‘Upside-Down Melting Pot’

John P. Avlon’s column criticizing the noncitizen voting bill soon to be proposed to the New York City Council by Bill Perkins [“Upside-Down Melting Pot,” Opinion, April 12,2005], tries to cast it as some sort of extreme measure from the far left, while it is well within the mainstream of American political practice and discourse.

Contrary to his view that allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections would be a disincentive to becoming citizens and assimilating to the American way of life, by involving noncitizens to be direct participants in the democratic process, you increase their incentives to do so.

By registering to vote in local elections, being courted by local politicians, and feeling they have a stake in the local issues and process, noncitizens will become motivated to become citizens, aspiring to also be involved at the state and national political arenas.

ANGELO FALCON
President
Institute For Puerto Rican Policy
Manhattan

‘Landlords Lag’

It comes as no surprise that many of the city’s landlords are not compliant with an aspect of the city’s new lead paint law – after all, if all landlords complied with the law, we would immediately begin to see thousands fewer childhood lead poisoning cases [“Landlords Lag in Compliance With Lead Law,” Julie Satow, Page 1, April 12, 2005]. Nonetheless, the new law acts as a “key element in the city’s efforts to reduce children’s exposure to lead paint,” as the city’s health department has written.

Because the law is targeted and flexible, it is less burdensome for landlords than the standard it replaced, but at the same time protective of children’s health. That is one of the reasons that courts have found the real estate industry’s arguments completely meritless and dismissed their lawsuits to block the law, a development you failed to report. Coupled with proper enforcement from the city’s housing and health departments, the new law will help reduce poisoning, saving society the burden of caring for thousands of brain-damaged children.

JOEL KELSEY
Chairperson
New York Public Interest Research Group
Manhattan

‘The Legacy’

Ira Stoll speaks the truth in his superb “The Legacy of Arthur Hays Sulzberger” [Arts & Letters, April 13, 2005]. I remember well the role played by the New York Times some six decades ago in the Holocaust of World War II. Mr. Stoll is correct when he says that President Roosevelt might have acted to save some of the victims but for opposition of people like Sulzberger, Krock & Co. At the least, thousands of children could have received sanctuary, and rail lines to Auschwitz should have been bombed.

JEROME STARR
Manhattan

‘Rudy at the Rodeo’

Re: “Rudy at the Rodeo,” John P. Avlon, Opinion, April 1, 2005. The Republican Party in 1940 had the same problem – at that time Wendell Willkie, a Woodrow Wilson Internationalist Democratic businessman who believed strongly in the American free enterprise system and who as late as 1938 had voted for Herbert Lehman for governor of New York, won the presidential nomination.

Willkie was a staunch supporter of civil rights and civil liberties and took on without hesitation isolationists and anti-Semites such as the Reverend Charles Coughlin, Charles A. Lindberg, and America First. At that time the party leadership wanted a winner and combined with a massive outpouring of public support from the rank-and-file led to his nomination; over 1 million letters and telegrams poured into the convention in support of Willkie as well as the thousands of supporters who filled the convention hall chanting “We want Willkee.”

In fact, his vice presidential nominee, Republican Senate Minority Leader Charles McNary of Oregon, who was a leading Western liberal (and who FDR admired secretly), made this probably one of the most liberal, progressive tickets either party nominated in the 20th century. Incidentally, Willkie spent a total of $4,000 of his own money to win the nomination.

LEONARD PITTINSKY
Manhattan

‘Stadium Bound for Approval’

Re: “Mayor: Stadium Bound for Approval,” Jill Gardiner, New York, April 7, 2005. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said it over a century ago:

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree.”

Mayor Bloomberg is betting that New York is going to get the Olympics. Not at all certain.

WILLIAM ABBOTT
Oyster Bay, N.Y.

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