WITH NEW LEAD LAW, ADOPT HIGH STANDARDS
In response to “Lead Law Close” (Metro Ink,
November 2): It appears that City Council has yet to determine the scope of the
law as well as determine the testing methods. To be effective, the law must
have high standards to identify all cases of lead toxicity, not the mere 40
percent that would be found with visual testing only. This law should apply to
all city properties to ensure the health and well-being of all of Rochester’s
children and future generations.
There is no doubt that the clean-up costs will affect
property owners financially, potentially resulting in rent increases for
already disadvantaged families, abandonment of property, or defaulted
mortgages. As such, City Council should strongly consider subsidizing clean-up
efforts to defray costs to the property owner and ensure compliance. Although
the initial investment will be high, preventing lead toxicity inevitably will
save the taxpayer by mitigating health-care and special-education costs in the
long term.
Rochester’s
children deserve a lead-free environment to grow, learn, and thrive in.
Jennifer
Byrnes, Crista Crittenden, SadhnaKohli, SohugMookerjee, RabihSalloum, Teresa Talens, and Erik Thingvoll.(The writers are graduate students in the department of Community and
Preventive Medicine at the University
of Rochester.)
ABOUT THAT ‘VILLAGE’
I am a very proud African-American and one of the villagers
with a vested interest in the village that Italo G. Savella vilified (“Stopping the Violence,” The Mail,
October 26).
Savella wrote: “I am a
second-generation Italian-American whose family came from a dirt-poor village
in the south of Italy.
Many African-Americans came from a South that allowed them only to sharecrop or
do domestic work. And yet I am convinced that neither among the peasants of Southern
Italy or the ‘coloreds’ of the segregated South was there the
moral poverty rampant in our inner city.”
When Mr. Savella’s clan arrived in
America,
African-Americans had been here for 300 plus years — 246 of those years as
slaves (slavery: moral valuelessness?). It was the
time of Plessy v. Ferguson, which condoned segregated
public facilities (moral valuelessness?). Brown v Board of Education overturned Plessyin 1954, requiring an end to segregated
schools, but it did not set a timetable, and it did not outlaw other segregated
facilities.
It took the Civil Rights Movement to make changes for this
(moral valueless) nation with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Movement was a non-violent
movement led by valiant Southern “blacks” who were lynched, bombed, beaten,
disenfranchised, and jailed for protesting peacefully (moral valuelessness?).
As a son of the segregated South, I can testify that our
communities consisted of more than “sharecroppers” and “domestic
workers.” There were limited political, social, and economic
opportunities, not much different from today in Rochester.
The difference is that African-American communities of the segregated South,
even with these limitations, worked as that proverbial “village,” whereas now
these communities are separated along class and generational lines, dividing
the African-American community even more.
The poor are segregated into certain parts of the city.
Affordable housing is non-existent in some communities. The unemployment rate
of young African-Americans is abysmal. Discrimination and segregation is alive
and well in Rochester, causing a
disparity in the rates of problems. According to the media images,
African-Americans are the only poor in Rochester,
and young African-Americans are the only perpetrators of violence.
Savella wrote: “The
African-American community is suffering from a colossal failure of parenting
and an abysmal lack of life-giving moral values.” His solution: “The sooner
African-Americans come to grips with these dreadful facts, the sooner they
start doing something about it, the sooner they can start correcting the
problem.”
The African-American community in Rochester
consists of approximately 86,000 citizens, according to the 2000 census —
nearly 40 percent of Rochester’s
population. We compose a large portion of this village. “It takes a village to
raise a child.”
Carl Smith, Lake Avenue, Rochester
GOT IT?
“Let’s face it, Rochester
isn’t exactly a pizza-lover’s Mecca,”
writes Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
(Best of Rochester, November 9). Ouch, that hurts. The only advice I can give
to that critic is: stay away from Domino’s and the other chains and go to Amico’s Pizza, East Ridge Road.
Oh, and by the way, someone tell Alex Miokovic: real
bread, Martusciello’s, Lyell Avenue, capiscipaisan?
James M. DeMarco, Hartsville Lane, Webster
THE REAL, REAL THING
One small topic not covered in the excellent survey of what
makes our city a great place to be (Best of Rochester, November 9): the best real Gelato.
Since returning last month from a trip to Tuscany,
I have wondered: despite Rochester’s
significant local Italian heritage, where does one go for The Ice Cream of
Heaven? Can anyone tell me if the same thing can be found in Greater Rochester?
One requirement: you have to have been to Italy
to a gelateria and know exactly why I miss it.
Carlos Mercado, VickPark A, Rochester
KEEP IT LOCAL
DaynaPapaleo
chirps that the “smartest use for the Wegmans-shaped
hole on Mount Hope Avenue”
would be a Whole Foods Market (Best of Rochester, November 9). What an
ill-informed and misdirected idea.
While the MountHope
neighborhood needs a good food store, importing Whole Foods is not the answer.
Whole Foods is an outside chain: most of the money Whole Foods collected from
us would leave our local economy.
Whole Foods has a stunning record for handsome displays of
“natural foods,” but an equally stunning record for poor labor and anti-union
practices. Organic farmers who sell to Whole Foods report a mixed experience.
Some have a good relationship with a particular branch of the store; others
have found that Whole Foods has no loyalty to local farmers.
Instead of a big national chain, let’s fill the hole with a
neighborhood store, run by Rochester
people with financial support from the city.
Elizabeth Henderson, Peacework Farm, Welcher Road, Newark (Henderson
is an organic farmer.)
WRITING TO CITY
We welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication.
Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.
Our guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and
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publish letters that have been sent to other media — and we don’t publish form letters generated by activist groups. While
we don’t restrict length, letters of under 350 words
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from the same writer more often than about once every two months.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.
