To the editor:
(re: “Activists critique bills criminalizing protests,” March 7)
So Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz wants to make blocking a street an act of terrorism?
OK, let’s start with the self-absorbed parents of the students at Amber Academy, the charter school on Corlear between West 231st and West 232nd streets. Twice every school day, they block Corlear with their double-parked cars and cause a din of horn-blowing from the drivers who want to get through the block.
I live on Corlear and West 232nd, and the noise ain’t fun.
The Amber Academy isn’t the only charter school fostering this “terrorism.” Several years ago, at a meeting of the Community Board 8 education committee, residents of Marble Hill bitterly complained about a charter school there that had parents’ cars and school buses blocking the street. Probably several other charter schools inflict street blocking terrorism as well.
If blocking a street is an act of terrorism, let’s start the arrests and trials with those who do it habitually: these over-privileged parents who are teaching their children how to ignore everyone else.
Or is street-blocking by protesters with whom Dinowitz disagrees the only form of terrorism?
Such bills — as the one on lithium-ion batteries that Dinowitz has introduced — are important for preserving housing in the Bronx. I support these bills.
But bills that criminalize political expression beyond what the current laws offer don’t help our communities and smack of Trump, DeSantis, and the other “red” politicians.
Deborah Wallace