that America needs to stop supporting genocide and that protesting the starvation of children is more than a free speech issue. It is a defining challenge to the moral fabric of our society.
I noted with sorrow the Recorder’s editorial cartoon published on May 3, which honors the 58,220 American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War. We grieve for those lost lives. But the cartoon is a lie, because it tells only a fraction of the story. For surely it is not just our own American soldiers who died that had lives worth living, and whose deaths are worth noting with grief. No one knows how many people died in that fruitless war, but one of the more recent estimates was a 2008 study by the British Medical Journal that estimated a total of 3,812,000 dead in Vietnam between 1955 and 2002. That’s not a number; those are people.
I was deeply disappointed that you chose to show a picture of a pro-Palestinian encampment as part of your article on antisemitism [“Antisemitic incidents remain up,” May 1]. Those of us, and we are many, working to stop the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government with the help of U.S. weapons, are tired of the press trying to conflate support for the Palestinians with antisemitism. The Recorder staff would be well advised to read up on the meaning of antisemitism and what makes someone a Semite. Most Palestinians by virtue of language, culture and place are Semites. Many Israelis, by virtue of coming to the Middle East from Europe are actually not Semites. Following this logic, Israel, with U.S. support, is practicing antisemitism on a devastating scale.
I trust I was not the only Greenfield Recorder reader who was taken aback by the headline on the May 1 front page (“Antisemitic incidents remain up”) accompanied by a photograph of a pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson College. Conflating these students’ actions with antisemitism is precisely what the Trump administration wants, but it is not the truth. People like RumaysaOsturk, Mahmoud Khalil, and Mohsen Mahdawi who express concern over Israel’s ongoing violence against Palestinian civilians are not antisemites. This regrettable placement of the photo and that headline warrants a correction by the paper or at least a commitment to do better in the future.
By JOAN MARIE JACKSON and MITCH SPEIGHT
Most days in Greenfield you can find us talking with our neighbors at our three favorite local stops: the Public Library, the Greenfield Senior Center lunch, and Saints James and Andrew church. We listen closely to what our community friends say about the challenges facing our city.
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