Las Vegas Sun

May 9, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

MADD-style action needed

The women at the table of the daytime TV talk show “The View” recently discussed the police beating death of Tyre Nichols. Their show reminded me of the kind of discussion that must have happened in 1980 when women got together to start Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

Mothers beginning then did not just get mad, they got busy. Young people, like Candy Lightner’s daughter, Cari Lightner, were being killed by repeat DUI offenders, just like young citizens today are being killed by police with a license to kill whomever displeases them.

MADD went to work lowering the legal blood-alcohol level for drunk driving, raising penalties and enacting many other educational and action measures.

I hope the women of “The View” and others like them get busy today. And I hope a few white men will take some time to grow a social conscience and join with them.

Women, once again, from the time of the underground railroad, the anti-saloon league, women’s suffrage, children’s work and welfare campaigns, and civil rights, are true leaders of humanity in American society. White men generally have busied themselves in their spare time watching football in a beer stupor, and occasionally rising to attend funerals.