Wants more coverage of organized protests
I’ve believed in the power of the press since first reading my father’s letters to the editor as a child, and later, my own. I saw that power during the ’70s when the press here demanded the sunshine of the Sunshine Law. Committed citizens, editors and reporters worked to make our city better.
Why not cover the protests taking place at least once a week since January? Only two articles so far. Two! When your reporter says several hundred and the overhead drone says more than 5,000? Two to three hundred people come out each week to make their positions clear. In addition, at least once a month since January, thousands here have demonstrated. We’re pleasant. We are law-abiding. We smile. We wave. Cars honk at us and wave back. But in that record of events (the TFP), we barely exist.
So I ask: Don’t quote the opposition that wasn’t there. What did our speakers have to say? Don’t quote local TV channels (with or without attribution) without checking their figures before you print. Talk to the organizers. Nobody pays us (these signs can be pricey). Ignoring us does not erase us.
We are out because we care.
Helen Barrett
Christians drifting away from Jesus
In his reflection on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, Rep. Greg Martin asks, “Are we better off for drifting so far from the faith that once helped shape our country?”
I assume he means Christianity. According to Pew Research, 62% of Americans identify as Christian. Judaism is the second-most popular religion in the U.S., at 2%.
Americans’ growing skepticism of organized religion is warranted. We’ve all witnessed the unholy marriage of Christianity and U.S. politics, and the constant displays of hypocrisy by Christians in positions of power.
Tennessee’s Republican supermajority, with its evangelical governor and legislators, regularly impose their personal beliefs on us — restricting what can be taught in schools and universities, using conspiracy theories to undermine public health, endangering women by interfering in their medical care.
The news has become a steady stream of cartoon villains: Scripture-quoting politicians ignoring wildly unChristian behavior within their own ranks; preachers cheating on their wives; youth ministers molesting kids; evangelical voters cheering on policies that hurt the sick, the hungry, the poor, and especially the prisoner and the stranger.
Americans are drifting away from Christianity because the Christians trying to control America have drifted away from Jesus. Any fix must start there.
Allison Gorman
Worried about authoritarianism
Our nation is spiraling downward from democracy to authoritarianism. That is not hyperbole. Never have we had millions of citizens in cities all across America protesting a president’s treatment of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants, not just white immigrants. We have never deported people without due process, until now.
I attended the protest in Chattanooga and have never been more proud of the thousands who turned out. Many members of my church were there, and that made me even prouder. We were protesting the actions of our authoritarian president. He is assaulting every American institution we have honored for centuries.
He attacks our courts, news media, science, Congress, law firms, USAID, trade, allies, educational institutions and wants to change our laws to fit his agenda. He is a wannabe Mussolini if you understand the history of the 1930s.
I cannot think of him as “my president,” and that saddens me. But he doesn’t stand for any of the values I stand for: truth, free speech, rule of law, fair play, separation of church and state, and more important, “the Golden Rule.”
As a born-again Christian, I’m afraid where this will end.
Wilbourne C. Markham Sr.
Signal Mountain
Where was example of Christ in vote?
Since they present themselves as Christians, I would like to ask Congressman Fleischmann and Sens. Blackburn and Hagerty if they feel that they were following the example and teachings of Christ when they voted for legislation that took food and health care from the poor to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.
I don’t expect an answer.
Al Ezzell
Erlanger welcomes neurology residents
On July 1, the Erlanger Baroness health system welcomed its first neurology residents as part of the Chattanooga campus of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. These young doctors have committed to treating disorders of the brain. Now, the Baroness is a lady of a certain age, and she would be the first to tell you that neurology education started in July 1899, the day she opened her doors, because wherever there is a hospital, there is someone sharing the findings of a neurologic exam. There is always somebody showing the signs of a stroke, a seizure or some other disability.
Wherever there are people, there will be patients, and Erlanger is the destination for many of them — carried along in vast tributaries by ambulance and by helicopter. This river never runs dry, because our community’s faith in the Baroness never runs dry.
My colleagues and I will guide these residents for three years. Hopefully, at some point, they will come to realize that a medical education is lifelong, and that they better get going. A neurology education rises steep like the Tennessee mountains. The world looks a little different from the top.
Neurology is the custodian of the brain, protector of an organ often imitated but never truly rivaled by AI. The brain is the organ that makes us human. Along with its projections, the brain allows us to move and to look, to dance and to see, and, finally, to connect and to understand. Imagine protecting all that. Imagine being a neurologist.
Dr. James Fleming
Assistant Professor, UT-Erlanger Neurology
Less fortunate to pay more with budget bill
A recent news release from Sen. Blackburn’s office claims, among other things, the Big Beautiful Bill (for Billionaires) will provide “the largest tax cut in our nation’s history” and “supercharge our” economy. When has that ever happened when Republicans enact a “tax cut”?
As usual, in this Republican “tax cut,” the top 0.1% will save about $400,000. That will not impact their lives one bit. Those making less than $51,000 a year will see a tax increase of as much as $1,000. That will negatively impact their lives a great many bits.
Blackburn claims “this legislation will do so much to improve the lives of hardworking Tennesseans.” By making millions of them pay higher income taxes? By making it more difficult to obtain food stamps? By throwing them off Medicare? That’s Blackburn’s idea of improvements?
Those are only part of what the BBB(B) has in store for us. Besides the negative economic impact on average Americans, it also allows the president to ignore the Constitution and take away some of our most basic rights.
When Republicans propose legislation, it rarely benefits average working Americans. The $2.4 trillion the BBB(B) adds to the national debt? Guess who’ll be responsible for that.
Ted Tumelaire
City should get graffiti under control
We’ve just finished a cruise on the river Danube which took us through Hungary, Austria and Germany. And no matter where we visited, most of these beautiful old cities were marred by unintelligible graffiti on every public space.
More and more we see this same puerile crap beginning to appear on walls, underpasses, etc., in Chattanooga.
Our local government needs to do something to ensure we nip this trend in the bud, lest we fall prey to the outrageous desecration of public spaces I’ve witnessed in Europe.
Howard Brown