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Readers write: Speaking up for change, what communities need, and more

Letters to the editor for the Jan 25, 2021 weekly magazine. Readers discuss taking a stand, how communities can heal themselves, and more.

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Staff
  • By Monitor readers

Speaking up for change

Thank you for the article “To be Black, a woman, and a cop: A trifecta of American complexity” in the Nov. 16, 2020, Monitor Weekly. It affirms my view that we need Black women in leadership in every law enforcement department. In the article, police Lt. Melissa Morgan tells readers to raise their voices and be clear about what changes they expect in their communities.

I expect policing reforms to be enacted into law. I think national standards are needed to prohibit discriminatory profiling, to ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and to require data collection and de-escalation training. 

I also believe that Black female law officers are uniquely qualified to de-escalate tense interactions. Lieutenant Morgan is inspirational. I hope others will heed her messages. 

Risa Kaiser
Arroyo Grande, California

What communities need

Regarding the editorial “America’s new pastime: Police reform” in the Dec. 7, 2020, Monitor Weekly: No doubt, every effort to improve the relationship between the police and the community is to be welcomed.

But now, Americans need to realize that what they are dealing with is fundamentally a trust issue. This means that in high-crime areas, police departments would need to do more than reform themselves. Some missing ingredients often seem to be effective communication and community bonds.

The schools and the church are the two institutions that can best provide relevant help. Both work with the family, whose breakdown I believe is at the root of all social malaise.

Felipe Fernandez
Miami

Shopping in person

In the cover story, “The checkout blues,” from the Dec. 14, 2020, Monitor Weekly, I was grateful to read Cara Salvatore’s comments on “walking into a store and seeing things you wouldn’t have seen” if you were shopping online. Those of us who do get out and stand in a cashier’s line get to see things on shelves and say, “I forgot I needed that” or “I’m glad they have that here.” And we can always come up with a smile for our fellow in-store shoppers.

Johnette Perry
Orinda, California

Ethical consumption

When I pulled the Nov. 30 Monitor Weekly from my mailbox, I saw the photograph of sneakers on the cover and glanced at the related article, “The new sports activism,” about sports stars and social justice. My first thought was, how much do the people who made those sneakers earn? Do they earn a living wage? 

Then I wondered if these stars are going to make millions of dollars promoting shoe brands. Are they complicit if those brands don’t pay a living wage to the workers who are producing those shoes? Do they care about social justice for them? Aren’t the consumers who purchase products made by what is practically slave labor also complicit? 

Lots of injustice in this world exists because the American consumer doesn’t want to pay a price that would allow workers in other countries to earn a living wage (and also to maximize profit for the corporations in the supply chain). I can remember advertisements in the 1980s asking people to buy American, but that didn’t work, did it? Do boycotting apps work? OK, I’ll stop here! 

The magazine cover was thought-provoking, but maybe not in the way it was intended.   

Judy Perry
Swanzey, New Hampshire

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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