I love the Op-Ed section of the paper. I believe we all need to write at least one letter on something we’re passionate about in our lifetime. In saying that, I applaud this reader

My fifth-grade son asked me for help with his homework the other night. His class is reading Lois Lowry’s famous novel, “Number the Stars,” based in Denmark circa WWII. I read this book when I was my son’s age. I couldn’t believe such horrible things had actually happened. Reading his assignment, I was struck by the words at the end of Lowry’s book: “Surely that gift — the gift of a world of human decency — is the one that all countries hunger for still. I hope that this story of Denmark, and its people, will remind us all that such a world is possible.”

Is this what countries hunger for still, “a world of human decency”? Is this what our country hungers for still? I look at what’s happened the past month in our country: thousands of federal workers fired and the freeze of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Lifesaving food and medicine programs, a shining beacon of American hope and generosity, gone.

The ghosts of the past are crying out to us now, in 2025, to speak up for a “world of human decency.” That world is still possible, but only if we stand up for it.

Heather Maher, Gig Harbor