Editor:
Charles Andrews recently wrote in the Daily Press: “Does it make a difference? Doesn’t seem to. Right, Bill Bauer? But everything you put out there does make a difference. The pebble in the huge pond. It takes a while for the ripples to spread and you may not be able to see where it all washes out, or still be around for it.”
Every pebble does make a difference. One of the leaders for getting indentations in sidewalks so wheel chairs could use them worked over twenty years to get the laws changed. He died before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by President George H W Bush on 26 July 1990. In 2008 I started demonstrating at the LA National Cemetery to prohibit the display of large Confederate flags at VA Cemeteries. I never thought the regulations would be changed in my lifetime. To my surprise and joy they were changed in 2016, a year after the murders at the AME Church in Charleston, SC.
I have been involved in politics for over fifty years, actively the last thirty, and I have never witnessed such a disgrace on the Office of the Presidency by the current POTUS. It deeply saddens me to see such vulgar words and behavior by OUR President. I have not voted for a successful candidate for POTUS in the last five elections. However, we are at a point in the life of our Republic that challenges the very core of our being, our values that so many have labored long, hard and died for. We – Republicans, Democrats, Independents – cannot sit by idly, complain and hope it will go away. That things will just get better. We must act. We must act to recover our values, the soul of our nation.
I have not seen any evidence the Republican Party seeks to recover the values of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or Eisenhower. Therefore, I turned to the Democratic Party and have been actively supporting the Santa Monica Democratic Party since June 2018 to ensure a new occupant in the White House on 21 Jan 2021. Be it phone-banking, writing postcards, door-to-door canvasing, whatever it takes. It is not necessarily exciting or always energizing, but such actions are the bedrock on which our beloved nation is founded and continues.
Each of us can be one pebble in a pond that will overflow to recover an America that truly aspires to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of its citizens, regardless of race, creed, sex, or political affiliation.
May God continue to Bless the UNITED States of America.
John Medlin
Santa Monica
