Municipal ID cards are a game-changer for vulnerable residents of Wyandotte County
Municipal ID cards
As a child of immigrants who also researches and advocates for immigration reform, I was overjoyed to hear the Safe and Welcoming Act was passed in Wyandotte County. Local advocates for immigration reform have fought for half a decade to get it passed.
The act provides opportunities for undocumented or unauthorized immigrants, the elderly and the homeless to secure photo municipal ID cards while limiting police collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I hope the many immigrants who live among us will be less fearful in their own communities.
Few people recognize the anxieties of undocumented life. But with emerging policies such as this act, many local undocumented immigrants may feel less hesitant about driving at night to take their sick child to the emergency room for fear of being stopped because they fit a “profile.” Others may feel more comfortable reporting being the victims of crime.
From picking up medicine at the pharmacy to buying a car to travel to work or a cellphone to communicate with friends and loved ones, this allows people just like you and me to live more comfortably doing essential things while taking care of their families.
- Kelechi Wright, Kansas City
Fitting memorial
Mara Rose Williams’ Thursday column, “Cemetery memorial is no honor if it desecrates graves,” (9A) recognizes the irony that even a planned memorial honoring the unnamed dead in Fairview Cemetery risks disturbing more unmarked burials. She concludes, “Surely the project can find a place to put the monument that would not run that risk.”
An even greater irony is that the very racism that left these graves unmarked in the most undesirable place in the cemetery could continue to keep the graves from being memorialized for fear of further disturbing them.
Perhaps one solution is to recognize that the entire area — the “soggy, hallowed ground” — is itself a living metaphor for the effects of historical systemic racism. The segregated area full of depressions is itself the monument. Setting up uniformly shaped tablets around the perimeter of the 6 acres of segregated dead, listing the names of as many African American burials known to lie within as possible, leaving room to add names as they become known, and adding corner markers with the history of the city’s segregation of the cemetery would, I think, bear self-contained witness to the memory of these dead more dramatically than any single in-ground monument ever could.
- James Heiman, Independence
Not pro-life
Republican Missouri state Rep. Brian Seitz introduced HB 2810, potentially criminalizing “abortion-inducing devices or drugs” and any attempt to access these medical provisions, including criminalizing treatment for ectopic pregnancies and forcing even rape victims to carry unwanted fetuses. In an attempt to be “pro-life,” this bill is anything but.
Medical consensus maintains ectopic pregnancies are almost never viable. Without the use of Seitz’s proposed criminal medical treatments, the embryo will implant in the fallopian tube and rupture, causing potentially fatal hemorrhaging in the mother. Criminalizing medically sound treatments used for ending nonviable ectopic pregnancies will lead to death.
Victims of trafficking face physical and sexual violence, psychological abuse, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, addiction, PTSD and dissociative disorders. One could carry the fetus of the sadistic and vicious man who caused all of that. Beyond a lifetime of physical and emotional scars, criminalizing medically sound treatments would force her to carry the offspring of the man who stole her life from her.
All human life is valuable, beautiful and miraculous, a gift from a generous creator. Nothing in Rep. Seitz’s proposed bill is loving or life-giving. Criminalizing medically sound, lifesaving treatments is refusing love of the life that is to protect the life that may be. This is not pro-life.
- Rev. Sheth LaRue, Springfield
We need oil
The U.S. was producing 11 million barrels of petroleum per day when President Joe Biden came into office. If we were still producing as we were in 2019, it would no doubt have an effect on the skyrocketing price of oil.
The administration expressed its desire to reduce oil production from day one. It has accomplished that goal. It shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, imposed onerous regulations and discouraged financing for drilling for some smaller producers. The larger producers have reduced developing new wells in this hostile environment.
The president is calling on Saudi Arabia and the authoritarian regime in Venezuela to increase oil production. Also, he is trying to strike a deal with the terrorist state of Iran, which would no doubt use that oil money to finance more terrorism throughout the world.
The U.S. has massive oil reserves. The president needs to swallow his pride and admit we need the oil industry. He needs to call in oil executives and discuss ways oil production can be increased in the U.S. He’s held similar conferences with other industries. Why not oil?
- Richard Wells, Lenexa
Protect children
State Sen. Kellie Warren:
As chair of the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee, you decided to block SB 420 from being heard in public. Why? The sexual abuse of children by hidden predators, within families or institutions, will not stop until predators are held accountable and justice is served to the victims of childhood sexual abuse.
If you value protecting children from sexual predators, then grant a hearing for SB 420. Pedophiles, hebephiles and ephebophiles prey on children in family homes, foster care, schools and churches. In good faith, children were sent to trusted institutions. These predators and institutions are now protected by antiquated statute-of-limitation laws.
It must stop. There should be no civil statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse.
The children of Kansas deserve better protection from hidden sexual predators. SB 75, Sheldon’s Law, could accomplish this by requiring mandatory reporting by those in authority.
You are either protecting the children, or you are protecting the institution.
You should be ashamed for protecting the latter.
- Kim Bergman, Survivor-USA Gymnastics, Shawnee
- Joe Cheray, Survivor of incest and two-time rape survivor, Topeka
- Terin Humphrey, Survivor of Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics and two-time Olympic silver medalist, Kansas City
- Susan Leighnor, Victim-survivor of clergy childhood sexual abuse, Hutchinson, Kansas
- Lesa Patterson-Kinsey, Victim-survivor of paternal child sexual abuse, Prairie Village
- Cecelia Simon, Victim-survivor of group home childhood sexual abuse, Newton, Kansas
Senseless act
A Friday headline read: “Concealed guns on buses, in churches approved by Mo. House.” (3A) This is supposed to cut down on gun violence?
It’s like fighting cancer by giving everyone cancer. Of course more people will die. It defies rational thought.
- Shirley Lewis, Overland Park