Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994 TAG: 9405030002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``It should be welcome news that somebody is actually doing something.'' ``Planned Parenthood has every right to strike out on its own to show leadership. It has good reason to be impatient, too, because the city and others have been so slow to organize for action.''
It was hard to tell where your praise for Planned Parenthood stopped and your carping began.
Your extensive coverage last winter of Roanoke's highest-in-the-state teen-pregnancy rate provoked a large volume of letters to the editor expressing alarm and concern. It was indeed a depressing picture that should have galvanized the city into immediate action to pursue practical solutions to these alarming problems. By your own judgment, ``city officials can be faulted for foot dragging.''
Only praise should be heaped on those who are ready now to enact positive measures such as:
Implementing a media campaign to encourage Roanoke Valley teens to postpone sexual involvement.
Establishing teen advisory councils at Hurt Park and Lansdowne Park.
Establishing a parents' and concerned adults' task force with the help of the City of Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
Creating a permanent 27-foot-high mural in downtown expressing the need for teens to consider the consequences of too-early sexual activity.
Expanding Planned Parenthood's educational programs, medical services and public-advocacy efforts directed toward reducing teen pregnancy in the valley.
I believe Planned Parenthood's ``own agenda'' is unequivocally worth pushing.
HARRIET C. DAVIDSON ROANOKE
'Retarded' label no longer acceptable
WHILE shopping at a local grocery store recently, I saw the Knights of Columbus collecting donations for children with mental disabilities. I applaud their efforts; however, I found the aprons they were wearing to be very offensive. They were bright yellow with ``Help Retarded Children'' in big, red letters.
The term ``retarded,'' while it may be accurate, is very obsolete and offensive when used to identify these children. I suggest they use part of the money collected to replace those aprons with new ones that read ``Help Mentally Disabled Children.'' This truly would be a first step in helping these children as this is a much more acceptable, pleasant way of identifying them.
LINDA LANG ROANOKE
The people's wishes should count again I ATTENDED a meeting recently at the Bent Mountain Rescue Squad that was sponsored by a group of citizens opposed to Interstate 73 going through their community. They had very reasonable arguments why it's a lousy idea.
A man, who was obviously for the proposed road, said that it doesn't really matter what you want, the road's going to go through if the powers-that-be decide that it should. That's the real issue here: Who has the power in our country and how it is distributed?
If this country's citizens have been so disempowered that it doesn't matter how they feel when their elected officials make a decision on their behalf, it seems the people have a constitutional right to rise up and overthrow those who believe that it's their right to wield the power of the people against the people's wishes.
BILL GRAEFE CHECK
Don't subsidize junk mail, collectors
WITH THE proposed postal-rates increase budgeted to go into effect in early 1995, it seems the first-class rate increase will again subsidize many businesses and nonprofit organizations. (March 9 Associated Press news story, ``32-cent stamp proposed.'')
Americans have complained for years about the amount of junk mail received every week. Why do junk mailers get special discount rates? Why can't rates be the same for all? Maybe it's because, as one postman put it, ``junk mail pays my salary and benefits.''
It really upsets me when a nonprofit organization writes for a donation and the stamp says 5 cents. There hasn't been a 5-cent, first-class rate that I could use since 1963. This is really unfair.
Cut the first-class rate back to 20 cents. Charge the same rate for a post card; it requires the same amount of processing as a letter. Hike junk mail rates to 20 cents. Eliminate special favors for all businesses and nonprofits groups. They should pay the same as everyone else.
If the U.S. Postal Service is really sincere about cutting costs to benefit Americans, it should give up providing a product for the stamp-collecting industry at our expense. Make the stamp one small size; cut out fancy pictures, which, at best, are poor reproductions. Print the price of the stamp and words to indicate it's a stamp from the United States, and forget color. Black and white is enough. Forget the date; colors and dates mean nothing except to those in the stamp-collecting industry. If stamp collectors want something else, let them pay for it.
ROBERT ST. LAWRENCE SALEM
Parents are put on the defensive
REGARDING Rebecca Smith's April 7 letter to the editor, ``Tough love isn't always child abuse'':
When I was growing up, my parents taught me all the good qualities of life. If I went astray, I was corrected with soft words or a firmer approach. I'm thankful today for their guidance.
We cannot blame America's youth for their problems. The blame should be rightfully placed on government and the system it has created. According to the system, it's always child abuse at some level. There's no such thing as tough love. If you slap, spank or raise your voice to your children today, they don't have to call to report child abuse - others will make the call. Then you'll be defending yourself as to how you discipline your children. When children have made up their minds to go astray, there's not much you can do as a parent in disciplining them.
If our government doesn't review the present system soon, it had better be prepared to build more courts and detention facilities to house today's young people.
HARDIE DUHANEY MONETA
Many blacks fear ANC leadership
AND NOW the real blood bath for South Africa begins.
For years, those who've been there have tried to warn the world. South Africans of all colors are terrified that the outside world believes that the African National Congress represents them.
Plenty of other black groups opposed white supremacy, as did many whites, but these exiles would have axes to grind for everybody.
I've talked to black businessmen, black technicians, black laborers and whites. They despair at how we've supported the ANC in our misguided attempts to solve a problem we couldn't, or wouldn't, understand.
Will South Africa have enough old tires to meet the ANC's needs? They won't run out of ``necklace'' victims soon.
God forgive us.
ROBERT S. TERRY BEDFORD
Prejudice wasn't left behind in 'old days'
HOW SAD the headline in this newspaper that read, ```I wanted to be a drug dealer''' (April 10 news article by staff writer Laurence Hammack). If newspaper editors approve of negative things as the only good things that can be written about black teens, they really need an intelligent person to do research.
I find it hard to accept because I know a lot of educated people who really believe that unmarried blacks are the only ones having babies and that blacks are the only ones caught selling drugs and killing people.
Isn't it sad that you seem to be saying to children that they only need to protect themselves from black people? I wonder if that's why so many young people are being killed - because they aren't being taught that danger comes in all colors.
It amazes me more that people in power and in control allow this to happen. I wanted to cancel my newspaper subscription as soon as I opened it up and felt the injustice. Then I realized it was a perfect way to show my children, who seem to think prejudice was in the ``old days.'' It seems Roanoke will soon return to the old days.
Intelligent and caring people will have to pray each day that one day we'll have honest and fair people to print our news.
MARY LEAR ROANOKE
by CNB