City Councilor Chuck Turner had every right to speak his mind in the City Council’s Feb. 14, 2007 meeting and say that the Council should pass a resolution to bring American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. I strongly object to the negative responses that Rev. Shaun Harrison of the Youth in Crisis Ministries and Rev. Bruce Wall made condemning Turner for raising the issue.

Just because a person chooses to be a politician to help his constituents, that does not mean he must cut off his concerns for other people and their problems. That is why he got into politics in the first place — to help people. So what does it matter if the people are in Boston or halfway around the world? Does it mean that he should not care about others?

I wonder if those who are blasting Turner have ever been to a war zone, let alone having actually been in a war, and seen the babies on the streets and roads with no family, with no food, begging for anything that you can give them for comfort. Well, I have, and it is not a thing that a person with a conscience can forget.

Chuck Turner did not start the street violence that the reverends so graphically described in their statements. But the highest office in our land lied and started a war with another country that is getting thousands of young men and women killed for no good reason, and all the head of our government has to do is call it off and stop our young people from dying.

Anything that happens in the world affects other parts of the world as well. Look at all the programs that have been cut so the government can send billions of dollars to the Middle East to fight an unpopular war. How can Revs. Wall and Harrison be so narrow-minded that they can’t see that maybe some of that money could provide community centers, after-school and school programs that may get some of the angry children off the street? Councilor Turner is doing his job by trying to keep some of the young people — on both sides — from dying.

Melvin Francisco
Dorchester