Editor, Do Asian lives matter too? Doesn’t look like it, if you see all these Asian store workers in inner cities across America being murdered in cold blood while their stores are robbed – that’s what they get in exchange for providing basic necessities and accepting food stamps and welfare cash.
I write this letter to express my concern and frustration with President Frank’s response to the Department of Justice’s Report of its investigation of the University of New Mexico’s failures regarding the investigation and response to reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment by its students, specifically President Frank’s comments that the DOJ’s report has a “lack of facts” and was just “anecdotal”.
Looking at the Bernie-stoked Clinton plan to initially offer free in-state college tuition initially to those whose family makes a total of only $80,000, this would mean the poor, and many American business owners do not even want this because, plain and simple, they do not want more college graduates flooding the market with their higher wage demands, especially liberal arts degree holders “with their noses in the air.”
It’s time like this when the structure of racism rears its ugly head from the hidden shadows of the so called “post-racial” society. It’s time like this where people are waking up and realizing that they are fighting an everyday struggle and war on race. These events that are blasted all over the news and social media numb one’s response and ability to process the difficult situations. When we are constantly waking up to hear of another killing of someone who looks likes us— we begin to constantly question, “Are my family, friends, co-workers, peers, neighbors next” or even “Am I next?”
Ongoing Republican obstructionism to any Obama-proposed legislation recently reached an egregious level; public health is now being endangered. They have blocked appropriations to fund the fight to eliminate the microcephaly-causing Zika virus, carried by mosquitoes, and therefore able to be quickly spread anywhere. They have played with the lives and health of even American babies, even after several tens of thousands of Zika cases have already appeared in Puerto Rico.
I wanted to share a little bit of my opinion on the "Brexit" outcome in the United Kingdom. As most people on campus probably know, the UK's referendum to leave the European Union passed by a slight majority. The political right celebrates this as a victory for nationalism and a resistance to the establishment.
Millions of men, including many who love their wives and girlfriends, are terrified of having family and friends find out they want sex with men! Some try to smother their desire with religion. Some bully gays and yell "faggots." Some kill themselves with booze, junk food or a bullet. Some like Omar Mateen murder LGBT persons. Many live a double life.
The gun violence of June, 2016 is unforgivable. These events are the latest in a string of near unfathomable grotesqueness. Children in Sandy Hook, theater patrons in Aurora, church goers in Charlotte and so, so many more. They share a common denominator of the worst humanity can offer. These events are unthinkably cruel and inescapably brutal. But we must fathom them; we must accept reality. This is not an admission of fear or defeat. Let our reactions as a city, as a state and as a nation be worthy of a people who claim to be free.
The shocking killing of UCLA professor William Klug by his former graduate student in engineering, one Mainak Sircar who was from India, begs examination of exploitation of foreign students by American professors, because in this case Sircar reportedly bore a grudge against this former professor, having claimed earlier that Klug had “cleverly” stolen his code.
I compliment Muhammad Ali for refusing to be a U.S. soldier. I highly compliment him for refusing to go murder people Vietnam.
So many working class Americans are voting for Trump because he does not appear to give a hoot about the environment when it comes to mining jobs he wants to bring back to the US, like for coal. But what about the danger to the health of the worker that mining inherently engenders? Thus for coal, what about black lung disease?
There is a tragically ironic element to the timing of Sunday’s attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, the aftermath of which amounts to the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history. All through June, all across the country, the LGBTQ community and its supporters have been and are celebrating Pride month, centered around the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage on June 26. People of all nationalities, races and preferred sexual orientations are taking to the streets to celebrate an atmosphere of unity, equality and love.
This is an assessment on what seems to be happening in America: a situation I like to call “political extremism.” Recently, I covered both Bernie Sanders’ and Donald Trump’s political rallies in Albuquerque.
One of the special benefits of getting one’s higher education in the USA is that USAan universities often have folks on campus from many different parts of the world – studying together, working in labs together, performing together and hopefully partying together.
If we give a damn about climate change, about saving water, about water pollution, about saving forests; if we give damn about cruelty to animals, about all hungry people worldwide having enough to eat, about our own health, stop eating all meat and dairy — cheese, milk, ice cream, eggs.
It is the employers of “illegals” who are acting illegally themselves. But we argue only over whether undocumented workers – whose only crime is looking to work and feed their families – should be deported or allowed to stay under a reform of our immigration policy.
Society has no business blaming a painkiller-prescribing doctor for an already-addicted patient’s death. Any doctor, out of his professional compassion and duty, is going to place pain management first, and is not expected to know a whole lot about the usual patient presenting, in particular if the patient is an addict. Besides, where does a prescribing standard leave off and “over-prescribing" begin for agonizing, unrelenting pain?
It was suggested I write in to explain why I am leaving UNM for UCCS this coming fall. It came to my attention that the UNM president has been less than agreeable when it comes to how assault, rape and other forms of violence are being handled. So, in an attempt to show that everything is not "okay" and "fine" here, let me tell you why I am leaving UNM.
In reading some of the recent letters regarding UNM's seal, I cannot help but wonder how our students and faculty have arrived at the conclusion it is racist. If it were, the seal would be advocating for the superiority of Western culture above all others. The seal does not does not do so in any way, shape or form. A frontiersman and a conquistador, in and of themselves, are not racist symbols. They simply are what they are. No more, and no less.
If UNM were still a public education institution, a new seal might reflect some of those values, not colonization and racism as it does now. But UNM is no longer a public educational place.
Solutions by The State News
