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Brooklyn Daily
To the editor,
Wow, Shavana Abruzzo, what a fantastic, eye-opening column (“George, Amal, and Muslim thugs,” A Britisher’s View, Sept. 10). You burst my George Clooney bubble, for sure. You’ve opened my eyes, and now I’m gonna open many, many, many more eyes after I Xerox your article and pass it on. Wowee. What detective work. Five stars! No, 10 stars to you, Shavana. You are the best. One of the dailies had a two-page spread about their English mansion. What the heck does one need 10 bedrooms and eight bathrooms for? Give that money to charity for homeless animals and folks if you’re trying to beat the tax man, I say. Eight bathrooms? Pure nonsense! Unless you’re a really lousy cook, and all your many guests have to use a bathroom at the same time because of your lousy cooking.Matt Rudato
Bensonhurst
Pink-n-purple
To the editor,
I loved your pink-paper issue for Breast Cancer Awareness Month (Oct. 3), but did everyone forget that October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and its color is purple? Let’s break the silence of this mental and physical killer.Desiree Milici
Brooklyn
Turkish support
To the editor,
We are shocked to learn about the violent, anti-Semitic attack committed against the executive director of Kings Bay Y, Leonard Petlakh (“Kings Bay Y head attacked at Barclays,” Oct. 9).
Leonard suffered a broken nose and lacerations, requiring eight stitches. Mercifully, he is now safe and recovering. We call on the NYPD to promptly find the assailants and bring them to justice. But punishment alone will not end this kind of hate and political violence, which have no place in civil society.
We must encourage our community to invest more heavily in education to teach our young people that political, ideological, religious or cultural disagreement should never lead us to express our views violently or in ways that compromises others’ dignity. We send our thoughts and prayers for a quick recovery to Leonard and his family.
Suleyman Aydogan
The writer is executive director of the Turkish Cultural Center Brooklyn
L’Chaim Deutch
To the editor,
Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Brighton Beach) is to be congratulated for having four pedestrian walk signs repaired on Coney Island and Brighton Beach avenues. I reported the first two, going west to east at Joel Samuels Plaza, crossing from the west side to the east side of Chase Manhattan Bank. The other two were on the northern side of Coney Island Avenue.
Mayor DeBlasio said that the city’s objective is to have zero fatalities, and he reported that there has already been a 20-percent drop since last year — a great incentive for the councilman to build on. Perhaps one day New York City will become New York Safety City.Elliott Abosh
Brighton Beach
Tree plea
To the editor,
I have lived in the Sheepshead Bay-Homecrest area for more than 30 years and seen many trees pruned. It is one big racket. Usually a private contractor drives by and in a superficial, cosmetic manner hacks off a few branches hardly bigger than twigs. Very little of substance is accomplished. As City Controller Scott Stringer has already pointed out, hefty fees are charged and we, the taxpayers, foot the bill.
Less trees should be pruned and the really dangerous large branches of damaged tress should be taken care of. Our safety is at stake.Henry Finkelstein
Sheepshead Bay
Speed demons
To the editor,
The reason we put people in public office is to protect us and make life in the areas they serve better, but some of these officials come to work with blinders on about speeding motorists. If they want to see a total disregard for the law, they should stand on E. 66th Street and Avenue U and watch out-of-control motorists run red lights, park on sidewalks or at the bus stop without a thought to pedestrians. I’m sure that this nonsense goes on everywhere, but passing a red light is very serious. Some idiot drivers speed through lights while others use them like a stop sign.
Some great deterrents would be heavy fines, their car impounded, and their license suspended. Of course all this will fall on the deaf ears of politicians who don’t seem to care about our huge speeding problem.Perry November
Bergen Beach
Teacher breachers
To the editor,
Accused sex predator Sean Shaynak, a teacher at Brooklyn Tech High School, gives a bad name to the once-respected teaching profession.
