Some Glad to See Agran Go; Some Hope He’ll Go Far

As perestroika blossoms all over the world from Berlin to Romania to South Africa, it is accompanied by a dismaying response from frightened right-wingers, as evidenced by a resurgence of anti-Semitism, gay-bashing, white supremacy and neo-Nazism. This is true even on our own college campuses, now full of kids born after the Civil Rights movement.

Irvine’s conservatives, like old Politburo members incapable of accepting change, were threatened by a leader who saw the future and moved proactively to shape it, instead of merely reacting on a crisis-by-crisis basis. As few other politicians have, Larry Agran recognized that environmental and economic problems cannot be solved in municipal isolation, and the solutions he set in motion are both innovative and exemplary.

His problem is that he’s always been about five years ahead of his time, with a vision 10 times as broad as the comfort zone of the basic pothole-patcher. He may have outgrown Irvine, but there’s a wider world that desperately needs his courage and convictions.

LARKETTE LEIN

Irvine