Using illegal labor should be illegal
We need jobs! Don't tell me that crops are rotting in the fields when I drive past three construction sites every day and no non-Latino in sight?
I drive past two roofing jobs and no non-Latino in sight. I drive by three house-painting jobs every day and there might be one non-Latino and two Latinos painting ... this in just one neighborhood in a midsize city at the foot of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. Illegal is illegal, and using illegals should be illegal too!
JAMES WILBURN, Fort Oglethorpe
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Cartoon shows lack of concern
Cartoonist Clay Bennett's characterization of Signal Mountain football team as "illegals" was not humorous. It was tasteless and obviously penned without any concern for the young man at the center of the controversy, his teammates, coaches and Signal Mountain families.
Unfortunately, we live in a society today where there are many who take pleasure in criticizing others without considering the consequences.
I was glad to see Ward Gossett's article in Friday's newspaper about Tim McClendon and Signal Mountain High School. In retrospect, he should have dug into the facts surrounding this issue and done his interview before writing his first columns on the subject. Regina Hickl-Szabo's excellent article in Sunday's Perspective section pretty much says it all.
Tim McClendon was clearly not recruited to play football for Signal Mountain. To deny him from participating in a sports program or anyone else transferring to a school for clearly defined and approved hardship reasons, is very wrong. To further penalize his teammates in the process is unconscionable.
I hope that the TSSAA commissioners will have the courage to change their stance on this matter and do what is in the best interest of the young men and women whose sports activities they govern.
DON WHITFIELD
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Americans losing their vigilance
Regarding a letter on Oct. 14: Wow! The Founding Fathers were an elite, all right, but maybe not an aristocracy. The right to vote was based on owing property which not only left out women, but small artisans, professionals and others who only owned their intelligence and skills.
We really are better off today.
But the fight goes on.
The information tools are in the hands of believers in the status quo, or worse. I am an old lady, and I have watched as these tools have been gathered into hard right-wing hands -- see the Chattanooga Times Free Press, owned by those people in Arkansas. See Rupert Murdoch!
Freedom requires vigilance, and we are not as vigilant as we should be.
Is news gossip and sensation? Or is it based on facts and information?
Like the ancient Romans, too many of us are satisfied with bread and circuses.
NANCY R. SMITH, Dayton, Tenn.