Time to recognize and respect Jason Victor Serinus’s “As I See It” column in the Leader. His recent entry, “State officials can preserve and forward democracy” (July 17, 2024), not only provides valuable information for voters on statewide Democratic candidates who will hopefully represent you and me, but is also a fount of encouragement and calls to action for those of us who, like Serinus, “will not vote for anyone who allies themselves with the Trump-dominated Republican party” and that movement’s false representation in regard to, among many other things, decreased governmental regulation and tax cuts. Serinus routinely deals, on a local, statewide and national level, with the serious threats to our daily lives that the goose-stepping GOP would introduce should they emerge victorious in November, never forgetting how each of us will be affected, including those who would cast a vote for Trump.

I recently read comments from a well-known man who acknowledged that a MAGA regime would be a devastating blow to the democratic process, but wondered what the day-to-day effect would be for someone living in New York City or San Francisco — is it possible to simply roll back civil rights, or would they be incrementally eroded so that we would gradually stop taking these rights for granted? The writer of that post spoke from a remove of relative safety afforded to him by age, race and economics that many outside (and even inside) his coastal urban examples do not share, and I detected a slight academic patronization to those comments, as if he were presenting an abstract theoretical. I’ve never found that to be true of Serinus’s words. He proves with each passionate column that his concerns are shared by all of us.

Serinus has joined my weekly reading list, which includes Heather Cox Richardson (“Letters from an American”) and Jessica Craven (“Chop Wood, Carry Water”), as an essential voice in the process of learning how to protect and preserve democracy. Thank you for publishing his work.

Dennis Cozzalio

Port Townsend