Mailbag: Grateful for the Daily Pilot’s coverage

Although I’ve complained about the rising price per page of my Los Angeles Times subscription, I’m glad an issue of the Daily Pilot has not gone by the wayside. The Aug. 3 front-page articles were especially interesting, even though I’m not a Huntington Beach resident.

I recently watched a program on PBS about the demise of local newspapers across the nation and the impact on communities when they disappear. I think most Times readers don’t regularly attend their city council meetings, so I’m happy there are still local reporters paid to do exactly that!

Fusako Takeda
Fountain Valley

H.B. council’s actions deny the past

As it reads in the Huntington Beach Declaration of Policy About Human Dignity, “… everyone should be treated with courtesy and respect, regardless of their racial background, their nation of origin, the religion they practice, their sexual orientation, gender or disability status. It is the right of all citizens to pursue their daily lives with the knowledge that they will not be physically harmed or verbally abused.”

The current majority of the Huntington Beach City Council has voted to take a wrecking ball to this declaration, which has served the city well since 1996. This was penned at a time when many people were afraid to venture down to the pier or downtown because it was a gathering spot for skinheads. Flash forward almost three decades to 2023 and Huntington Beach is experiencing a reported increase in hate crimes. Yet the conservative council members voted to rewrite this unifying statement that promotes human rights within our community. Some have even mentioned abolishing it. These same conservative members axed the Huntington Beach Human Relations Committee, which has a 25-year-old track record of improving the safety and well-being of our residents. No explanation was given from the members for making such draconian changes to city government. The commissions that were abolished this past week consisted of volunteer members, and the cost to operate them was minuscule.

First, they restrict the Pride flag, then they come for the public library books. Then they squelch the rights of our seniors living in mobile homes, and now they’re working to dismantle everything from city clerk qualifications, local election policies and so much more. They’re taking a wrecking ball to the city, and they have no interest in listening and collaborating with residents who are impacted by their decisions. As a 27-year resident of Huntington Beach, I feel uneasy and embarrassed to live here.

Carol Daus
Huntington Beach

It has become abundantly clear that the conservative four spent months plotting and scheming the takeover of the H.B. City Council to spread their nefarious fascist program and undo what prior councils, even if they were also conservative, had accomplished. With the elimination of the city’s longstanding declaration of policy on human dignity, first introduced in 1996, after the shooting death of a Black man in front of McDonalds on Beach Boulevard by a white supremacist, the con four are well underway toward turning the politics of the city bright red.

To forestall their plans, those who oppose what is taking place must immediately start planning to retake control by pinpointing and spotlighting their intent and purpose so that the general H.B. population can become more involved and active and remove Burns, Van Der Mark, Strickland and Mckeon from office. They are not open to listening to the will of the people. Their only concern is to force their agenda on the general public, no matter what their views are. It is going to be a long four years, but fascism should not be allowed to fester.

Richard C. Armendariz
Huntington Beach

In my 40 years of living in Huntington Beach, I have seen several dangerous city council majorities, the present one being easily the most dangerous. Not content to simply lord it over the rest of the council in shaping policy for our local government, it is actively seeking to subvert it and crush all opposition in the community with its heavy-handed dismantling of our civic norms. This form of authoritarianism is called totalitarian democracy. In it, lawfully elected representatives rule and citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of government. I taught high school social sciences for many years and I know my history. I have studied it and I see this threat in the world today. Although presidents, most notably the previous one, have attempted to install it nationwide, it is mostly state and local governments who institute such anti-democratic control over its citizens. Totalitarian democracy has finally come to Surf City.

What can be done about it? As with lawn care, we need to keep our democracy green with a five-step program. The first step is to recognize what is going on. This is not merely a partisan takeover. It is a hard-right coup. The second is to oppose it every step of the way. We cannot allow further degradation of our liberties to occur and allow our city charter to be hijacked. The third step is to “stop the steal” and not allow the spread of this civic cancer to infect other seats on the city council. We have the next election in 2024 to worry about. The fourth is to push back in every way possible through civic and legal channels and especially through the media. What is going on must be exposed and countered. The fifth step is to “fertilize” our local democracy by strengthening civic institutions and community groups which serve the public. We must be mobilized to fight back and eventually turn out these autocrats in order to reclaim our local government.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach