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Right now one of the easiest road/streets to travel on in Tyler is Old Jacksonville Highway. Now it is proposed by the city and TxDOT to widen and put in medians and an overpass at the intersection of the south loop and Old Jacksonville. What a terrible idea. The medians alone should kill this project, but an overpass? You have got to be kidding.

The medians have been a topic of rage for years on the loop. Evidently the city and TxDOT have learned nothing from the past or they just do not care what the public has to say. The medians have closed many businesses and caused hundreds of accidents. They cause delays and take up valuable space on the loop. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes!

Please, save our tax dollars and leave Old Jacksonville Highway alone.

Jerry Gardner

Tyler

WHERE IS JUSTICE?

Justice! Where? Not in Smith County or in Texas. When you can’t find an attorney — Black, white, red or yellow, even with the Texas Bar Association, to take a white man’s case against them, because they tell me the judges in Smith County are crooked! Before the world knew George Floyd, my son Samuel Bamburg, on May 18, 2020, who joined at 17 to serve our country and now suffers PTSD and in 2018 our Smith County sheriff promised amnesty if military citizens sign up for PTSD help they would get it and Judge Skeen and attorney Roberson lied to him by telling him he was in a military court and if he takes a plea he will get treatment, knowing Tyler, Texas, had no military court yet and he got no help!

Then he spends 62 days in the Smith County low risk and has had not one prisoner come down with any symptoms of COVID-19 and because he refuses to take the COVID-19 test, for fear of them putting it in him, they shackle him and as they are taking him to the towers where they also have claimed heavy cases of the COVID-19 and two officers threaten him, saying that are going to see he gets it one the size of a gorilla throws him on the ground helpless and puts their knee in the base of his neck other in his back until he is about to pass out and right arm is going numb before they let him up! He sustained facial injuries and til this day has refused him requested medical treatment and the requested info he needed to file charges. I recently found the forms to send him to file, and they know he only has 90 days to request videos til they are erased! You tell me where is justice for anyone in Smith County?

Brenda Bamburg

Tyler

LOVE LACKING

Having watched video of the shameful interaction between Trump/Gohmert supporters and Hank Gilbert’s appearance and attempted speech last Sunday, I was struck by its contrast to the posthumous op-ed by John Lewis. He stated, “Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you … let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

I would say that the drowning out of dissenting voices was a display of intolerance, flaunting the flag of repression was a display of hatred, physical confrontation during an approved and peaceful public rally uncalled-for violence and the presence of armed dissenters an unacceptable form of intimidation and an incitement to violence. I found the principles of peace, tolerance and love for our fellow human beings sadly lacking. I have said before that Tyler deserves so much more than Louie. Now I am not so sure.

Charles Butler

Athens

JARRING DISCONNECT

It’s very telling that even in 2020 an apparently diverse group of people coming together to help someone experiencing a medical emergency warrants five columns on the editorial page.

“Never really having given any thought about the color of the man’s skin; his position in life; his political or religious affiliations; or any other criteria …” writes the author (guest column, Tyler Morning Telegraph, July 29). Then, his true purpose of writing the column becomes evident with his “last words” to the sick man, “Just remember people wearing blue shirts’ lives matter.”

Of course they matter. Who among the people in his account had said they didn’t? There is a jarring disconnect in the writer’s story, transparent to readers but apparently not the self-congratulating column writer.

Carol Thompson

Tyler