Assault on educators

As a 31-year-old educator within the state of Florida, I strongly oppose Senate Invoice 1014. I sincerely really feel that state legislators are in search of methods to make life harder for educators. .

We deserve to have the ability to stand collectively to speak about our working situations and the training situations of scholars. These are the lecturers who by no means stopped from day one of many pandemic. We’ve by no means stopped working and now we have by no means stopped caring about our youngsters. Neither do bus drivers, meals service employees and guards.

This invoice is an affront to all lecturers and different educators within the public faculty system. What’s the purpose for this invoice? This doesn’t resolve any actual downside. SB 1014 will make it extraordinarily tough for lecturers to keep up their membership in our skilled associations and is meant to depart educators and not using a collective voice. It’s nothing greater than an assault on the individuals who work to coach the kids of Florida.

Lawmakers should cease creating issues and work to unravel them.

Carmen Ward, Trainer / President, Alachua County Training Affiliation

Give attention to metropolis providers

Because the mayor of a small city, the mayor of Gainesville, Lauren Poe, ought to give attention to the fundamental providers that native governments are supposed to offer: regulation enforcement, emergency response and infrastructure reminiscent of than roads and sewers. The City of Gainesville additionally supplies public providers to its residents (and surrounding residents).

As a substitute of speaking about gun legal guidelines (which metropolis leaders haven’t got the ability to vary), racism (which is in folks’s hearts and never managed by the federal government) and poisonous masculinity (an idea wholly invented), Poe is anticipated to foyer for Gainesville Regional Utilities to decrease tariffs and for the municipal authorities to scale back property taxes in order that the residents of Gainesville can give attention to the wants of their very own households as an alternative of asking. authorities monetary assist.

Daniel Galligan, Gainesville

Saving laws

In response to a March 26 letter to the editor, claiming that laws handed by the Florida legislature is meant to criminalize peaceable protests, nothing may very well be farther from the reality. The laws goals to criminalize surrounding automobiles and blocking roads, which may trigger critical hurt to others.

Peaceable protest is about making voices heard. Blocking surrounding roads and automobiles is a life threatening tactic.

Please ask the Senate Felony Justice Committee to vote sure on Invoice 484. It’s a invoice that can save lives.

Barbara Ferris, Gainesville

Democracy wants social requirements

In my humble opinion, now we have had not less than 4 years of destruction of outdated social norms. So in my pondering it begins with massive funds like that of the Koch brothers who funded the election of state governments that twisted election legal guidelines.

The Supreme Courtroom’s Residents United choice dominated that companies are folks and limitless political spending is free speech. After which there was the “inventive destruction” by social media of newspapers and investigative journalism in addition to the explosion of “yellow” journalism. These occasions allowed for demagogic arguments that stoked worry of the “different” in an economic system that noticed middle-class jobs disappear by the acceleration of commerce and automation.

Sadly, arguments primarily based on private assaults on “the opposite” have gotten widespread political discourse. These arguments set the stage for what occurred in Atlanta and infect the minds of a era of kids.

Eli Glazer, Gainesville