Build it in your backyard

Editor, The Press:

(re: “Housing is a human right, and why we support shelter,” Nov. 11)

U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman and state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi are just that: representatives. Their job is not to “school” their constituents on moral obligation, social contract, or the talking points of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Or to invent some vague concept of our community’s values.

Their job is to represent our constituents. Right now, some of their constituents are legitimately concerned about the effects of the city’s plan for a homeless shelter in North Riverdale. I urge them to listen to and accept their constituents, and to produce the “facts” in their claims for a dearth of ill effects of homeless shelters on their respective locations.

I also encourage them to offer their own neighborhoods as prospective locations for the shelter if they are so magnanimous in their high-minded and seemingly morally superior stance.

I say “seemingly” because they subtly stigmatize dissent from their stance as “racist or classist” — a fairly typical tactic these days, where both extremes of right and left cannot fathom any rational form of dialogue.

It is outright coercion.

Weaponizing current progressive discourse against your own constituents is reprehensible, but shrewd politically.

Cynthia Elmas

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