Many of the actions taken by the current administration have one thing in common: They threaten the death of many people.

Consider what they have done or are attempting to do: stopping cancer research; forbidding research agencies to communicate with each other or the public about diseases; stopping grants and subsidies to farms, limiting the ability of the people who feed us to continue in operation; reducing/stopping the SNAP program that helps those who are low income get enough to eat; cutting billions from the Medicaid budget (to offer tax breaks to the obscenely wealthy), a program that enables the most vulnerable among us to get health care; stopping USAID from distributing food and medicine to populations around the world; cutting back on air traffic controllers; withdrawing from WHO and the Paris accords; pretending that by removing any reference to climate change that the increasing storms and extreme conditions we are experiencing will miraculously disappear; eliminating the agencies that monitor weather and give communities advance warning that storms are approaching; expelling or sending immigrants to concentration camps, including many who are in the country legally, which not only upends their lives but leaves us without many of the workers who tend to our most vulnerable family members and neighbors, young and old, who harvest our food, and so on.

Thousands if not tens of thousands may die as a result of these actions, and none of them need to happen. Mr. Trump came into office promising to improve lives, and all I see is the harm and terror he has brought with him.

I understand that shock and bluster is part of what attracts his followers, someone who picks up on the anger they feel for the struggles they have making ends meet. But Trump is going way beyond shock and bluster; his policies hurting people and dismantling the government. Is this what you had in mind?

I hope you who voted for him will finally see who he really is and take action with your neighbors and friends to resist the destruction of our communities and country.

Doug Selwyn

Greenfield