Nursing-home nightmare
To The Editor:
Re “The trials of collage artist Kasoundra Kasoundra” (news article, April 16):
What a Dickensian nightmare! The system is hell-bent on making laws but really short on accountability. This report of a woman whose rights are being violated by the very system that purports to be helping her deserves major media exposure. Surely there’s some punishment to be meted out to guardians that abuse their position. Justice has a blind eye yet again.
Talia Shafir
Kasoundra’s Kafkaesque story
To The Editor:
Re “The trials of collage artist Kasoundra Kasoundra” (news article, April 16):
Bravo for making this explicit and concise account of what has befallen Kasoundra Kasoundra. I speak with her regularly on the phone and feel the frustration of her circumstances. I hope that this account can be copied and sent to all social-service agencies and she can recover her life and continue to create her artwork.
She never goes out of the nursing home, even in good weather. No one deserves such Kafkaesque treatment.
The so-called guardians should be removed from their positions and a good friend should be given that position and Kasoundra should be put in his or her care.
Free K.K.! Free K.K. now!
Phyllis Segura
Demand accountability
To The Editor:
Re “The trials of collage artist Kasoundra Kasoundra” (news article, April 16):
To make this personally frightening for everyone reading: Very few of us have as strong a community network as she does, so it’s unlikely we would ever get even the failed oversight she has gotten.
Unless we push politically for true accountability measures — and how about the legal recognition of longstanding friends as an alternative to blood family and unconnected “guardians”? — we are each of us just a few years away from living her story.
Dudley Saunders
Kasoundra reparations
To The Editor:
Re “The trials of collage artist Kasoundra Kasoundra” (news article, April 16):
Thank you for bringing this horrible situation to our attention with such a detailed and thorough piece of reportage. Not only must this woman be returned to her home, she should be given reparations for the time she spent unjustly imprisoned, deprived of her work, possessions and friends.
Social work is at its worst when it meddles rather than helps. Justice will be done when the guardians lose their freedom and Kasoundra is set free.
Thelma Blitz
Won’t get fooled again
To The Editor:
Re “Planning chief downplays upzoning’s impact; Critics are still all hitting the roof” (news article, April 9):
Given that New York University was handed our parklands and our area was rezoned from residential to commercial by both de Blasio’s and Bloomberg’s administrations, when I learn of this new real estate maneuver, I cringe.
Always before turning an area into luxury housing, developers rush to “create senior housing that’s affordable.” And if that housing succeeds in ridding the area of the “undesirables,” new luxury housing starts to fill the area. And that’s assuming the affordable senior housing is really built, not just promised.
Why, of course they won’t deceive us, they proclaim. But mark Andrew Berman’s words: They are after our neighborhoods. Hungry for more, in years to come they will build what will be totally unaffordable for our neighbors.
Let’s all say no to this scheme to help developers. Enough of these false promises.
Sylvia Rackow
Rackow is chairperson, Committee to Preserve Our Neighborhood
Our bus black hole
To The Editor:
Re “M.T.A. walks the walk to tour bus-deprived nabe” (news article, March 26):
Thank you for your update on our continuing efforts to reinstate the sorely needed bus service formerly provided by the pre-2010 M1, M3, M5 and M6 bus routes in our community. The hole in service these cuts and reshufflings has left has deprived not only the elderly and disabled, who fully depend on bus transit to get around. All bus users in our district — parents and children, people on their way to work and school, those traveling for healthcare appointments, shoppers and myriad others — have been deprived of comfortable and convenient access to the public buses they rely upon.
Besides the numerous efforts that the article cites that have focused on rectifying this serious problem, Community Board 2 is officially on record requesting the return of these vital bus routes in three separate resolutions. Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t voice his or her distress at this dearth of service.
Shirley Secunda
Secunda is chairperson, Community Board 2 Traffic and Transportation Committee
Slow down on T.P.P.
To The Editor:
The fact that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret should concern every American worker.
The entire progressive community, including UFCW Local 1500, environmental groups, civil rights organizations and consumer advocates, has been shut out of T.P.P. negotiations. Meanwhile, 600 corporate lawyers are advising the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. No one can reasonably expect a fair trade agreement to emerge from this undemocratic process.
Given the current struggles of working families in New York, members of Congress should not be pursuing a fast-track trade deal that widens the gap between the rich and the poor, threatens food safety, and gives working-class families even less of a chance to find personal and professional success.
If members of Congress truly care about America’s working and middle classes, they will oppose fast-tracking this terrible trade agreement.
Tony Speelman
Speelman is secretary-treasurer, UFCW Local 1500 in Westbury, N.Y., New York’s largest grocery workers union
Westbeth Spring Sale!
To The Editor:
In the July 12, 2012, issue of The Villager, Michelle Herman, in her article about Ernest Borgnine and Tortilla Flats, referred to the “Westbeth basement sale as part of the regular rhythms of Far West Village life.”
In that spirit, we are now initiating a second sale. So many times, visitors asked if we had this sale every month, or every week, and we always had to say, “Sorry, only once a year.” This year, however, we are having the Westbeth Fleamarket’s First Ever Spring Sale.
We will be in the same space as last fall (55 Bethune St. and 137 Bank St.) for four days over two weekends in May: May 9, 10 and 16, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and May 17, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Keep looking in these pages for more details later on.
Gina Shamus
Shamus is a member, Westbeth Beautifi-cation Committee
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