To the editor:

Ken Meyer’s sanctimonious letter of June 4 calls for “understanding each other and accommodating our differences” and then proceeds to do the direct opposite. Meyer bemoans “chaos, confusion, violence, protests and disorder” by “protesters, authorities, activists, looters, organizers or very concerned citizens” without ever acknowledging that these events have a real cause and respond to great evil. What seems to upset Meyer is the fact of conflict as such, but not the killing of George Floyd, nor the many other killings of people of color at the hands of police officers who seem to have a fully justified sense of impunity, nor the widespread police violence inflicted not merely on rioters, but much more broadly on people peacefully protesting these events. We will never “understand each other,” and conflict will continue, as long as white privilege allows many people to ignore or deny the root causes of these events.

David Burress,

Lawrence