Here’s a sampling from my email bag. Keep the messages coming. My address is david.ramsey@gazettedev.gazette.com

In Tuesday’s paper, I celebrated the decision by Washington’s NFL franchise to drop its insulting and racist team moniker. In the column, I quoted American great Billy Mills, who won the 10,000 meter run at the 1964 Olympics. Mills, a proud Marine and a proud member of the Lakota tribe, spoke a basic truth about Native Americans.

“We are not mascots.”

“It’s a rapidly changing world” – quote from Billy Mills in your opinion piece today. Yes, it is. I find that my just being a white man is a total offense now. Everything I’ve done, do and will do is an affront to all the new woke culture people our schools have churned out. . . .

I grew up here, went to Harrison schools my whole life and learned quickly that people’s skin color really wasn’t any big deal. Now I find out it seems to be everything and what we’ve been teaching people about skin color not mattering (or shouldn’t) is completely wrong and if you are a person of color you can do no wrong because of that fact. But, if you are white, well you are the cause of all the heartache in the world and need to be on your knees repenting.

PN

(I have yet to meet a fellow American who finds “total offense” or wants me to “repent” because I am a white male. And I never will meet such an American. Because they don’t exist.)

You know, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I was never a Redskins fan anyway. BUT, the way I figure it all this crap started with a very bias media. . . . AND the really important thing is; “WHO GIVES A DAMN WHAT AN IDIOT IN HOLLYWOOD OR A MEDIA TALKING HEAD THINKS ABOUT ANYTHING???” We can make up our own minds.

RW

(I have zero ambition to make up your mind, but I would encourage you to pay heed to Mills’ voice and ponder the hurt the racist Redskins moniker caused him and tens of thousands of other Native Americans.)

I’ve been following nearly all of your recent commentaries in the Gazette wherein you often express what many folks today would call “woke” viewpoints, with the term meant in a positive way. Today’s column on the Redskins name change is just the latest example. Chances are, in a conservative stronghold like Colorado Springs, you get a lot of blowback on these viewpoints. If so, I say kudos to you for swimming against that tide.

KB

(Chances are I get a lot of blowback? Ah, yes, but that’s fine. Disagreement is part of what makes life fun and interesting.)

In Sunday’s paper, I wrote of the FBI’s and J. Edgar Hoover’s failed crusade to label Martin Luther King Jr., as a communist.

I read with interest your column that Martin Luther King was wrongly labeled a Communist. I wonder if you are aware, that in the 1950s, there were billboards throughout the South showing Martin Luther King on the front row of a Communist training school. If it were not true, someone would have sued for libel or slander. It never happened.

JM

(I guess I need to consider the FBI’s crusade to smear King to be only a partial failure.)

In a column earlier this month, I wrote of the complicated decision to keep or discard the name of Chivington, Colorado. John Chivington was the man most responsible for the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 that left 250 Native Americans – many women and children – dead on the state’s eastern plains. 

While we’re into the notion of renaming things, wasn’t Governor Evans, he of Mount Evans fame, the one who ordered and sanctioned the attack? I doubt anyone considered naming one of our front range 14’ers after him to be a social comment on his shameful involvement in that episode.

DR

(I grew up in Denver not far from Evans Avenue. Will that avenue be named after Evans in five years?)

In another June column, I rode my bike along the Greenway Trail that hugs Monument/Fountain Creek in downtown Colorado Springs. Dozens of homeless live along this stretch.

“You seem to think it is an easy subject and seem to have it all summed up succinctly… “We could, with more beds and more enforcement, someday celebrate a clean, safe local treasure.” While I agree that it would be nice I am not nearly so heartless to think that beds and more enforcement are the answer. . . . The city certainly shows its Republican roots in demonizing the poor rather than offering compassion for their plight. . . . I’d call you out on your obvious oblivion to your white privilege, but I’m white myself and have enjoyed the same and am similarly oblivious.

RG

(And here’s another view of the same column:)

I’ve been an outreach volunteer for Rocky Mountain Human Services for the last 5 years. I spend a great deal of time at shelters, soup kitchens, campsites and parks looking for veterans to enroll in a program that leads to permanent housing for them. . . . Your article on this topic was a clear and concise overview of the situation. I wish everyone would read it. . . . Thanks for treating this issue in such a thoughtful manner.

GS

Tracy “Indio” Lewis, 47, walks among his group’s campsite near the Pikes Peak Greenway Trail in Colorado Springs on Friday, March 27, 2020. (Chancey Bush/ The Gazette)

Chancey Bush The Gazette