I am the current President of the Washington State Crime Prevention Association. I have been with the WSCPA for over two decades and have held the presidency and past presidency of the organization multiple times. The WSCPA, like most state crime prevention associations nation wide, is committed to providing citizens, private businesses and law enforcement with cutting-edge crime prevention strategies and best practices. We are not about building cultures of “Zero tolerance”; we are about building cultures of “Zero incidents.” I am fortunate and have had the privilege to work with some of the finest crime prevention professionals nation wide.
However, if we are going to have a significant role in bettering the future for those we serve and the nation, then we will need to radically redefine and expand the role of “crime prevention.” We will need to as professionals and as citizens include the topics of environmental destruction and climate catastrophe and define both as the results of epic criminality. Indeed, the greatest case of white collar criminality in human history may be the Exxon revelations from the mid-1970s, where Exxon scientists confirmed and established through careful research the inevitable realities of carbon-induced global warming should fossil fuel consumption continue at ever accelerating rates. Exxon had full and complete knowledge that their product of profit, if allowed to endure, would threaten human civilization. The research was buried and hidden and never saw the light of day. The impact of this and other petroleum industry propaganda will haunt humanity for generations to come. In fact it is simply impossible to comprehend the unimaginable destruction and havoc that humanity has inflicted on our precious source of life, mother earth. Those who continue to plunder and wreak environmental destruction deserve and warrant the best efforts of crime prevention professionals nation- and world-wide.
The other area of crime prevention we need to take on and shed light on is the growing risk of nuclear war. In 1987, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty — INF Treaty. The INF Treaty eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, including their launchers, within the range of 500 to 1,000 kilometers. President Trump has threatened to scrap the INF treaty, which would lead to a renewed arms race that would in all probability seal the fate for both the planet and humanity.
The issues of climate catastrophe and nuclear Armageddon are not “Left wing” vs. “Right wing” or “Democrat vs. Republican.” That kind of banter and bilge is absolutely toxic as it provides a smoke screen for two issues that demand humanity’s immediate and full attention.
Two horses of the apocalypse have been unleashed and are approaching mankind at an ever accelerating rate. As a crime prevention professional, I have a responsibility to cast light on the two greatest crimes that threaten all human existence. We need to expose the damning realities of climate catastrophe/environmental carnage and the growing threat of nuclear war. Yes, it is absolutely essential to tackle the tragedies of workplace violence, gun violence and other crime-related realities that haunt the domestic population.
All these issues demand our finest efforts. However we need to expand the role and definition of “Crime Prevention” and bring into full focus the duo realities that threaten all human life. We cannot afford to give any entities — government or corporate — a free pass if the work that is actively pursued amounts to and reaches a level of criminality unrivaled in human history.
JIM SAWYER, Edmonds, Wash.
I would like to thank TPP for recently publishing an article entitled “Cash Buys Elections ...” by Wenonah Hauter [12/15/18 TPP] about the struggle in the state of Virginia to transition from coal/natural gas to sustainable energy. The theme of this relatively small struggle is emblematic of the most important mega-drama in the world. I have no quarrel with the articles on either side of “Cash...”: Jesse Jackson recapitulates the good points of Obamacare and another author tells of the slow loss of the American dream. But, having said that, these themes are small potatoes compared to the backstory behind “Cash...”
Here’s an example: the cover story of this issue of TPP, “‘Vaya con dios’: the impossible life of a judge on the US immigration frontline,” by Art Cullen, was about the impossibilities of bringing justice to immigrant wanna-bes. Well and good as far as it goes. But why this continuing pressure to move from south to north (on the other side of the earth the same movement is from Africa to Europe)? Yes the complex answer to this question involves economics and politics and religion. But part of the answer — a bigger and bigger part as time passes — is climate change/population growth. Soils degrade; access to water becomes ever more difficult; each acre must support more humans. These incremental trends have no natural non-catastrophic end. On and on they go until something snaps. This story has played out time and again regionally (read the excellent book Collapse), but now, even though some regions are worse than others, it’s happening everywhere.
JOHN D. PALMER, Huntington W.V.
