Letters

Re: your endorsement for "No" on Proposition F [October 25–31]. Thank you, L.A. Weekly, for having the nerve to print what many of us, as grassroots Valley anti-secessionists, haven't had the opportunity to express. Yes, at its core the breakaway movement is the last cavalry charge of the NIMBY, regressive suburban flight. But my heart goes out to the good-spirited City Council candidates who got caught up in Richard Katz's pseudorevolutionary rhetoric. Unwittingly, they — along with a mostly East Valley legion of voters — are poised to make history: the abrupt creation of America's sixth largest city as a flathead plebeian nation, all painted pretty with nowhere to go.

On the flip side of this, the rest of us go about our business fixing cars, splicing film, writing cheesy pop songs, painting houses, loving, losing and loving again on both sides of Mulholland Drive. For us, L.A. still feels like home.

—Paul Perner North Hollywood

 

Wow! Such courage, such conviction you have shown once again in your endorsements. Simply vote for the Democrat, even if he makes you sick. Don't even think of voting for a third-party candidate, and don't even listen to the Republicans. This is a perfect example of what the Democratic Party has become and why I left it: cynical and dictatorial. Don't even dare question the leadership. Just do what you're told.

I still appreciate the endorsements, however. It's an efficient method know of finding out what to vote against.

—Tony Blass Winnetka

 

Rarely do I find myself in disagreement with my friend Harold Meyerson. But the Weekly's decision to endorse Gray Davis is incomprehensible. You based your endorsement on the good legislation he has been forced to sign. But a governor does many things aside from signing bills into law. As your own reporters have chronicled over the past few years, Davis has:

• hired the law firm of O'Melveny and Myers to browbeat 12-year-olds during depositions in civil-rights lawsuits filed over the deplorable condition of California schools;

• refused to even threaten to seize the power grids during the state's energy crisis;

• refused as a matter of policy to entertain the idea of paroling anyone convicted of murder decades ago, no matter the prisoner's record while incarcerated;

• proved himself to be nothing less than a fund-raising machine, exempting himself from the scandalously high contribution limits of Proposition 34; and

• rewarded his contributors with lucrative labor pacts, such as the one with the prison-guard union whereby guards' salaries exceed those of teachers in the state.

Having lost your competition to the ravages of the market, the Weekly has a special responsibility now to be an alternative voice and not a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party.

—Roy Ulrich Vice President, Southern California Americans for Democratic Action Los Angeles