To the editor:
To date there have been five racist/bigoted attacks on our community. I call them attacks because that’s what they are. They attack the feeling of safety and security, of purpose and need, and it’s an attack on our community’s compassion. It is said that “home is not a place, it’s a feeling” and that is so true. Are we “All Heart” if we aren’t a home to some of our population?
We must put an end to this charade of denouncing hate but not using the word, racism, it’s time to call it by its name. Racism is hate with a specific goal of making others feel unwelcome, unsafe and unwanted. Hate is racism in action, and saying hate in place of racism is also racism in action because it moves it forward. During Covid’s peak I learned about the “R Naught number,” a way for epidemiologists to track the infectability of a virus.
The goal is a number less than one, one being one person infected can only transmit it to one other person, less than one means you basically need two infected people to infect one other. As it rises the other way a number higher than one means that one infected person can infect more than one person at a time, thus spreading the virus faster.
Applying that “R Naught” theory, loosely, to racism and hate you can see how it can spread if we don’t stop it at the first incident. As it goes on longer more people get infected and so on and the cycle continues, becoming stronger and bolder.
The cycle must stop! Without calling it out and taking strong stands to act against racism and the hate it brings this cycle continues. But, it stops now with us. Every single Democratic candidate running this year has denounced racism and hate and stood in front of our community and proclaimed that we see the hurting and suffering those affected in our community feel and we will do whatever we can to rid this infection from our community.
The time for letting actions of hate slip by with little to no reaction from our leaders of the City is over, I and all of the Democratic candidates are working hard to make everyone feel like Bristol is home and we will take action and move forward cleaning the stench of racism from our community and be the compassionate people we were and know we can be. To be Bristol Strong is to find our Strength Through Compassion!
In solidarity against racism,
David Landi (D)
Bristol City Council District 3, Candidate
Sept. 19, 2023