Kerry will save struggling after-school programs
Head Start needs more funds. Currently in Lane County, Head Start is only serving 50 percent of those children eligible due to a lack of funding.
Research has shown early education programs like Head Start can prevent school failure and crime. John Kerry has a plan to save Head Start. The No Child Left Behind Act created new requirements for educators but did not give them the funding they needed to complete them. The No Child Left Behind Act was underfunded by $27 billion. John Kerry has a plan to fully fund education programs that teach kids, not just test them.
John Kerry is a strong supporter of after-school programs. I am in high school, and I have witnessed how after-school programs can save lives. I know two different people who were considering suicide and did not go through with it because they made friends in an after-school program. I know other students who did not drop out of high school because of an after-school program they were in.
In the past three years, college tuition has risen 35 percent. About 220,000 people were priced out of college and many more felt they had no hope of affording college. John Kerry has a plan to bring college education to all Americans.
Send me to college. Vote for John Kerry.
Peter Howland
Springfield
Leaving Nader off ballot – no way to run a democracy
David Jagernauth makes good points about keeping the progressive faith (“Voted out with the garbage,” Oct. 1). We need to know more about why no Senators, including Kerry or Edwards, would sign the election objection of the Congressional Black Caucus in 2000. That scene in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is heartbreaking.
The Democrats’ fight against Ralph Nader is disgraceful. This is no way to run a democracy. We need to allow more candidates back into the presidential debates and to reform our electoral process along the lines of “instant runoff” systems like in San Francisco. I have spoken with conservative voters with lukewarm support for Bush who would vote for Nader instead if only he were on the ballot.
A vote is only thrown away if it isn’t cast or isn’t counted.
Robert Adams
Eugene
Monorities could use a lot more than ‘some help’
Tuesday’s commentary article on affirmative action was an appreciated, but misguided attempt to discuss and understand the purpose of affirmative action. First of all, affirmative action can not only refer to increasing opportunities for black Americans, but also women, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans.
However, black Americans have been prominent advocates of affirmative action, authoring numerous books and articles in support of it (such as Randall Robinson’s “The Debt”). The author of Tuesday’s article suggests that economic-based affirmative action would be a more constructive approach to achieving social (not racial) equality.
Undoubtedly, minorities and black Americans specifically have suffered the United States’ injustices and discriminatory practices since before Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Yet some Americans seem to believe that racial discrimination ended in the 1960s with white-only water fountains.
The author of Tuesday’s article says, “No student on campus today won their freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation.” I completely agree. I am sure there isn’t a teacher or student on this campus who is at least 140 years old. But, it is possible that there is a student on this campus who was a victim or is related to a victim of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. According to a 1997 Seattle Times article, the experiment was a 40-year long experiment that ended in 1973 done by the Public Health Service that denied treatment to 399 black men with the disease.
Along with that, the well-known case of Mumia Abu Jamal, an incarcerated activist and journalist who was arrested (from no substantial evidence) for the murder of a police officer in 1978, displays how close to home racial injustice indeed is. These examples illustrate that racial oppression is still alive today.
The author of Tuesday’s article says that although he/she disagrees with race-based affirmative action, “blacks could still use some help from society.” I commend the author for the sympathy, and also for raising some important issues like black teen pregnancy, black low income levels and low levels of black educational attainment.
Unfortunately, the author fails to connect the 400 years of oppression as a cause of these issues, the need for social reform and the first step of that being affirmative action. After all, there must a reason why black men flood America’s prisons and black children continue to drop out of schools, right?
If we study our history, we will learn that when blacks gained their freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation, the reconstruction granted blacks no compensation of land, giving them no economic foundation to begin their life as a free people. Hence ever since 1863, black Americans have been playing the catch-up game.
It is useless to single out a black person and say, “Hey- you weren’t a slave, you and I are equal,” because slavery and other forms of oppression tyrannized a whole people, its culture and its future generations.
Black Americans, along with all other minorities, could not “use some help.” Instead, they could use racial equality, socio-economic equality and the opportunity to lead and participate in a government in which they are underrepresented. Increasing the number of people of color in universities and professional industries is a long overdue, but progressive initiative.
Jordan Thierry
Eugene