The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on April 8, 2023. Submit your own letter to the editor by clicking HERE.
I often wonder what historical figures and activists responsible for positive and progressive changes for human rights over the years would think if they came back and saw what was happening today.
In a reverse scenario, If Adolph Hitler awakened in Orlando this year, he might think he won, and the 407,300 American soldiers who lost their lives defeating him would be in shock when they saw swastikas flying in that city, and not condemned by our governor.
MLK, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and even John Lewis would think it unfathomable that all the progress they worked and died for is not only being reversed by hundreds of voter suppression laws but erased from the history books and banned in some states, never to be learned by our children and grandchildren.
Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Caty Stanton, and even Jane Roe herself would be crushed by the knowledge that all the progress for women’s rights and women’s bodily autonomy were again having to be fought for, as if they had never happened.
And folks like Frank Kameny, Barbara Gettings, and Harvey Milk would have whiplash watching the recent rights won by gay Americans just over the past 15 years begin to disappear in some states so fast they barely had time to be implemented.
And dare I even mention the 2nd amendment, which has been misread and misinterpreted by the right for years in their insatiable zest to bring back the wild west.
What year are we living in anyway?
Douglas Campbell
Port Charlotte,
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