Letters for Jan 25, 2023

Honest reckoning

The Spokane County Human Rights Task Force would like to thank Dr. Larry Cebula and his students for their work in uncovering and documenting the racial covenants in our region (“Project Covenant: Eastern Washington University research unearths the threads of historical housing discrimination, ” Dec. 11).

Systemic racism is insidious and its reach was not isolated to the Jim Crow South as we often forget. We are not immune. Every community has a responsibility to confront our own histories, even when those histories are ugly and uncomfortable. Dr. Cebula and his students are demonstrating what that entails. We bear a responsibility to our past and if we are to ensure our children and their children live in a better world, an honest reckoning with history is a good place to start.

Paul Schneider

Spokane

Thank you, Mike Fancher

Thank you to Mike Fancher for your guest opinion in the Jan. 15 Spokesman-Review (“Legislators’ work belongs to the people, out in the open”). It explained how some of our state legislators are attempting to circumvent the public records act.

Some have refused records requests based on Article II, Section 17 of the state Constitution that was put in place to protect legislators’ oral debate from libel action.

Shame on you who have done that. Our current Congress in D.C. is not something to be emulated. (See “How Congress Stopped Working,” ProPublica.org) We need our state legislators to represent us openly and lead the country out of this mess. Work. (More than the two days a week that the Congress in D.C. works in full session).

I’m grateful to Mike Fancher for his column and his presidency of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and their work watchdogging our elected officials who should not need this oversight. Show Congress how work should be done, together and openly for the good of all of us.

Kathleen Smith

Spokane

Fentanyl solutions

I read about all the fentanyl overdoses both around here and nationwide. It makes me sick to my stomach and would like to suggest two additional tools in the toolbox to help in preventing some of the staggering amount of over overdoses, especially in kids. You may not agree with them, but just hear me out.

First, we know that EMTs (police also, I believe) carry the Naloxone spray which counters and stops the opioid overdose in its tracks if administered before the heart stops. That’s what the drug is designed to do, nothing else to my knowledge. Why can’t we give it to the students to carry in their backpacks along with providing proper training for administering it? If it just saves one child (which I doubt, it will save many more) isn’t it worth it?

Second, could we create an easy type of testing kit that will identify if a pill has fentanyl and how much it contains? Allow the kits to be sold at stores just like pregnancy tests.

Fentanyl pills will not stop being flooded into the U.S., as long as there is such high demand for them. Plus, I bet China just loves to see so many kids overdosing over here. That is where the ingredients are created, then shipped to Mexico for the pills to be created.

Can we just think outside the box? Current solutions are not enough.

Jason Ernsting

Nine Mile Falls