One recent evening, we received a call from our granddaughter, who is a teacher at a charter school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and whose fifth-graders are predominantly Hispanic and black.

She said that the children, the students, were afraid and very upset, because the next president of the United States is a man who thinks he can say anything and that there are no consequences to what he says, that words don’t matter.

Well, words do matter. He can’t take them back. He said them, and the children heard them. They heard what he said and what his supporters said, and they are scared and their lives are being profoundly damaged by what Donald Trump has said and says he will do.

I say to all of us: This is the time to talk to our children and our grandchildren, to reassure them, but also to tell them that they can make a difference. And going forward, we must all do whatever it takes to make sure that such a man with such a terrible message does not again prevail in a presidential election.

Deborah Schneider

Falmouth

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