To the Editor:

In recent weeks, white supremacist stickers have appeared in Mercer County and their message was disturbingly clear: “Reclaim Your Nation. Reclaim Your Heritage.” We at YWCA Princeton want to reiterate that we remain dedicated to our mission – to eliminate racism, empower women, and promote peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all.

Like any agency with a nearly 100-year history, we have endured and weathered the changing attitudes of society as a whole. We have also been witness to the effects that racism has had in the communities we serve. We do not and will not tolerate racist messaging, as it is in direct odds with the advancement of our mission.

In 2007, with the now-dissolved YWCA Trenton, we cofounded Stand Against Racism (STAND), which is now a signature campaign of YWCA USA. The STAND’s purpose is to build community among those who work for racial justice and to raise awareness about the negative impact of institutional and structural racism in our communities. This year, we innovated the STAND to make it meaningful for all of our community members throughout the year, through a range of civic engagement activities. As part of the STAND, this summer we proudly hosted an open-for-all summer series featuring three distinguished speakers who held discussions around difficult and often-times ignored topics such as racism in higher education, racism and mental illness, and the Black immigrant experience.

We will not let these racist stickers overshadow the hard work of our staff, supporters, allies, and most importantly, children and families served by our programs. We have an English as a Second Language program that serves over 300 students each year, including free United States Citizenship classes for individuals undergoing the naturalization process. Our Child Development Centers promote diversity and inclusivity in the classrooms and our Bilingual Nursery School in Princeton supports bilingual preschoolers. Our Breast Cancer Resource Center has an initiative to provide support and services for women of color recently diagnosed with breast cancer as well as breast cancer survivors of color.

We are committed to any and every person that walks through our doors, to always stay true to our mission, and we urge our community to STAND with us.

In solidarity,

JUDY HUTTON

CEO, YWCA Princeton

To the Editors:

Let me get this straight: our town is spending about a million dollars on new parking meters, at around a thousand dollars each, but can’t be bothered to save a few old meters so that it can refund the balances on smart cards? That is literally all it would take – just keep a few of the old meters inside one of the town offices, use them to read balances off the old cards, and then give cardholders back their money. If handling cash is the problem, balances could be transferred to the new online app. I have enjoyed the convenience of my smart card, but it would take a significant lifestyle change to use my balance by the end of the year, especially once it becomes usable in only one place. The “use it or lose it” plan sounds like a policy concocted by airline or insurance executives. I would have expected better from elected officials who are my neighbors, but I guess that was naïve. Nobody likes being swindled, even if the amount is small – the town should change this callous, bad-faith plan or invite a class-action lawsuit whose costs will swamp the modest windfall it seems hoping to pocket from smart cards holders.

JONATHAN ECKSTEIN

Longview Drive

Editor’s Note: Town Topics received the following response after sharing the letter with Mayor Lempert and Princeton Council:
“We recognize that some residents have balances on their Smart Cards that they may not be able to spend down completely before the meters are replaced in October/November. To accommodate these card holders, Smart Cards will still be a valid method of payment at the Spring Street Garage for eight more months, until April 30, 2019. Additionally, we are exploring the feasibility of transferring Smart Card balances onto the new parking app.

“We are switching to new meters as part of Princeton’s effort to make parking in the town work better. These new meters will enable payment by credit card and smartphone as well as coins. Because the old Smart Cards use outdated technology that is no longer supported in the parking industry, they will unfortunately not be compatible with the new system. To avoid any inconvenience going forward, we are encouraging all Smart Card holders to use up the balance on their cards before the meters are replaced in October.”

MAYOR LIZ LEMPERT

COUNCIL PRESIDENT JENNY CRUMILLER

To the Editor:

I would like to thank everyone who contributed to my lemonade stand fundraising events on August 5th at Hill Top Park and on August 9th, 2018 at McCaffrey’s shopping center. And special thanks to Lisa Fulforth, McCaffrey’s administrative assistant. Eighty percent ($144) of the sales proceeds were donated to Princeton Children’s Fund (PCF). For more information about PCF, visit www.prince tonchildrensfund.org.

To the Editor:

I appreciate Linda Oppenheim’s letter [Racist Stickers Posted in Princeton Inspire Resident to Call for Action,” Mailbox, Aug. 22]. However, she forgot to include No. 6 in her “We must” list. No problem, I am here to help:
6. Stop the hate of the American white male. He HAS done a lot of positive things for our country.

