Community Roundtable

All American history is NOT glorious, but it can be illuminating.  We need to educate ourselves.  I agree with Nancy Pelosi, that it should “all be up for review; subject everything to scrutiny and make a decision”.   All the monuments to Confederates (traitors to our nation, who fought to uphold human bondage) should be removed to museums or Confederate cemeteries.  The tributes glorifying those who sought to eradicate Native Americans should be expunged.  Symbols of white supremacy should be uprooted.  Some of our historical figures are begging for contextualization; what did they do for our country?   Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Washington & Jefferson, imperfect but important men.   I urge you to Google: Wallbuilders,  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Slavery in Virginia.  “These two prominent Founding Fathers were pioneers in the movement to end slavery in their state and in the nation.”  Time & events hold sway.  An interesting discussion online: NPR 6/23/20, David Greene and Manisha Sinha, professor of American History  of University of Connecticut.

Trish Forsyth Voss

Local governments owe it to their residents to take necessary precautions to ensure that all eligible voters can safely exercise their right & duty to vote, during this pandemic, in the coming presidential election.  People should not have to choose between possibly contracting Covid-19  and casting a ballot in the most crucial election of our lifetime.  Voters should NOT have to stand in long lines for hours to vote or have to wait until election day to find their polling place was shutdown.  I applaud our Governor, JB Pritzker, for signing Senate bill 1863 & House bill 2238, which expands early voting hours at permanent polling places, and makes Election day a state holiday!  “I LUV our Gov!”   Election authorities must mail or email applications for a mail-in ballot to registered voters; those submitting applications by Oct 1, should receive a ballot by October 6, 2020.   The new Illinois laws take effect immediately and apply only to the 2020 general election.

Trish Forsyth Voss

“Defund Police” is a detractive rallying cry of protesters and reformers, who are fed-up with the extreme police brutality we’ve seen displayed far too often.  RELAX!   This mantra really means ‘scaling budgets back some’, and reflects a growing momentum to reallocate more resources to agencies providing community services, such as violence-prevention efforts, youth-homelessness programs, opioid taskforces  & mental-health response teams to better manage community needs.  Police forces have been stretched too thin, having officers respond to problems that they’re not always adequately-trained to resolve: growing mental-health issues, school-behavior problems, dogcatcher, etc.   Allow cops to focus on potentially-violent crimes, but recognize that there are systemic-problems that must be addressed & reformed.  Policing policies are largely set at the local level.  Lynda Garcia, Leadership Conference of Civil & Human Rights said, “A budget is a moral document, and where cities invest their money speaks to their values, and we have power to make changes”.

Trish Forsyth Voss

Increase charges for Derek Chauvin, arrest the other three officers who assisted him in murdering George Floyd; Stop chokeholds!   The crackdown on PEACEFUL protesters is not the answer; we need a crackdown on brutal, lawless officers, who show no real regard for citizen’s rights.  Six officers were charged on 6/2/20 for breaking a car window, assaulting & tasing college students therein.  That’s what’s needed; quick, appropriate responses to police brutality.  End blanket-immunity for police; a badge should not be a license to maim or kill human-beings.  Crises in America is exacerbated by Trump threatening to activate military troops against citizens.   Amidst the “biggest health crises since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the largest economic crises since the Depression, and the greatest social unrest since the 1960s”, we have organized-saboteurs, race-agitators, Boogaloo-boys infiltrating protesters to ignite a race-war.   We need to vote the Constitution-tramplers OUT, and change policing laws.  Criminals should be arrested, with equal protections under the law.

Trish Forsyth Voss

Covid-19 changes everything!  Schools will try to resume this fall, but the curriculum might involve a mix of alternating in-person learning with remote-learning, fewer days at school, reduced class sizes, intermittent closures.   We know not what the next few months will bring.  Biology and viruses don’t care about politics; we should be guided by the science, making informed decisions for the health & safety of our students and staff.   Districts will try to prepare for contingencies, but how do kids social distance on buses?  Public schools serve different roles than just education; they provide structure and essential social services, our kids are fed and nurtured, and most experience safety at school.  This period of quarantine has exacerbated domestic and child abuse, with many parents isolated, unemployed and anxious.     The National Domestic Violence Hotline # is 1-800-799-7233 (website: www.thehotline.org).  Help is available 24/7.   Reach out for help!   The costs are mixed for reopening our economy and society; what costs are we willing to pay?    (Search: Kawasaki disease.)

Trish Forsyth Voss

I believe our Governor’s first priority is the lives & safety of Illinoisans. On 5/12/20, Illinois saw an increase of 4,014 infected persons, that day’s total infected 83,021, the death toll nearly 4,000 in our state; those numbers increasing daily.   This weekend the U.S. death toll will undoubtedly reach 100,000, loved individuals, abruptly reiven from us.   There are fights underway in most states about when and how to reopen — to proceed with caution or throw it to the wind.  In ‘quarantine fatigue’, we yearn to have this nightmare behind us, but it’s NOT!   The new wrinkle — kids are contracting the virus, some dying from ‘pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome’, even as officials debate on reopening schools.  Business owners are understandably upset about their uncertain-prospects.  This feels immensely personal to most of us.  Remember, it’s a Global Pandemic, over 300,000 deaths worldwide.  I want my Governor to proceed with informed-caution.  Financial health is important, but Public Health is ultimately the harbinger of Economic Health.

