This is a response to the Aug. 21 My Turn column headlined “Basic needs hard to find in Greenfield.” The writer says, “… why not instead tackle what might make life better for your own residents. Put OUR needs first for once and put your personal agendas aside. DO SOMETHING FOR US. “
The personal agendas she is referring to are caring about social justice and climate change and the people she is charging with not attending to OUR needs are on the City Council.
The problem with this is that the problems of social justice and the real problems of climate change are not personal agendas. They are the agenda of the majority of residents. The writer, on the other hand, is speaking from a personal perspective not for the people as she seems to think she is.
I lived in Greenfield for a number of years in the 1980s and only moved away in order to get a teaching job that was too good to pass up. When I retired, in 2014, I moved back because of what Greenfield is. It has more to offer than one of the hilltowns (where I had also lived in the 1970’s and it is not Brattleboro, Northampton, Amherst or Hadley and that’s a good thing! I suggest that if the author want’s chain stores and big box stores like Walmart, etc., and finds living in Greenfield so inconvenient that she move to where she can more easily spend her time shopping.
John Guenther
Greenfield