No primary elections
During last Tuesday’s City Council meeting, City Clerk Bill Maloney presented to the councilors the current dilemma with the Primary Elections. Since District C is the only area with three candidates, there is no need to have a Primary in any other district.
Mr. Maloney explained how state law applies in this case and councilors seem to agree although we missed an opportunity to test the new voting machines. Perhaps they will offer a crash course to the poll workers before November 6.
It is shameful situation in this city where so many residents complain about how the city is run yet, not too many of them are willing to get involved. Some districts have no candidates for school committee at all and we are hoping that there will be some volunteers to run a sticker campaign on Election Day to represent Districts B, C and F.
The purpose of having a school Committee is to prepare them to one day being able to handle the schools’ administration. True that school committee members have been treated by that Education Board created by Boston officials worse than second class citizens. They are not allowed to contribute to the decisions being made as a way to discourage them. One thing is for sure, at this pace, not having interested people to participate we will never get control of the schools as promised.
The School Committee is both an avenue for local residents to have someone who can speak out for them AND it should be training grounds for future educational leaders who will one day gain control of the school system.
The lack of participation within the school committee has a lot to do with the fact that the state and city leadership have not empowered the committee so many throughout the area feel like it’s a waste of time.
One of the things we need to take back control is a good leadership within the school committee.
Violence through the years
It all started with Pac-Man!
People have a short-term attention span and most people believe that active shooters and mass murders have been occurring in recent years only. I took the time to check and made a list of the 25 worst cases and it went back to 1991 in Killeen, Texas with 23 dead and 27 wounded. Those statistics include only incidents with 5 deaths or more in order to be considered “mass murders.”
The information is varied such as the firearms used. In some cases, only pistols and revolvers were used and other times only rifles although in half the instances they carried both, rifles and pistols or revolvers.
In most cases, they happen to be young people, many of them in their 20s and probably brought up in the video game generation. Many of those games are extremely violent, simulating shooting at people and drawing blood or cutting off body parts.
Even some television shows tell you and to plan a crime and then are so graphic with the results that you want to turn away from the screen. Fortunately, the producers of the movie “The Hunt” decided to cancel the opening in theatres. The previews seen on television described how wealthy individuals kidnap “deplorables,” take them to the woods to hunt them down like animals.
Just think what growing up with that violence can do to a child’s brain. No, I am not a psychiatrist but it’s easy to see how they become desensitized to that brutality. Just like kids growing up with domestic violence; they usually become abusers because that’s all they know.
We have to make better decisions raising our children and be watchful of what they do because they could be early indications that something is wrong.
