Letters to the Editor: February 27-March 4, 2020

The Editor:

Dena Jensen was right to criticize the patented name “Iron Chink.” It is a derogatory slur from the past. I refer her and other readers to the Exclusion Acts of 1880 and 1924. The Chinese were imported to work on the railroads in the 1850s, then rounded up and deported starting in the 1880s. Some were born in the U.S. and had to fight for the right to remain.

There must have been a demand for Chinese workers as the canneries employed the Chinese crews through a Chinese contractor. The contractor negotiated to provide separate housing, food and pay. There is strong evidence that the Chinese were good workers, and were even known to take a hungry white youngster in for a hot meal.

Our history has many unpleasant truths. The name of the above-mentioned machine is one. The cruelty of the Exclusion Acts is another. The Alaska Packers Association Museum offers the story of Scandinavians, Italians, Greeks, Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans and women working in salmon canneries.

Sunny Brown

Blaine

The Editor:

Hailey’s Law was passed in response to a 2007 accident caused by a driver who drove drunk twice in one night. After the first DUI arrest, the driver returned to her parked car and soon collided head-on with another car at about 50 miles per hour. The victim, Hailey French, suffered a collapsed lung and severe lower body injuries including a shattered kneecap and crushed foot.

It was a long battle to get Hailey’s Law passed by the state legislature and signed into law in 2011. Hailey’s Law required law enforcement officers to impound cars for twelve hours belonging to people they arrest for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

But an October 17 decision by the Washington State Supreme Court overturned the law. Why? Representative Luanne Van Werven is working on a new bill, HB 2483, which will meet the court’s concerns so that a person who is still impaired doesn’t have access to their car. Nobody else should be injured or die because we didn’t fix this.

Hailey’s Law isn’t a political issue. It’s about protecting all of us. Please contact your state legislators and ask them to support it.

Joan Dow

Bellingham

The Editor:

I watched part of President Trump’s address to his Las Vegas political rally.

From him, I heard name-calling and racial slurs, irrelevant anecdotes about how great a TV celebrity he was and, worst of all, “kiss my ass.”

Question 1: To what base part of the American psyche does this man appeal? I will tell you what part: to the part that enslaved millions; to the part that slaughtered the native peoples they found here and systematically destroyed the resources upon which those people lived; to the part that still maintains women of all races as second-class citizens.

President Trump’s stage antics reminded me of Benito Mussolini. The frightening thing is, the people of Italy pandered to Mussolini and allowed him to govern them right up to the point that their country was destroyed. Is that what we will do?

I fear we may, which leads me to Question 2: What benevolent conqueror will save and restore us in the manner we conquered, saved and restored Italy? As the old Roman saying goes, “Who guards the guards?” For this question, I have no answer because there is no one. Of the great powers, we are the only hope. Perhaps, as Churchill warned of the Nazi regime, we will descend into a second dark age more frightening and more malevolent than anything mankind has ever known.

Perhaps.

Ken Ely

Blaine