A person walks along a homeless encampment on East 12th Street in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
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We can’t sleep on
homeless problem
Re: “State’s homeless numbers skyrocket” (Page A1, Dec. 28).
Thank you for the article regarding homelessness. Considering the magnitude of the issue, there need to be programs to get people off the streets and have them triaged by those qualified to address their issues — be it no resources, addiction or incapacity.
Perhaps each state, using federal matching funds, could develop appropriate facilities in open, semi-rural spaces to house and address the issues. There are colleges and universities that have people being educated in fields of medicine, psychology, social services who could do their clinical time in such places.
Those who scoff at using resources for helping people and addressing issues may not understand that not caring for people can lead to more unpleasant outcomes in our communities than people just “sleeping” in the streets.
Gary Branchaud
San Leandro
U.S. tainted by
Israel’s bloody response
Benjamin Netanyahu’s retaliatory daily massacres of the caged population of Gaza are obscene. It’s worse than one Guernica every day.
At the same time, the government encourages increased land grabs and settler and army violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. By supplying the bombs and phosphorus to Israel, the American government is making us accomplices. I am afraid our government is clothing us and our children with a shame that will stick for a long, long time.
An Iraqi jewelry store owner in Scottsdale, Ariz., once told me that he did not blame the United States because “America and Israel were married,” as he put it. In that case, the American partner in the couple needs to develop a backbone and show some really tough love to rein Israel in. America should refuse to give military aid and allow U.N. Resolutions to pass and carry weight.
Scott Higgins
Oakland
Support effort to stop
cervical cancer
Just as polio was — and still is — a silent threat that often displays no visible symptoms in many infected people, so too is cervical cancer.
This January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month.
The wild poliovirus infected around 350,000 children in 1988. The incidence of the disease has decreased by more than 99 percent worldwide thanks to mass immunization campaigns funded by world governments and public and private sector donors like Rotary.
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women around the world, and in 2020, an estimated 600,000 cases were diagnosed, resulting in more than 342,000 deaths.
Yet such deaths can — and should — be prevented with vaccines and screening. Support Rotary and the WHO in eliminating cervical cancer.
Richard Godfrey
Fremont
SCOTUS should leave
ballot issue to states
The U.S. Supreme Court is on the verge of figuring out how to handle Donald Trump and the states that want him off the next election ballots.
There is no question that Trump formed a mob and directed them to attack Congress and the congressional act of affirming the last election. Lives were lost and the vice president was in fear for his life. Hundreds of men have been incarcerated for following Trump’s calls to arms, which did happen.
But SCOTUS wants to avoid another scandal while trying to appease two diametrically opposing factions. SCOTUS has become a conservative super majority with six of the nine justices identified as conservative. There is no way to predict what the court will decide, but it will still be controversial unless they choose not to decide and leave it all to the states.
Stuart Shicoff
Martinez