Tuesday’s Letters to the Editor

Where is the outrage?

EDITOR: We are still reeling from the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan that left four teenagers dead and more wounded. The parents of the shooter are charged with involuntary manslaughter because they supplied the murder weapon — an early Christmas gift. I agree with the charges. I think the parents are accomplices to murder.

In the past few days, two Republican members of Congress — Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — sent out Christmas messages showing their children holding semi-automatic weapons. Their message: It is OK to supply children with weapons that can kill people. This is good parenting!

Do they have any empathy for the victims and families of this horrendous murder in Michigan? Where is the outrage?

BOB JOHNSON

Lower Lake

Mandate is un-American

EDITOR: I am a 78-year-old vaccinated woman who attended the support demonstration for a City Council member in Healdsburg (“Rally disrupts council meeting,” Dec. 7). She was denied access to the council chambers because she chose not to get vaccinated. I was there to support her because I believe vaccination mandates are un-American, and if we do not speak up for our freedom, we will lose it.

I met some young mothers who were there from Mendocino. They had taken a bus. They were not “bused in” from some far away land. The “banging on the window” was two people tapping politely to be admitted when it was time for the council meeting to start. Ninety-nine percent of the demonstrators simply milled around. It is unfortunate that the press exaggerates or politicizes some free expression events to make it appear like a bunch of radical nut cases attend these events.

The data showing Florida is doing much better on COVID than California without destroying the economy or implementing draconian mandates could inform us if people were not so polarized.

CAMILLE HARRIS

Santa Rosa

The real victims

EDITOR: While history has shown that education can often amplify divisions of class and social standing, ignorance itself has proven somewhat more impartial, as demonstrated by the comfortably entitled demonstrators fogging up the windows of Healdsburg City Hall last week.

And while it is deeply offensive that these anti-vaxx, anti-mandate dramaturgists who proudly confuse disregard with freedom would stoop so low as to equate their self-centered faux-martyrdom with being “victimized” by segregation and “Orwellian” oppression, it is sadly not at all surprising.

The ghosts of actual victimized and oppressed peoples are rolling in their graves at these maskless wonders who lack both the insight to be embarrassed for themselves and the social empathy for others to even care.

JON JONES

Healdsburg

Farallones infestation

EDITOR: Having recently retired from the adjacent Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and having heard a decade of discussions pro and con, I want to correct some statements about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to remove mice from the Farallon Islands to save native wildlife (“A poisonous plan to save birds,” pressdemocrat.com).

First, Brodifacoum 25D rodenticide was exempted from the state ban. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency labels it for island ecosystem restoration. This approach has succeeded in nearly 700 island restorations.

Other means have failed. Contraceptives won’t work, are still years away, cannot reach all the mice, and each mouse needs repeat doses. The bait requires years of regular replenishment, repeatedly disrupting seabird and seal rookeries. Who’ll suffer most? Seal pups and chicks.

COP26 has taught us that delay is deadly. We can’t predict when climate change and other stressors might push the endangered ashy storm-petrels, a small endemic seabird, past their tipping point. Between 2007 and 2012, 49% of these birds disappeared. The mice and the owls they attract have helped push them toward extinction, and also prey on other rare species.

Only the Fish and Wildlife Service plan for mouse eradication can restore resilience to help native wildlife survive.

MARY JANE SCHRAMM

Novato

Learning from Monroe

EDITOR: James Monroe was president (“Respecting history,” Letters, Dec. 3). He was responsible for the Monroe Doctrine and fought and was wounded in the American Revolution. He made treaties with England and France. He helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of Florida and the Missouri Compromise.

The system of slavery had blighted the entire world for 150 years, and he, like many of the founders, had slaves. Upon his death he probably went straight to hell for having slaves.

Naming a school after a president is a perfect chance for education about history and accomplishments and failures and sins. Naming a school after Monroe is a perfect chance to remind and teach us about the evils of slavery. Changing the name does nothing for enlightenment and education.

Give me break. It isn’t honoring him for slavery, it is reminding us to teach what we have learned and what things we honor and what things we despise. Don’t change names; teach the kids.

ROGER DELGADO

Sebastopol

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.