Cartoons

Editorial | COVID spin doctors making job harder on the real ones

S.A. Shepler (c) Community Word 2022

“Follow the science,” they say, which is good advice. Unfortunately, though, the COVID-19 pandemic has become way too political and is spinning out of control. It’s important to connect the dots and not let opinion cloud the facts. Especially these…

Editorial | Undermining local journalism hurts everyone

S.A. Shepler (c) 2021 Community Word

Dear Gov. Pritzker, Legislature, City Council and others: We are losing independently-owned newspapers at an alarming rate. You say you value local journalism, but you undermine its very existence when you don’t return calls from reporters, don’t issue statements in…

Editorial | Abortion is healthcare, prioritize it over politics

S.A. Shepler (c) 2021 Community Word

Religious objections to abortion are completely subjective and should not be the basis of public health policy. When Texas Republicans contend life begins at conception, they are conflating opinion and fact. Rabbi Fred N. Reiner states in a letter-to-the-editor in…

Editorial | Deliberate Misunderstanding

S.A. Shepler (c) 2021 Community Word

It is not antisemitic to advocate for Palestinian human rights and respect. It is not antisemitic to protest war against Gaza. It is not support of Hamas, a terrorist organization, to object to bombing Gaza. It is not antisemitic to…

Editorial | How art can change the world

S.A. Shepler (c) Community Word

Peoria should bring Preston Jackson’s whale sculpture, “Shirley Armstrong,” to the Peoria Riverfront in the green space to the east of Peoria Riverfront Museum. The whale is a beautiful and haunting reminder of the interconnection between the sometimes careless actions…

Editorial | What Tom Vilsack fails to say about hunger

S.A. Shepler (c) 2021 Community Word

Tom Vilsack is returning to his post as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. He served in that capacity under President Obama for eight years. Vilsack hails from Iowa, a leading agricultural state with a major focus on industrial corn, soybeans, hogs,…

Editorial | Land-grant legacy of injustice

S.A. Shepler (c) 2021 Community Word

A recent report in High County News concluding a two-year investigation revealed “a dark open secret: One of the largest transfers of land and capital in the country’s history had masqueraded as a donation for university endowments.” The report found…