READERS WRITE
Council should protest provincial moves
Re: Is civility the enemy of change? (Jan. 23)
I hope our elected and appointed officials read this thoughtful essay on how they are using the appearance of civility as an excuse to reject those seeking justice because they don’t use “proper channels.”
This white civility may be a double-edged disability. It leads officials to ignore or suppress local justice movements. And it also hinders them from acting effectively when Hamilton is being bullied by the current provincial government.
On the front page of the same edition, we read that the mayor and councillors are “pushing back” against the Ford government’s gutting of conservation authorities, apparently by writing a letter. How bold! And when Ford ignores it as he has the 45,000 emails already sent to him, then what? Perhaps they could learn first to respect and then to apply the appropriate tactics of unruly protesters.
Don McLean, Hamilton
Here’s the answer: vote them out
The authors of this commentary write that white civility is preventing real change at Hamilton City Hall. I understand their frustrations. I believe that Burlington offers an example for how to hold council to account: vote them out. City councillors in Hamilton are changed very rarely.
In Burlington, the overdevelopment of the downtown outraged the community, but the councillors ignored them. And all but one were voted out. I have a friend, a Hamiltonian, who told me that her councillor, who she did not agree with, told her that it didn’t matter what she thought because he would be reelected. And he was right. These activists need to mobilize people to inform the electorate of the terrible things that many of the long term councillors in Hamilton have voted for, gone along with, or didn’t prevent.
They need to go door to door, do mailings, use social media and whatever else they can think of. It’s important to make the voters as outraged as they are by what is happening. In Burlington, councillors ignore their constituents at their peril; in Hamilton, they don’t worry about it.
Susanne Tristani, Burlington
Hamilton must avoid ‘socialist’ trap
Can we skip to the ultimate goal of the authors of this commentary? They are for the defunding of our police service, race-based hiring (especially in public positions), the erasure or radical revision of our European history and the abolishment of capitalism.
Opinion providers should be honest about why they support radical changes to our society instead of claiming that it’s all for the common good just to make it palatable for the uninformed reader. For those that truly care about the common good for this city, more policing is needed, more leadership from a mayor who refuses to give in to these radicals is needed and more focus on our struggling economy and those at risk to COVID is needed. This city has real and significant problems to deal with like record high opioid overdoses, record high gun crime and a record high number of homicides in 2020. Hamilton must not fall into the trap like many U.S. cities have with crazy socialist policies. We all know how that turned out.
Michael Wright, Hamilton
Palestinians waiting on vaccines
Re: Israel not depriving Palestinians ... (Jan. 21)
The author of this commentary is half right. Israel is not depriving Palestinians of pandemic health care. Israel has been vaccinating Palestinians in recognized Israel and in East Jerusalem, but not in the West Bank.
It has, however, vaccinated Israeli settlers living there. The Palestinian Authority (PA) under the Oslo accords does have responsibility for the health of Palestinians but Israel, as the internationally recognized occupying power, has responsibility for the health of the occupied Palestinians under the 4th Geneva Convention paragraph 56 “to control the spread of infectious diseases and infections.”
The PA has asked the World Health Organization (WHO) for vaccines through the COVAX program but these vaccines will not arrive before the end of February or the beginning of March. The WHO has asked Israel to provide vaccines for the PA but Israel has refused saying it is short of vaccines for Israelis. If eventually they have enough they will make them available.
Health workers from Gaza have been trained by Israelis to respond to the virus but no mention is made of providing vaccines or any relief from the 17-year blockade which makes the provision of health care in this densely populated area almost impossible. Mervyn Russell, Oakville
The politics of vaccination
Pfizer is an American company with production facilities in the U.S. and Belgium. Promised vaccines will not be shipped next week, and will be reduced for close to a month in Canada but not elsewhere in the U.S. or Europe. Infuriating? Yes. Surprising? Not really, when politics come into play.
Meanwhile, all long-term-care homes in Toronto, Peel, Windsor-Essex, York, Ottawa, Simcoe-Muskoka and Durham have received first doses of the vaccine. Hamilton, an area that should receive high priority due to its numbers, has not. Infuriating? Yes. Surprising? Not really, when politics come into play.
Our leaders in Hamilton could be on the phone to Ford every day, but that wouldn’t change things. Surprising? Nope.
Carol Town, Hamilton
Time to spill the beans on rollout
Thanks for the update. Nothing really new there regarding the priority list or the timeline. The question really is how is it going to roll out? How will we be informed when it is our turn? Will it be through our family doctors — as in the UK — who will contact eligible patients and give them a time and place? It’s time to spill the beans — well past time.
Marcia Kash, Hamilton