Consequences for Chiefstick shooting can help restore trust

Phil J. Davis, Bremerton

Kitsap Sun June 25, 2020

I am proud of my 15 years teaching with North Kitsap Schools, especially for our outreach to troubled youth. But the police killing of Stonechild Chiefstick on July 3, 2019, makes me sick to my stomach. I have nothing against Poulsbo business owners, but now I don’t like visiting their city center.

How can justice be done and healing begin?

Washington state just approved Initiative 940. It mandates de-escalation training and calming approaches that address mental health issues. Police violence is a very last resort. Thousands of Kitsap County protesters now make similar demands.

The City of Poulsbo can support Initiative 940 by disciplining Officer Craig Keller. Stonechild’s children lost their dad forever. Officer Keller can at least lose his job. No man who panicked like he did last July 3 should be wearing a police uniform and packing a gun.

When we NK teachers had a troubled teenager, our very best interventionist was volunteer Steven Old Coyote. He used humor, songs and stories to help white, brown and Black teenagers who were angry, grieving or had substance issues. Steven knew how to de-escalate conflict and communicate, using the same Cree spiritual tradition as the Chiefstick family.

What should have happened when Stonechild was getting a little crazy, waving a screwdriver? Poulsbo, please find a better answer than shooting him among families picnicking with little children. Try to make me proud of North Kitsap again. Please take a knee with the protesters and get to work developing better approaches.

Phil J. Davis, Bremerton

Congress is making progress on poverty

Judy Arbogast, Olalla Published 3:21 p.m. PT April 21, 2020

While it may seem popular to criticize Congress currently, there are many members who are stepping up and working on behalf of constituents amid this global coronavirus pandemic. Thank you to Senator Patty Murray and Senator Maria Cantwell for their work to appropriate funding requests.

One of the current issues is with the foreign operations, which represents less than 1% of the total budget. Programs include Child Health, Bilateral Tuberculosis, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and Global Partnership for Education. It is this section that has helped fund the World Health Organization, whose job it is to convene leaders to make sure that the response is coordinated and evidence-based, and that there is a truly global response to a global pandemic.

Until recently this section of the budget has passed with full bipartisan approval. People know that a healthy, educated world is a more stable, safer world, with fewer conflicts.

The pandemic is moving more people into poverty across the globe. We cannot afford to undo these valuable programs, which are saving millions of lives, ensuring quality education, strengthening democratic values in fragile states, and building trading partners with emerging economies.

Judy Arbogast, Olalla 

Honoring Earth Day in the time of COVID-19

Marty Bishop, Port Orchard Published 7:00 a.m. PT April 22, 2020

How should we be caring for life on our planet this Earth Day?

Scientists and activists have been warning us for years that we need to reduce global greenhouse gases. In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote a report detailing what the world would need to do to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). They concluded that to avoid that level of global warming it would require “deep emission reductions” and “rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” They also stated that human caused emissions would need to be reduced “45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.” This report was taken seriously by some.

Among those was Greta Thunberg who started striking in front of the Swedish parliament. Her strike went viral and launched a movement of young people that has spread around the world -- Fridays For Future. FFF joined with the Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, 350.org and others in global climate strikes in September 2019.  Estimates vary from 6 million to 7 million people participated worldwide.

Protesting is a key way to build movements to bring about change. The political scientist, Erica Chenoweth has found that it takes approximately “3.5 percent of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.” (From: The ‘3% rule’: How a small minority can change the world) Environmental organizations noted this idea and started working together to make Earth Day 2020 an historical day of activism. The Earth Day Network formed. Climate leaders, churches, schools, mayors and heads of states in 180 nations joined to plan for rallies across the globe to demand that we quit ignoring the climate crisis.

Then came COVID-19 -- a crisis we cannot ignore. And all plans went “online” or “virtual.”

It has left many of us who were planning marches and protests feeling lost. How can we communicate the urgency facing our planet? How can we make our voices heard?

This health crisis is horrible and everything pales in comparison to it now. I mourn with those whose lives have been affected by the loss of loved ones. I know it is a terrible time to be on the edge financially. I dread reports from third world countries of the pandemic’s spread to their poor. However, in the long term, after climate tipping points have been crossed, the covid 19 pandemic will seem minor.

We can do something.  We can flatten that ever rising line of CO2 emissions.  We have the technology to reduce greenhouse gases and build a liveable future. According to the IPCC we have until 2030 to drastically cut our emissions by 45% to prevent a global temperature rise of 2.7 degrees F. 

Now, on this Earth Day, without any marches or songs, we must commit. What will you do?

Marty Bishop is a member of 350 West Sound Climate Action. She lives in Port Orchard. 

