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The River Reporter A year ago, around the time he took office, Kurlander (a frustrated former columnist from another local newspaper, which discontinued his column when he announced his candidacy) bought a small advertiser formerly published in Rockland County called The Bargain Times. Now published out of Monticello, a majority of the copies printed are given away free in area establishments. Recently, Kurlander took on a not-so-formidable foe. In a January 21 commentary, he attacked the mentally ill, the poor, and the sick. What tough targets. Kurlander painted a word-picture of a Monticello nonprofit soup kitchen as a den of criminals and addicts, and our county seat as a haven for undesirables. "Bus tickets, not vans, may be the answer for many on the streets in Sullivan County," he simplistically and heatedly concluded, referring to a recent fiscal cut by the county. This sounds like a call for sundown probation, like when a western lawman in the movies says: "Get out of town by sundown." Problem is, this enforced practice has been held unconstitutional in a land where freedom of movement reigns. This is not the wild West. Those who've chosen to make Sullivan County their home -- for whatever reason -- are in the same soup as the rest of us. They live here. Like the rest of us, they have families and others who care for them. Life's ills have overtaken certain aspects of their experience, and some have made wrong choices. But like the fictional Shylock and all live humans, if you prick them they bleed. If you starve them, they die, steal to eat, or perhaps take drugs to blunt the pain. In the end, the same Justice overtakes us all.Thoughtful legislators might consider closely examining the private interests which seek and import New York City's homeless to our borders. But please don't attack those who suffer mental defect or disease, or the agencies that minister to them once they're here. Many were actually born here. Almost all are Americans, with the same entitlements as any citizen. They pay taxes, and many of them vote. At once a politician, officer of the courts, and editor, Kurlander first makes news, then uses the podium of his shopper to publicize his slant on it. This is the propaganda of a politician. Of course, the same freedoms which protect genuine newspapers also protect Kurlander's organ. In America, we're free -- sometimes even obligated -- to speak and to write. It's not the so-called "underclass facilities" (Kurlander's words) in Monticello and elsewhere which exist to serve needy citizens that make Sullivan County what it is. No more than "underclass" lawyers who represent low-income clients in court cause crime. Advocates in the public interest must condemn such ignorance. Greater resources should be devoted -- from federal level down to local --to rehabilitating; and less to incarcerating those whose offenses actually stem from mental illness or addiction. Acting to bus people out (as legislator Kurlander advocates) -- whether by Short Line or by prison bus -- because they suffer from an illness, will lead our society further into an abyss from which there may be no peaceful return. As an elected official, Mr. Kurlander's foremost duty is to serve his constituents, not to meanly place blame on the mentally ill, chemically dependent or indigent for the failures and bad decisions of public policy-makers like himself. --Tom Rue, contributing editor RELATED
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© 1985-2006, Tom Rue. All rights reserved.
