A Matter Of Perspective

This is in response to Miaya Sustaita’s letter (“The Sound of Slaughter,” Letters 5/20). Sustaita compared the sounds of trees being cut down in order to make way for an apartment building along the river path to “when women, children and the aged and infirm cannot get out of the way of the machines of war and the mercenaries who drive them.” Get a grip. Have you ever experienced actual adversity? I agree, it’s sad to see green space destroyed in exchange for “market rate” apartments that won’t help our houseless neighbors. But given that an actual genocide is currently being carried out on a military scale against Palestinian children in Gaza, I think your language comparing two dozen trees being removed to literal genocide is in poor taste and shows a severe lack of perspective.

Brian McDermott

Springfield