An Apology for Lesser America

Bill Budd, Port Orchard

Kitsap Sun April 16, 2020

We are all in this together. As the world get functionally smaller, we find it hard to disentangle when asked to. Our economies are tied together with supply chains stretching around the globe. It seems America First is a lesser America.

We grow dizzy when our president substitutes spin for truth. We have to praise our president to get him to cooperate (don’t call those governors) or for some to keep their federal jobs, demanding loyalty over competence. He likes temps leading our government departments.

We cannot even provide our health care workers with respirators and surgical masks. We should be heading up the world’s response to COVID-19 based on our nation’s collective knowledge, our technological and economic resources, and our emergency management plans and preparation. Instead, we lead the world in COVID-19 cases.

I am upset that we have to spend $2 trillion dollars to bail out our economy because we were not able to respond with accurate, reliable testing and contact tracing and that we did not have a world class planned response when those failed. I am upset that we have a president who says he is not responsible. So instead, in one day, we are spending more than we spent on all NIH health research on all diseases over the last 80 years.

I am sorry for all the lives that have been and will be lost. I am sorry that America can’t do more to protect humanity.

Bill Budd, Port Orchard 

World faces more health threats than just COVID-19

Beth Wilson, Olalla published 8:38 a.m. PT March 22, 2020 | Updated 8:40 a.m. PT March 22, 2020

The danger is almost invisible, until, like a friend of mine, you develop a dry cough and temperature. The risk is quite serious, but still almost invisible. There are other threats to human health that are equally ominous, or even more. As of Saturday, March 21, about 14,000 people have succumbed to COVID-19 worldwide. Did you know that over 14,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable illnesses like pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria? Yet, those deaths are seemingly invisible to us. The reason we don’t know about them is that those children mostly live in the developing world, where access to prenatal care, adequate nutrition, immunizations, public health systems and medical care are limited or non-existent. Another threat to human health is global warming. Again, looking out my window into the forest, it’s hard to tell that the world is changing. Yet, even now, thousands of people’s lives have been lost due to the impacts of climate change, including floods, fire, drought and rising seas. It’s easy to ignore those impacts because they are not happening to me and us. Here in the U.S., we need to take the coronavirus threat very seriously and follow the recommendations of the CDC and our state and local health departments. But, we also need to recognize these other health threats that are occurring at this very moment. Children are dying and our climate is threatened. An equally strong response to those threats is required by a humane society.

Beth Wilson, Olalla

Housing also needs emergency help

Thank you for your coverage of the homeless counts in Kitsap County. It's so important to have good data to make informed decisions, especially in these uncertain times. The Senate is poised to pass a bill to help combat the COVID 19 outbreak.

Unfortunately, the House did not include housing supports for our most vulnerable population. It is critical that supports like the following be included, as housing is healthcare in an epidemic:

• $1 billion in additional McKinney-Vento funds and significant additional resources for the Disaster Housing Assistance Program to quickly get people into affordable homes.

• A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions to help renters and homeowners remain stably housed during and after a coronavirus outbreak.

• $3 billion for the creation of an emergency assistance fund (along the lines of the bipartisan Eviction Crisis Act) to help prevent evictions by providing short-term financial assistance and housing stabilization services

Reach out to Sens. Murray and Cantwell and let them know this is what we need.

Diana Tyree-Eddy, Bremerton 

Let's provide opportunities for women around the world

How exciting to see the article in the Sun about the women who won the sailing Race to Alaska. Thank you for shining a light on their achievements.

Unfortunately, many women and girls in the developing world will not have the opportunities those skilled women sailors have. In this time of amazing medical advancements, it is heartbreaking that worldwide every day 2,000 girls and young women will contract AIDS. About half will receive life-saving treatment and half will lose their lives to this terrible disease.

The U.S. has provided leadership to reduce death from AIDS for 18 years, through its investment in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Deaths have been reduced significantly, but still, AIDS claims far too many lives; TB continues to be the largest infectious killer in the world, and drug-resistant malaria (a major killer of children) is on the rise around the world.

In October, at the Global Fund Replenishment Conference, the U.S. has the opportunity to continue its leadership for global health. Every dollar that is pledged to the Global Fund by the U.S. is matched $3 by other nations, and billions provided by recipient countries. Our national investment is magnified many times to save lives, build stability in an uncertain world, and to protect our own nation from these terrible infectious diseases.

The Global Fund could help create a world in which all women and girls can successfully compete in contests of skill and intellect like the Race to Alaska!

Beth Wilson, Olalla

Read on Kitsap Sun

Federal funding for brain research benefits us all →

PTSD, addictions, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, strokes, seizures, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder, chronic traumatic encephalopathy are just some of the disorders of the brain.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) is the world’s premier health research organization, through its own research labs and through grant funding of research labs throughout the country. One of NIH’s projects, the BRAIN Initiative is at a halfway point in its projected course. It has made tremendous gains in our understanding of the brain and the development of methods for studying the brain.

