Continental, the model citizen

According to Matthew Hirsch, the "$65,000 Hotel Council advertising campaign against panhandling is one example of how hotels can make life difficult for poor people" ["Continental Divide," 5/7/03]. Hirsch tries to depict a second such example, in the new hotel Continental Development Corp. has proposed for South of Market – a development that, according to the author, has "cut down community opposition with promises of cash."

Yet, Continental's hotel proposal could not give us a better counterpoint to the Hotel Council's negative ad campaign. The company accommodated its designs to neighborhood concern, it contributed funds to nonprofits, and above all, it agreed that the jobs it creates will come with decent wages, good benefits, and respect in the workplace. This is a model of how a company should engage with the community – hardly an example of corporations running roughshod over the disenfranchised.

In an economy like this one, we should seize the rare chance to negotiate for new jobs in a development that respects its surroundings. We should applaud when a wealthy corporation recognizes the power of community groups.

Ian Lewis, Researcher Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 2

The right to protest

Several decades ago I spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps (1959-1963). That was during peace time and nothing I experienced in the USMC was anything at all like being in the antiwar movement. Of course, they had us crawl under live machine-gun fire, but we always knew they wouldn't hit us. Nobody got hurt in the Marine Corps. But April 7 at the Port of Oakland was different – people did get hurt.

One young woman who'd been hit by a concussion grenade had a bruise covering her entire right shoulder. I also saw a man with two baseball-size bruises on his back and one on his chest. Dozens were hit that day.

These experiences make me think about the defense of our First Amendment rights. Suppose I were a marine in Iraq today. Would I be guarding our freedoms – as the mainstream media keeps telling us? No way! I'd be defending the agenda of Bush and Ashcroft, which includes the so-called "Patriot Acts." I might even be shooting Iraqi demonstrators.

Fortunately, we do have a strong tradition of civil liberties in this country, and I attribute it to the work of many generations of protesters, from the days of Samuel Adams to the present.

Daniel Borgstrom Oakland

Leno's fights

I enjoyed reading Rachel Brahinsky's portrayal of Assemblymember Mark Leno's strong debut in Sacramento, "Mark Leno's Tightrope" [5/7/03]. I remain puzzled, however, by the repeated implication that Leno is "generally committed to things that are likely to pass" and unwilling to take on tough fights. In his freshman year, Mark has tackled transgender rights, worked on amending the Ellis Act, fought for medical cannabis, and introduced legislation that would allow localities to raise their own taxes to save vital social service programs. I don't know how anyone could consider these acts as anything less than pioneering.

A.B. 1690, for example, is a fight Leno is willing to engage in because it is one of the only life rafts the legislature can throw to local governments to keep their budgets afloat. It is a creative and risky bill that puts him at odds with powerful business interests, but Leno is moving it forward because it is the right thing to do for the state's struggling children and their families.

My take is that in his first six months, Leno is doing exactly what we sent him to Sacramento to do – be a leader who will take tough stances on the issues that matter to San Franciscans.

James Garnett San Francisco

Willie bikes to work

As I biked my way down Polk Street this morning, I wondered why automobile traffic was backed up to O'Farrell. Utilizing the bike lane, except in front of the Culinary Academy where, as usual, a truck was illegally parked (no ticket), I was able to catch up to the problem: In the distance, Willie Brown was riding a bicycle, followed by his very slow-moving limo (complete with flashing police lights). Unlike the regular folk riding with him, or just stuck trying to get past, he chose to ride in the automobile lane. Thus, à la those commie hippie bike freak "members" of Critical Mass, Da Mayor was "impeding traffic" by failing to utilize this bike lane, which under other circumstances he boastfully points to as a proud accomplishment of his mayoralty. A further irony is that, just one block before passing this imperial entourage, I had to veer into the automobile lane myself since there was yet another illegally parked car, which too had not yet been ticketed.

Scott Bravmann San Francisco

For the record

In "Down but Not Out" (5/14/03), we reported on a joking conversation between two residents of the Salvation Army's Bridgeway Project in the Tenderloin in which Velma Smith humorously implied that Robert Wise was the father of her child. Wise is not the father of her child and has no children out of wedlock. We regret any confusion.