Letters: Plethora of problems | Creating AL | Provenance of ‘woke’ | Teen girls | Public bank

East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for March 2, 2023

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Plethora of problems
drive BART riders away

Re: “BART will boost police foot patrols” (Page A1, Feb. 23).

Your news item says BART currently has 10 officers on foot patrols split in “all the shifts” to patrol all the trains and BART stations. BART currently has 50 stations and operates 19 hours on weekdays.

With 206 sworn officers, what are the other 196 officers doing? I have seen BART police cars in the Clayton shopping center. Doing what? No wonder crime is high on BART. Except for caving into union demands of more and more raises, BART only knows how to raise the fares.

No wonder no one wants to ride BART any longer.

Virendra Jain
Concord

We are creating
artifactual life

Although the East Bay Times editorial titled “California must lead in crafting AI protections” (Page A6, Feb. 22) partially expresses a current need, the stakes are much higher than the editorial suggests.

We are creating not just AI, but AL: artifactual life. In a sense, we are collectively playing God. Current embryonic stages of AL include the autonomy of Mars rovers (see Amazon Studio’s “Good Night Oppy”“]), autonomously driven vehicles and the seemingly emotional conversations of ChatGPT.

So yes, we should be concerned. But, long term, if we humans don’t destroy ourselves with war, the creation of AL is inevitable. It will be the way we extend our awareness throughout the vast cosmos. Further, even today there is a very positive side: The choices inherent in our new role creating life will have us looking deeply at ourselves, which may help save us from self-annihilation.

Wallace Clark
Concord

‘Woke’ is a product
of Black consciousness

Wake up everybody; it is a new day.

Black History Month has ended, but what has changed? Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” is still very relevant. The new catchword is “woke.” But what does it mean and where did it originate? I bet most who use it, or should I say misuse it, have no idea.

Woke is from Black America, Black culture, Black people. It is a term in Black English or Ebonics (remember Ebonics) that means being “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination” of any kind. That is the actual meaning. No one out there gets to redefine it, just accept it. So, if you do not want to be woke, well that must mean that you are … (fill in the blank).

When you get an opportunity please look up and listen to the song “Wake Up Everybody” — both the original and the John Legend remake.

Conrad Dandridge
Martinez

Moral decay is
hurting teen girls

The CDC recently released data from a 2021 study of high school girls, comparing them to a similar study in 2011. 57% of high school girls studied in 2021 said they were depressed (36% did in 2011), with 30% saying they had considered committing suicide (19% did in 2011).

Why do you suppose this might be? COVID lockdowns are bound to have contributed, of course, but I think this is also a logical outcome for a society that works to convince young women that they can run from their own biology, delay indefinitely aspirations of marrying and having children, and instead devote more time to work and a frenzy of single activity, including sexual promiscuity. And, of course, to think of young men in terms of “toxic masculinity.”

And the young are the ones paying the price for all this “social engineering.”

Mike Heller
Walnut Creek

Think bigger on
public bank plan

Re: “East Bay cities seek safe financial waters” (Page A1, Feb. 26).

Your article on the Public Bank East Bay demands a response. You reference the usefulness of the public Bank of North Dakota in financing productive activities under more favorable conditions than local businesses and local governments could get from big Wall Street banks. All true.

However, why think small? When this country was founded, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington established a national bank to provide credit to productive businesses, with branch banks throughout the 13 states. It was nothing like the Fed, contrary to popular misconception. Rather, it was much more like the Bank of North Dakota on a national scale.

But to make any of this really work, we need to break the power of the big banks, which is a daunting, but not impossible, task. Snipping at their heels with a little community bank won’t amount to much, though it might make some local politicians feel good.

Hunter Cobb
Alameda