To the Editor:

There has been much discussion about the Letter to the Editor written by District 1 Council Member Cathy Reiss and comments in defense of that letter by District 2 Council Member Ryan Knapp. This includes my letter refuting the premise of Reiss’ letter.

As I reflect on this dialogue, there are two things that strike me about both members’ actions. Their first public statements on our nation’s racial divide were not statements of recognition and reconciliation.

Instead, both council members’ first public thoughts on race in America were an attack on Black Lives Matter, an organization universally associated with recent calls for racial justice. It stuns me that this move was their reflex as politicians and as members of our community. Their actions give me pause.

The second is the nature of the attack itself. Each of these elected officials harvests both real and imagined elements of BLM’s mission statement creating provocative soundbites in order to discredit the organization as a whole. I belong to many organizations — religious, political, and charitable — and I don’t always see eye to eye with everything they say.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the same. Did that cause you to dismiss the whole enterprise? Leave your church? Cancel your civic organization membership? Abandon a good and just cause? Of course you didn’t. You went home and complained about it to your partner and then soldiered on. But that’s not what Reiss and Knapp suggest. They suggest that the baby go out with the bath water.

Council Member Reiss continues her attacks on BLM. Like Council Member Knapp, she latches onto the real and imagined parts in order to discredit the whole. It is a tried and true political ploy especially by members of the majority who claim to know what’s best for the minority.

As members of Newtown’s Legislative Council both Knapp and Reiss have the power to build. Instead they chose to use their political muscle to tear down. Newtown deserves better.

Respectfully,

Stephen Zakur

32 Lyrical Lane, Sandy Hook August 17, 2020