News

Letters to the Editor: April 17-23

By
• April 16, 2013

Readers tackle the larger issues behind homelessness, violence and drug addiction.

Bigger Problems

The immediate problems of homelessness, violence, mental illness, drug addiction, dirty syringes in public areas, etc., that we are facing here today in Santa Cruz are local manifestations of a larger and more serious problem. As the Global Ruling Elite and their criminal psychopathic minions on Wall Street, the Too Big To Fail Banks and in government continue to rob us and plunder the economy, you will see more families in the middle class descend into poverty and despair.

We should look carefully at what is going on in Cyprus today, where the bankers are stealing depositors’ savings to pay off the banker's “debt.”

You want to address drug addiction in Santa Cruz? How about taking your money out of the banks who launder drug money for the drug cartels. Keep this in mind as we work on local problems. We should fully understand the context of our immediate local problems and the ultimate source of the problems we are facing today.  

Drew Lewis
Santa Cruz

Radical Green

It should be more than obvious to anyone by now that Santa Cruz has gotten overcrowded.

 By generally recognized econometrics, we have overshot the environmental “carrying capacity” of this area by at least 3 fold.  That is, there are 3 times as many people here than should be.

 I don’t know where the money came from to construct a new million dollar basketball court complex near downtown, but those funds should have been spent constructing a new city environmental center complete with showers (for bike commuters), free computer terminals, free printing and a healthy level of research and library materials to help transit our city into an ecologically sustainable green community for the 21st century.

The city of Santa Cruz should be hiring local global climate change activists, not wasting funds to hire more police officers, who are turning our wonderful community into a lawless, fascist police state.

 A city environmental center can help coordinate a local hemp industry to develop and sell textiles, pull together the knowledge, resources and local workforce to plant and maintain thousands of fruit and nut trees all throughout the city as future free food for the community,  and work to mitigate the threat that global climate change will have upon the people, wildlife and vegetation that is unique to our bio-region.

The city of Santa Cruz needs to go ‘big time’ REAL GREEN.  That means banning all gas-guzzling SUVs, removing the illegal police state spy and surveillance control grid that has been built up around us since 9/11, requiring all natural food stores to stop selling and promoting meat, getting the city to wean itself off the corporate energy and food grid by requiring home and businesses to install rooftop solar PV panels and becoming food self-sufficient (community gardens, local food industries and community plant and tree food sowers and harvesters), and, finally, introducing non-polluting electric vehicles to replace all internal combustion engines within the city limits.

I urge all Santa Cruz residents to work together now to help build a green, sustainable, ecologically independent community separate from the failing, dysfunctional, over-consumptive, Earth threatening lifestyle and value-system of our currently imploding and collapsing society.

So, get out of your cars folks, and learn to bicycle.  Plant gardens, help start community gardens, organize to plant fruit and nut trees everywhere, lobby for a city environmental center, install solar and wind, get rid of your gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs  and learn to power down to a vegan/vegetarian diet.  And do not have more than one child per family, the world is already overpopulated.  Its time for a New World!

May Boeve
Center for Integral Living
Santa Cruz

  • https://www.santacruz.com/news/2013/04/16/letters_to_the_editor_april_17_23 claudinedesiree

    I do agree with alot of your vision, quite beautiful and carefree and sensible…..except I want to add that unless SC does not stop the inflow of people who want to live free and easy on the streets and in the Nature on minimal or no-income, as it is so easy to do in SC…then I ask the local govmt or some private entity to donate a large piece of open land,  (ie, Homeless Garden Project land) to create a self-sufficient ecovillage enterprise in which they can live, work and hang out…building small zero carbon cob srtuctures, powering with solar and wind, growing their food and learning, teaching, working to run this as a demonstration ecoliving organiztion and business.

    After Occupy SC it was clear how much the “homeless” folks enjoyed living together in community, and what a strong integrated community it can be, ie organizing meetings, choosing leaders, creating their own govmt…lets offer them a space to be social and productive for our city and for themselves and to build self-esteem by learning how to create a self-sufficient ecovillage and teaching others as well.

    Then we can work on cleaning up the rest of the town, especially the rampant marijuana and drugs which are numbing and dumbing our residents and young people, and depleting them of positive energy and motivation to learn, grow and be whole and expansive in creative potential and manifestation and be REAL!!!!

    What do you think?

  • https://www.santacruz.com/news/letters_to_the_editor_april_17_23.html claudinedesiree

    I do agree with alot of your vision, quite beautiful and carefree and sensible…..except I want to add that unless SC does not stop the inflow of people who want to live free and easy on the streets and in the Nature on minimal or no-income, as it is so easy to do in SC…then I ask the local govmt or some private entity to donate a large piece of open land,  (ie, Homeless Garden Project land) to create a self-sufficient ecovillage enterprise in which they can live, work and hang out…building small zero carbon cob srtuctures, powering with solar and wind, growing their food and learning, teaching, working to run this as a demonstration ecoliving organiztion and business.

    After Occupy SC it was clear how much the “homeless” folks enjoyed living together in community, and what a strong integrated community it can be, ie organizing meetings, choosing leaders, creating their own govmt…lets offer them a space to be social and productive for our city and for themselves and to build self-esteem by learning how to create a self-sufficient ecovillage and teaching others as well.

    Then we can work on cleaning up the rest of the town, especially the rampant marijuana and drugs which are numbing and dumbing our residents and young people, and depleting them of positive energy and motivation to learn, grow and be whole and expansive in creative potential and manifestation and be REAL!!!!

    What do you think?

  • https://www.santacruz.com/news/2013/04/16/letters_to_the_editor_april_17_23 County Resident

    I like it Claudine.  We could allow the homeless to occupy large buses on Coral Street, and then when they’re all in there getting their community vibe going, we can drive them out of the state and set them free to colonize other lands!  Surely their social ingenuity and strong integration will allow them to prosper elsewhere, without sponging up our tax dollars at a rate that makes May’s utopian visions unachievable.

  • https://www.santacruz.com/news/letters_to_the_editor_april_17_23.html County Resident

    I like it Claudine.  We could allow the homeless to occupy large buses on Coral Street, and then when they’re all in there getting their community vibe going, we can drive them out of the state and set them free to colonize other lands!  Surely their social ingenuity and strong integration will allow them to prosper elsewhere, without sponging up our tax dollars at a rate that makes May’s utopian visions unachievable.