Taking a stand

Dear Editor,

Last Saturday my interview with the Times Observer made the front page about my experience at the 60th day of protests in Portland, Ore. I received both positive and negative comments from readers.

I was nervous doing an interview and I felt as though I could have been clearer about my purpose for my visit to the protest. All Americans have a right to protest for just about anything and everything here in the land of the free and home of the brave.

I support anyone’s right to speak up for what they believe in and that voices of the oppressed should be heard. I don’t believe that abolishing police is the answer to racial injustice or fixing our broken system.

I do support allocating more money to social programs, schools and to communities to better our country as a whole. We must also educate ourselves how citizens of color came to suffer oppression in this country. I do not support the strategies our federal government is attempting to silence the voice of Americans. It is a clear violation of our rights.

Sending federal officers to attack citizens for the so called reason of protecting federal property is never going to create the change that this country needs. Instead of deescalating the situation, federal officers only attracted larger crowds and created immense agitation for those who live locally and from afar.

The federal governments effort to restrain voices from being heard is ineffective. The solution is to change. Threats and intimidation won’t make the positive changes that we need. Martin Luther King Jr. said that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

It is time we start listening so we can begin to make a difference.

My purpose for going to Portland was to listen to the unheard, see the unheard, and support the unheard.

I have to say I learned a great deal from my experience at the protest. We can bicker back and forth on social media all day but if we want to solve the racial and social injustice we need to come together and take action to injustice happening at this very moment in time.

It is time to end the egocentric tendencies so many of us process.

Molly McDunn,

2008 Warren graduate,

Ellensburg, Wash.

Enemies in office

Dear Editor,

I want to help you come to realize that too many people voted for representation in our federal government that are enemies of our United States of America.

I have the picture of three Democrats in the Senate who have all alluded to the opinion that Christians should not be allowed to serve in government. It’s questionable whether that party’s last president was even born in America.

Since they don’t like the way America was founded, that is why I believe they are enemies. Their mission is to try to do away with “In God we trust” in many different ways.

I hope that the people will come to realize and want to ask God to forgive them for voting “anti God and America.”

Send love and prayers for our country.

Emil Bundy,

Warren