To the editor: I couldn’t help but cry while reading Steve Lopez’s latest column on the intractability of the addiction and homelessness around MacArthur Park. (“The time for excuses is over. L.A.’s MacArthur Park needs a champion now,” column, Dec. 21)
Politicians will not fix this problem. It is a social problem, with the “rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.”
You know those on the street with addiction are there because drugs have been our salvation, according to TV commercials and pharmaceutical companies. Others have mental illness and, at long last, have just fallen off the cliff of life.
We as a society can do better, but politicians are manipulated by “stakeholders,” a euphemism for lobbyists.
Good luck to our children and grandchildren.
Gene Dorio, Santa Clarita
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To the editor: Lopez rightly asks where the political will is to clean up MacArthur Park for the children and families who live in the area.
Mayor Karen Bass has promised, just as mayors have before her, to take action against gang activity and drug dealing, but little happens.
Much of the activity in and around MacArthur Park described by Lopez is illegal. California has laws against drug possession and distribution. Why are they not being enforced in the MacArthur Park area today?
We need leadership from the mayor’s office, the Los Angeles Police Department and the new L.A. County district attorney to eliminate this open-air drug epidemic and criminal activity for good.
Mary M. Emmons, Los Angeles
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To the editor: When is it right to make life-saving choices for others who can’t ask for help?
Much talk about this revolves around maintaining the dignity of the people suffering and allowing them to make the choice to get help or not. This gives us a way out of helping them because we can say, “They choose to stay in their addiction, so what can I do?”
To help public discourse about this topic get more momentum, we need to also talk about ourselves. Think of it this way: Do we want to become a society that helps to alleviate suffering, or one that perpetuates suffering through our inaction?
A first responder pulls someone out of a burning building and we rightly applaud. But when someone is so addicted to a drug that they have lost the ability to make the choice to get help, we say, “Let’s not force anything.”
We must call out our own hypocrisy and start making decisions as if we are the ideal version of the society we dream America can still one day become.
Matthew R. Jensen, San Pedro
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To the editor: Kudos to Lopez for calling out the broken promises of generations of city leaders who vowed to fix the social ills of L.A.’s Westlake neighborhood, which includes MacArthur Park.
There is a solution, and it’s called taxes.
If we had a better, more equitable tax system that required the comfortable actually to pay their fair share, the city budget would not be always too strained to allocate the needed resources to make a big difference.
Patrick Frank, Venice
