Nicholas Bernhard: Sacred Heart: Feeling vandalized as well
About 20 years ago, I attended Bridge School next door to Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Bridge School was small enough that we had to walk over to Sacred Heart’s gymnasium for PE class. The main building was originally a convent, for the same order of nuns dramatized in the movie Lillies of the Field. There is a quiet beauty to the land around there: the open fields beneath the Front Range, and a little grove of trees, which held a pond where geese would brood over their eggs. I have visited the chapel at Sacred Heart twice. When services are not being held, the chapel is filled with a rich silence, and seems to invite calm reflection. When Sacred Heart was vandalized, it felt like a small part of my own past had been vandalized, too.
I am a strong secularist, which for me includes a respect for other people’s rights to religious belief, and a respect for other people’s property. More importantly, secularism means being firmly opposed to desecration, which was the obvious intention of the Sacred Heart vandals. The vandals defaced someone else’s property, knowing that those who held it as sacred would feel violated, and this must be condemned without equivocation.
In a secular society, we can learn from and share in each other’s heritage and traditions. I can admire the complexities of a Passover feast without being Jewish, and I can find solace in the ritual of lighting a candle for a deceased relative without being Catholic. This is what “culture” means. It is what I will be fighting for, as I fight against those who would affect change through desecration and intimidation.
Nicholas Bernhard
Lafayette
Jim Wolf: Mark Wallach: He earned my vote
The first time he ran, Mark Wallach won a seat on the Boulder City Council , and he did it without my vote. Now as I consider his intelligent and independent voice on the Council, I am endorsing him for another term, and I do so with enthusiasm. Mark is a known and steady voice, one that all his colleagues on the Council recognize with their support of his candidacy. Please consider voting for Mark Wallach when you fill out your ballot; you will be doing it for Boulder.
Jim Wolf
Boulder
Julie Schoenfeld: Nicole Speer: A vote for diversity
I was perplexed by the omission of Dr. Nicole Speer in the Daily Camera’s endorsements for City Council. Dr. Speer walks the talk in her desire to create a more diverse and inclusive Boulder, the kind of city where I want to live. I was a member of the City’s Racial Equity Working Group, and am confident Dr. Speer will implement the strategies laid out in the City’s Racial Equity Plan passed unanimously by the current Council.
As the Director of CU’s Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium, Dr. Speer created programs where CU students from underrepresented backgrounds taught neuroscience to thousands of K-12 students and teachers in Boulder and beyond. She’s also involved with outreach to the unhoused and the NAACP’s Education Committee.
I was confused when I read the Camera’s endorsements. They expressed disappointment in not seeing more “active and engaged residents who are bright and experienced in community service.” Yet the paper overlooked Dr. Speer who has a terminal graduate degree and has volunteered in our community for the past 16 years.
More than words are needed to create a diverse and inclusive community. For that reason and others, I urge each registered voter to join me in supporting Nicole Speer for Council.
Julie Schoenfeld
Boulder
Jeffrey Flynn: Steve Rosenblum: Extensive experience in housing
I urge everyone to go to Steve’s website at www.steveforboulder.com/ and click on the “about” tab and the “issues” tab to see what he is about. Housing is a very complex issue and requires more than doing away with single family zoning, as some of the Boulder Progressive candidates seem to want to do. We need someone who has extensive experience in this area to begin to solve our housing problems. Steve has that experience. He isn’t someone who just spouts platitudes but has done the work in housing over many years. He has literally created affordable housing in Denver for those in need.
He knows how to work at all levels; local, state and federal, to get the money and governmental approvals required to get housing built. Other candidates like to talk about how they are going to solve the housing crisis in Boulder but they literally have no experience in doing so. And because of that, they won’t be able to take actual steps that leads to more housing for our workers and government employees, like our police and firefighters. Steve has that experience. And that’s why Boulder needs him on Council.
We need someone who can step in from day one and get the process moving, not someone who will take two years to even understand the complexities of this difficult area. I urge you to vote for Steve. Along with Mark Wallach, that will give us two experts on housing on City Council to solve Boulder’s most pressing issue. He may be the most important Council vote you can make this year. He literally is the housing candidate in this year’s City Council election.
Jeffrey Flynn
Boulder