Among other things, how did this person get appointed to the prestigious school to begin with? While other teachers languish in schools filled with unruly discipline problems and unable to transfer, how was this guy able to waltz into such a plum position? Evidently, he knew someone, so politics as usual played a keen role.
It’s just always not what you know, but rather who you know. Let’s go back to appointing people based on ranking lists of examination results. Right now everything is based on favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism.
I remember the old days when the transfer lists would come out and each year they would say that Districts 21 and 22 had no teaching vacancies. Yet, if you went to a school board meeting in those districts in June, retiring teachers were being honored. Yes, it became the old game of hiding positions for friends, relatives, and people the politicians wanted in.
In 2005, United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten gave up seniority transfers. Now, it’s called the fair market system, and it’s anything but fair. Principals, school teams, and others routinely choose the people they want, and ability rarely if ever counts. Let’s return to a civil service merit system in education.Ed Greenspan
Sheepshead Bay
Brooklyn wins
To the editor,
The euphemisms being used that relate to the changes in Flatbush can be equally identified with so much of Brooklyn. When I attended Midwood High School, from 1950 to 1961, the socio-economic-racial dividing line was Empire Boulevard and Eastern Parkway into the Interboro Parkway to the Van Wyck Expressway. White flight began and the lines moved more easterly towards the Belt Parkway, with the new demarcation being Caton Avenue and Linden Boulevard to Pennsylvania Avenue.
The last changes I saw before departing Brooklyn for Long Island was Church Avenue to Rockaway Parkway to the Belt. I now live in the Boston area and have returned to Brooklyn over the last 10 years to visit friends and attend baseball games in Coney Island, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Speak about changes, I’m surprised that Putin isn’t seeking to annex most of Brooklyn for the large Russian speaking population that is not only in Brighton Beach, but through to Kings Highway and Avenue J.
Brooklyn has always been a melting pot of the world. The first inhabitants were native Americans. Then the Dutch after the Manhattan “garage sale.” Then Eastern Europeans, Irish, British, Caribbeans, Africans, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, and countless others. Each time there were changes, those growing up in such an environment were learning so much about the culture in our world. Students didn’t travel around the world to study abroad, but instead learned so much from the different neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Whatever the color of Brooklyn, just allow it to evolve, prosper, and grow with people sharing, learning, and leaving peacefully together.
So much has changed in Brooklyn since I moved away in 1988. More people want a Brooklyn address than a Park Avenue one. Park Slope is a changed area. Columbia Street is no longer looking like Berlin after World War II. Red Hook and Gowanus have become areas to be proud of. Grand Army Plaza on a Sunday is a beautiful place to be alone or with your family. Strolling along Flatbush Avenue from the bridges or Prospect Park to the Barclays Center are delightful. Be proud of what you have, as you cannot find a piece of Brooklyn in Boston, Des Moines, St. Paul-Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Worcester, Albany, New Orleans, Cleveland, Austin, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal, Hartford, Providence, Paris, London or many other places. I’ve been to these places and not even the bagels are real.
Change is hard on many, but keeping Brooklyn diverse is better than being just black, white, yellow, red or any other color of the spectrum.Bill Funk
Acton, Massachusetts
Speed demons
To the editor,
Time after time I’ve either read or heard about many hit-and-runs by cars where someone was usually killed. It was no surprise about a women being hit and killed by a biker in Central Park. I feel sorry for the family that lost a wife and mother. The down side about Brighton Beach is some bikers think the Boardwalk is a place to speed. We’ve got seniors, and children who use the Boardwalk, and in my heart I hope neither gets hit by some out-of-control biker.
