Weaken ISIS by welcoming refugees
Oppression only hardens, and unites the people you're oppressing. Examples can be clearly seen in social movements around the world and throughout time. Poor workers wanting better pay. Woman wanting to vote and receive equal pay. Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Jews wanting equal rights, the list goes on and on. Now we have Syrian refugees as the new "problem of the week," and half of America is pleading to keep them out. I have one solution to help solve the problem: Open your arms and embrace them.
To truly weaken a minority, you must love them. When you give people genuine love, you take away their oppression and make them equal in the process. That is what ISIS fears most, they're counting on "the West" to oppress the refugees (and all Muslims). Do not give them what they want, take away their power with the emotion that embodies America and her people.
If you still need convincing, listen to the words on the Statue of Liberty,
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
— Max McCallum
Anchorage
Leaders owe us much more than prayers
There were a flurry of tweets and Facebook posts from politicians offering their thoughts and prayers after the most recently publicized mass shooting. Soon thereafter, others pointed out that thoughts and prayers won't do much to prevent the next shooting, as we've had more mass shootings this year than we've had days.
In Jonah Goldberg's Saturday editorial, he rhetorically asked, "If this had been an earthquake, would you reject prayers while survivors were still being plucked from the rubble?" In this analogy, the politicians offering up these tweets are the equivalent of first responders — very few would have a problem with a paramedic or a firefighter saying a prayer on their way to the site of a collapsed building, but we would be aghast if they never left the firehouse and instead only thought and prayed for those in the rubble while minutes, hours, days, months and years ticked past.
These shootings have been happening for decades. Our elected leaders owe us much more than just their thoughts and prayers, and many of us are disgusted that so many seem unable or unwilling to do anything to prevent these (more than) daily tragedies.
— Nathaniel Grabman
Anchorage
Port needs funding more than U-Med road
As one who grew up in Anchorage, attended APU (then AMU), and is a UAA alumnus, I applaud Mayor Ethan Berkowitz in his decision to end the U-Med road project. The U-Med proposal would have divided the campuses of APU and UAA, and also destroyed the original concept planners had in the early 1960s — a university/park campus area in East Anchorage. The U-Med proposal would have destroyed a unique and special part of Anchorage, no question, despite the types of mitigation that were proposed. Finally, putting $17 million toward the port project makes much more sense. Let's put the money toward a critical infrastructure element in Anchorage, and not toward a project that would destroy a truly great part of Anchorage.
— Charles Barnwell
Anchorage
Please give us the ADN holiday lights map
For many years our family of friends would pile into cars with children and popcorn bags to take in the holiday light displays that Anchorage homeowners so generously share with our community. Last year I did not see the Christmas lights display map in the print edition of the Alaska Dispatch News or online. We were very disappointed to have our yuletide tradition end.
If the ADN does not organize this, how will we, and all those people we saw enjoying lights in the past, know where to go? This is an appeal to ADN to resume this fine tradition, and for neighbors to nominate the local families that really know how to get those electric meters spinning this time of year.
Come on ADN, you still have time to make a lot of people happy this Christmas.
— Jean Watson
Anchorage
The views expressed here are the writers' own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a letter for consideration, email letters@alaskadispatch.com, or click here to submit via any web browser. Submitting a letter to the editor constitutes granting permission for it to be edited for clarity, accuracy and brevity. Send longer works of opinion to commentary@alaskadispatch.com.