Letters to the Editor: Hey, Bel-Air aristocrats, stop mistreating food-truck operators

To the editor: Your article about deranged Bel-Air residents verbally abusing young food-truck entrepreneur Jennifer Ramirez reminds us that people with a bit of money and social position have always tended to regard hard-working people with less money as somehow disposable.

It also evokes the indelible scene painted by Charles Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities” when an aristocrat’s coach runs down and kills a peasant child, and the only concern of the disconnected person inside that coach is whether his horses have been injured in the mishap.

But Newton’s Third Law of Motion always applies, in politics and ethics as much as physics. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; this was demonstrated, with a vengeance, in the 18th century France that Dickens re-created. It also applies here and now to the common brutality of those who regard themselves as the aristocrats of Los Angeles.

Leigh Clark, Granada Hills

..

To the editor: Ramirez has more class than the rich cad who berated her for doing what is necessary to make a living, as well as the cad in the black Rolls-Royce who screamed at her. She is to be congratulated for investing to make a living and doing the difficult job of negotiating the narrow streets of Bel-Air to provide sustenance for the workers in that area.

In addition to working her difficult day job, she is studying to begin a career that can improve her life in the future. Congratulations to Ramirez; there should be many more like her.

Those in the rich enclaves of Bel-Air, Brentwood and Holmby Hills couldn’t survive without construction workers and people like Ramirez, and they should give these people the respect they deserve.

Joann Duray, Playa del Rey