Letters to the editor for June 5
Olympia Schools must join in the call to end shootings
As our community and nation continues to grieve in the heartbreaking aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, I am stunned and disappointed at the profound missed opportunity and lack of leadership exhibited by the Olympia School District in response.
In an emailed alert to parents Thursday, Olympia High School administrators informed us about a nationwide student walkout intended to compel lawmakers to take action against gun violence.
However, the school’s primary message was simply a warning: The “walkout is not a school-sponsored activity. Therefore, all schools will continue to follow district policy regarding excused and unexcused absences.”
Although this policy may be appropriate for political walkouts in general, the message is exceedingly misguided and tone deaf, simultaneously expressing an adherence to the status quo attitude that continues to prevent our country from doing anything to stop these increasingly commonplace tragedies AND an abdication of its responsibility to advocate for the safety of its students and teachers.
This walkout was not about politics as usual. This is specifically about the interests of our schools, teachers and the students we entrust to them.
Instead of this business-as-usual message, Olympia Schools should have seized the opportunity and joined the call to collectively say, ENOUGH. Instead of issuing a warning about academic consequences, Olympia High School’s principal should have been leading the march!
When we all stand together, we can find a solution to these dangerous circumstances now faced by students and teachers in our nation’s schools.
But not until we do.
Chris McGann, Olympia
Uvalde and the Second Amendment
Our original sin of slavery, so embedded in the compromises of our Constitution, continues to play out darkly in the mass killings of Uvalde and Buffalo. Anti-democratic institutions such as the Senate and the Electoral College are the spawn of our slave-owning founding fathers. However, what is often not recognized as being related to the slave owners is the Second Amendment.
Slave owners George Mason and Patrick Henry were the authors behind the right of a “well regulated militia ... to maintain and bear Arms.” The motivation for the Second Amendment came from their desire to protect slavery by keeping the federal government from interfering with a state’s right to use slave patrols. Subsequently, this dark beginning has been spun, by cynics and fools, into an absolute right of gun possession by unregulated individuals.
Voltaire asserted that, once we accept the absurd, we reap the atrocious. The absurd interpretation of the Second Amendment as an absolute individual right produces the atrocious, the bullet-shattered bodies of innocent young children.
Denis H. Langhans, Olympia
Houseless people are survivors of violence
Houseless people are survivors of violence. Reasons people disclose they are houseless range from eviction, job loss, mental illness, domestic violence, substance use and beyond.
Regarding substance use, isn’t trauma the gateway drug to substance use? Aren’t all houseless neighbors survivors of violent systems of oppression? The individual who flees domestic violence has limited community resources. The mentally ill and disabled are left without support. Housing is impossibly unaffordable, and tenant rights in Washington state are decades behind other states and countries.
Americans value mutual aid over centrally administered social and medical programs. Mutual aid, however, comes with strings attached and fountains of disdain from those offering it. An investment in centralized health care is one of social care. When weighing the cost of administering health care, governments consider that social care reduces the cost of medical care by reducing stress for citizens.
The pandemic has exacerbated the impact of oppressive systems. Domestic violence has increased. People who are economically displaced rise in numbers. Mental illness and substance use rises — we are at a crossroads.
I call on public administrators to take the crisis as an opportunity to reduce harm while building systems that will prevent harm in future disasters.
The housing crisis is a problem of leadership and lack of accountability. It will take brave leaders with power and platforms to shift the paradigm of our “bootstraps” culture. We need radical policy changes. Lives are at stake.
Thalia Vaillancourt, Olympia
This story was originally published June 5, 2022 at 5:00 AM.