What’s the Matter?
I greatly appreciate your insightful piece about law enforcement’s continuous efforts to withhold critically important video evidence from public scrutiny (“Eyes Wide Open,” Aug. 10). However, I would like to address an oft-repeated misunderstanding that seriously muddies the question. You write: “The ongoing debate over public access to police body- and dash-cam videos can be viewed through the lens that sees a national tug-of-war over whether black lives or blue lives matter more.”
I don’t qualify for membership in Black Lives Matter, but I do belong to a number of allied groups, and according to published BLM information that I have seen, that movement has never suggested “that your lives matter any less,” but rather “that Black lives matter just as much.” Another slogan that has recently taken traction among some allies is “How can All Lives Matter when Black and Brown lives don’t?” This essential point is frequently missed by those blinded by white privilege, but it’s easily understood when the will to do so is there.
Santa Rosa
Meat? Murder
Today’s 10 highest-grossing box office releases are about animals: Finding
Dory, The Jungle Book, Zootopia,
The Secret Life of Pets and Kung Fu Panda 3. Nearly half of our households include a dog and nearly 40 percent have a cat. Two-thirds of us view them as family members and cherish them accordingly. We love our animals to death. Literally.
For every cat, dog or other animal that we love and cherish, we put 500 through months of caging, crowding, deprivation, mutilation and starvation, before we take their very lives, cut their dead bodies into little pieces and shove those into our mouths. And that doesn’t even include Dory and billions of her little friends, because we haven’t figured out how to count individual aquatic animals that we grind up for human or animal feed.
The good news is that we have a choice every time we visit a restaurant or grocery store. We can choose live foods—yellow and green vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, grains, as well as a rich variety of grain and nut-based meats and dairy products. Or we can choose dead animals, their body parts and other products of their abuse. What will it be?
Santa Rosa
Friendly Correction
Sonoma County Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi was a supporter of District Attorney Jill Ravitch when she last ran for office in 2014. Pozzi called the Bohemian this week to clarify that while she may have supported Ravitch and considers her a colleague, she is not a friend of Ravitch, as last week’s news story, “Eyes Wide Open,” claimed. We regret the error.
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