Trish Forsyth Voss

“Partisanship is a fact of American life”, understated a Pew-Research survey in March, citing that originally majorities in both parties agreed that a range of restrictions were necessary to confront the deadly-epidemic overtaking America, but each week escalates the infections & responses to it.   Immunologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, greatly-trusted on one side of the equation, had to beef-up security due to death threats.   Courageous doctors & nurses are fighting at great self-peril to save lives; an undeniable spirit of solidarity, compassion and ingenuity inspires others, but as pandemic continues to widen exponentially, taking evermore lives in its wake, threatening our economy with a deep-depression, president Trump ramps-up his lies, distortions, firing of government experts, assigning blame to China, attacking blue-state governors, all in a radical re-election-bid, which stokes the worst inclinations among us.  Crowds of terrorist-protesters, armed with assault-rifles threatening law-enforcement officials in several states, presents a window into our tragic, raging-tribalism.   Camps of Love vs Fear!

Trish Forsyth Voss

This pandemic will change everything! From A to Z.   Awareness, Access, Agriculture, Aliens, Automation & Antibodies.  Business-operations, Borders.  Currencies, Communication-mediums, Cults.  Digital-transformation (all-digital-globally), Deliveries, Defense, Deficits, Debt.  Education, Elections, E-commerce, Economics, Environmental-uprisings.  Farmers & Food-distribution, Funereal-practices.  Gatherings, Global-cooperation, Governments.  Healthcare & Hospitals, Humanity & Housing.  Innovations, Incarceration, Immigration, Info-sharing, Infrastructures.  Judicial-reforms & Justice-revolution.  Kin & Kindness, Kymographs,  Learning-methods & Long-term-care.  Meetings, Monitoring, Meat-packers.  National-security & Nation-building.   Online-everything, Oil-dependence.  Politics, Production (in-country).  Quantum-computers, Quarantines, Quacksalvers.  Relocations, Resources, Religious-contravention.   Scientists, Start-ups, Supply-chains, Surveillance.   Telemedicine, Technological-advances, Testing, Travel, Tourism.  Uniters & Universal-health-coverage.  Vaccines, Vegetarians, Video-conferencing, Voting.  Workforces, Workplaces, Warfare.  Xenodiagnostics.  Youthquakes.  Zoom, Zoonotic-research.   This pandemic is changing us already in multifarious ways, many revolutionary, from which we won’t want to go backward.   Re-tooling for a new 21st century-world is a huge, brave undertaking.  Seismic events, such as we’re undergoing, change lives and mindsets.  Like it or not, we’re in for big structural changes to come!

Trish Forsyth Voss

Trump was briefed on outbreak in January by the National Security Council; then he received a memo from Peter Navarro.  HHS Secretary Alex Azar directly, in detail, warned Trump of the pandemic; finally Trump announced limited travel from China.  Late February, hair-on-fire health-experts implored Trump to warn Americans and urge social-distancing, which he did mid-March.  Trump’s desperate attempts to deflect blame, only cause more facts to surface; how he denied, minimized, mocked, and stalled on actions to mitigate the contagion. The president could invoke Defense Production Act now to get rapid-testing ramped-up; why does he neglect to do so?  Trump’s belated decisions & bogus-attempts to rewrite history is NOT helping Americans.  We need millions of tests produced & distributed weekly CDC/FEMA, and full-speed ahead on a vaccine.  China reported six days late!  Withholding WHO funding is like gutting the fire department because they were minutes late to a raging house-fire.  Trump did NOT inherit a broken system; he alone broke it.   Trump has our blood on his hands!

Trish Forsyth Voss

UVBM, Universal-Vote-By-Mail, makes more sense now, than ever before!  Why should anyone have to choose between catching plague and exercising their civic duty? They shouldn’t!  Covid-19 will change how we do everything ongoing, and it has increased the urgency to implement common-sense voting practices.   Americans need to unify: ‘Stand-up’ for fair, safe, simple, secure balloting.  Stop blocking & suppressing citizens from trying to vote!  We need to eliminate caucuses and traditional, expensive polling places.  Twenty-nine states have easy online voter-registration, and five states have ALL mail-in voting, some with secure ballot drop-sites.  Voter turn-out increases, and levels the field for young, old, poor, disabled, minorities.  “Republicans are elected to every level of government in states that vote primarily by mail”, though Trump says that “Republicans lose-out in mail-in voting; it’s horrible, corrupt, a terrible thing!”  When the female reporter asked him why he had done so, he replied, “for me, it is allowed, it’s called out-of-state”.  Unify America!   UVBM, Strengthen our Democracy!

Trish Forsyth Voss