By Bill Bolt Santa Monica Letter was hateful Editor:
(Editor’s note: The editorial board of the Santa Monica Daily Press agrees with the letters below. The letter to the editor that was published in Tuesday’s paper should’ve never been printed. It was an oversight by the night editor that it ran and was not intended to be printed. The SMDP regrets that it ran and apologizes to the community for publishing its content. We are a community paper that strives for positive change, not to promote violence toward anyone.) Letter in bad taste Editor: I could hardly believe my eyes: A newspaper allowing its pages to be used as a vehicle for the advocacy of violence against struggling human beings (SMDP, letters to the editor by John Zarchen, July 22, page 4.) I am not concerned about Mr. John Zarchen. Such windbags seldom ever carry out their hateful words. However, I am deeply concerned that you, the editor and publisher, should print such dangerous stuff. This is not freedom of speech. This is direct provocation to violence. Proposing that gangs go after homeless people and anyone who dares to help them in phrases like “Boot out the invaders” and “Use your muscle,” and then daring to connect that up with legitimate police work, is outrageous.
Something awful happened this week in Santa Monica, but it was tragically unintentional. Something else awful happened in your pages and, in a way, was worse because it proposed intentional evil against fellow human beings.
I can hear you saying “Oh, but we have a column written by a homeless person.” That does not give you carte blanche to propose violence against the homeless and people who feed them. Would you print his column if your homeless columnist proposed that the homeless get even with the housed and well-off by burning their houses down and heaving bricks through the windows of their cars as they drive by to teach them a lesson in humility? Would you have endorsed slavery and horse whipping field slaves because masters also had “house n……ers” working in their mansion who they treated a little better?
Isn’t it enough that one Santa Monican has been found guilty of manslaughter for shooting a homeless person six times?
What is happening to this city, once proud of its decency to those in need: First higher incomes, then greater hypocrisy and now out and out right-wing vigilantism?
Stop it now before more people die needlessly!
PS. Instead of aiding and abetting the brutalization of the homeless with the unattainable goal of making them disappear, why don't you lend support to an intense look at the effectiveness and efficiency of the homeless agencies in this city? National Public Radio just did a long report on a successful program (was it in Minneapolis?) where they offer alcoholics a clean, permanent and private place to live and eat, yes and even drink. The project does not demand that drunks first reform before they are rewarded with roofs over their heads. The success is that they are off the street, not requiring repeated police and paramedics attention, and can call a safe secure place home, rather than always wandering the streets to avoid extremely restrictive, dangerous and often unavailable places like shelter dormitories. The drunks can even keep their cherished pets in their rooms with them.
I'll never forget the statement of one of the residents: “Drunks are human, too.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 24, 2003. Read the original PDF.