Criticism
When asked in April 2005 if he thought he was more conservative than some of the older council members, Coonerty responded, "I think I have a fundamentally different outlook on the role of government, on important battles that need to be fought. A lot of people came of age in a time of direct conflict and the issues they were fighting were huge. Protecting the North Coast. Lighthouse Field. I believe we're in a different era. It's time to make the table a little bigger, to maybe not have big fights but instead look at a number of targeted policies. I don't see symbolic battles happening. I see it more about making sure the city operates within a set of core values in a way that brings more people into the process." Some business owners felt the increased law enforcement Coonerty supported in downtown Santa Cruz improved the area, while others called it a "crackdown" and said " didn't need to be so heavy-handed".
In early 2006, Coonerty voiced support for Santa Cruz police after it was reported that undercover officers had infiltrated community meetings to organize a New Year's parade without obtaining a permit. Coonerty supported an internal investigation, which cleared the police of any wrongdoing. The city's own police auditor determined that police had violated the civil rights of parade organizers and, with pressure from the community and the ACLU, the city put in place a policy to curb some of the abuses of police power.
After the Sentinel noticed his supporters wrote an "admittedly glowing Wikipedia profile that they hoped might hook Web-savvy young voters.", he was quoted as saying "Given it all, I would rather just not have a Wikipedia page". Like many other politicians, including Hillary Clinton, Coonerty has struggled to stop the spread of misinformation as anyone can edit a page on Wikipedia.
Read more about this topic: Ryan Coonerty
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)