We need to band together to fix this

To The Eagle:

Thanks Kent Martin for writing so eloquently on the effects of urban/suburban rule-making for rural parts of the state. I first heard you present that perspective about a year ago and it set me thinking that this issue is not limited to just fishing, and not just to Wahkiakum county.

The same problem is lurking behind other issues of the day: for example in timber management, the urban/suburban destruction of their own areas, and their voting power to force rural areas to make up for their own problem; in gun rights, their overcrowding and voting power has allowed them to make rules they need but rural areas don't; in school financing, their voting power has allowed them to write the rules in their favor disregarding rural areas.

We should not make this another us-vs-them thing - too much of that currently going on. Rather, after rural areas receive recognition that our lives matter too, then we can negotiate more sensible, sustaining solutions to problems, including short-term mitigation of problems dumped onto rural areas by urban/suburban areas. This applies to us. It also applies to much of our state, and to much of the midwestern USA. We have a lot in common with a lot of people: we need to band together regardless of political affiliation and get this fixed.

Ron Wright

Puget Island