The President’s recent budget proposal cut NIH funding. It is up to U.S Congress to restore and increase those funds. We need better treatments to help those individuals with brain disorders. Better treatments, in turn, will ripple out to help the families who love and care for those individuals. Economically, the sooner we have better treatments, the better. It is estimated that depression and anxiety disorders alone cost the global economy $1 trillion dollars per year in lost productivity.

Can we really afford not to fund brain research?

Bill Budd, Port Orchard

Read on Kitsap Sun

Let’s not ignore the inconvenient issues

If history were only this day and the world were only my house, I think I would agree with Pete Brady (“Economic answers for Trump’s popularity,” letters, Dec.31) about the greatness of these times.  

Like him, many of us don’t like to think of increasing national debt and homelessness, dirty oceans and melting ice, bombs, food insecurity and locally undereducated children.

We want someone else to take care of those problems. Maybe my granddaughter. She’s three.

Jill Clarridge, Bremerton 

Read on Kitsap Sun

Help Congress Help Homeless With Renters Credits

The Olympian’s Christmas Eve edition asks “Is Congress doing enough to help homeless in Thurston County?” emphasizing struggles within the “unsheltered” population even with some community progress. While Thurston County is to be commended for its successes, the 31 percent rise of average rents in the last 10 years might be a huge thorn that needs clipping for those caught in the downside of our housing situation.

The Olympian speaks to providing political pressure at the federal level in response to what we see daily about our community. Let’s consider financial resources by addressing the increased rent burden and how to insulate the most vulnerable from evictions, one of the major paths into homelessness.

A renters’ tax credit could help address the affordable housing crisis by capping the out-of-pocket rent and utility expenses a low-income household would pay at around 30 percent of their income. The credit would cover any excess above that up to 100 percent of the community’s “Fair Market Rent.” Researchers at Columbia University estimate that a renters’ credit could lift over 9 million Americans above the poverty line. There have been bipartisan proposals to create a renters’ credit and to appropriately address the rights of landlords.

Adequate housing is as complicated as finding solutions. A renters’ tax credit can be part of the solutions. Political pressure comes from our using not only our vote, but expressing hopes and possibilities to our elected representatives. Let’s use our personal power during this dark time of the year.

Nancy Curtiss, Olympia

Read on The Olympian

Great news for working parents in 2020

Preparing for a newborn should be exciting. But for my family, that joy was tempered by stress and financial uncertainty, because I did not have adequate paid leave. My employer could only offer six weeks at about half my normal pay. As an early childhood professional, I knew the science about the importance of parents being there during a baby’s first months and wanted to bond with my daughter. My husband and I saved as much as possible so I could take 12 additional weeks unpaid.

Those weeks were incredibly difficult. We struggled to cover expenses – and emergencies were a nightmare. Our car broke down, leaving us dependent on family for transportation. My brother’s family lived with us. And when our dryer broke, none of us could afford to fix it.

No family should be pushed into a financial crisis because they need time to recover from birth and bond with a newborn. That’s why I’m so excited about Washington’s new paid leave program, which will help give families the security they deserve.

Starting Jan. 1, 2020, Washington workers who accrued 820 hours in the past year will qualify for up to 16 weeks of combined paid family and medical leave each year to bond with a new child or take care of themselves or a loved one with a serious illness. Payroll premiums for the program began last January, with the average working person contributing just $2 a week. Learn more about this new program!

Cristyn Kelly is a graduate student, a mom, and a member of MomsRising. She lives in Bremerton

Read on Kitsap Sun

Climate isn’t just business as usual

COP 25, the United Nations climate conference, ended on Friday. How many people even know what COP stands for or what it is trying to do? Our climate is collapsing yet only a few people talk about it, or realize what a tragedy is happening.

Instead, business continues as usual. We approve natural gas projects like the liquid natural gas plant on the Tacoma tidelands. We continue to build natural gas lines to homes. And yes, we continue to buy gas-guzzling cars. There are good, affordable alternatives to fossil fuels. We must keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Think of all the jobs that we will need to transition to clean energy — jobs in wind, solar, microgrids, and electric rail. We can do this. We just have to start before all the tipping points take us into a future that is unrecognizable.

Marty Bishop, Port Orchard and member of 350 West Sound Climate Action

Read on Kitsap Sun

Quit making cuts just to benefit the rich

Welfare for the very rich at the expense of struggling families must stop. (“Program for food stamps tighten” Dec. 5) About 3.1 million people would lose SNAP eligibility (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps).

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture itself has admitted its reforms would cost almost half a million children their free school lunches since eligibility is often determined by a household receipt of food stamps.

