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Rallies prove Trump
opponents aren’t alone
Re: “Thousands rally in massive protests” (Page A1, April 6).
I attended a rally Saturday in opposition to the nightmare that has descended since the last election. No speakers, no famous people, just thousands of plain citizens gathered together, thousands who made their own signs, making music, singing and walking. I was touched to the verge of tears. I felt part of a great tribe I had feared no longer existed.
I can’t do it justice. Donald Trump is still president, and all the terrible things that might happen might still happen. But all those thousands of people — walking, chanting, singing, carrying signs, some funny, some not, all of them understanding the hard times we are in — gave me hope that the war isn’t lost yet, and that I was not alone.
Michael Steinberg
Berkeley
Polluters should pay
for past deceit
As the earth warms, Californians will pay more for the damages caused by climate change, including from disasters like the Los Angeles fires that are more severe as a result of hotter temperatures. But we don’t all bear equal responsibility for the crisis.
Oil and gas companies knew about the harms of climate change for decades, but lied to the public and lobbied legislators to slow climate solutions. They should pay to clean up their own mess. That’s why the state Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025 would assess the biggest polluters a fee based on their past emissions, with the funding going toward climate solutions like clean energy, investing in firefighting and recovering from disasters.
Nicolas Riani
Oakland
Trump is dismantling
freedom of speech
Re: “Trump requests details on profs” (Page A1, April 4).
Donald Trump has relentlessly applied pressure to universities that are spreading the “woke virus,” and we are seeing the consequences as students vanish.
Students have been taken by ICE or left the country after being accused of spreading Hamas propaganda. Recently, we learned of UC Berkeley and Stanford students having their visas revoked. Now, they are going after professors at UC Berkeley who called for support of Jewish staff and students and the safety of students and faculty with Palestinian family in Gaza. Showing any empathy appears to be unacceptable.
This isn’t about protecting national security. This is about silencing voices that do not align with the regime’s vision for America.
We need to contact our representatives and put a stop to this.
Jackie Cochrane
Richmond
Private equity makes
wealth inequality worse
One of the most serious problems in America is wealth inequality.
A substantial portion of that wealth is concentrated in private equity (6.5% of U.S. GDP). While originally a field where rich investors could legitimately profit from risky investments, it has become a playground where the rich buy large segments of industries (hospitals and senior care facilities, for example), load those companies with debt, raise prices, skim off large pieces of the profits, exploit the benefits of the carried interest tax loophole, and return the leftovers to the pension funds and endowments who originally provided them with the capital they needed to acquire those companies and monopolize those industries.
CalPERS plans to allocate 17% of its total investment portfolio to private equity. Wouldn’t pensioners — and the rest of America — be better off if they did not have to pay the excessive hospital bills because of CalPERS’ involvement in private equity?
Jim Wolpman
Walnut Creek