Celebrate Direct Support Professionals Week Sept. 11-17

Dear Editor,
    Gov. Bruce Rauner has proclaimed the week of Sept. 11-17 as Direct Support Professionals Recognition Week in Illinois. This special week is celebrated across the nation to express appreciation to direct support professionals, who provide vital support to persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, among others.
    At Community Link, we are extremely proud of our talented and hard-working direct support staff, which often goes above and beyond, providing extraordinary support to individuals with disabilities.
    Direct support professionals’ jobs are rewarding, as each employee makes a real difference in another person’s life every day while striving to help individuals achieve their highest degrees of independence and integration into the community.
    If you know a person who works as a direct support professional, please congratulate and thank them for their dedication to this critical work.
    John Huelskamp
    Executive Director Community Link

                                                                               Let us not forget 

Dear Editor,
    Sixteen years ago this week, I walked into my squadron (906 Air Refueling Squadron) and knew our way of life would be changed forever. On that day, terrorist attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people and affected the lives of countless others across our great nation and beyond.
    That galvanizing moment changed our nation, a generation of Americans and the world. The loss of life, destruction and devastation hit hard but it did not confine our country to a future filled with fear. As deep as the loss was we stand united against the evil that sought to destroy our way of life and our freedom Americans have fought to defend since our nation's conception.
    On Sept. 11, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned the nation during his Fireside Chat: "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him." 
    The time for active defense is now. Do not let us split hairs. Let us not say: "We will only defend ourselves if the torpedo succeeds in getting home, or if the crew and the passengers are drowned." ?
    This is the time for prevention of attack. Those words are ever more relevant today as they were 76 years ago as our nation continues to wage the war on terror.
    So let us not forget the 2,977 people who were killed and the thousands who have paid the ultimate price, our wounded warriors and the men and women who continue the fight against the evil that seeks to undermine our way of life. We can honor the memories of those we lost and the sacrifices of those who bear the scars of battle by carrying forward the values of service and sacrifice in everything we do.
    Rafael Him
    State Senate candidate

                                                    Trump versus Clinton

Dear Editor,
    Democrats have been calling all people who voted for Trump uneducated, small, illiterate and other names especially in the Belleville letters page. 
    Is it the people who voted for Trump out bashing people, breaking laws, gathering in places without a permit to do so legally? 
    I took my tests to go in  the Army when I was 16 years old and left two days after I turned 17 for Fort Leonard Wood. When I landed in Vietnam I was 17 years, 9 months and 5 days old. 
    You spoke of draft dodgers Mr. Robke. You forgot one and I would wager that you voted for him. William Jefferson Clinton was a draft dodger supreme. Maybe you didn't read the letter he sent to the ROTC colonel in Arkansas saying  he would join the ROTC if he would get him a deferment one more time. 
    Did he join? Not in my lifetime he didn't. He also didn't think the colonel would still have the letter decades later, but he did. 
    Do you also know that he protested the Vietnam war in a foreign country? He should have faced a firing squad for that. 
    The Democrats chose to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for the presidency. She has been a crook, fraud and liar all of her life and everyone in this country knows it. She even has perjured herself to Congress, the FBI and the American people. 
    I have studied politics before I was ever a teenager, but more importantly I have studied the politicians. Hillary Rodham Clinton and William Jefferson Clinton have belonged in prison for decades. People talk of Trump's taxes. I hate to disappoint anyone, but Trump didn't make tax laws and you know who did. 
    The hate I see is from the people who can't stand it that Hillary Rodham Clinton lost to Trump. Maybe some just need to look in a mirror to see the hate. 
    I searched to find anything political on Trump before he decided to run. The only thing I could find is that he bought Democrats and  Republicans equally for things he wanted done. He was not my choice for president but I could not vote for a person like Hillary Rodham Clinton. 
    It wasn't the Republicans who got Trump elected, it was Independents and some Democrats. 
    So keep up the hateful speech until the next election and you will be disappointed again. 
    Robert E. Colston Jr.