Letters: Candidate forums, Met opera, city council and ceasefire in Gaza

League of Women Voters primary candidate forums on March 23

The public is invited to two forums to be held on Saturday, March 23, with Democrat candidates in contested primary races. Both forums will convene in the Monroe County Public Library Auditorium, 303 E. Kirkwood Ave., in Bloomington. Co-sponsors of the event are the League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County, the Big Ten Voting Challenge, the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, IU PACE (Political and Civic Engagement), Kappa Tau Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Monroe County NOW, Monroe County Branch NAACP, and the South Central Indiana Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Republican candidates in the contested race for Monroe County Commissioner, District 3 have been invited to a forum in April. As of March 12, their participation has not been confirmed.

The first forum on March 23 will take place from 1-2:30 p.m., with Democrat candidates for Monroe County council at-large Matt Caldi, Trent Deckard, David Henry and Cheryl Munson. Laura Rusk, president of the American Constitution Society at IU’s Maurer School of Law, will moderate.

The second forum will be 3-4:30 p.m., with Democrat candidates for Monroe County Commissioner District 2 Peter Iversen and Julie Thomas (incumbent), and candidates for District 3 Penny Githens (incumbent), Jody Madeira, and Steve Volan, participating. Maria Douglas, Middle Way House development director, will moderate.

Community Access Television Services (CATS) through the Monroe County Public Library has been invited to record the forums.

Debora Shaw, spokesperson for the League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County

Metropolitan Opera broadcasts still available locally

The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts live productions on occasional Saturday afternoons. Up until this season, they have been shown at the AMC Showplace 11, near the College Mall Kroger. That theater is now permanently closed. Therefore, there is no local theater showing these live performances.

However, the good news is the Met has now made our area eligible for their At Home program. People can purchase tickets and stream the productions to their own homes. A ticket also allows the purchaser to watch video of the performance for seven days after the livestream, so if your Saturday afternoon is busy you can still view the performance.

Please circulate this information to any opera lovers you know. To see the list of remaining streams for this season, and to sign up, go to https://metstream.metopera.org/. There will be a Check Eligibility button, and you will have to allow the site to use your location to confirm your eligibility. Then you will have the option to purchase tickets.

Mimi Zolan, Bloomington

City council should pass resolution seeking ceasefire in Gaza

As a Jewish American with grandparents from the shtetl of Pinsk, I appeal to my fellow Bloomingtonians to urge our city council to join municipalities across the country to pass a resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The majority of the 30,000+ dead in Gaza are women and children; 1.7 million, stalked by famine, have been displaced in a strip smaller than Indy. The world’s highest tribunal, the International Court of Justice, has ordered Israel to stop actions that plausibly constitute genocide. Yet Israel has tightened its blockade of food, water, fuel, electricity; continued destroying housing, hospitals, schools, cultural and religious sites; continued its torture, degradation, and incitement to hatred. There are no more excuses.

This is not just the “horror of war” with a symmetry of violence on both sides. Denied a state of their own by the Israeli occupation, driven from their ancestral farms, Gazans are trapped like fish in a bowl at the mercy of one of the world’s most powerful armies. Please write your councilmember today — urge them to echo Pope Francis, and people of good faith, and all faiths, the world over, who say: “Enough, please! Stop!” Two words suffice: ceasefire now.

Benjamin Robinson, Bloomington