It’s Time for a Change
Before the 2024 election, Donald Trump denied knowing about Project 2025 because it was so unpopular. He lied 30,000-plus times during his first term and continued to lie as 31 of those people ended up in his administration.
Trump has control of the Executive Branch, Republicans have given him control of the Legislative Branch and the Supreme Court has given him immunity from illegal acts. Trump has bragged he can do anything he wants.
This culminated in the following during the first full week of January:
- Removing the Venezuelan president with no input from Congress, with Trump saying he personally will control their oil. Estimates are that this campaign has led to an estimated 200 deaths of people in that country and billions in expenses.
- An ICE agent murdered an ICE observer, a white, Christian, American citizen and mother of three young children. Despite numerous videos of the event showing she was driving away from the agent, Trump claimed that he was dragged by the car and lucky to be alive.
- The Department of Homeland Security shot two people from Venezuela.
Trump and the Republicans are destroying American democracy, and they need to be voted out of office.
Stephen Sacks
Fresno
Re “History of the 99 Freeway”
What a great article! You have captured so much of the history of West Fresno.
My parents were displaced for the new construction of the 99 freeway. They built their first home near the west-side post office on F Street.
Regarding relocation assistance, homeowners did receive a small relocation budget. However, this was a setback for generational development. They lost equity in the house they had built.
West Fresno was left with little resources after the freeway was built. There were about five to seven local grocers that had high prices and preyed on the disenfranchised.
In the late 1980s, my mother walked the streets of our neighborhood to get everyone to sign a petition for a community shopping center to be built. That resulted in Kearney Palms Shopping Center.
This was a great benefit to the residents of West Fresno. They were no longer subject to the mom-and-pop stores with higher prices. However, this did change the close-knit community around those markets and many of the small businesses did not survive.
The food, housing and health disparities are heartbreaking. And there are many factors that people do not understand as to why those disparities exist.
Sharon
Online comment
Lower Military Budgets
“There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.”—Brutus/Julius Caesar
The time and tide is right for a majority of Americans to stand up to the criminal Donald J. Trump.
In the upcoming elections, let us make the “218/217 Peace Project” a reality. This proposal is workable with the support of some national media coverage and a few dedicated supporters in each of the 435 Congressional districts.
Let us begin with Peace Fresno and the Fresno Center for Nonviolence.
The idea is that candidates pledge that, if elected in the midterm election, they will work to lower the U.S. military budget and the NATO military budget.
Just imagine if a majority, 218, of the House of Representatives was prepared to support a pacifist platform.
Vincent J. Lavery
Dublin, Ireland
