Letter to the Editor

Jackson Oaks Folks Are Not ‘Mob’

Dear Editor,

I am amazed that your reporter Serdar Tumgoren incorrectly used the word “mob” to describe an orderly meeting of concerned citizens appearing before their city council to protest trails, which were never looked at for useability, maintainability or cost by a costly consultant who evidently drew lines on a map of Jackson Oaks without seeing or acquiring knowledge of the terrain involved. Did not your reporter understand 20 percent grades, undermining large trees, switchbacks, costs of construction and maintenance, lack of policing?

My old Websters New Collegiate dictionary defines a mob as:

1. the lower classes of a community (masses, rabble)

2. a large or disorderly crowd: esp: one bent on riotous or destructive action

3. (chiefly Australia) a flock, drove, or herd of animals

4. a criminal set

Which one of the above are we Jackson Oaks citizens? You should be ashamed to print such misleading garbage.

The reporter who wrote the article doesn’t understand the words he is using, and the editor or whoever was responsible for editing the stories submitted is either ignorant of proper English usage or was not doing her job. Using a misleading and inflammatory word like mob in the lead paragraph taints the story, and is editorializing. Editorials belong on the opinion page, not disguised as news articles.

I have not seen the referenced police report about flagging down cars, but when I went by they were waving to all passersby, not signalling them to stop or pull over.

They were performing a community service by notifying their fellow citizens about a very important meeting of the city council. Don’t you really wish more neighborhoods would get involved in city decisions? I do.

I was a journalism major in college and the trails article violates the ethics of journalism I was taught at San Jose State University. Have they changed? I hope not.

If you think I was insulted to be called part of a mob, I was! And I suspect the members of the city council, who were also insulted several times in your paper, were shocked to hear their orderly and well run meeting was a mob scene and that they had caved in to a mob. The meeting was probably recorded, maybe televised.

You and your reporter would do well to look at that tape and get your facts straight.

Being called a NIMBY was also evidently meant to be demeaning, but since my backyard, as are most of my neighbors, is unfenced I accept NIMBY, because shouldn’t one look our for their own backyard? No one else will do it.

George Nale, Morgan Hill