STEVE SMITH -- What’s Up

This was supposed to be a funny column. I was going to try to make you

smile by declaring that the screening debate in Costa Mesa should not be

about checking people for their citizenship status but about giving IQ

tests to future candidates for office.

I was going to suggest we screen candidates for financial skills by

requiring them to play Monopoly with county Treasurer John Moorlach. Beat

him and you can run for office.

But the subject isn’t funny and I could not get past the raw ugliness

of arbitrarily screening the people with whom I have worked, lived and

played for 15 years; the people whose kids play with my kids and the

parents who have the same hopes and dreams for their children as I do for

mine.

Yes, the City Council passed on the issue of creating a screening

process for commissioners, but a larger screening scenario is still

favored by many.

For me, as it usually does, this debate comes down to children, for it

is impossible to deny that the wide net cast by those who endorse a

screening policy before one can use a city service, attend a school or

prevail upon a Costa Mesa-based charitable organization will snare

children who are here not by choice but by circumstance.

So far, the debate has been too narrowly focused because another truth

is that one or two individuals cannot cause these changes. But to heave a

sigh of relief at this knowledge is to disregard the voices of more than

10,000 residents who want to fix what is not broken; who want to punish,

not help our neighbors, justified in the name of improvement. A cold

heart is no improvement.

My thoughts now turn to the lack of local leadership to condemn the

movement to screen my friends and neighbors.

Our schools have been publicly declared as “declining” by the

screening crowd, yet I have not read or heard a single opposing opinion

from any teacher, administrator or school board member.

Months ago, when I stated that a teacher dress code is in order,

Newport-Mesa teachers union president Linda Mook wasted no time in

responding.

And when I oppose specific school policies, there is always a chorus

to condemn me, even though I repeatedly maintain support for our local

schools and express admiration and appreciation of our teachers.

Where are these voices now, when the reputation of our dedicated

teachers and administrators, a much more important subject, is being

tarnished?

Where are you, school board members, all of you, and why are you not

condemning this false attack on the schools? You had no trouble

castigating me for far lesser criticisms. Where is your indignation now?

Where are the voices of City Council members Libby Cowan, Linda Dixon

and Gary Monahan against those who are working overtime to tear down what

they have spent years to build? Surely we are not relying on Cowan’s

recent well-meaning but lukewarm speech to serve as our answer to the

movement.

Where are any of the voices of the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce,

which should condemn the speech that threatens to scare business away

from our great city?

Where is any representative of law enforcement anywhere to repudiate

the feeble attempt at the manipulation of crime statistics to declare

that our city has an “abnormally high crime rate?”

Bill Turpit has spoken. Where are the voices of other leaders of the

Latino community to condemn this strategy?

Where are the voices of the real estate agents to point out that

property values are not declining as we are being told, and that Costa

Mesa is still the best city in the county in which to work, live and

play?

Where is the voice of any member of the clergy to remind us all that

Westside children are God’s children too?

Those who believe that silence is the best defense are wrong, for it

is not one person but thousands who believe that we should demand that

people provide proof that their papers are in order; thousands who

support removing the local lifelines from this segment of our poor. Your

silence makes them stronger and silence has a well-known history of

bestowing power upon the ignorant.

The voices I seek are supposed to be our leaders. It is during times

such as these when they are most needed; when we hope to turn to them for

the words and deeds that will maintain the progress we have made; to tell

everyone that whatever is wrong with Costa Mesa will not be corrected by

scapegoating.

The sun is setting in Costa Mesa, the city that embraced diversity

without undue political correctness and that embraced tolerance without

being strangled in return.

We are now deafened by the voices of those whose goals are to divide,

deny and destroy. And no one is here to answer them.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer. Readers

may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (949) 642-6086.