To the Editor:

Thank you to our Seventh Congressional District representative, Ayanna Pressley, on her signing last month of the letter to the Biden administration advising negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Alas, this mild peace advocacy by a few dozen members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus was quickly condemned by mainline Dems, including Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss, as well as much of our corporate-owned media who have jumped on the war-funding bandwagon. The letter was quickly withdrawn under huge pressure to do so. 

As a retired person who remembers when Democrats spoke out for peace, it is disorienting and deeply disturbing to see most of them now being swept up into the pro-war-funding crowd. The Democratic leadership seems determined to keep supplying weapons, regardless of the cost to US domestic programs or the cost to the climate crisis, which is worsening every day by this war. Their war-funding policies continue the sacrifice of Ukrainian as well as Russian lives and have us on the knife edge of nuclear war. 

As a member of Dorchester People for Peace and Massachusetts Peace Action, I and many others are proud that US Rep. Pressley signed the letter, and only wish that she and the others in the group of signers had been able to hold their ground. Thank you, Ayanna Pressley, for trying to get to peace in Ukraine by beginning negotiations to end the war.

Rosemary Kean
Dorchester