By Julia Reeves Santa Monica Remember North Korea Editor:
(This letter was originally addressed to SMDP columnist Charles Springer, who appears on Mondays.) I have to say that with some of your previous columns, you almost won me over. However, with this latest column of April 15, you cast the last deadly blow against yourself in my eyes.
First, let me say, that rather than this country allowing these women to be homeless, it is they who are choosing it. They have freedom of choice, which means that if they really wanted to, they, perhaps with much-needed help, could get off the streets. “The very people who gave all of us life, are living on the streets?” How can you make such a generalization?
Suddenly, you see some homeless women walking by and you make them into martyrs from whom we all have sprung, been given life. Heaven help us all if that were the case.
We are not treating women this way. They are treating themselves this way. To make a comparison between homeless women in this country and the way that “women are treated in Afghanistan under the Taliban or in Iraq under Saddam’s regime,” is ludicrous. These homeless women here have rights, which they are not exercising, while those other women to whom you refer have virtually no rights.
I am sorry, I just don’t buy it. Give me a break!
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.