We have two terrific candidates running for Santa Fe School Board — Lorraine Price in District 5 and Susan Duncan in District 3. Both have demonstrated their competence and their commitment to public education. Historically, few people vote in school board elections. Let’s change that! You can vote early at the County Clerk’s office or on election day, Tuesday, Feb. 5, at your neighborhood polling place. Our children, our teachers and our schools need us to care, and they deserve it.

Elaine Sullivan

Santa Fe

Oppose tyranny

Read the Second Amendment? Know of “Shay’s Rebellion?” The NRA hopes you have not — but you should. The Second Amendment was developed specifically to protect our government from such a seditious collection of traitors as now controls the NRA. The founding NRA leadership and members were committed to universal gun control laws. The membership must decide: democracy or anarchy? Now the NRA’s leadership promotes paranoia, mistrust and insurrection.

As the conservative Nixon-appointed Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger said of the group’s libertarian portrayal of the Second Amendment, “One of the greatest pieces of fraud … by special interest groups that I have ever seen.” Remember, one other leader of a small radical faction encouraged the ownership of guns: Adolph Hitler. The NRA represents no more than 1 percent of Americans. A million peaceful protesters will do more than 300 million guns to insure America’s safety. Stand together against this tyranny.

Michael Blakeslee

Santa Fe

Study needed

Santa Fe pride relies on all of the walking activity that tourism brings. However, there are many intersections around town where crossing is downright dangerous. It’s high time for Santa Fe to create a walking environment that is not only safe, but actually invites and encourages people to walk instead of drive. Councilor Ronald Trujillo is right to propose a study to determine whether we have enough crosswalks and enough time to cross the streets. But Santa Fe also needs the safest possible facilities: high visibility, “zebra-striped” crosswalks, which increase motorist yielding; traffic-calming devices, which have been shown to significantly reduce pedestrian injuries; and exclusive left turn signals, which are very effective at reducing conflicts between cars and walkers. Let’s make Trujillo’s study a comprehensive needs assessment for pedestrian safety in Santa Fe.

Jean Armbruster

Santa Fe

Social Security is earned

It cannot be repeated enough that Social Security is an earned benefit, not a government subsidy. It is administered by the federal government, but is funded by working Americans and their employers who have, throughout working life, contributed part of their earnings through the Social Security tax. This includes the self-employed, who must pay both employer’s and employee’s portions of that tax. To regard it as a government subsidy, part of the federal deficit, is to indulge in either ignorance or vicious cynicism.

Before Social Security, half of Americans died in poverty. This would be just fine with those right-wingers, all of them very wealthy, who want to destroy Social Security, or through privatization, turn it over to the “banksters,” who would destroy it for their own gain.

America is experiencing class war waged by corporate CEOs and their political servants, where greed trumps justice, workers a disposable commodity.

Hans von Briesen

Santa Fe