I have lived with pesticide exposure

David Connell (“Community Voices: We need a local notification system on pesticides,” May 15) has studied the pesticide notification debate in Shafter for a semester at Berkeley. I have lived with pesticide exposure in Shafter for 15 years, and sadly have to doubt Connell’s confident assertion that the Kern County Agricultural Commissioner Glenn Fankhauser’s goal is to “protect public health and safety, and notify those potentially affected by fumigant applications.”

I wish that were the case. After years asking for the basic right to know about toxic chemicals being sprayed near our homes, and seeing Mr. Fankhauser fight us at every turn and even defy a direct order from the state, I can only conclude that his goal is actually to protect industry profits and their right to continue polluting our neighborhoods in secret.

I can think of no other explanation for refusing to make Notices of Intent, which are public information, public. However, I do appreciate Connell’s conclusion: “The Shafter steering committee requested a local notification system, and they should get it sooner than eventually.” How about now?

— Maria Anabel Marquez, Shafter

IT’S BETTER TO OVER-WARN ON PESTICIDES

As a Shafter resident, I read David Connell’s piece (“Community Voices: We need a local notification system on pesticides,” May 15) with great interest. I don’t think of myself as an activist, but I do want to know when toxic chemical spray is planned in my neighborhood, and I don’t expect local officials to defy the state in order to avoid protecting my health. That just doesn’t seem right.

As Connell rightly notes, Kern County already has a system in place, unique in California, that provides grower-to-grower notification, and there’s no reason that same system couldn’t be extended to the general public. If Kern Ag Commissioner Fankhauser is determined to provide door hangers, he should go right ahead, but we need public notice posted online as well. As Connell says, “It’s better to over-warn than to not warn at all.”

— Felipa Trujillo, Shafter

DID ANYONE BOTHER TO CHECK SPARTANS NAME?

I had a good laugh this morning when I learned that South High has changed the school mascot from the Rebels to the Spartans. Did anyone bother to do a quick Google search before they changed the team name? I did, and in seconds learned the following: “Sparta had the highest number of slaves compared to the number of owners. Some scholars estimate that there were seven times as many slaves as citizens.”

Thank you South High for making my day a little brighter.

— Kevin O’Neill, Bakersfield

ERASING ALL OUR HISTORY

The politically correct and anti-U.S. history buffs are at it again.

They are changing the name of Plantation Elementary School and possibly six streets around it. It seems the word “Plantation” conjures up feelings of hate in our Black population as we all know required Black slaves. I, for one, when hearing the word “Plantation” or driving by Plantation Elementary School, never had it cross my mind.

I have a couple of thoughts of how to solve this and other PC problems at one time instead of month to month — one locally and one for our nation’s government.

Locally let’s convene a mixed racial committee to investigate all school, street and building names checking into their family roots, especially if they came from the South. Let’s root them out once and for all.

Nationally, let’s stamp out the memory of the Confederacy and the Civil War in two short generations. Let’s ban and wipe out all written and filmed information on the Confederacy and Civil War along with any of the same of the 640,000 Americans, Union and Confederate, who died for their beliefs, right or wrong. Of course if we did this then there would not be any slave history.

To be a true loving country we should also include all history of the KKK, the American Nazi Party of the ’30s, what we did to the Japanese, and Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Let’s become a true loving country to and for all.