When you bike down Emmons Avenue and make a left turn, there are bike lanes going from south to north, and on the other side of the street the lane goes in the opposite direction. Crossing over Coney Island Avenue going west there is a bike lane, and once again on the other side of the street there is a bike lane which ends at Neptune and Coney Island avenues as well. What do we consider a sidewalk? Not a place for anyone to bike ride, but for people to walk on. Being courteous of walkers should be the theme and concern every day.Jerry Sattler
Brighton Beach
Vote smart
To the editor,
Know a candidate’s public record, if you really want to be an informed voter. Go to votesmart.org, where you can find a report card by a group that takes no stand on who to vote for. Highly praised by all, the only aim of this group is to make every voter informed on candidates running in an election. No longer need we depend on TV commercials or smiling faces in a newspaper. Now we can get the facts just by going to votesmart.org. The 21st century is truly here.David Raisman
Bay Ridge
‘Flawed’ system
To the editor,
The American system is extremely flawed. Virtually everything we, as school students, were taught academically is made up of bull. The school system does not teach us how to be independent thinkers, but instead it teaches us how to be dependent drones. The employment workforce is, and always will be, racist and sexist. Society is biased against gays, but too chicken to even attempt to investigate the massive corruption that takes place behind the walls of the federal government.
The Catholic Church is guilty of all of the above. Its members secretly molest young boys, then dictate to gays about how they should live. They don’t say a word about the genital mutilation of young African girls. Pompous, holier-than-thou believers. See them, don’t wanna be them.
Everyone is too busy and too content worrying about what someone else has or what someone is wearing. People should mind their own business.Sebastian Casalenova
Bensonhurst
Republi-con Party
To the editor,
It is amazing that today in the U.S. we have so many people who argue against science, and argue against higher-order thinking skills. One of the planks in the Texas Republican platform is to remove classes in critical-thinking skills from college curriculums. The ability to use our senses and apply logic is greatly to the benefit of people, yet there are people who prefer to not only refute facts, but to deprive others from being exposed to this information.
In the 1960s we forced school integration and changed several laws. The national guard was required to escort some students of color into their new schools to enforce the new law. Several decades later, these laws were so successful some folks began to ask whether we still needed carefully enforced anti-discrimination laws, and even some sane people had to wonder whether it would always be appropriate to give special placement to people based on their race. But the bigots were still alive. They had just been keeping silent (to some degree) in public settings, since sentiment had turned against them.
In some pockets of the country there were lots of repressed haters, and the conservative one percent (who also own the media) did everything they could to attract the haters, and fan the fire of that hate, to distract them from focusing on the fact that the rich were taking all the profits of enhanced digital productivities, and were engaging in class warfare in a never-ending attempt to drive down costs in the name of increasing profits. And they used their increased profits to “back” (purchase) legislators and to create legislations that were more profitable to the corporations which wanted those particular laws. And some people joined the hating, because the incentive of joining a group of haters so you can feel better about yourself is the same as it ever was.
The Republican Party is shamelessly aligned with corporations (business), and cares much more about business profits than it does about workers (people). Republicans fight against fair-pay laws, propose and implement legislations to do away with a minimum wage, try to outlaw unions, and try to reduce or eliminate taxes for the wealthy and corporations while taking the money from programs that support the public, especially the middle and lower classes. Also, because the causes Republicans represent would not appeal to the general public, they adopt strategies of using propaganda to misinform and mislead, defaming their opponents rather than debating them. Republicans support and try to appeal to the extremist fringe groups, including religious extremists, homophobes, misogynists, and xenophobics. Republicans strategically attempt to create an atmosphere of fear and distrust among the public so they constantly make up conspiracy stories, which occupy the news programs and divert attention from the corporate control of government. Nasty, selfish stuff. In fact the current Republican selfishness is so extreme that they have consciously adopted a strategy of blocking all progress for America if they are not the elected party in office. They will not pass bills benefiting America unless Republican goals of further increasing the wealth of the wealthy (by cutting programs helping the public, like Social Security, food stamps, and Medicare) are included. They are essentially trying to hold America hostage.
And that is why we should boycott the Republican Party, and urge our friends to do that too. We need a legislative body that represents the people of our country, and is less controlled by business interests. Paul Fox
Bay Ridge