DEKALB CITIES
What is real agenda
behind push for city?
The guest column (“Residents denied destiny,” Opinion, Jan. 3) is specious at best. The carefully worded column cites numerous data from the University of Georgia study that seems to lend credence to the Lakeside cityhood movement. However, one might glean the real Lakeside agenda in remarks such as, “We also hear these concerns: DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis will soon stand trial on extortion and conspiracy charges,” and, “The county appears to be more focused on retaining its 5,500 employees instead of providing taxpayers with a lean and effective government.”
The Lakeside City Alliance seems to be missing a potential key factor: Could there be a significant number of north-central DeKalb residents who don’t attend their meetings because they don’t want to be part of a new Lakeside and the Republican agenda? I, for one, certainly don’t want my “destiny” tied to these folks!
If cityhood must happen in my neighborhood, I’d want it to be Briarcliff. However, I’d much rather remain in unincorporated DeKalb, even with all its flaws and very real challenges. Why is there not a dialogue about residents coming together to make DeKalb strong again? The DeKalb cityhood movements smack of the South’s secession movement 150 years ago. Seems to me, it all boils down to politics. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
KATHLEEN COLLOMB, Decatur
MARIJUANA
Column is argument
for decriminalization
I find it fascinating that a profound conservative like David Brooks (“Weed laws reveal what society values,” Opinion, Jan. 6) is now willing to admit he had a propensity for performing felonies as a teenager. Rather than making a coherent argument about the new cannabis laws, he — as himself — is a good example of why cannabis should be decriminalized.
Even though he admits to performing these felonies (possession, consumption and transfer of marijuana) as a youth in white suburbia, he was allowed to pursue his career with a clean record. If he had been an inner-city youth caught for the exact same crime, that felony could have followed him for the rest of his life.
What Brooks needs to understand is that regardless of the substance — cannabis, alcohol or tobacco — there are always those who will abuse it. But the most profound point Brooks makes is that even if you smoke cannabis, you can go on and do many things. Such as becoming a U.S. president, senator, the most decorated Olympian in history, or even a conservative newspaper columnist. I think it’s obvious, this law’s time has come.
DONALD VARN, Conyers