KIRK SILVESTER

Bayberry Road, Hopewell Township

To the Editor:

I am a retired senior citizen and I live in Governors Lane.

I have read about the referendum to raise $130 million for the Princeton Board of Education school expansion and improvement. I have asked the following question at the mayor’s office, at a meeting on Witherspoon Street about this challenge, and to a candidate for town council for whom I will vote in November. I understand the average assessed home in Princeton is currently $837,000.

I would like to know, if the referendum passes and the $130 million is raised, how much in dollars will that increase our tax bill each year? $100, $1,000, $2,000? More? I think before all voters in Princeton vote on this issue, they should know in dollars how much we will have to pay. There has to be an accountant, a town official who can calculate that number before the November election and let the voters know. I would like to know.

Thank you.

HOWARD W. SILBERSHER

Governors Lane

To the Editor:

In re Donald Gilpin’s article, “Panel Experts Will Discuss Immigration, Provide Information on Multiple Issues” [Town Topics, Aug. 22]: Having attended the panel discussion on August 23, I appreciated the sponsors organizing this public forum in Princeton. I have two suggestions for future panel discussions:

1. Try to find panelists with different positions on the issues discussed. Failing that, encourage panelists to acknowledge the merit of positions other than their own. Until I asked them about it, none of the panelists addressed the merits of limiting immigration into the United States or of enforcing immigration law.
2. Try to find experts who know the limits of their expertise and are careful in what they say. I was dismayed by three statements in particular:

1. In Donald Gilpin’s article, Executive Director of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF) Adriana Abizadeh is quoted as saying, “All of the immigration policy changes we have seen over the last 20 months have been xenophobic.” That’s quite a claim. It suggests an unwillingness to consider other motives, and a lack of desire to find common ground with those who disagree. Starting from there, how likely is persuasion or reconciliation?
2. Professor Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University, told the audience that the term “chain migration” was coined by Donald Trump just recently for derogatory use in his presidential campaign. In fact, “chain migration” has been used without negative connotation in immigration studies since at least the 1960s. To suggest that the term is necessarily pejorative needlessly alienates those who use it with no such intent.
3. It was thoughtful to include a religious leader on the panel, Brother Christopher McNabb of Trinity Church (Episcopal) in Princeton. I did not find his ideas about immigration policy well thought out, however. When I asked the panelists if they could think of any good reasons for a nation to limit immigration, Brother Christopher said that while nations have the right to secure their borders, most restrictions on legal immigration to the United States are not related to national security. That is plausible. Brother Christopher went on to say that if we would “follow the money” we would find that big business uses its financial (lobbying?) power to restrict immigration into the United States. Odd. U.S. businesses are among the biggest proponents of liberalizing our immigration laws, which would increase their access to workers and tend to keep wages down.

I appreciate the panelists’ willingness to discuss immigration in a public forum. In an effort to understand each other better and reconcile our differences, let’s do our homework and respectfully engage the best arguments of those with whom we disagree.

MARTIN ERHARDT

Nassau Street

To the Editor:

In his August 22 letter [“Personal Experiences Lead to Different View of Weapons Used Against Japan”], Mr. Bill McJames of Hillsborough takes issue with the Coalition for Peace Action’s annual gathering to commemorate the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like many, he believes that the two atom bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were the primary cause of the Japanese surrender and thus prevented massive casualties on both sides from an otherwise inevitable U.S. land invasion of Japan.

It is worth mentioning that modern historians vigorously dispute this interpretation of the causes for the Japanese surrender. However, the focus of the Annual Commemoration held by the Coalition for Peace Action is not to look backwards in time and decide if the bombings were right or wrong. True, the destruction caused by those two relatively small atomic bombs was horrific. But the detonation of just a fraction of the thousands of today’s immensely more powerful nuclear weapons could essentially end life on our planet. That is the awful future we must strive to prevent.

And that is why we favor diplomacy, not war, with Iran and North Korea. Thanks to diplomacy, Iran has no nuclear weapons to date; and if President Trump hadn’t withdrawn from the Iran Nuclear Agreement, Iran could not produce such weapons for at least a decade. North Korea does have dozens of nuclear weapons. But the U.S. has over 7,000 of them, far more than anyone can argue might be useful for deterrence.

