Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are old, too. KC Royals should stay at Kauffman Stadium | Opinion

Kauffman joy

I had the pleasure of going to a Royals game at the beautiful stadium recently. The weather was perfect, the game was competitive, I enjoyed good company and the atmosphere was fun and relaxing.

I looked out at the stadium and was just incredulous that the powers that be actually want to abandon it. I will never understand why this is the plan. Some say it’s old. Wrigley Field or Fenway Park anyone?

I imagined it being torn down, and then driving by on Interstate 70 and seeing a hole where the ballpark used to be. After the game, walking across the parking lot and seeing the beautiful lights of Arrowhead Stadium on one side and Kauffman on the other, I thought about what a treasure those two places have been to our community all these years.

- Laura Martinez, Kansas City

From the past

I agree with the opinions in The Star’s editorial concerning teaching history in our schools. (May 15, 7A, “It’s wrong to keep using the Negro Creek name”)

Students need to be aware of the critical importance of such world-shaking historical events as the French and Indian War and the Teapot Dome Scandal.

Similarly, we need to reintroduce such vitally important subjects as sentence diagramming, least common denominators, cursive penmanship and painting with watercolors.

In English class, students should be assigned to read the lofty, immortal literary masterpieces of James Fenimore Cooper, Louisa May Alcott and Charles Dickens. Knowledge of social conditions in 19th century England is of earth-shaking importance.

- John R.W. Taylor, Kansas City

Keep the name

Reading the editorial board’s impassioned condemnation of the Johnson County Negro Creek study coalition’s decision to retain the creek’s name, I became acutely aware of a basic truth of storytelling: Who gets to tell the story matters a lot.

In this case, multiple narrators appeared as far back as 1856 and continued to tell their racist stories by using some form of the word “Negro” for 167 years.

Most telling in the editorial narrative, however, is the board’s acknowledgment that “older local Black leaders wanted to keep the name as some sort of reminder of the past” while younger Black activists argued that the name “is too offensive to remain in place.”

Characterizing the narrative of older Black leaders to maintain the name Negro Creek as “some reminder of the past” diminishes the voice of community elders as a quaint artifact.

Emmett Till’s mother knew the importance of leaving her son’s casket open at his funeral. Even The Star itself apologized and changed years of under-reporting our Black community’s stories.

No, the Negro Creek study commission got it right. Keep the name as incontrovertible evidence of 167 years of racism in Johnson County. Keep the signs to interpret that reality.

- James Heiman, Independence

At the source

Debt ceiling negotiations are in the news along with the expiration of Title 42 restrictions on immigration and migrant border crossings. (June 1, 10A, “This debt ceiling deal isn’t great, but ‘no’ unthinkable;” May 26, 7A, “Here’s how the government can improve processing immigrants”) Both affect priorities funded in the upcoming federal budget. The future will depend not only on how much is budgeted, but on what is funded.

Thousands of migrants at the border are not there because they want to leave their country, their homes or their families, but because they do not have livable countries, homes or families and must leave to survive.

The 2023 U.S. budget funds atrocity-prevention programs through the State Department and reconciliation programs and complex crises responses through the United States Agency for International Development. Collectively, they account for $90 million of the $1.7 trillion in 2023 discretionary spending. They fund initiatives in other nations preventing genocide and mass atrocities, promote nonviolent conflict resolution and stabilize governments facing emerging crises, ultimately reducing the displacement of citizens and the flow of migrants. Every dollar spent on these programs saves an estimated $16 in potential military response if the crises boils into armed conflict.

Congress has an opportunity not only to reduce spending, but to spend more effectively by shifting more support to programs such as these.

- Steve Kellogg, Independence