30 THE COURIER SUN • NOVEMBER 27, 2014 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.couriersun.com editorial letters sun WWW.COURIERSUN.COM Victoria Schneps-Yunis Joshua A. Schneps Bob Brennan Leela de Kretser Amy Amato-Sanchez Nirmal Singh Graziela Zerili Stephen Reina Ron Torina, Jennifer Decio, Cheryl Galagher Liam La Guerre, Cristabell e Tumola, Angy Altamirano Katrina Medoff, Eric Jankiewicz, Salvatore Licata Cliff Kasden, Samantha Sohmer, Elizabeth Aloni Cristabele Tumola Demetra Plagakis Warren Susman Celeste Alamin Maria Valencia Daphne Fortunate Victoria Schneps-Yunis Joshua A. Schneps Publisher & E ditor Co-Publisher Associate Publisher Acting Editor-In-Chief VP, Events, Web & Social Media Art Director Assistant to Publisher Assistant Art Director Artists Staff Reporters Contributing Reporters Web Editor Events Manager Senior Acc ount Executive Classified Manager Controller Office Manager President & CEO Vice President Schneps Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361 718-224-5863 • Fax 718-224-5441 Sales fax: 718-631-3498 www.couriersun.com editorial e-mail: [email protected] for advertising e-mail: [email protected] Entire Contents Copyright 2014 by The Courier Sun All letters sent to THE COURIER SUN should be brief and are subject to condensing. Writers should include a full address and home and office telephone numbers, where available, as well as affiliation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld on request. No such ad or any part thereof may be reproduced without prior permission of THE COURIER SUN. The publishers will not be responsible for any error in advertising beyond the cost of the space occupied by the error. Errors must be reported to THE COURIER SUN within five days of publication. Ad position cannot be guaranteed unless paid prior to publication. VIctoria Media Services assumes no liability for the content or reply to any ads. The advertiser assumes all liability for the content of and all replies. The advertiser agrees to hold The Courier SUN and its employees harmless from all cost, expenses, liabilities, and damages resulting from or caused by the publication or recording placed by the advertiser or any reply to any such advertisement. IDENTIFY THIS PLACE Go to www.queenscourier.com and search “Identify This Place” to find out where this is Why skip the turkey? Next week, President Obama will pardon two turkeys to promote the turkey industry. Every one of us can exercise that same pardon power by choosing a nonviolent Thanksgiving observance. It’s a most fitting way to give thanks for our own life, health and happiness. The 240 million turkeys killed in the U.S. this year have nothing to give thanks for. They are raised in crowded sheds filled with toxic fumes. Their beaks and toes are severed. At the slaughterhouse, workers cut their throats and dump them into boiling water, sometimes while still alive. Consumers, too, pay a heavy price. Turkey flesh is laced with cholesterol and saturated fats that elevate the risk of chronic killer diseases. Labels warn of food poisoning potential. This Thanksgiving, I won’t be calling the government’s Poultry Hotline, wondering how that turkey lived and died, or dozing through the football game. Our Thanksgiving dinner may include a “tofurky” (soy-based roast), mashed potatoes, stuffed squash, chestnut soup, candied yams, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and carrot cake. An Internet search on vegan Thanksgiving and a visit to my local supermarket will provide me more recipes and delicious turkey alternatives than I can possibly use. Freddy Green, Flushing Make every day Small Business Saturday Why not continue participating beyond the annual national Small Business Saturday on Nov. 29? Do the same as often as you can during the other 364 days a year. Skip the national chain stores’ annual Black Friday madness, which now starts early Thursday night at most big-box retail stores. Only P.C. Richard & Son puts aside financial greed in favor of allowing their employees to stay home with family and is closed. Stay home and enjoy your Thanksgiving meal with friends and family. Get a good night’s sleep and instead come out and support small businesses by shopping local. In these difficult economic times, it is especially important to patronize your neighborhood businesses. There are so many great options to choose from. Remember these people are our neighbors. They work long hours, pay taxes and provide local employment. If we don’t patronize our local community stores and restaurants to shop and eat, they don’t eat either. Larry Penner,Great Neck Subway safety The recent tragic story about an innocent man being shoved in front of an approaching subway train and being killed again brings up the question, “Where is it safe in this city?” People going to work who use the subway system will now have to be even more cautious about where they stand on the platforms. Hopefully, the police will be able to apprehend this fiend before he strikes again. Again, there seems to be a total lack of morals and values in our society today. Life is so precious, but there are those like this animal who do not see it that way. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim’s family and friends. We, as New Yorkers, must always be vigilant and on guard whenever and wherever we travel in the city. John Amato, Fresh Meadows Floods are disasters The city is “warning” its public schools about a “flood” of “illegal” immigrants, according to a tabloid owned by an Australian oligarch. “Warning,” “flood” and “illegal” have commonly understood overt meanings, but are they here being used to conceal an editorial position that is a subtle form of hate speech? Floods are disasters. Warnings give a “heads up” of danger. And illegality is wrong by nature. Are those kids wrong by nature? Do they represent menace, catastrophe and lawlessness of a type to which Mayflower descendants are immune? There are demagogues on all sides of the immigration debate. But whatever one’s viewpoint on the president’s recent action, all people of conscience will obey one dictate: do not use these children’s plight as a political football. Do not isolate them and make them feel like outsiders. Don’t use them as rope to play tug-of-war with. They are not parties to adult antagonisms. But circumstantially they are accessories. There is no such thing as a second-class child. As elected egos and economists toy with the particulars, let’s not yield to those who would degrade us all by keeping them in the shadows. No child’s humanity is diminished by decree or document. Let’s welcome them as the equals in the eyes of the law as they are already to the eyes of the Divine. Ron Isaac, Fresh Meadows SUPPORT YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SHOPS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON Shoppers are off and running this week in what could be the busiest holiday season since the nation was wracked by a recession nearly eight years ago. Estimates from the National Retail Federation predict a robust 4.1 percent increase in sales compared with the last two months of 2013 and well above the 2.9 percent average increase over the past decade. In all, consumers are expected to plunk down a whopping $617 billion this holiday season, hopefully enough to shake the cobwebs off an economy that has been slow to rebound. But the much-anticipated retail boom has to go beyond the big-box stores and Internet shopping sites if the benefits are going to trickle down to where most of us live. This weekend marks the fifth annual Small Business Saturday, a national program to try to boost “mom and pop” businesses and neighborhood shops that remain a vital part of our economic backbone. Neighborhood shops taking part in the now-annual promotion will be doing their best to offer up personal service and unique products on Saturday, Nov. 29. There is no place that spending this holiday season will have a greater impact than on Main Street. Local shops also pay local taxes and employ our neighbors. It would do us all well to take a stroll through our local shopping districts to see what gems are there to be found. In the end, we all benefit. TIME TO CLEAN UP FLUSHING CREEK It’s about time. After decades of neglect and nearly unchecked pollution of Flushing Creek, city officials are finally taking a look at the environmental disaster in our own backyard. Councilman Peter Koo and Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd met on the banks of the creek last week to take a firsthand look at the sorely inadequate system for keeping raw sewage out of the waterway. The city’s interest in perhaps solving the problem comes as Mayor Bill de Blasio is eyeing the shoreline in Flushing as a new site for residential development in a city starved for new housing. But the prospect of new residential development along the creek is hard to stomach if the waterway remains as fouled as it is. HAPPY THANKSGIVING We live in incredibly diverse city, but at this time of year people of all backgrounds pause to give thanks for what we have. Thanksgiving is perhaps the one holiday observed by all New Yorkers and we would like to join in that spirit to give thanks for uniting here in a great city and a wonderful nation that is full of opportunity and hope. Happy Thanksgiving.
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