Rec and Park's wreckage

Re: "A Little Room for Nature" [Opinion, 6/8/03]: This is San Francisco. Everyone supports biodiversity and supports "saving a little room in San Francisco for the plants and animals that were here before the city itself." To try to hide the bad management and relentless gentrification of the Recreation and Park Department behind motherhood and God concepts like nature and biodiversity is like Ashcroft and Bush trying to hide the destruction of civil liberties behind, well, motherhood and God, and "patriotism."

The real tragedy of the Natural Areas Program is, first, that it is almost unanimous scientific opinion that the NAP is so badly designed that it will accomplish none of its stated and laudable objectives; and, second, that Rec and Park management and NAP supporters (almost all of whom seem to be on the payroll) have taken a concept which started with virtually universal support and driven it straight off a cliff.

As to the specifics:

Poison oak is explicitly called for on page 6.15-8 of the official Rec and Park NAP Management Plan.

Banning public access to roughly 25 percent of the park system is set forth in the thread starting on pages 1-6, through pages ES 3, 8, 33, 42-50, and the RPD Dog Policy, section 2.1.

Trees have been destroyed at Tank Hill, Bayview Hill, Lake Merced, Pine Lake, and Mt. Davidson. The certified count is 1,034 trees at Bayview Hill alone. There were another 500 removed at McLaren Park, leading to an environmentally disastrous brush fire in 2002.

This fight is not about nature and biodiversity. It doesn't come from any effort of mine, or any other park user, to "divide park users" and "pit one against the other." Chaining up ball fields so kids can't play is not something I did, and it's not biodiversity. This is a fight against the efforts of an unaccountable and incompetent bureaucracy to eliminate the people of San Francisco from their own parks.

David Looman San Francisco

SEIU loves Angela

I was personally offended by Savannah Blackwell's recent article on the Service Employees International Union's endorsement of Angela Alioto for mayor, "Union Disunion" (5/21/03).

The members of SEIU 250 came together April 23 to endorse their choice for mayor of San Francisco. Blackwell's article discredits the democratic spirit that our union embodies and that SEIU members contributed to with their votes to support Angela Alioto. The hand vote process has been used by SEIU 250 for many years, and is the same method by which we have endorsed countless other candidates for public offices, including Tom Ammiano and Eileen Hansen. I am a proud health care worker who's worked for 25 years in the health care industry – I have no need to blindly follow another person's voting preferences. My 25 years of industry experience certainly grant me the ability to make an informed decision as to which mayoral candidate will best protect quality health care in San Francisco.

Alioto needs no arm-twisting to succeed in this year's mayoral race; her proven track record of supporting the working families of San Francisco speaks for itself.

Derek Armstrong Alameda

No more 'Chronicle'

Thank you for your article on the biased coverage by the San Francisco Chronicle, "Which Deaths Matter?" (5/28/03), which consistently minimizes the death and other harm done to Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military and illegal settlers with the aid of $15 million a day of U.S. funding. I finally had to cancel my subscription to the Chronicle (and the New York Times) because they are so blatantly pro-Israel in both news and editorial content.

For national and international balanced, in-depth reporting, I recommend the Christian Science Monitor to your readers.

Claire-Elizabeth DeSophia Richmond

Where's the bias?

Re: "All Bias Considered" (5/28/03).

Milada Belaya and similar propagandists do little service to anyone but themselves by simply referring to those with biases different than their own as "biased," "anti-Semitic," or "self-hating."

The ruling right-wing zealots of this country have gotten away with shutting down meaningful civic debate in the mass media, above all, for one reason: the mislabeling of any journalist or news agency as liberal that doesn't serve them directly, and the correct assumption that these journalists and employers don't have the courage to stand up for their fifth-estate responsibilities and tell it like they see it anyways. I suspect the zealots served by the likes of Belaya hope to continue applying this same model for themselves to keep topics desperately needing debate and consideration taboo. It won't work. Nonetheless, you have to be impressed by the gall of someone labeling the New York Times and NPR anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. Man, where does that put Pacifica?

Mark Adams San Francisco

For the record