Killin gave us a chance

I was saddened to read in the D-H on Jan. 8 that Mayor Doug Killin is so ill.

My husband and I are former meth users with criminal histories, and three years ago we decided to clean up our lives. Once clean, we were in need of a place to live, so we applied for one of Mayor Killin’s properties.

When we met with Mayor Killin, we explained our circumstances to him along with the fact that we were denied at five other apartment complexes.

I am not sure what led him to believe in us, but he did. I have never had a landlord that was as “tenant friendly” as he was. We are still living a clean lifestyle, and I can’t help but think that it’s because Mayor Killin gave us a chance with stable housing that we are still doing so well.

My family will forever be grateful to him.

Stephen and Elizabeth Little, Albany

Make taking cart a crime

I drove down Queen yesterday morning thinking about grocery carts in the creek. I then noticed six in the back of one store. I then saw five or six more, with another actually in the street. They were from more than one store. I counted 26 before I got to Waverly, and that was on the south side only.

The problem is not the stores, but lack of law. A city ordinance could be passed making using a cart off the store’s parking lot a crime. It should be no different than taking a bike and riding it elsewhere. And police do pick up abandoned and stolen bikes.

A grocery cart costs a similar amount or more. The law would be broken when the cart left the lot. If there is a legal twist that the business must press charges, so be it. They press charges for shoplifting. A decent store would offer a $25 reward whenever someone spots a cart being stolen from the premises.

The cart is not public property. It can easily be labeled “for use on owners’ premises only.” This paper should run lists of whose carts are where. I would expect businesses to reinforce their rights to their property. If they don’t, and their carts still get left abandoned, let it be known and many customers will shop elsewhere.

Roger Hawthorne, Albany

Torture: Illegal and immoral

In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted experiments on obedience at Yale University. His scientific process and findings were — and continue to be — controversial. Regardless of gender, regardless of nationality, he found that people would inflict electrical shocks to a person (despite any moral misgivings they had about the procedure, and especially to a stranger) if they were told to do so by an authority figure.

In short, it has been scientifically proven that we will hurt one another, we will damage and destroy one another, given the chance — or let’s say, the opportunity, the situation — the permission to do so.

Torture was outlawed internationally by the third and fourth Geneva Conventions. Following are two articles which should be noted:

No. Article 2(2) of the Convention Against Torture: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

No. Article 3.1: “No state party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

And torture is illegal in the United States because of our Constitution and the Convention Against Torture (CAT), a treaty President Reagan signed on April 11, 1988, and the Senate ratified on Oct. 21, 1994.

Torture is not only illegal, it is immoral. Whenever torture is used, our humanity is diminished. Torture damages and/or destroys the victim, but it also corrupts the perpetrator.

Victims of torture are objectified by the perpetrators. Victims become, in the perpetrator’s mind, a thing bereft of emotional or physical meaning. To objectify another human being is what rapists do to their victims. It’s what murderers do to their victims. It’s what psychopaths and slave owners do to their victims. Is it OK under any circumstance to ask another to rape, murder, terrorize and enslave in our names?

Sept. 11, 2001, was a defining moment in U.S. history, but unfortunately, for many parts of the world, it was just another violent example of a few radicals desperate to make their mark on the world. And they have. They have succeeded in getting us to imagine torture as an option in this country instead of the heinous crime it is.

Leonora Rianda, Albany

Service officer helped us

We wish to extend our gratitude to former Linn County veterans service officer Pat Brillon. Due to her diligence and perseverance for about four years, the VA has finally granted a disability claim to us, on at least a portion of the items submitted to them.

Patrick M. and Delta Duncan, Sweet Home