Attacks on president won't stop until he's gone
The incessant drumbeat against President Donald Trump by the liberal media, self-serving politicians, prima donna millionaire professional athletes, Hollywood, unhappy people whose candidate lost the election, and others with their own negative agendas will not stop their attacks until the president is drummed out of office and they get their pound of flesh.
Dale E. Yoder
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City can create its own symbols for reconciliation
I'm glad our city is taking the events of Charlottesville seriously and our own history in marginalizing those made in God's image. As a fifth-generation son of the South, I pray about my part in that.
Symbols make a difference. I'd like to offer a few suggestions:
* A good, old-fashioned monument to emancipation (look up "Bussa statue").
* A monument to Walden Hospital, the first black-owned hospital in Chattanooga. Black folks didn't have to be treated in hospital basements anymore. The great Juliette Derricotte died there.
* A monument to local black mill workers. Blacks were not allowed to work in mills in surrounding areas, but Chattanooga was different.
* Recognition of our refugee community: epic, heroic lives of otherwise common people living and working in our town.
I'd love to contribute to any of those.
Sam Gowin
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Don't destroy all monuments, move them
I am a 71-year-old white Southerner. My ancestors fought for the South during the Civil War, and I grew up thinking of Robert E. Lee as a Southern gentleman and war hero. My father used the N-word to put down anyone or anything.
I understand why many Southerners have sympathy for the Confederacy, but as I matured, I was able think outside the box I grew up in.
I believe that Confederacy sympathizers should not continue to stick it to African-Americans, white Americans, nor the USA, by waving Confederate flags and displaying their Confederate heroes in public places where they must be observed every day.
While I propose that such commemorations be removed I do not want them destroyed, but saved for history in proper places such as museums and military parks, or an idea I saw in Budapest, Hungary, a city that had been occupied by the Soviet Union may be plausible.
After Hungary broke from the USSR, it removed Soviet monuments and placed them in a country setting without any fanfare, just a place to be seen by those interested.
John Winesett, Lakesite, Tenn.
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Demand change, protect democracy
More than 50 percent of our country does not endorse this immoral agenda. We have now been cheated out of two intelligent, qualified people (Al Gore and Hillary Clinton) who won the popular vote for the position of president of the U.S.
It's time for those of us who value decency and justice to demand change. We must challenge those who support the Republican agenda that favors big business, corporate malfeasance and the 1 percent at the expense of the rest of us (95 percent).
How long will our fledgling democratic republic be able to withstand these assaults on our basic constitutional rights? How long will you and I be able to stand in an environment focused on keeping everyone (but the 1 percent) down?
Judith Petersen-Benn