Meanwhile, with the help of tax loopholes instigated by the rich and powerful, more than half of all U.S. income growth has gone to the top 1% since 1976.

And because of the 2017 tax law, the richest 1% of households (making $1.8 million per year) receive on average about $47,000 in annual tax cuts, while those with the lowest income (making $13,000 annually) receive on average $90. (taxallianceforeconomicmobility.org) This makes our growing wealth gap much worse.

Consider:

– The majority of the people who receive SNAP are children, the elderly or people who struggle with a disability. Government statistics show that the average monthly benefit per person is $135 a month.

– Economists at Moody’s Analytics estimate that every $1 in SNAP payments generates $1.70 in local and regional economic activity.

– Here in Kitsap County about 13.1% of our children are living below the poverty line. (data.census.gov) They deserve better.

We can tell Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and U.S. Representative Derek Kilmer to reject these new changes. 

Donna Munro, Bremerton

Read on Kitsap Sun

Response wasn't suitable as a counterpoint

In Brett Thovson’s response to Reverend Jessica Rockers (Letters, Nov. 19) I saw nothing more than fear-mongering and slander.

According to his letter, Rev. Rockers said: “she admits her view is based on the law enforcement ‘machine’ and not on the individual.” She was actually was speaking about the structures that were built on racist legislation long before slaves were free and the average person’s view of racial stereotypes. That is very clear to anybody with a reading level suited to an adult.

That said, is it really okay for The Sun to have published him comparing her to child abusers? Do they consider slander a true opinion or is it suddenly okay to print Ad hominem attacks against people? Not to mention the people who are trying to better the world by making us all think about the history of racism and how it affects decisions made by the police, judges, and jury to this very day?

I say the answer is no. It is not okay in the slightest and is dangerous to Rev. Rockers, her family, and the congregation that she preaches to. The Sun as a whole should be ashamed for printing that attack against Rev. Rockers.

Joey Witherspoon, Bremerton 

Read More on Kitsap Sun

Let tragedy galvanize us against racism

The column published in September, “The Trouble with Tying All Police Shootings to Racism,” asks us to wait for the facts before we determine whether the shooting of Mr. Stonechild Chiefstick in Poulsbo on July 3 was racially motivated. I would argue that racial bias in our U.S. justice system is already a well-documented fact.

This article claims “white officers are not any more likely to fatally shoot” people of color than non-white officers. This shows a woeful misunderstanding of the reality of institutionalized racism and how it transcends the skin color of individual officers. Stonechild Chiefstick’s death is the result of a much deeper issue than the skin color of the officer who killed him. It is the result of a justice system that values white bodies over bodies of color.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Mr. Chiefstick did not deserve to be killed. Our Suquamish community does not deserve our silence.

Rev. Jessica Star Rockers

Read on Kitsap Sun

U.S. must honor its commitments to world health

I recently heard that hundreds of children in Pakistan contracted the AIDS virus. This is an especially sad story as we get near to Worlds AIDS Day on December 1. This disastrous event could have been prevented with enough funding to provide clean disposable needles. Even better would be if we eradicate this disease. The possibility of doing that is feasible.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been saving lives for years by providing treatment and vaccines. Recently the United States agreed to do their part in fully funding this program. With the state of our government funding as it is, there is fear that the promised funding will not be delivered. We need to watch and ensure that our government honors its commitment. In doing so it will also honor all those who we remember on World AIDS Day.

Martha Bishop, Port Orchard 

Read on Kitsap Sun

Let’s work together to improve life for low-income mothers

I have seen the dedicated Catholic congregants praying outside Planned Parenthood, and I am writing because I believe we share a common goal. We want women to be safe and to find alternative options if they want them.

I believe that when you stand at an abortion clinic you are shaming women that have had to make a difficult choice. Ending abortion services will not end abortion, it will only make it dangerous (and life-threatening) for those in need. Closing Planned Parenthood clinics will also increase unwanted pregnancies by making it impossible for low-income women to get birth control.

In service to our mutual goals, I have made this offer to the Holy Trinity Parish Pastoral Coordinator: If a list of all the social services available in Kitsap County can be provided, I will make a brochure for placement inside Planned Parenthood, where those facing a difficult decision will be able to see the alternatives that you are praying they find.

Please, allow a merciful God to judge them, and use the gifts God has given you to serve these women in tangible ways. Use your time and energy gathering donations for new moms, scholarships for them to get an education, build houses for them to have a safe space. Use your tools to help them build their life with their baby. These are the efforts that will create real change for women in difficult situations, not judgement from the roadside. Please end your visible prayers outside the clinic and begin the work that will make abortion obsolete.

Ani Pendergast, Bremerton 

Read on Kitsap Sun