Dutson wrong about protesters
Lance Dutson couldn’t be more wrong about local protests. In his Dec. 26 BDN column, “The real dark money in Maine,” he claims it’s big political organizations in Washington, D.C. that are funding the protests against the oppressive Republican policies. In fact, those protesters are your outraged friends and neighbors.
Those people protesting the tax bill in front of Sen. Susan Collins’ home last month weren’t paid, and no one from Washington knew it would happen. The idea was local and organic. It was a response to the fact that although Collins acted like she was listening and her Bangor office staff was very polite and attentive, nothing was happening.
People of all different beliefs and backgrounds are standing up and raising their voices at the outrageous and appalling acts of the Trump administration, such as that the Republicans giving federal dollars to their wealthy corporate donors, rolling back civil liberties, and giving away our public lands to big oil and gas.
Dutson should look closer next time he drives by a protest. He might see his retired neighbor, the minister from a local church, and his child’s teacher shivering, but committed to exercising their First Amendment rights with no sponsorship, no funding to even buy coffee and doughnuts.
Diana Cookson
Dixmont
Fulford for Congress
My parents raised me with a strong belief that participation in government was a civic duty. I teach this optimism and faith in democracy every day to my sixth-grade social studies students and to my own sons, who are now in college. I passionately believe in America and the good, hard-working people of Maine. We are the citizens who Congress should serve, not the corporations.
The biggest threat to our democracy in this era is the presence of secret funding of candidates and the loosening of controls on corporate money influencing our Legislature and Congress.
I am tired of seeing Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s trite posts from visits to veterans’ homes. I call his office and his staff knows nothing of what his position will be on issues that are important to me. He doesn’t know the community I live in. He doesn’t need to know because his handlers will tell him how to vote.
I am voting for Jonathan Fulford to run against Poliquin. Fulford’s calloused hands speak to the fact that he is a worker. I see him in the grocery store pushing his grandchildren in the cart. I know he has pledged to take no corporate PAC or lobbyist money.
Fulford didn’t go to Harvard, but he can tell you all about the fastest-growing economic sectors in Maine. He understands science, and he is willing to face the challenges and the opportunities that climate change presents. Fulford is the way politics should be. He is not bought, and he will not sell us out.
Martha Conway-Cole
Belfast
Inhumane policies
History has shown that human beings have invented countless ways to torture, punish and exert their will over other human beings. Americans have a long history of deliberate infliction of suffering — recall the slaughter of the first people, the history of black slavery, internment of the Japanese, the My Lai massacre and the tortures at Abu Ghraib, all events that Americans have later condemned.
In the past year, we have seen increasing cruelty and victimization of the poor and marginalized in our domestic policies, incarceration on a massive scale of people of color, and the flourishing of “hate crimes” nationwide. And we are becoming numb like the Germans in 1933 (or the lobster in the pot).
Now the U.S. is reportedly considering a formal policy aimed to deter illegal border crossings by ripping children from their parents. This does not “make America great”; it is inhumane and wrong. It is past time to speak out before we lose our souls.
What kind of people are we? I am ashamed and frightened for our country.
Lesley Fernow
Dover-Foxcroft