Boulevard Bites

by Sheila D'Amico

### Readers of the Leona Heights column may have noticed the new byline. Columnist Gordon Laverty has passed the pen to his son, Larry, who has been co-writing the column for several months. Gordon began writing for the MacArthur Metro with the first issue in April 1989. Larry’s mother, Marge Laverty, was the Metro’s first garden columnist, whose own voice came through in her interesting and informative columns, a tradition later carried on by Adina Sara and now by Hadley Louden. Our best wishes to Gordon and Marge.

### Gordon’s passing the torch is a good reminder that the Metro has never been about one person. The efforts and contributions of dozens of people go into each issue. We’re sending a metaphorical Valentine to our distributors, advertisers, writers, photographers, behind-the-scenes personnel, and financial supporters. All of you make the Metro go. That “you” includes readers who take time to comment on a story or on the paper in general.

### Special thanks to readers who are sending donations to the Metro in response to our appeals. Check our financial thermometer. We’ll have more details in a future issue. Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so and can afford to, please make a donation to this nonprofit community newspaper as soon as you can. See page 2.

### What would the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have said about the Occupy movement? In his long Letter from Birmingham City Jail—written four months before his speech on Washington Mall—he said:

“Never again can we afford to live with the narrow provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country. ...

“Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

Not everyone can engage in civil disobedience, stand on a soapbox, demonstrate in the streets, march to a port, Occupy Oakland. Some write letters or emails, speak to their friends, register voters, mentor students, work in their neighborhoods. But anyone, through his or her quiet or vociferous actions, can carry Dr. King’s basic message that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”