Letters to the Editor (July 5)

Activity important at school playgrounds

I see children playing every day at my neighborhood elementary school after building hours or during the summer. Adults often supervise or join in the fun.

According to the Kansas Health Foundation 2018 Data Book, 74.5 percent of children and adolescents are not physically active at least 60 minutes per day. A full 30.7 percent are overweight or obese. Lack of physical activity and obesity are directly linked to upward trends in chronic heart disease and diabetes.

A Robert Wood Johnson-funded study found that physical inactivity cost the U.S. about $117 billion in health care costs per year. Can we really afford to lock children and families out of our public school playgrounds?

The need for refugees

This year, no more than 21,000 refugees will be welcomed into the United States. This is the lowest number accepted into the United States since the beginning of the program. It comes at a time when the need has never been greater.

The decline in refugee arrivals has left many industries in the United States unable to fill jobs with U.S. citizens. Employers across the country in industries such as manufacturing, hospitality and meatpacking rely on refugees to fill jobs.

As U.S. citizens, we should be advocates and speak up for refugees, welcome them and their families into our community, learn more about them and the horrors they flee, and find that their hopes and dreams are the same as ours. Please contact our president and ask that we welcome 75,000 refugees to the United States in FY 2019.

No respect for human traffickers

We waste too much time and money pandering to gate crashers along our southern border.

These poor, unfortunate lawbreakers have been prepped by human traffickers to game the system and use their own children (or someone else’s) as pawns hoping for a free pass.

When these freeloaders lose custody of their children, are we really supposed to feel sorry for them?

If your first act entering the United States is one of lawlessness and you have no hesitation using innocent children as an accomplice, should you have custody of these children to begin with? Are you the kind of people we what as future citizens?

Diversity not always the key

I’ve been reading in the Eagle about the unsightly empty storefronts in downtown Wichita, and the city’s plan to try to relocate some of our local art community businesses into them.

Economic analyst James Chung’s dismal report on Wichita’s economic health still hangs over us like a dark cloud. If our soon to be courted (by the city) art community doesn’t mind having a few non-competitive neighbors downtown, why not promote a few more diverse types of businesses in some of these vacancies?

Driving around town, I realized Wichita is still not quite full to capacity with smoke shops, tattoo/piercing parlors, payday loans, nail and massage joints, vape shops, pawn shops, and bail bondsmen. Perhaps there’s even room for another gentleman’s club or two, since they now can sell booze at the crack of dawn.

Out of the way, James Chung. So long, Bedford Falls. Pottersville, here we come.

End abuse to animals

I am writing regarding animal protection legislation. There is so much cruelty to animals, everything from using animals in cosmetic testing, to factory farming. Cows are made to stand in a stall all day with no way to turn or move.

We need to make everyone aware of this awful abuse. Once more people are aware of these abuses, I believe they will be horrified as I am. We need to have pro-animal legislation now.