Anybody else want to add their names before I send this to the Chronicle? If I get co-signers, I'll change the "I'm" to "we're" in the third paragraph.
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Editor,
It's a shame to see Mayor Gavin Newsom courting social conservatives by doing something as uncool as pushing a youth curfew. There's safety in numbers, so if he's going to be advocating coercion, he should seek to force people out on the streets at night, not fewer. That's the whole concept behind "National Night Out." People who are out on the streets are also less likely to commit or be victims of domestic violence, since most domestic violence happens in the home.
Remarkably, the mayor's curfew plan even fails to focus on the populations who are most at-risk for being mugged, namely the feeble and elderly. If anyone deserves to be made safer by being forced to adhere to a curfew, they do. And since elders more often live alone, they are less likely to be exposed to domestic violence if required to stay home. Such a curfew would be easier for the police to enforce too, since feeble and elderly people usually move more slowly and tend to want to stay home and go to bed at an early hour anyway.
To those of you reading this and thinking I'm just joking, don't be fooled! These ideas are only partly meant to amuse -- the more you think about them, the more you may find them actually more sensible than Gavin Newsom's approach. But, you may protest, hardly any of the feeble and elderly are violent criminals! Why should they all have their freedom curtailed? Aha! Now we approach enlightenment: Hardly any of the kids are either.
Sincerely,
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Candidate for Supervisor, District 8