In deciding how to have a good immigration system, we have to take into account that if we don’t have strong nation states (for all the failings of the nation state) we will be ruled by corporations. Democracy (again, for all its failings) resides within borders, and democracy is able to provide a check on corporate power. Corporations are after profits, no matter what the cost to workers, the environment, the culture and so on. Democratic nations can check corporate power. Too much of the discussion around immigration disses borders as unfair, arbitrary or unnecessary, but national borders are essential to nations. And, without nations, democracy, and the counterweight to corporations democracy can provide, disappears.
Citing our history of a confiscatory and violent foreign policy towards Mexico is best put to work, not by justifying illegal entry into the US, but by acknowledging we continue to be a bad neighbor to Latin American countries. Why in 2009 did President Obama and Secretary Clinton enable in Honduras the replacement of the democratically elected President Zelaya? The answer is clear: it is one more example of the overriding goal of US foreign policy to have things on US terms economically. We need to make our government, using the power we have as citizens in a democratic nation, change our foreign policy to one that does not help impoverish Latin America, leaving it ripe for corruption and turning its people into migrants. Why can’t the US help foster the “Honduran Dream” and the “Mexican Dream” and the “Salvadoran Dream” instead of continuing the mistaken hubris of “American exceptionalism” with the US as the only nation where freedom and opportunity can be found?
When it comes to immigration, there are those who want to “Build a Wall” and those who want open borders, like the Chamber of Commerce. Between these two extremes, there are many choices we need to examine and decisions we need to make as a country. I look to TPP to enable that needed, wide-ranging discussion.
JUDY JENSVOLD, Ithaca, N.Y.
In “Common-Sense Food Stamps” [12/1/18 TPP], Joan Retsinas puts the obesity figure at 40%. It would be interesting to see a breakdown by age groups and locations for the large portion of our population.
I’ve come to believe that so many Americans eat so few fruits and vegetables because many of these foods are imported and really don’t taste very good. They are harvested before their time to allow for shipment, and their natural processes of development and decay are often altered with chemicals and GMO technology. Organic is good; organic USA-grown is better. More and more farmers markets are now accepting food stamps. Better access to them could certainly improve the health of the urban poor, as well as the elderly and the disabled.
Inadequate physical education in our public schools is also a factor. Since the advent of No Child Left Behind, plus subsequent budgetary calamities, schools across the nation have had to curtail or eliminate P.E. Instead of spending a class period engaged in active pastimes, students sit and take tests or study for them. Their brains are drained but their bodies don’t burn off the calories they eat. Nor do they develop the habit or regular exercise. At home, too many neighborhoods have become too unsafe tor kids to simply “go out and play,” or even visit one another. Frazzled parents can’t always take part.
Rather than continually redefine “healthy,” the FDA ought to just define “unhealthy.” That list stays fairly constant. Food stamps or not, we are all truly what we eat.
BETTY CROWDER, Honeydew, Calif.
I happen to agree with The New York Times when they warned Nancy Pelosi not to give too much power to the newly-elected House Democrats who call themselves “Democratic Socialists.” They will be a minority of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.
I don’t enjoy being unkind or insulting toward anyone, even the Republicans in the Congress, a sizable minority of whom are really scary “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinists, but, to me, you have to be a total and complete moron and idiot to call yourself a “Democratic Socialist” and that includes Bernie Sanders who I like and agree with 90% of the time.
First of all, they are not true socialists because they do not advocate abolishing our capitalist economic system.
Second of all, if you believe that anyone can be elected President of the United States who calls herself/himself a “Socialist”, then you must live in DreamLand and must have drunk the Kool-Aid.
Third of all, where I DO agree with them is in their belief that our federal government should do more and spend more to help the poor, the near-poor, the lower-middle-class, and the middle-class who are struggling to survive and to pay their bills.
They need to inform and educate the public to the fact that almost every single one of our traditional allies (if not all of them) have federal governments that do more and spend more (in proportion to their population sizes) than we do in the USA.
And, to paraphrase Al Pacino in the movie And Justice For All, for us to be right about this, all of these other countries have to be wrong.
I don’t think so.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
When Yogi Berra said, “I really didn’t say everything I said,” it was somewhat amusing. nnBut were President Trump to assert the same thing would be no laughing matter.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2019
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