Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for Dec. 11, 2022

Grateful for Marin’s emergency health system

Following my fight with the influenza virus and pneumonia, I want to thank everyone at the MarinHealth Medical Center. This was health care at its best. My high fever and level of exhaustion in my lungs put me into the emergency department. During those two days in the hospital, I found that the medical care team was filled with much compassion.

My father is a retired medical doctor. I’ve always had an understanding that what health professionals do is incredibly important for everyone. But now I feel that this Marin group is, indeed, the best people I have ever known. They are dedicated to helping others through difficult circumstances.

Their struggles during the coronavirus pandemic clearly affected them greatly. Yet they helped people through their suffering in many ways, overcoming the challenges of life and putting their own health second.

They are lifesavers. They are all the miracle-workers who put their lives on the line to help people surviving these difficult times. I am grateful and thankful for their help and support.

I am deeply indebted toward these hospital staffers, as well as the San Rafael paramedic firefighters who stabilized me and got me to the emergency department.

— Kevin Cook, San Rafael

America’s disenfranchised need some compassion

We should celebrate the recent 2022 voting results, where election-denier candidates were soundly defeated. But our work is not done. Over one-third of our nation still feels hopeless and disrespected by liberal voters like California’s majority. They feel this way for good reasons that we don’t really acknowledge.

Disenfranchised Americans have suffered more “deaths of despair” than any other group. Over 70,000 Americans die every year from suicide, drug overdose or alcohol poisoning. Brookings Institute, a liberal “think tank,” shows that these deaths are concentrated among White men with less than a college education, most often living in older manufacturing and mining communities. Jobs have disappeared there and communities are tattered. These people have lost hope in the American dream, and are now earning less (when adjusted for inflation) than they were in 1979.

Adding insult to injury, comedians everywhere — including those on late-night talk shows — have been making fun of disenfranchised Republican voters for years. I believe such one-sided, unfair network programs cause disenfranchised Americans to retreat into their media bubble of Fox News. As a result, online talk of civil war has never been higher and demagogues like Donald Trump can flourish.

Marin County liberals should not sit back. Instead, they should extend their vaunted compassion to reach out to friends and family in the disenfranchised category. The wounds need to be closed. As former President Abraham Lincoln said, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace.”

— Michael Hagerty, Novato

Immigration status of attacker newsworthy

I appreciated last month’s article about accused Paul Pelosi attacker David DePape, which was written by the Associated Press and published in the Marin IJ (“Official: Pelosi suspect in US illegally,” Nov. 4). Apparently, a U.S. official stated that the man who assaulted and seriously injured Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer was in the U.S. illegally since the year 2000 and should have been deported years ago. Pelosi’s assailant is a Canadian citizen.

What a sad tragedy, also loaded with its own irony, since Nancy Pelosi and the leading Democrats in Washington, D.C. have, for years, consistently undermined border security and the role of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in protecting our borders and citizens. Today, our country is very vulnerable in this regard as we have allowed our visa system to be seriously underfunded and understaffed.

Instead of spending millions on a wall along the Mexican border, we should be strengthening our visa oversight and tracking system while making electronic verification mandatory for all employers.

When the spouse of a public figure is attacked, the story makes front page news. That’s good. When average Americans are victimized by someone in the country illegally, it seems that the immigration issue is basically ignored. Paul Pelosi’s story shows that the press and the police can inform us when this type of injustice occurs.

I wish all Marin County law enforcement agencies and the press would inform us whenever a criminal suspect is in our country illegally. We all deserve that kind of fair and equal process.

— Kenneth Kelzer, Novato