Dear Editors:
I am very much against the Constitutional Convention, which Arthur Z. Schwartz discusses in the October 2017 issue of WestView (“Why Vote ‘Yes’ for a Constitutional Convention?”), for four reasons.
There are changes we need to make but the way to do that is to defeat the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC). We have some momentum on this and the Constitutional Convention would be a distraction. I think it’s a bait-and-switch to distract us from what we must do.
We also need to focus on getting a better U.S. Congress. There are at least four nearby Republican congressmen we need to defeat. The Village Independent Democrats (VID) is focused on 19, and if we have more energy, Staten Island is next. If we have a Constitutional Convention, we would be spending money and time on delegates, and that will drain money and attention from Congress.
Haven’t we learned that anti-immigrant, anti-poor people, anti-choice, anti-LBGTQ propaganda distorts our political process? Do we want that here? I picture the billionaires drooling over the chance to make our constitution anti-
public education. It is now pro-public education and pro-gun, and that’s why the Campaign for Fiscal Equity succeeded in court. What we have is actually pretty good, and the reforms we need can be executed in other ways.
Delegates are elected from Senate districts. What fantasy assumes they will be better than our current State Senate?
—Keen Berger
