Letters to the editor for Feb. 10
Resisting racism
Members of the Thurston League of Women Voters are concerned about recent events at Capital and River Ridge high schools. We are particularly disheartened to see race as the flashpoint for name-calling and worse. We endorse students who protest racism.
Of course, racist behavior is not unique to these schools or to particular areas or groups. It is a system of unchecked abuse and oppression. The LWV has its own history of racist practices to confront. It’s our choice to face realities of how white supremacy, economic exploitation, and cultural domination have shaped our society, including taking steps to do better.
In the words of Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” Perhaps those who participated or did nothing in the face of racial taunting wish they could go back and do better?
We support school officials and community members in working to address this systemic problem, particularly to use these events as teachable opportunities about the history and consequences of racism and the importance of changing their/our own behavior.
Extinguishing racist behavior requires ongoing efforts by all of us. This incident reveals the need to confront the problems directly and to educate students effectively. Learning from current and past events is a more honest and effective way to address our problems. We won’t be better than this until we do better than this.
Sandra Herndon and Carol Goss, Thurston League of Women Voters
Is population growth driving climate change?
Population growth is the powerful driving force behind climate change (and other negative developments like increasingly aggressive behavior, homelessness, poverty, refugees, extinctions, skyrocketing rent prices, jammed highways and more).
The disasters caused by climate change — homes and infrastructure destroyed by tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, fires, blizzards, and rising seas — have thus far been small enough to repair using resources from outside the disaster zones. But population growth always forces us to repair more than we lost — replace the lost infrastructure and then some, to provide both for the survivors of the disasters and, on top of that, 2 million newly arrived persons that flood our country every year. That new “growth-driven” additional infrastructure includes schools, road expansions, housing, electricity, food, jobs … most of which require burning more fossil fuel to get the quick results that growth demands.
As climate change intensifies, the scale of disasters will eventually exceed the ability of our country to repair them. At that point, our civilization will start unraveling irreversibly. Or sooner? Our ability to prevent a spiraling downward depends on people who know how to do it. That trust and honestly employ science. Anti-vaxxers? Climate change deniers? Coal industry senators? Are they getting numerous enough to accelerate our civilization’s decline?
But driving all of it is population growth. Even mentioning it is a prohibited taboo. Can a country getting more stressed and stretched by growth, more crowded and nasty, grasping desperately for anti-science “solutions,” turn it around?
David H. Milne, Lacey
State needs a different approach to affordable housing
The effort by state legislators to increase affordable housing units will not work. Changing zoning to allow more housing units in neighborhoods will not create affordable housing. Any new infill units will be just as expensive as any units on the market now. And rents will continue to rise as market prices go up.
The only way to create affordable housing or low-income housing is to pass legislation that requires it to be built. Builders are not interested in low-income housing and governments shy away from providing low-income housing. Future home owners and renters should not believe that zoning changes or the market will create affordable housing. Voters need to demand that legislators pass laws that require low-income housing.
John Newman, Olympia