To the editor: The reluctant activists
The Chester Telegraph | Mar 30, 2026 | Comments 3
Watching the evening news with my mom in the 1960s, we saw the daily body count from Vietnam — mostly young, working-class men, drafted and placed in harm’s way to fight a war without clear objectives; too young to legally buy a beer, but old enough to die in the jungle half a world away.
We watched the assassinations of a sitting president, a promising presidential candidate and a civil rights leader who preached peaceful protest. We saw peaceful demonstrations turned into street battles by police, unarmed protesters shot by National Guard troops, a river so polluted that it caught fire, and a residential neighborhood poisoned by corporate toxic waste.
I was too young to fully understand it all. I was not too young to appreciate what changed when The People took to the streets. The draft ended. Troops came home from Vietnam. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts became law. Nixon created the EPA. Meaningful changes, every one — driven by The People saying enough is enough. Our government learned not to go too far. I thought we’d all be OK, and we were — for a time.
Fast forward to 2026. We’re embroiled in another war most Americans oppose. Environmental safeguards have been stripped away. People of color are being arrested indiscriminately in our city streets. Americans who stood up in protest have been gunned down without consequence. Our 238-year-old Constitution is under attack by a rogue administration while a Republican-controlled Congress stands by in silence.
So once again, it falls to the peace-loving, justice-centered people to take to the streets. Most of us are Reluctant Activists. We’d rather spend weekends with family, resting up after a full work week. But the stakes are too high for silence — higher, even, than in the tumultuous ’60s and early ’70s. It’s the very principles our nation was founded upon that we’re fighting to reclaim. And we will not stop -– we cannot stop -– until we have righted the ship once again.
Tim Roper
Chester
Filed Under: Commentary • Letters to the Editor
To the Editor…
I shall begin by submitting a very wishful command.
I suggest heavily that the underwear of all the Anti-Trump perverted PROTESTORS, be infected with a Thousand and One Camel Spider’s and Black Scorpion’s since that is where their Brains are!!
I guess they would love to see Vermont flooded with masses of illegal Drugs from Venezuela under the Mad-Man Madura and wifey!?
I guess they would love to have had the Ayatollah of Iran demolish Israel and the Republic of the U.S.A, with his ICBM’S and Drones!!?? Maybe Trump should have allowed that to happen, but he does not have a Bleeding Heart to let ICBM’s take out CENTCOM in Tampa, NYC(which in my mind would be a delight to have happen under the present leadership!) nor a Drone emailed to the Green in Chester, my Hometown!
All of you PERVERTS calling for a Democracy, etc., are in desperate NEED of a class with photos, videos, sound-tracks of a be-Heading, plus other delights, to wake up your brain infested asses to the deplorable, despicable RELIGION called THE ISLAMIC FAITH!!!
Yours truly, Nathan as in Hale, and Adams as in John……
Thank you, Tim, for your eloquent description of what we lived through back in the 60s and early 70s. Never thought I’d be marching again in my “golden years” for many of the same reasons I marched back then. But you are so right: we can’t just sit by in silence and watch our democracy being gutted. Armchair retirement will have to wait.
I am so thankful for older generations being the story keepers and sharers, like this. This kind of generational knowledge and activism encourages the younger generations to push back against apathy and pessimism.