Fresno Bee letters: Renaming foothill town, COVID vaccines, illegal immigration

Let’s talk over renaming S-Valley

I believe when confronted with the hypocrisy of pledging to uphold that which is the vision and guiding principles of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and permitting a community name synonymous with a pejorative, that it will be clear that we as a community have reached a juncture that necessitates renaming.

The Rename S-Valley Coalition has a single prevailing question: Does the current name reflect the stated vision of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors (“working together for a quality of life for all”), while embodying their guiding principles (“Respecting and embracing ethnic and cultural diversity”), making it an appropriate name for a Fresno County community? Our request to the board is simple: Host a community meeting to discuss this question.

The supervisor representing S-Valley, Nathan Magsig, prevented the former CAO from including the topic as a Board of Supervisors’ agenda item.

As people agree that names like “Squaw” are offensive, people are forced to ask “Why?” People who are unfamiliar with the word, its history and meaning, look into it. For the Native community, raising awareness is only the beginning. Changing names and recognizing MMIW on May 5, as a National Awareness Day, is a good place to start.

Making State Center representative

Former State Center Community College District Trustee Ron Manfredi, in his Jan. 23 op-ed, regurgitated an age-old establishment narrative in falsely accusing the current SCCCD trustees of “gerrymandering.” It’s obvious that Manfredi didn’t attend any of the community meetings or spend any time at all fact-checking himself before launching into a premeditated smear campaign.

Anyone with the slightest understanding of Madera County demographics recognizes that the western, more urban, Madera city core is substantially different than the rural, more conservative eastern portion of the county.

The state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission recognizes that too, splitting the county along similar lines for federal and state electoral districts. And they spent hundreds of hours on the topic for an entire year.

Now both halves of the county will have the opportunity for SCCCD representation that serves their needs. Currently, Madera County has only one trustee, who lives in the city of Madera, but counts on the conservative voters in the eastern half for his votes and re-election.

The SCCCD districts have been misaligned for decades. The new board members have actually “un-gerrymandered’ them. Kudos to them.

COVID vaccines not getting to Hispanics

During the January-February rollout last year of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, 12,928,749 individuals received the vaccine, and only 11.5% of those individuals were Hispanic (CDC, 2021). The low vaccination rates among the Hispanic community are a public health concern.

The Kaiser Family Foundation published a research article that analyzed immigration status and how it affected whether an individual was vaccinated or not. The remarkable findings were as follows: immigrant families were unsure if they could get the vaccine since they were denied COVID-19 relief help. Also, most believed receiving the vaccine could affect their immigration status (KFF, 2021).

The results suggest that immigration status does affect if a Hispanic individual gets vaccinated. Additionally, Hispanic work areas are not mandating the vaccine. In August 2021, ABC News reported the significant corporations mandating employee vaccination: Cisco, CVS Health, Delta Airlines, DoorDash, Facebook, Ford, Google, McDonald’s, and Netflix (Messenger, 2021). Very minimal of the Hispanic populations are represented in these organizations.

Hispanics accounted for 43.4%, grounds cleaning, maintenance, 36.7%, and construction, 27.3% (BLS, 2015).

White-collar jobs are mandating the vaccine while Hispanic workplaces aren’t.

Clear reasons for illegal immigration

The Biden administration states it is baffled why migrants are crossing our border illegally. It astounds me that they are baffled. America told them to come and to get the free stuff: housing, health care, education, food stamps, and other benefits, just for crossing the border. Little vetting and no deportation threat to most. America offers opportunities beyond belief for those folks, and when Biden stopped the wall and opened the gates, they are taking advantage of the golden opportunity.

I thought the vice president was going to look into the root causes. It is simple. The migrants are fleeing poverty and lack of freedom.

What is scary is that the people in the White House advising the president are “baffled” by this activity. Sadly, they can’t fix the problem unless they start building the wall. Joe’s ego and supporters won’t stand for that.

The flood of migrants that are coming also put to rest the arguments of “systemic racism.” The people who are crossing the border are not ignorant. Why would they enter such a “racist” country?

America is the land of opportunity. How sad that the Biden administration doesn’t understand that concept.

Islas wrong to bully vaccine opponents

One of the techniques that racists and bullies use is marginalizing the “opposition.” By calling names it makes the targeted class “less than people,” and therefore worthy of ridicule and derision and allows the aggressor to define who and what the opposition is.

Fresno Unified Trustee Veva Islas appears to like the ability to bully people with whom she disagrees, and in this case those she disagrees with are called “anti-vaxxers.” That pejorative is instantly understood as synonymous with a knuckle-dragging, uninformed, flat-earther and immediately elevates Islas’ position as superior. That’s what racists do.

“I am opposed to anti-vaxxers. I am. I won’t sugarcoat it,” Islas said.

Here’s a simple test: Everywhere in the Islas story where she says “anti-vaxxers,” substitute the “N” word and see how it reads. Ouch. Kind of puts things in a different perspective when you don’t “sugarcoat” them, doesn’t it?

This story was originally published February 13, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Fresno Bee letters: Renaming foothill town, COVID vaccines, illegal immigration."