Plan to Bulldoze Garden Is Disturbing and Far-Reaching

* I read the story about the city’s plan to eliminate Victoria O’Casey’s Sylmar garden to a class of sixth- and seventh-graders at Millikan Middle School. The response: “How stupid!” I couldn’t agree more.

I am a substitute teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Every day I go into economically depressed communities to teach emotionally depressed children in economically deprived schools. Since neither the federal, state or local governments, nor the taxpayers seem to care about these children or their communities, I’m beginning to believe that the only hope for our urban areas comes from individual efforts like those of O’Casey . . . unless of course, the city steps in.

How on earth can the department of public works justify its plan to bulldoze a lovely garden--an urban oasis--which is open to and obviously enjoyed by the public? Does the city have any other plans for this alley?

I am not suggesting that one garden will improve the lives of L.A. residents, but O’Casey’s efforts are heartfelt steps in the right direction and it is the bureaucracy’s reactive, uncreative response to her efforts that is so disturbing--and so far-reaching.

As one of my students, Maya, a sixth-grader, put it, “I want to grow up in a nice environment, so you are not taking a garden away from one lady, but you are taking it away from everyone who wants a nice city.” And as Jessica, a seventh-grader, put it, “I want to live in a place where people like Ms. O’Casey are honored as heroes, instead of ridiculed like criminals.”

Will the city do the right thing in this small case, or will it be complicit as usual as our children continue to walk down an alley of rotting morals and broken dreams?

JAMIE GREEN

Studio City