Honoring King or special interests?
What does the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday represent? What does Dr. King represent? I believe he represents education. Why education? He believed in education above all else because without it, freedom is useless. If you are free, yet uneducated and unskilled, you are not free.
We live in a county in which the unemployment rate has reached double digits. That rate is almost twice as high for black minorities. It is a county that sees hundreds of young people drop out of school each year. Is this what Dr. King died for? Is this what his vision intended?
I believe that Dr. King would desire for children, black and white, to honor him by honoring themselves. He would want impoverished children to go to school so they can have a warm meal. He would want them to go to school so they can become better than their current circumstance. He would want them to educate themselves on the past to avoid making the same dire mistakes that the older generation has made time and again.
He would want adults, on both political sides, to stop using his name and the name of others as political rhetoric.
Furthermore, I believe he would want those in leadership, particularly over minorities, to stop telling them what Dr. Kingís legacy means. I for one believe that Dr. King did a fine job of defining his legacy himself. The minorities of this county do not need bureaucrats to define it for them. If these bureaucrats think so highly of the minorities they support, why do they constantly insult their intelligence by telling them what to think?
I believe that this holiday’s meaning is clear. It is meant not to honor a person. It is meant to honor a dream of true freedom and equality.
ó Josh Wagner
Salisbury
Hometown hospital
I have lived in Salisbury long enough to witness the acquisition, merger and takeover of many local businesses ó Home Savings & Loan, Security Bank, Stanback, the Salisbury Post, Philís ShoesÖ The list seems endless. These local success stories generated great wealth for their owners and stockholders and have created many philanthropists and good deed doers. But these acquisitions, mergers and takeovers have also caused the loss of local jobs and have hurt local suppliers. Novantís acquisition of Rowan Regional Medical Center is no different.
Rowan Regional Medical Center will be celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. It is billing itself as our hometown hospital. Yet its local management is gone; new management commutes to Salisbury from elsewhere, and its purchasing decisions are being made in Charlotte, and are favoring Charlotte suppliers and businesses.
If Novant wants Rowan County residents to use the hospitalís services, then it needs keep more of its management and purchasing decisions local. Otherwise it has no leg to stand on when Rowan County residents go out of the county for medical services.
ó Michael S. Young
Salisbury
The writer is vice president of Downtown Graphics Network Inc. in Salisbury.