Agreements like the one with Iran have decreased the danger of nuclear weapons. The U.S. should move back into compliance with the Iran Agreement and should pursue a verifiable agreement with North Korea as well. And we should also enter into negotiations that reduce the threat of nuclear weapons for everyone.

In remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki each year, the Coalition for Peace Action calls for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. This is not an impossible dream. After all, our nuclear reduction agreements with the former USSR have reduced nuclear warheads by about 80 percent to date. And a global agreement could be achieved by all nations complying with the UN’s Nuclear Ban Treaty, which was overwhelmingly approved last summer. Instead of rationalizing the past, we must move forward into a nuclear-free future.

NIKI VANALLER

Assistant Director, Coalition for Peace Action

To the Editor:

With all due respect to Ms. [Niki] Van Aller (“Hinds Plaza Rally Commemorates Hiroshima,” page one, August 8, 2018) and her view of nuclear weapons, which I agree with regarding their possession and possible use by unstable leaders like those in Iran and North Korea, I have a slightly different view of the weapons used against Japan in World War II based upon two personal experiences. First is the fact that my father fought in the Pacific theatre, and would likely have been involved in an invasion of the Japanese mainland had that become necessary. It is highly likely that I owe my existence to those bombs, as do many of my generation.

Second is a conversation I had years ago with the mother of a business colleague of Japanese descent who lived in Japan during the war. I don’t recall how the subject of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came up, I certainly wouldn’t have raised it in such company, but she made a very insightful point about those events. When I tried to deflect the discussion by suggesting that the U.S. could have found a better way to use the bombs; perhaps making a giant crater in the middle of nowhere to show their potential, she replied “no” and offered the following: “The Japanese people were prepared to fight to the last man, woman, and child had the Emperor ordered it. The U.S. had to convince him that the war was unwinnable. Those bombs saved tens of thousands of Japanese lives.”

Expert estimates of the casualties on both sides resulting from an invasion of Japan, including Japanese civilians, tend to confirm her opinion. Numbers I’ve seen totaled upwards of one million. While a world free of nuclear weapons is certainly a worthy goal, as long as people like Kim Jong-un and Ayatollah Khamenei have them, the U.S. has no choice but to maintain its nuclear deterrent capability.

BILL MCJAMES

Hillsborough

To the Editor:

This country was built on the backs of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other people of color. When Barack Obama was elected as the 44th president, it was a proud moment not just for African Americans, but for all Americans who understand that “we are a nation of immigrants.”

Donald Trump is the antithesis of Barack Obama. While Obama was the president for all Americans whether or not you agreed with his political views, policies, or decisions, Trump represents far fewer Americans, and has used those people to divide the country along racial lines, and turned back the hands of time.

While Obama was a statesman who reached out to Cuba, forged a nuclear deal with Iran, established affordable health care, and maintained America’s long-standing relationship with NATO and other alliances, Trump has been duped by Kim Jong-un, and outfoxed by Vladimir Putin. He has been humiliated by porn stars, and bad actors.

America is said to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but I don’t see that now. People of color are under assault, our leaders are cowardly and mute. Checks and balances are late arrivals. The president is committed to building walls instead of bridges. I wish I could say the future looks bright, but it doesn’t. Social justice has taken a backwards trend, and white nationalist rhetoric and actions are on the rise. America is not winning, it is not being made great again.

November’s election is the most important election in our lifetime. African Americans and other people of color will again be asked and expected to help turn Congress blue and put the president and his policies in check. Therein lies the Rub and the Irony.

It’s time for the Democratic Party to be responsive to its broad coalition. It’s time to demand a return on our investment. If the Democratic Party cannot place the following agenda items on their platform, on November 6 we should stay home and fry chicken:

• Rewrite section 4B of the voting rights act to negate the discriminatory voting policies being passed by states throughout the country.
• Establish a U.S. Commission of Law Enforcement with a national data base on police shootings and prosecutorial oversight.
• Eliminate state and federal funding for private prisons that contribute to mass incarceration.
• Work to reverse Citizens United with a constitutional amendment and eliminate Super PACs. Give democracy back to “the people.”
• Establish responsible gun control legislation.
• Provide affordable access to health care.
• Remove all confederate statues and signage.

