Editorials – Page 85 – Everett Leader Herald

What happens next without a stimulus

Without more direct aid from the Federal government to Americans in the form of a second stimulus, many, many local residents and homeowners are going to lose their properties.

They’ve already lost their jobs and their unemployment benefits which run out in another month.

Without further federal aid, the future is looking dismal for this city’s most needy residents, and for the city itself. For those who were employed in the cleaning industry and at restaurants, there are very few opportunities for a new job.

Many, many families are running low on funds.

The lines for free food are longer than they were during the complete shutdown of the economy – another bad sign of things to come.

There is no easy way to highlight just how serious a moment we are at.

The Encore Boston Harbor Hotel and Casino has laid off more than 4,000 employees.

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The mayor retreats in the face of withering fire

The mayor has shown common political sense in removing his name – temporarily – from consideration for a voting membership on the School Committee.

The mayor is now facing three major fronts.

Call them cracks in the dam. Call them what you will.

The genie is out of the bottle for him with regard to serious racial issues being raised by Councilor at Large Gerly Adrien, the Boston Globe, the Leader Herald, and the fair-minded people of this city.

The mayor’s failure to comment on the City Council’s poor behavior two weeks ago, haranguing Adrien and urging her to resign, has not been resolved.

The racial overtones permeating and bandied about at that meeting, and at others, was embarrassing even by Everett City Council standards.

That the video of the hearing was erased, stolen, or ruined is another matter for a closer look at the Administration.

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No apologies forthcoming from the Council

At the City Council’s meeting two weeks ago, most of the council derided Councilor-at-Large Gerly Adrien for not attending the meeting in person.

Adrien felt their comments had racial overtones, especially the suggestion by several of the councilors who should have known better, who asked her to resign if she couldn’t do the job.

The meeting was ugly, a textbook example of mostly white councilors disturbed by having to serve with an assertive Black woman on the Council.

Adrien topped the ticket.

That gets her no respect from the present crew on the Council. With the notable exception of Councilor Fred Capone, Adrien has met the wrath of nearly every councilor since joining the body.

She is too noisy for the others. She is too concerned about things like racism, equality, servicing the poor and needy to have a positive impact on the crew she is sitting with as a councilor.

They don’t like her, and they let her know this.

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Veterans Day is everyday

P
Plaques, at Everett High School, salute veterans and service members from Everett. (Photo By Jim Mahoney)

It is impossible to know exactly how many Everett men and women have joined the armed forces of the United States during war and peace since the nation was founded.

It is, we believe in the tens of thousands, beginning mainly with the Civil War and extending to the modern era when Everett men and women have served in World War2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the world wherever American armed forces are deployed.

Signing your life away to the United States Armed forces takes courage.

Serving your country takes courage.

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The second Covid-19 wave is upon us

Many entertaining Dystopian movies (Zombie movies) depict how we will survive a pandemic that leaves much of the world infected with flesh-eating zombies and those of us who remain uninfected.

The infected are the vast majority.

Those struggling to survive have not yet been infected. The death-defying effort every hour of every day is to live among the zombies, to feed ourselves, and to remain uninfected.

In zombie movies, you must be bitten for the virus to be spread. Then you bite someone else and then they bite someone else and then after three weeks, the earth is overrun by zombies.

With the present Coronavirus, you need to be breathed upon to catch the virus and then to breathe it onto someone else once you’re infected and that’s how it spreads.

The way it works is pretty simple.

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