Letters to the editor

Santa Clara County has plan to close digital gap

Daniel Wu’s Aug. 3 story (“With schools moving online again, digital divide deepens”) paints a painful picture of how Bay Area youth are struggling to stay on track with their education during COVID-19, due to lack of broadband access and technology at home. While in many parts of the Bay Area, school districts are hastily piecing together coverage plans, the situation is radically different here in Santa Clara County.

The Board of Supervisors and the County Office of Education formalized a plan in June to address the digital access needs for vulnerable families. The partnership will provide equipment and data coverage for underserved community members who need access to services online, including funding approximately 11,000 hot spots/connectivity devices and 15,000 devices, such as laptops or tablets, to these families.

This will be a challenging school year, but the county’s fully financed plan to close the digital divide for these struggling families will help immensely.

— Dave Cortese, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors; Dr. Mary Ann Dewan,

Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools

Trump dashes chance to foster cooperation

It is truly good news that Congress just passed and President Donald Trump signed the Great America Outdoors Act (“Environmentalists cheer billions for national parks,” Page A1, Aug. 5). This act funds the land and water conservation fund and addresses the huge maintenance backlog at federal public lands.

More importantly, it shows that Democrats and Republicans can work together to get something positive done for the environment. We will need more bipartisanship like this to solve the climate crisis. However, we will need a different president — at the signing event no Democrats were invited, Trump compared himself to Teddy Roosevelt as an environmentalist, and he criticized China and India’s polluting. An effective president will foster cross-party cooperation and influence global climate action.

— Tom Calderwood, Los Gatos

Remove financial burden from U.S. Postal Service

I urge Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Ro Khanna to support HR 2382 and S. 2965. This will repeal HR 6407 — the requirement for U.S. Postal Service to prepay future retirement benefits for all employees — and forgive all USPS defaulted payments.

The 2006 bill HR 6407 was enacted to financially burden the USPS so it could become untenable and be privatized. It must be repealed and its debts forgiven.

The USPS is a vital service that ensures all Americans, even in remote locations that would be unprofitable to deliver to, can receive vital correspondence and parcels, including deliveries of medications, bills, paychecks, taxes and legal documents.

— Catherine Ball, Santa Clara

Portland crackdown threatens all our rights

Each year, I recite the First Amendment with my school’s journalism class. The words remind us of our rights: the freedom of speech, of the press, the right to assemble peacefully.

However, the recitation also reassures me that when we attend protests and marches, we should feel safe — it’s well within our rights.

But when I read about the extreme federal force against Portland protesters, I was concerned, confused, and most of all, infuriated.

Protests are at the core of our country’s foundation — from the Boston Tea Party to the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Yet here we are, centuries later, unsure if we’ll be detained without explanation the next time we attend a protest. Or worse.

Regardless of whether we live in Portland or Silicon Valley, federal actions in Portland impact everyone. I hope everyone knows their rights and stands up for them.

— Helen Zhu,

Cupertino