All I Can Do Is Write About It

All I Can Do Is Write About It by Dominik Mosur

BY DOMINIK MOSUR

EDITOR

Students in the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood will lose access to open space next year if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to close Candlestick Point State Recreation Area along with 47 other parks is approved.

Literacy for Environmental Justice, an education non-profit serving the Bayview community, is one group opposing Candlestick’s closure.

After signing their petition I couldn’t help but imagine the outcry from Pacific Heights and Marina District residents if the federal government announced the Presidio was being shut down to save a few hundred thousand dollars per year.

As California’s population surges toward 40 million we continue to build more houses, roads and shopping centers.

Our sense of freedom diminishes with every open space that is fenced in while the odds for survival of unique animal and plant species decrease.

Our governor is eerily out of touch to propose closing a park in an urban zone where open space is so hard to find, where so many lack access to a respite from the stress of city life.

Limiting access to Candlestick Point will remove it from the public’s consciousness and affect future plans for the site. Frequent visitors familiar with the park will not stand by idly while a piece of their commons falls to the bulldozers, an ever present threat for open space in the city.

Will another home for wildlife and a place to contemplate the quite perfection of nature, be enveloped by asphalt and concrete?