Opinion | Police Violence in Portland Protests

To the Editor:

“Violence Is Not an Answer,” by Chuck Lovell (Op-Ed, Aug. 4), is an insult to the thousands of Portlanders who have been indiscriminately gassed, beaten and shot with crowd-control weapons by the Portland, Ore., police night after night, simply for protesting racist police violence.

Mr. Lovell, the chief of the Police Bureau in Portland, claims that “as police officers, our duty is to uphold the rights of anyone to assemble peacefully and engage in free speech.” But the police in Portland are making a mockery of the First Amendment by using excessive force, violence and intimidation to suppress free speech in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The A.C.L.U. of Oregon had to sue federal agents and police in Portland for violently attacking journalists and legal observers, as well as medics tending to the very community members whom the police harmed.

Chief Lovell is right that violence is not the answer. That includes police violence. If the police don’t want us to take their resources (“defund the police”), then the Portland police and Mayor Ted Wheeler need to use our community’s resources to heed their own advice, take accountability for their abuses, respect the Constitution and ensure that Black Lives Matter in Portland.

Kelly Simon
Portland, Ore.
The writer is interim legal director of the A.C.L.U. of Oregon.

Black Women’s Reproductive Rights

To the Editor:

Re “The Ghost of Margaret Sanger” (column, July 26):

Planned Parenthood has long denounced Margaret Sanger’s eugenicist beliefs, recognizing the need to engage in anti-racist work as a 104-year-old institution. Covid-19 leaves no confusion about the effects of systemic racism. Yet Ross Douthat conflates the disparate impact of public policy on Black communities with the fundamental right of Black women to control our own bodies. Birthrates do not equal power, unless you’re a white supremacist.

Black women know reproductive control began at the auction block, when our ancestors’ forced reproduction was the engine that drove the American economy. Whether we’re attacked for having children and needing support, or for having an abortion, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

Mr. Douthat insinuates that his argument may produce “intersectional dilemmas no doctrine can resolve.” Our experiences are intersectional, but there’s no dilemma: Our bodies are our own, and we won’t apologize for it.

Alexis McGill Johnson
New York
The writer is president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Betraying U.S. Forces: A Republican Habit

To the Editor:

Re “Trump Says He and Putin Didn’t Talk About Bounties” (news article, July 30):

President Trump has betrayed American forces by giving Vladimir Putin a free pass on his reported bounty payments to Taliban-linked militants for American lives. Mr. Trump’s acquiescence, if motivated by his personal goals, such as Russian electoral interference on his behalf, is treasonous, but not unique. Leaders of the modern Republican Party have repeatedly sought electoral advantage by disregarding the lives of American soldiers and government officials.

In 1968 Richard Nixon’s team sabotaged talks that might have ended the Vietnam War, because the Democrats would have gotten credit and might have cost Nixon a close election. Similarly, Ronald Reagan’s campaign and leading Republicans worked to thwart a deal for the release of American hostages in Iran in order to avoid an “October surprise” that would have helped President Jimmy Carter’s re-election bid.

Why have G.O.P. leaders shown themselves willing to betray American troops and public servants for partisan gain? The answer seems to lie in a worldview that rejects the principle of a loyal opposition and, quite conceivably, democracy itself. Can they be held to account?

Daniel Lieberfeld
Pittsburgh
The writer is a retired professor of history and politics at Duquesne University.

Internet for All

To the Editor:

Re “The Limits of Broadband” (editorial, July 19), about how many “Americans sheltering from Covid-19 are discovering the limitations of the country’s cobbled-together broadband service”:

Your editorial correctly declared that high-speed internet connections are a “civil rights issue” and that service is “often unavailable or too expensive in rural communities and low-income neighborhoods.”

As the president of Midtel, an upstate New York telecommunications company that serves underserved rural areas, I can say from experience that smart government policies are a key to bridging the digital divide.

New York’s current policies send mixed messages, discouraging the infrastructure investments necessary to make full connectivity a reality today and into the future.

My company has received more than $15.5 million in state grants to replace our copper network with fiber, enabling us to bring customers fast, reliable and affordable high-speed service. But the state is taxing fiber in the Department of Transportation right-of-way, a space traditional utilities get to use free. This added tax, which we legally cannot pass on to our customers, makes already expensive projects cost-prohibitive.

If New York is indeed serious about closing the digital divide and enabling all New Yorkers to prosper in the new normal, it must enable the industry to make the goal of broadband for all a reality while paving the way for next-generation connectivity.

Jim Becker
Middleburgh, N.Y.