We can be civil despite differences

BYRON DE ARAKAL

We begin with the notion that the closure of the Costa Mesa Job

Center will ultimately pan out to be a smart move in the necessary

campaign to yank the city’s Westside from the clutches of poor

planning and dubious land uses.

More immediately, the benefit will be the discontinuation of a

government-sponsored environment that aids and abets illegal

employment transactions, which is why I’ve never been a fan of the

thing.

My hunch is that job center proponents know as much. If you don’t

think so, it’s instructive to pay some attention to the word wars

that have broken out in the fortnight since the City Council’s vote

to shutter the 17-year operation.

On the one hand, Mayor Allan Mansoor and Mayor Pro Tem Gary

Monahan -- two of the three council members who voted to phase out

the center’s operations -- have publicly offered some pretty

clear-eyed reasoning for their action. Much of it is paraphrased at

the beginning of this column. The point is that they’ve offered their

arguments without spitting in the eye of the folks who think these

guys -- along with fellow Councilman Eric Bever -- have lost their

marbles.

I’m not sure the same can be said for many of those lamenting the

job center’s imminent demise. By the rants of some huddled in the

opposing camp, the council majority’s decision was either a bloodless

highjacking of democracy, a railroad job by a trio of misogynist

boors, or part of an Aryan plot to transform Costa Mesa into an Old

European hamlet.

All are certainly colorful theories and equally absurd. But that’s

what happens when -- absent an intellectually honest argument -- the

status quo fights to preserve its inertia.

By one account, Mansoor, Monahan and Bever ignored one-third of

the city’s residents (those who voted for Councilwomen Katrina Foley

and Linda Dixon, who oppose closing the job center) by voting to

scuttle the job center. Don’t ask me how that is. Foley and Dixon

were fully engaged in the debate during the March 15 council meeting,

offering plenty of dissenting opinion. That Dixon’s and Foley’s

desire to retain the job center did not prevail doesn’t mean they

(and so too their constituents) were shut out of the debate or

ignored, however. It only means they occupied the minority view in a

full vote of the people’s elected representatives. That is precisely

democracy.

The goofiest rejoinder bouncing around the public square on this

matter is the idea that the job center vote broke the way it did

because the male members of the council ganged up on the female

members. This seems to suggest that Dixon and Foley voted as they did

only because they are women, and for the men the same. The theory

itself, ironically, oozes sexism. Nevertheless, what if either Dixon

or Foley had voted with the majority? In that case, the gender-wars

card heads right out the window.

Worse, the men-beating-up-the-women argument paints Dixon and

Foley as powder puffs, which they are certainly not. They’re both

sharp, well-spoken women with principled convictions and ample

fortitude. Both have the moxie to slug it out with anyone -- man or

woman -- having an opposing viewpoint. The job center vote had

nothing to do with gender. It had everything to do with differing

policy opinions.

Finally, I was hoping that this town could wrestle with the

disposition of the job center without having the debate baited with

racism. But it isn’t to be. Some call closing the job center part of

a sinister plot by “radicals” to make Costa Mesa a “Latino-free

zone.” It’s an unfortunate and disappointing smear.

But it is also telling. When race baiting instigators show up, I

get suspicious. It usually means the opposing view can’t or won’t

argue the merits of an issue on intellectual terms. In this case,

Costa Mesa’s Latino population clearly won’t suddenly vanish once the

job center’s doors are permanently locked.

So, we can agree or disagree that the job center should no longer

be part of Costa Mesa’s landscape. But we should do so in a way that

demonstrates we can still be civil despite our differences.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and public affairs consultant and

parks and recreation commissioner from Costa Mesa. Readers may leave

a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or

contact him at byronwriter@comcast.net.