Fresno and the Pride flag: Letters to the editor, June 6, 2021

Mayor Dyer, Pride Flag, City Hall

If Mayor Dyer “loves the LGBTQIA+ community dearly,” as he claimed at his press conference, then here is a way for him to prove it. Fly the Pride flag at City Hall on June 11 and throughout the rest of the month. On July 1, open the new “unity park” at Eaton Plaza for all future flags. Anything less is unacceptable.

Imagine the message Mayor Brand would have sent if, last June, in order to preserve “unity” in Fresno, he had painted the statement “Black Lives Matter” two streets away from City Hall? Mayor Brand stood on the right side of history. This is Mayor Dyer’s moment to do the same.

I wish Mayor Dyer had done more research as he wrestled with his decision. The Pride flag he proudly displayed in his “Unity Park” model is not the most recent or inclusive Pride flag. Perhaps he doesn’t fully understand the LGBTQIA+ community he loves so dearly. I invite Mayor Dyer to visit the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno, where we fly the updated Progress Pride flag outside and inside the sanctuary. We have an extra one we’d be happy to lend him to display outside his home.

Kingsburg right to deny Pride month

The Kingsburg City Council’s vote to not support a resolution recognizing Gay Pride Month and the hundreds of city residents in attendance who didn’t want this in their city was not an act of bigotry. It was an act of Americanism. 

Several “pro-resolution” people who spoke at the council meeting described the plight of the gay community: higher suicide rate, isolation, depression, fear to leave home, etc. 

Without fact-checking the validity of their assertions, one still has to ask, “how does dedicating one month to recognize LGBTQ people & flying the gay Pride flag over City Hall fix any of their issues”? It doesn’t.

For your journalist Marek Warszawski to label the no vote homophobic and the residents of Kingsburg bigots shows how small a man he is, who doesn’t respect the democratic process.

The resolution submitted by Councilwoman Hurtado was simply a way to assist the LGBTQ community to get their feet into a quiet town with more gay action to come. 

An insurrection of sort, but without the violence.

Keep cops at FUSD campuses

I urge the honorable Fresno Unified school board members to vote “yes” in retaining police officers on our school campuses.

As a former Fresno Unified principal and also having served on two separate Northern California school boards, the overwhelming priority message from students and parents was ensuring school safety. 

Stop GOP attacks on voting rights

The sad decline of the Republican party into a cult of personality, white supremacy and baseless conspiracy theories is without precedent in American history. It is no longer the party of Lincoln that was imbued with democratic ideals, equality and freedom for all. It has become slavish in its desire to regain power to dehumanize the less affluent, people of color and to marginalize those whose sexuality is not part of the white evangelical's credo.

I fear for the health of our democracy if we allow this party to regain the House and Senate, whose self-interest and insularity are not the beliefs of the majority of Americans. The recent attacks against voter rights are a path to minority rule. We must not allow this to happen!

U.S. wrong to block UN votes against Israel

The U.S. provides over $10 million dollars a day of our tax money in military aid to Israel. Meanwhile, recently, 14 of the 15 countries on the United Nations Security Council were in favor of criticizing Israel’s evictions and demolitions of Palestinian properties in occupied East Jerusalem. But the U.S. blocked the statements.

Israel has a long history of demolishing the homes of Palestinians and building settlements in Palestinian territory, even though they are illegal under international law. There are now more than 400,000 settlers in Palestinian territory, about twice as many as 30 years ago.

Palestinians have objected to having their houses and neighborhoods demolished. They have objected peacefully to having their land stolen and being occupied by Israel. And while the United Nations always sides, with the Palestinians, the U.S. always blocks any action. While sending rockets into Israel is certainly objectionable, what peaceful recourse do they have?

And what has been Israel’s response? Rafat Tanani, his pregnant wife and four children, ages 7 and younger, were killed after an Israeli warplane reduced their four-story apartment building to rubble in the town of Beit Lahia, residents said. “It was a massacre,” said Sadallah Tanani, another relative.

Fresno PD contributed to woman’s death

I can envision a scenario where police chase a suspect who has killed and they believe will kill again. They don’t know who he is or how to find him if they lose him. It would be tragic if an innocent person lost their life in the course of that, but at least it would be lost in the attempt to save other lives.

That is not what happened in downtown Fresno recently. Police were chasing a suspect they knew, saying afterward they knew where to find him. He was wanted on “weapons charges,” whatever that means. What rational, legal, or moral right do police have to put the lives of everyone on the street in danger to win this round, when they could just have waited for him to go wherever they knew they could find him. De-escalate.

It was their decisions, as much as the suspect’s, that took Hannah Pimentel’s life. How many police vehicles were involved, how much time? How long before police are held accountable for outcomes they could reasonably have anticipated and avoided if they saw their job as protecting the lives of Fresno citizens? Is this what they need more money for?

This story was originally published June 6, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Fresno and the Pride flag: Letters to the editor, June 6, 2021."