One reader challenges Kansas leaders for not backing voter rights; another lionizes Kyle Rittenhouse – The Topeka Capital-Journal

Answering the call for voting rights

My wife and I observed the King birthday holiday this week by zooming in to the Whose Dream Is It? event provided by the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice and co-sponsored by Living the DreamInc. and The Brown V. Board National Historic Site. We extend our appreciation to all of those who worked together to make this fine presentation for our community as an opportunity to remember the legacy of Dr. King.

There were numerous highlights to the almost 2-hour program, but one that stood out to us was the offering from the man named as Kansas Citian of the Year in 2019, Alvin Brooks. Brooks has been a civil rights advocate for years in the Kansas City area. I noted a sense of deep frustration as he spoke Monday evening.

He noted that the U.S. Senate was preparing to vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, certain parts of which were struck down by two U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.

Our nation faces a wave of voting restrictions that often target communities of color. We need a full-strength Voting Rights Act to prevent this suppression from happening and root it out quickly where it is already happening. The U.S. Senate is preparing to vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as I write this letter. (Every Republican voted against moving the bill to the Senate floor for a final vote.)

It would have required states with histories of voter discrimination to receive approval from the Department of Justice or a federal courtbefore enacting voting changes.

Alvin Brooks asked listeners,What would you do? I will tell you what I am doing. I am calling my legislators today. I am asking them to reconsider their opposition. I am asking them to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. I am asking them to affirm democracy. To vote for free and fair elections for all people.

Rev. Jim McCollough, Topeka

NicholasSandmann and Kyle Rittenhouse are two American teenagers who fate propelled into circumstances beyond their years,yet both acted with a maturity and restraint under intense pressure that highly trained adults have often mishandled.

A culture that can produce two young men with this combination of innate courage and instinctive moral clarity has got to be doing something right.

In a contest between good and evil these ordinary teenagers overcame the forces of chaos, in Rittenhouse's case the specter of death at the hands of a craven mob only to be persecuted by a corrupt political/media elite that has come to represent the nihilism of the neo-American left.

A left whose ethical void has been filled by Jacobins like representatives Ilhan Omar, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff and to the shame of the nation President Joe Biden.

In a world where deception is transformed into truth by masquerading in a swirl of media-manufactured disinformation,these two innocent young men overcame a pack of frothing jackals with an unpretentious courage that resides at the core of all American greatness.

Gregory Bontrager,Hutchinson

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One reader challenges Kansas leaders for not backing voter rights; another lionizes Kyle Rittenhouse - The Topeka Capital-Journal