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:
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)