Daytona Beach’s First Step Shelter should emphasize work for homeless | LETTERS

Feed the spirit

Here we have a wonderful place, created after years of planning, arguing, now almost ready to open! Success?

It is just a big empty building.

I have written before about ideas for making it more financially stable. I am a former guidance counselor and have a handicapped son. It seems city leaders are buckling to the thinking that we will offer them all kinds of umbrellas for their bodies, but not their souls. Every human being must be required to contribute something, somehow or else they are just a consumer of others' care and work.

[READ MORE: Daytona homeless First Step Shelter construction deadline extended]

Everyone has the physical ability, hopefully, to do simple chores to help maintain this place. To cave into the thinking that once there, all will be supplied with no effort on their part is just going to bring about failure.

[OUR VIEW: Is Daytona Beach/Volusia County First Step shelter close to opening?]

Let's just say some can pedal, and that by pedaling they can produce electricity -- as some have shown in their protests. Or most can assemble, look at WORC. Wheelchair bound people do it all the time.

During the "self-esteem" movement I was told that all of these kids who misbehave are just products of terrible homes, and I was to build up their self-esteem. I argued that self-esteem comes from doing things for yourself -- that makes people feel good inside.

Well of course that did not work. Kids are too smart and worked the system. Adults are just grownup kids, and everyone needs to grow up to be productive, because the rest of us will just not want to carry them after the "do-goodness" wears off.

Along with the umbrella must come hope, and the realization that most homeless people have talents. Becoming a contributing member of a team can cement that thought. There may be exceptions, but if we don't include rules, hope, and a return to a productive state, this experiment will fail.

We keep looking for funding: It's right here, in the form of human labor. Shocking? I don't think so. Those who show they are grown up can be rewarded immediately for wanting to be self-supporting, with help.

To try to keep them there without this important and immediate plan will result in them leaving. Deep within, they will know it is not helping them.

Homeless people can be given more training, more responsibility. Even prisons try to do this now, and of course this is not a prison.

It should be a springboard, not a handout. Whether it becomes fishing or farming or assembly, the goal should be to become sustainable by itself. And perhaps, well run, it could even make some money. Heaven forbid! Then we can show San Francisco and Los Angeles how it is done.

Joanne Zimmermann, Ormond Beach

Why the hate?

I participated in the environmental rally in New Smyrna Beach on Friday afternoon at the corner of State Road 44 and Mission Road. There weren't many of us and unfortunately there were no young people in the group. Our signs indicated our concern about the eventual effects of pollution on the climate and the resulting impacts on Earth and its sustainability.

Sad to say, the only participation of young people were several young men in pickup trucks that drove past during the rally and gunned their engines to create a black cloud of emissions that fell over us. This occurred three times while I was there. They were demonstrating their opposition to our peaceful rally in an aggressive and hostile manner.

What has happened to civil discourse in this country? Why is such hatred directed to an opposing position? Where is civility? Why such a cowardly "action/statement"? How much better it would have been had they come over and asked questions as to why we are concerned and discussed why they think there isn't a problem. (Perhaps because there are no scientific facts to substantiate their view).

Hopefully the world leaders will address the impacts on our planet's environment in a timely manner and these young men will not have to look back in 25 years and realize that they were part of the reason there is no clean air and water for their families.

Sandra Smith, New Smyrna Beach

One wonders when, or even if, we will get Republicans in Congress to fully appreciate the attacks they are inviting on our democracy. Their reluctance is understandable--they fear President Trump's retaliation and what that will mean for their career-- but what do they think will happen to that career as time goes by and the situation continues to deteriorate? By now they should know that this president is only emboldened by their timidity. History will not be kind to them -- or their party.

The latest stain involving Trump and the president of the Ukraine should send alarm bells ringing in the ears of all those whose complicity in his ongoing illegal and immoral conduct permits it to continue. Yet, instead of calling it what it is, they attack the messengers, dismissing them as the "Dark State" or partisan Trump haters. Some simply remain quiet, but quiet does its share of harm. What we need is voices of conscience that at long last rise to put an end to what they have to know will ultimately harm them and their loved ones every bit as much as it will those of their political opponents.

There is a cancer growing on our democracy, and it is being ignored at its most critical phase, when something might yet be done to stem its most ruinous effects. We could well fail as a democracy should more political health officials not be found in time.

Noel Munson, Ponce Inlet

Grisly find

Do the 2,246 preserved fetal remains found in the home of recently deceased Indiana abortion doctor Ulrich Klopfer represent a victory for womens' reproductive rights or a horrible human tragedy for thousands of aborted innocent babies, sealed in plastic and crammed into musty boxes in a garage?

Russell Bizette, Port Orange

Angry rhetoric

Labeling, name calling, mocking and bullying are finding welcoming acceptance, with a nesting space in President Donald Trump's Republican party.

This president's seeming obsession with Twitter offers daily/hourly validation of his self-aggrandizement.

Dark humor dismisses these rantings as ''just Trump being Trump."

There's a morose enjoyment in watching Trump's swamp validating the president's boastfulness, often in disregard for the truth.

Labeling any news organization, except Fox, as fake, is Machiavellian.

Stopping regular press briefings, then shouting to the press while the noise of a helicopter on the White House lawn drowns out questions smacks of reality TV, and Trump's irremediable vanity.

Donald Trump's gargantuan hubris, insufferable selfishness, and insatiable hunger for flattery, didn't start when he became president. When Trump could've served the U.S. in the military in Vietnam, bone spurs flaunted his 4-F deferment.

The GOP spinmeisters are using the word "socialist" and the concept of 2nd Amendment rapists to distract, deceive, and divert. Those soothsayers are somewhat skilled with Republican antics.

The GOP strutted to be the party of family values. It was packaged with patriotism, apple pie, and wrapped with a radio-religion bow. The family values balloon lost its hot air. No one beneath the elephant's shadow could explain the pompous meaning: Whose family and what values?

The GOP gutter group is giving its coded winks, nods, and salutes again.

America sees it, knows it and will vote the label "One term Trump" into presidential history.

Barry Pitek, Port Orange

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