DN letters: Readers weigh in on Temple melee

I HAVE JUST one question in regard to Jenice Armstrong's article, titled "Temple melee no black & white issue" . . .

If it wasn't that, then what was it?

I'm sorry, I'm not buying the "troublemaking teens" excuse, but before you answer my question, please take a moment and really think, because in about two years, when we see a few of these "so-called" troublemaking teens on a video fighting with a police officer, will you still say the teen was a troublemaker and side with police or are will you say the cop was in the wrong and the teen was a upstanding citizen?

Here we go, let's flip-flop back and forth, but, before we do, let's see who did what to whom and find an excuse. You really should report the news for what it is and not what you assume.

So, what's the next step? You offered an excuse; you identified the problem, so why not offer a fix? Are you going to write a story about how the parents of these troublemakers have failed? Identify the parents publicly? Are you going to demand some type of counseling (at the parents' cost) for these devilish youngsters?

You wrote, "Spare us excuses for vicious attacks," but isn't that the exact thing you did, offer an excuse without all the facts? Again, I'm sorry, but I just don't accept the excuse that all 20 to 30 boys and girls in their early to late teens were troublemakers. If that's the case, we all have a lot to worry about for years to come.

Andrew J. Dankanich

Philadelphia

Jenice Armstrong wrote a strong statement ("Temple melee no black-&-white issue") about the social gathering gone sour near the movie theater on North Broad Street on Temple's campus on Oct. 21.

She carefully distinguishes the behavior of a few thugs from the peaceful majority of teens who merely wanted to see a movie. She does not excuse them, of course, and they need to answer for their criminal behavior.

But automatically attaching racial overtones to their attacks is itself a form of prejudice. As Armstrong correctly points out, no one, not even a poor horse, was safe from those miscreants who took advantage of a social assembly to commit robbery and mayhem!

Gloria C. Endres

Philadelphia

Again with the black and white issues. Is that all Solomon Jones ever writes about? How come when young African-American youths get together because of social media and attack white college students from Temple, no one talks about it being a racial issue?

When something like this happens, there was always an excuse. There is no excuse for the violence of kids just trying to go to school.

This isn't the first time it's happened, and it won't be the last, with such a mixed neighborhood.

If the races were reversed, there would be an uproar across the city, and Jones would further write about it and cause even more problems with his columns.

Greg Phy

Philadelphia

I just had to respond to Ronnie Polaneczky's call for participants to discuss the possibility of reasonable and civil acceptance of a terrible outcome in the election on Nov. 8 ("Listen Philly").

I would venture to suggest that few people could honestly take up that challenge. I had such an unpleasant visceral reaction just reading the description of the "day after."

It is not only the specter of a possible Hitler running our country that is so upsetting. I feel so sickened by the possibility that so many of our fellow Americans are either so severely cognitively challenged or that full of hate to actually vote for him. In any other past election cycle, we have had voters who might have not cared about the poor or the environment or minorities, but this year is different.

I think many people are questioning how they could continue to live their day-to-day lives as citizens of a county ruled by a dangerous lunatic.

It would be terrible. I could not read any newspapers or ever watch TV or listen to the radio. It would be like living, with eyes closed, as a passenger on an airplane two minutes before crashing - praying to survive - but on a continuous loop.

Glynnis Gradwell

Philadelphia

I've spent the last weeks before the elections doing my best to understand why anyone would vote for Donald Trump. People say they don't care how rude and vulgar his language is, or how he treats minorities, or what he thinks of women. The man is a misogynist, racist and a narcissist, and if anyone thinks he cares about the average person, you are sadly mistaken. He thinks about Donald Trump and how being president can help him. He discusses policy as if he were a dictator, not a president. He insults the members of the press and then he becomes insulted when they respond in kind. And finally he discusses the election process as being totally rigged against him.

Perhaps you doth protest too much, Mr. Trump; it's time to look in the mirror and see what we see.

Joe Orenstein

Southampton, Pa.