Category: Op-eds

culture Op-eds

Knowing the Unknown Soldier

An Open Letter to my Hometown of Floyd Virginia

By Mara Robbins 

There were a lot of things I didn’t know before recent years brought racist flags out of people’s yards and basements and onto the streets of my hometown, and after the terrible shooting in Charleston where nine black people in a bible study group were murdered by Dylan  Roof. There were a lot of things I didn’t know before witnessing riot gear on the streets of my hometown when there was a “rally and ride for confederate pride” in early September while we still grieved the tragedy in Charlottesville. There were a lot of things I didn’t know before the death of George Floyd brought the realities of racism in America undeniably before the eyes of conscientious people everywhere.

Yet once I know? I cannot UN-know. 

There are a lot of things I didn’t know then and a lot of things I won’t share now because those who share them with me do so in trust that I won’t risk their safety Read More “Knowing the Unknown Soldier”

Op-eds

Outcry is not enough

Photo by Ted Eytan, Creative Commons.

Opinion by  John Hopkins
Floyd County Democratic Pary chair

John Hopkins, Democratic party

Americans are right to protest when police abuse their power and take someone’s life in the process.

We are right to protest when obvious crimes are ignored. We are right to protest when our nation’s wealth is employed by law to diminish the weak and the voiceless.

We are right to protest when protest itself is treated as though it were unlawful.

Protest may wake the sleeping conscience, may rally the sympathetic bystander – and yet, protest taken to extreme will never carry the day. When the justified shout of “This is wrong” is lost in the smoke and rubble borne of reckless anger, society will rouse itself to save what property it can.

Read More “Outcry is not enough”

Op-eds

Who’s an ‘Enemy of the People?

 

Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took this photo during the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

By Bill Kovarik

Donald Trump claims that the press is the ‘enemy of the people.’  Let’s think about that.

Was Joe Rosenthal an ‘enemy of the people’ when he climbed Mount Suribachi  on Iwo Jima and came back with a photo of the US Marines putting up the Stars and Stripes?   The Associated Press photo ran in newspapers and magazines around the world on February 25, 1945.  It became so iconic, so loaded with meaning about sacrifice and service, that it would be adopted as the Marine Corps  monument in Washington DC.  Think about that.

Was John Hersey an enemy of the people when he wrote about the heroic struggle of a PT Boat commander to save his crew after his boat was destroyed in Read More “Who’s an ‘Enemy of the People?”