Letters to the Editor | Feb. 5, 2023

Recent stories on the Guns Down Gloves Up program seem to equate former police Capt. Nashid Akil’s absenteeism and the financial benefit received by Police Department staffers with the program’s merits and assessment expenses. The nearly $76,000 that went to Akil and others should be differentiated from a community program providing food, gear, and stipends for youth participants. Confusingly written language about the total of the stipends — “participants received prepaid debit cards totaling at least $13,830” — lets readers imagine participants were receiving more than the $350 provided for participating in the program for four weeks. The coverage also questions the money budgeted for monitoring and evaluation, while simultaneously concluding that violence prevention programs need more oversight and auditing. These two points seem contradictory. Increased evaluation, whether public or private, will be expensive, bureaucratic, and time-consuming. Equating questionable payments to city employees to providing food to kids after boxing practice misdirects the public’s ire toward programs trying innovative approaches to resolving complicated problems.

Lucas Richie, Philadelphia

With all the challenges faced by teachers across the country, from COVID-19 to violence and school funding challenges, educators in places such as Florida are now further overwhelmed with demands to restrictively align student reading material with politically approved curriculum. As one teacher who had to remove a “free” library in her own elementary classroom said: “It keeps me from being able to instill a love of reading for pleasure.” That statement should be heartbreaking to anyone who has the ability to freely choose reading material and delight in its ability to transport our minds to places near and far away. That innate sense of wonder at the power of the written word is systematically being quashed in school districts all over the country. These efforts translate into stifling imaginations for children of all ages — including those underserved students whose sense of a life beyond their limiting circumstances can be accessed and energized by books. How different so many of us would be, and not for the better, if our educations were politically censored, then or now.

Mary Kay Owen, Downingtown

The Inquirer article “Pennsylvania has 4.6 million fewer egg-laying hens due to avian flu” cried out for discussion of why this outbreak should prompt a shift away from egg production and consumption. Modern egg production harms chickens, even in “normal” times. Male chicks are killed after hatching. Female chicks’ beaks are typically removed. Bred for unnaturally high egg production, they are slaughtered once their laying capacity declines. Today’s standard chicken farming practices — with thousands of birds concentrated in small spaces — provide ideal conditions for avian flu viruses to mutate and spread. Human egg consumption is associated with cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, while healthier substitutes are readily available. By transitioning away from egg production and consumption, we can spare animals from suffering, help stop the cycle of avian flu outbreaks, and improve our own health.

Alysoun Mahoney, Dillsburg, alysoun.mahoney@gmail.com

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