Letters to the editor

“Two Genders” T shirt There is a remarkable, but disturbingly unsurprising, fact that emerges from Rick Sobey’s story about the First Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling against eighth grade student Liam Morrison, who, says the court, has no right to contest the Middleboro school’s ban on wearing a shirt with “There are only two genders” emblazoned on it. This is blatant ideological censorship of admittedly non-disruptive conduct. Yet, ironically but not surprisingly, the Middleboro school district engages in its own ideological preening. Sobey reports that the district “each year celebrates Pride month, hanging pride flags and sending the message that there are ‘an unlimited number’ of genders.” Apparently, in Middleboro, what’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. In legal terms, the constitutional principle of equal protection of the laws, embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not apply within the area covered by the First Circuit. Harvey Silverglate Cambridge Boston’s safe summer Kudos to Boston Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld on his latest piece (“Shooting shows Wu’s ‘safe summer’ plan is failure,” Boston Herald, May 9). I read his commentary on the recent shooting near a Dorchester charter school and the Shawmut MBTA Red Line station. The fact that the folks who run the Neighborhood House Charter School were forced to go remote for the remainder of this school year, is all one needs to know about the impact of persistent violence, much of it gang related. There should be a full time focus on creating safe environments for our school-age children who are getting caught up in escalating violence. I do agree with Battenfeld who writes truth to power on this issue and the mayor’s public stance. Wu has taken a holistic approach to violence and gang shootings. Wu’s “safe summer” initiative seems to have been hitting a few speed bumps along the way. Addressing root causes of violence through a public health lens and creating the conditions for healing doesn’t seem to be working out well to date. The mayor continues to remain too silent over this latest incident. Just because it wasn’t a public school doesn’t mean it isn’t as important. The data-driven and visionary approach might look good on paper but the city needs to be listening more to the experiences of the residents and neighborhoods impacted by violence. We are living with too much violence across too many neighborhoods in the city. It is a crisis and too many elected public officials are simply remaining too silent for our own good. We don’t need holistic approaches to an impending long hot summer, we need the attention of both the City Hall and the police. Sal Giarratani East Boston