Letters: KC readers discuss pandemic’s hunger, Parson’s inaction and senators’ silence
Fight hunger
I was just watching TV and saw video of long lines of people all over our country waiting in cars to get food. It breaks my heart to see so many people in this rich nation being so down and out. People who have never before asked for food are waiting in lines after losing their jobs because of the pandemic.
I am asking today for your help to heal our troubled economy by lifting people through food. We may be a divided country, but don’t let our hearts be divided on this issue. The act of giving benefits the giver as much as the people receiving. Any amount is wonderful.
Harvesters-The Community Food Network, Feeding America, the Salvation Army and others are wonderful places to give (and it’s safe to donate money online, too).
Let our fellow Americans know they are not forgotten this year.
- Linda Katz, Overland Park
Parson’s inaction
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is not acting like a governor concerned about the people he was elected to serve. He doesn’t think it’s his or the state government’s job to institute a mask mandate? He’s not a medical professional working around the clock for months, watching people get sick and die.
Maybe he should spend a month assisting in a hospital to see the effects of COVID-19 firsthand. Maybe he should work and worry and cry over these patients, and then decide what his real job should be.
This pandemic is not about the freedom to decide whether to wear a mask, but rather about our civic and moral duty to protect each other. Parson will be remembered when he leaves office for his indifference, callousness and denial about a virus that is killing people worldwide every day.
- Diana Garcia, Raymore
All together now
Where have the pronouns “we,” “us” and “our” gone? Have they disappeared to that foreign land where the terms “together,” “neighbor,” “common good” and “community” now reside? Have “I,” “me,” “my” and “mine” banished them from our social, political, and cultural discourse? Are they exiled from American consciousness and memory forever?
Or is there a majority of patriotic citizens who will welcome their return for the future of our country? Folks who understand that we, not I, made America great. Self-sacrifice, not selfishness, made us strong. Community, not self-interest, held us together in the past and will do so in the future — if we let it.
Words matter — how we speak them, how we write them, how we value them and how we live them.
- Diane Kuhn, Shawnee
Say it, senators
Veteran Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein lists 21 U.S. senators who have “repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for (President Donald) Trump and his fitness for office.” This list includes the two senators from Kansas, Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran.
As a lifelong Kansan and American citizen concerned with the direction our country is taking, I ask these two political figures to stand up for our democracy and voice, in public, your support for our electoral system and disavow Trump’s effort to undermine our laws.
It is an embarrassment to our state that neither of these two has voiced support for the citizens of the United States as a whole, but rather blindly follow the dictates of the party of Trump.
- Dallas Garr, Emporia, Kansas