Sign of the (end) times?

If you have been watching the news lately; everything is fearsome and chaotic. The protests in Los Angeles and now many other cities over the promised deportations of illegal criminal migrants have been anything but peaceful. Burning our flag and displaying Mexican flags is disgraceful.

Governor Newsom and L.A. Mayor Bass deserve the negative remarks for their wrongful siding with the criminal protesters. Sure, protesting is our right — do it with signs, marching and song but not with Molotov cocktails, rocks, burning, fighting and thievery.

And get rid of those masks. I want to know who is causing all this damage; who is responsible for these uprisings (really should be labeled insurrections); who is funding all of this (the Biden honorarily awarded George Soros?).

For those religious faith believers, the Bible prophesizes that at some point in time, such activities will lead to Jesus’s return to earth and End Times will begin. Wars, pestilences, earthquakes and brother rising up against brother will be the sign that the end is near. Yea, though we should not try to predict that time but to be hopeful people and be aware of the changes coming.

Such activities have happened over the centuries many times. But when things intensify and occur much more frequently, we are told, “The end is near”

Be watchful, not consumed with hatred. Live life peacefully and with hope. God is in control. The song “Que Sera” says what will be, will be; the future is not ours to see!

— Joe Azzarito, Chico

Alternative for park road redesign

On Tuesday (June 17), the City Council will consider four conceptual design options for South Park Drive near One-Mile Recreation Area. All four have problems.

The city could save a lot of money and heartache by adopting the following fifth option:

• Stop allowing motor vehicles on South Park Drive between Cypress Ave and the driveway to the 1-mile parking lot; there are no destinations there anyway. Between the One-Mile driveway and Caper Acres, allow two-way bicycle travel but keep the road one-way for cars.

• Don’t widen the road, not even by adding a multi-use path separated from the main road by a narrow strip of gravel (as proposed in some options); wide roads encourage speeding. Instead, install bicycle-friendly speed bumps to keep traffic slow and road-sharing safe.

• Along the south side of the road, install back-in diagonal parking made of compacted well-graded gravel (not the crushed basalt that ruined the gravel part of Upper Park Road for bicyclists and pedestrians). Back-in parking is much safer than head-in parking, and it avoids having headlights shine into the houses along Woodland Avenue.

• Keep the current parking areas on the north side of the road; they provide needed parking and induce “friction,” encouraging drivers to drive slowly.

• Create a new two-way driveway into the Caper Acres parking lot and remove the current vehicle exit point just east of there.

This fifth option is safe, inexpensive, neighborhood friendly, and maximizes parking where it’s needed most; please encourage the Chico City Council to adopt it.

— Ann Bykerk-Kauffman, Chico

News from past foreshadows present

I want to compliment the E-R for it’s “News of our Past” column. This week, it reprinted an article from 25 years ago speaking of the importance of immigrant labor to agriculture then and how up to 90% of the work force in agriculture were undocumented.

Having a historical perspective to cultural and social issues is valuable. By this article, we can see that there has not been a invasion but, rather, that immigrants have been a valuable part of our economy for decades (also remembering that a good part of this country was Mexico before it was America).

Not a invasion from Venezuela. Not a new situation.

During WWII, the Roosevelt administration invited workers from Mexico to come work our fields and orchards while American men were in service. Then in the ’50s, the Eisenhower administration decided to deport many of the same workers that had been invited to come, in a cruel operation labeled “Operation Wetback.” Nearly a million were deported, mostly from California, and like the current situation, people were snatched from the streets for speaking Spanish or looking foreign (i.e. brown), including American-born U.S. citizens.

Knowing the history helps us understand the present and how we got here.

In a previous column with an article reprinted from 1998, the E-R talked about the homeless issue in Chico at that time. The article could be on the front page of a current edition and be just as relevant.

Good job, E-R.

— Bob Caldwell, Chico

Much ado about nothing

In reaction to the statement “We read daily reports of people losing their rights, support, and protections” in this week’s highlighted letter to the editor, “Making the time to fight for what’s right,” I have some reflections/concerns:

In the past, apprehended undocumented aliens in the United States with lesser severe charges were given notice to appear in immigration court and placed under routine monitoring by the Department of Homeland Security.

Their charges? Generally, a first-time charge of improper entry — which, when assigned criminal charges, will likely only be a misdemeanor, dependent on a lack of aggravating factors. A misdemeanor is a criminal offense considered less serious than a felony. For civil charges, they can be fined $50 to $250.

The unfortunate reality now seems to be the reaction to Donald Trump’s invective that these undocumented individuals are all “prisoners, terrorists and mental patients” — whereby they are victimized through heavily armed ICE shock and awe raids, handcuffing and disappearance after apprehension into immigration detention, which really is prison, run by the same companies that run state, local and federal prisons.

Here is a laundry list of typical federal misdemeanors: petty theft, simple assault (an assault without serious injury), disorderly conduct (i.e., disturbing the peace), public intoxication, vandalism (minor destruction or defacement of property) and first offense DUI/DWI.

The typical American charged with any of these misdemeanor offenses will never find themselves languishing in prison with zero access to legal representation.

Again, “Much Ado About Nothing.”

— Mark S. Gailey, Chico

Lighten up!

The late great talk radio host Bruce Williams taught me a few words that add humility to any conversation. He would conclude his statement with “or so it seems to me.” That would surely improve many letters to the editor.

— Bob Gustafson, Oroville

Premature decision on cancer screener

You’ve heard of the Silicon Valley saying “fake it till you make it” or heard of the young Silicon Valley woman now in jail for conning the rich and famous into investing millions in a worthless invention that was to give chemistry panel results from a single drop of blood.

Well, I’m afraid that our City Council has prematurely committed significant funds to buy what may be a scam.

Grail, a startup in Menlo Park, is marketing a blood test, Galleri, that it claims detects 50 cancers at an early stage. If accurate, it would address the increased risk among firefighters who are exposed to toxic smoke. However, this test is not FDA-approved or covered by insurance.

Studies so far report that 1% to 1.5% of asymptomatic individuals without known cancer test positive, but only one-fourth to one-third on further testing and observation are found to have cancer. That is a false positivity rate of two-thirds, which may lead to unnecessary further testing, anxiety and possible harm.

Even more troubling is that under 50% of these individuals are found to have an early form of cancer.

There is no evidence yet that this type of test saves lives. The American Cancer Society warns that it is premature to offer this test, which costs up to $1,000. Our council plans to test all Chico firefighters and some police officers yearly. It may well be that this test is too good to be true.

— Dr. Julian Zener, Chico