Fighting Gang Violence With Responsibility

Re “L.A.’s Budding Mogadishus,” Commentary, Dec. 23: As a middle-aged man, I can alarm my middle-class home because my parents, not the LAPD or City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, made me do my homework, taught me to come home early, work hard, stay late when necessary, do it with a good attitude and showed me through words and actions that there was no right way to do a wrong thing.

I too, much like Constance L. Rice, believe we as a society should do as much as is humanly possible to eradicate poverty and gang violence. Having said that, charity begins at home, and Rice should heed the clarion call of Bill Cosby and put the eloquent diatribes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on the back burner.

The key to breaking the cyclical violence of gangs, poverty, sexual permissiveness and the ensuing poverty brought about by these choices begins in the home. Rice’s article raises the question, “What is a city except for its people?”

John Kelley

Yorba Linda

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In the mid-1960s, Lyndon Johnson decided to “end the malignant poverty” that Rice says “drives the violent dysfunction.” One might reasonably argue that the road chosen at that time led directly to [Watts housing project] Jordan Downs. People like Rice who believe that L.A.’s gangs are the “toxic byproducts of malignant poverty and deprivation that we apparently do not have the will to end” no doubt believe that such factors are also the root causes of fanatical Islamic terrorism.

Wrong on both counts; she and others can offer no viable solutions to either problem. You want to embark on the road to recovery, L.A.? Here’s a good starting point: Get yourself a Rudy Giuliani.

Kyda Sylvester

Auburn, Calif.