Let’s stop the Democrats from taking the black vote for granted. If all politics are local, and they are, throughout the U.S. black folk should be engaging their local representatives and the DNC by asking what have you done for “us” lately and will you commit to the above if “we” get out the vote and help turn congress blue in November. Wait patiently, but not long for an answer.

LEIGHTON NEWLIN

Birch Avenue

To the Editor:

When I returned from seeing the new Spike Lee movie, BlacKkKlansman, about Ron Stallworth, the first African American officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, who infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, I read the news that racist stickers had been posted in Princeton, about one block from my house. I was already upset by listening to the hatred spewed by Klan members on the movie screen. Knowing that this hatred persists in my time, in my town, infuriated me.

Racism and white supremacy are very familiar to me. I am active in the local anti-racism organization, Not in Our Town Princeton (niotprinceton.org). Like many people who are upset by racism, I immediately wanted to act. This letter is my first response. I call on my fellow townspeople to take action. We must:

1. Educate ourselves about the true history of our town — history which includes all people who have resided here, but especially the Lenape, on whose lands the town was built by white British colonists, and the African American community, which was founded by enslaved and free Africans and African Americans and their descendants who continued to experience the humiliation of Jim Crow segregation and present-day discrimination. Read Kitsi Waterston’s I Hear My People Singing, voices from the Witherspoon-Jackson community. Take Shirley Satterfield’s tour and hear about the life of that neighborhood. Advocate for racial literacy education for students and staff in our schools.
2. Do the inner work necessary to understand the unconscious implicit bias we all hold as the result of indoctrination through media, education, peers, family, American society. Take the implicit bias test at Project Implicit.
3. Speak out every time we see or hear discriminatory actions or remarks in our homes, our workplaces, our faith communities, our social circles.
4. Make contact with people of different identities, races, religions, ethnicities. Attend Not in Our Town’s Continuing Conversations on Race and White Privilege at 6:30 p.m. on the first (non-holiday) Monday of each month at the Princeton Public Library. Next meeting: Tuesday, September 4. Topic: “Racial Battle Fatigue: In This Time of Turmoil.” Presenter: Dr. Don Trahan.
5. Donate to organizations, especially local groups, that work to eliminate racism such as Not in Our Town Princeton, Paul Robeson House, Kidsbridge, Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said “For evil to succeed, all it needs is for good men to do nothing.” I trust that the good people of Princeton will not ignore these racist, hateful acts.

LINDA OPPENHEIM

South Hawthorne Street

To the Editor:

Having been a victim of the Griggs Farm fire on 12/27/2017, I want to express my sincerest, heartfelt thanks to the wonderful people of Princeton for their help and support. You never know what life will throw at you and everyone can experience terrible tragedy like a fire or flood. Typically, insurance companies reimburse you for your loss, but I was uninsured and have no savings. I am still facing the enormous task of rebuilding my life.

I just want to say how grateful I am that the municipality of Princeton offers assistance for people like me who are in need by providing food resources through programs like Arm In Arm, Cornerstone Community Kitchen, and the First Baptist Church of Princeton.

I want to express my personal thanks to people who are part of Cornerstone working through Princeton United Methodist Church on Vandeventer Avenue. I know others who have experienced a tragedy and feel the same way and are grateful for this community “safety net” and would be much worse off without it.

I especially want to thank the founder and CEO of Cornerstone Larry Apperson, clothing store manager Judith Miller, assistant manager Jeanette Timmons, dining room leaders Rick Kelly and Ramesh Jayaram, piano player Yvonne Macdonald, and all the other volunteers who have given their time and continued support to people who are in need.

Cornerstone offers a free, nutritious full sit-down meal in a friendly atmosphere: the tables are covered with white tablecloths, each table has a seasonal centerpiece, and the soothing sound of live piano music is playing discretely in the background.

Many of the organizations, local agencies, farmers, schools, and stores in the Princeton area contribute to Cornerstone and their donations of food and produce are gratefully welcomed. Donations of clothing and household goods are also received from throughout the community and all donated items are distributed without cost to us.

I am grateful to Cornerstone people for their amazing support!

May God Bless all the people of Princeton!

MARINA AHUNBABAEVA

Formerly of Billie Ellis Lane