We Need a Marina del Rey Town Hall
Re: “Information Underload,” News, March 7
I have lived in Marina del Rey for 25 years. I am now afraid of getting cancer from living here due to the gas leaks and the big oil well blowout. Are we in danger of more leaks and blowouts? We need a town hall meeting!
Anne Kirkpatrick
Marina del Rey
Argonaut Has a Long History of Bias
Re: St. Mark Church,
Rep. Ted Lieu and Election Endorsements
The Argonaut fails as a newspaper because it simply seeks to persuade with its version of the truth. Extreme bias is apparent in every article. From painting Pastor Spellman as a bully to kissing Ted Lieu’s ass to supporting every crazy leftwing measure like Propositions 47 and 57, it does not inform. It disinforms.
If The Argonaut had journalistic integrity, it would report both sides of an issue. Since it does not, the only thing that it is good for is to line a birdcage.
Debra-Lynne Terrill
Playa del Rey
There’s a Mob Outside Santa Monica Library
The Santa Monica library was beautifully built several years ago by local architecture firm Moore Ruble Yudell. It’s carefully designed to make it a pleasure to browse amongst bookshelves, built in rooms bathed in natural light. It offers visitors a glorious place for reading and learning, while giving children and students a convenient place to study.
With this in mind I happily drove to 6th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard to drop off 1,000 books that had belonged to our family, carefully packed in boxes to donate to the library. Everyone behind the desk in the main lobby was helpful and pleased to receive the donation. A library guard brought out a cart to transport the book boxes inside the glass doors.
However, it was only 3 p.m. and the surrounding library parking lot was terrifying. The library guards were doing their best to control the rabble outside the back library main doors. Sleeping bodies were lying on the steps. Drugs were being passed around. Loud screaming came from out-of-control young men who were walking back and forth.
I asked the guard to escort me inside as he pushed the cart with the book boxes. What if I had brought young children with me to do homework? The receptionist was so charming I felt guilty that library workers have to endure this on a daily basis. Why is nothing done about the mob surrounding and inside the library?
When I came back outside to my car, with the guard as protection, one of the wild men was peeing on the side of a junked up car parked next to mine. He then locked the car with a menacing huge chain and padlock and walked off. I asked the guard if this happened every day at the library. “Yes,” he replied, acknowledging the situation has gotten worse in the past two years. “I will call the police.”
What about our politicians? Where are they and what are they thinking about this situation? Families cannot and should not go to the library or even the parks any more. It is a horrible sight to behold. At this rate there will be no more childhood memories of time spent with parents playing in the park or browsing in the library. Is this what we want?
Caroline Cushing
Santa Monica
A Future with Less Fear
“The Green New Deal Comes Home,” Opinion, Feb. 28
Tudor Popescu’s refreshing column about Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “no more gas” decision helps us to think about our future of climate disaster with less fear. It is helpful to understand that there is something we can do about this overwhelming problem. A discussion of resource efficiency could also lead to some hopeful revelations about achieving more effective clean energy. Please Google “National Action Plan Vision for 2025: A Framework for Change.”
Diane Fletcher-Hoppe
Marina del Rey
I understand whole-heartedly how Caroline Cushing feels in the letter about the Mob at the Santa Monica Library. Having been an Angeleno since birth it’s very hard for me to get used to the homelessness and wanton behavior that occurs all over L.A. The other day I took my daughter to go for dinner at her favorite restaurant and right in front of us a man was peeing against the building and people were blatantly smoking something that definitely wasn’t cigarettes. Go to the promenade in Santa Monica and you have to step over the people to get to a shop. People seem to want to blame the homeless for the downfall of our city, but I see it as our politicians doing absolutely nothing but talking a good game, but not backing it up with results. As beautiful as California is with our beaches and warm weather and blue skies, we have become the modern day “Sodom & Gomorrah”where any behavior is okay and a blind eye is turned. Trying to raise decent, responsible children isn’t important here anymore. Caroline would be best to do as I am doing, take your children and go somewhere else where family values matter. California is looking more and more everyday like that classic Kurt Russell movie, “Escape from L.A.”