from HILDA WILCOX

Amend The Constitution

To Better Serve Nation

To the Editor:

With this letter I join thousands of other voices decrying the passage in the U.S. Constitution that gives our president power to override a decision of our Congress, which had recently voted to end our participation with Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen that has already been responsible for thousands of deaths from bombings, starvation or untreated illnesses – a catastrophe which the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian tragedy.

Although our president had the legal right to overturn the vote of Congress, I do not believe that we the people have the moral right to now close our eyes to our responsibility for our part in the suffering and destruction that our support for Saudi Arabia’s invasion continues to cause. But we can too easily retort, “Yes, but the Constitution gives the president the legal right to reverse the decision of Congress. There’s nothing we can do if his actions are protected by the Constitution.”

True, there’s little immediate action we can take, but just as some of us are hoping to find a way to get rid of the Electoral College, which twice in our lifetimes delivered a president we did not elect by popular vote, we can begin to work toward altering the Constitution, as we did when we gave African-Americans the vote and when we gave women the vote.

Time does not stand still. The Constitution cannot lock us in the past as long as we have the will to change it to serve the needs of the present.

HILDA WILCOX

Cooperstown