Sylvester L. Salcedo

Everyone has an opinion about race and race relations in America, but to date, I have not heard one concrete, specific solution offered to the nation as a first step. Please, put an end to the War on Drugs in America.  Today.  Now.

This could be the final straw (a discarded syringe: I presume it contains heroin) that breaks the proverbial camel’s back of our children’s attendance at New Haven’s Inter District, Magnet – John C. Daniels School. I found it in the school’s Baldwin Street parking lot on the third day of the new school year, Sept. 3.

Craig Hoffman’s January 15 essay for building a wall is a Janus-faced argument. On one level, he argues that building a wall “will greatly reduce the importation of drugs, guns and human trafficking that currently occurs from Mexico.” On the another level, Hoffman hides or fails to acknowledge that the source of his arguments is the “Build that Wall and Mexico will pay for it” slogan from 2016. That slogan feeds on a sinister, subliminal message that is divisive and obscene. Now that campaign slogan has turned into a presidential priority and it is painful and costly for those forced to work without pay.

On this Memorial Day, imagine this.  It’s late in the year 2007.  A company of Connecticut Army National Guard troops are stationed somewhere in Iraq, let’s say a small village called Daskara Nahr.  This village, once a hotbed of Islamic extremist activity, has been pacified and is now considered a model converted territory run by a trusted village chieftain allegedly known to be cooperative and friendly with the coalition troops assigned to stand guard duty and supervise the “Democratization program.”