To the editor: These of us who work alongside the banks of the Los Angeles River are sometimes instructed to be sensible. To weigh flood management, safe permits, comply with timelines and hold expectations in test. It’s accountable work and it’s mandatory.
However on occasion, somebody reminds us that practicality generally is a entice. Somebody insists the river calls for greater than endurance, greater than forms, greater than progress experiences. That particular person was Melanie Winter (“Melanie Winter, who fought for embracing nature alongside the Los Angeles River, dies,” Oct. 23).
Melanie by no means accepted “later.” She believed the river needs to be wholesome now, that individuals residing alongside it deserved entry now, that nature and justice couldn’t watch for comfort. She wished us to maneuver sooner, be braver and cease apologizing for wanting extra for the river.
I had the privilege of realizing Melanie, of sitting throughout from her as we debated the tempo of change and the politics of restoration. When she instructed me, “Don’t be lazy, Candice,” she meant “Don’t compromise. Don’t accept partnerships that dilute your goal or alliances that lose sight of the river.” She couldn’t abide small visions.
Melanie labored alongside Lewis MacAdams, the founding father of Pals of the Los Angeles River. Collectively, they outlined the fashionable river motion, believing it may very well be each wild and concrete, ecological and human. Lewis mentioned, “If it’s not unattainable, I’m not .” Melanie took that impossibility and made it pressing.
At FoLAR, our work sits on the intersection of massive imaginative and prescient and practicality. We bridge folks and authorities, navigating the sluggish world of coverage whereas additionally responding to urgent group wants. Melanie reminds us that collaboration can’t imply complacency.
That is our problem now: to hold ahead Lewis’ poetry and Melanie’s defiance with the pragmatism wanted to show imaginative and prescient into entry, ardour into coverage and urgency into lasting change.
Candice Dickens-Russell, Los Angeles
This author is president and CEO of Pals of the Los Angeles River.
