By Tom McEnery
Published on May 23, 1997, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
MORE CULTURE, PLEASE IMAGINE: MARIACHIS, ART, HISTORY, PEOTRY . . .
”THE streets of this city are safe. It’s only the people that make them unsafe.” This strange utterance came out of the mouth of a police chief and later mayor of Philadelphia. The balance that a city strikes between public safety and the people’s right to assemble and celebrate is a delicate one.
By Tom McEnery
Published on November 8, 1994, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
POLITICAL LIGHTS GO OUT
IN THE early morning hours of August 1914, the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, stood on the balcony at Whitehall contemplating the cataclysmic outbreak of World War I. Observing the lamps being extinguished, one by one, below on the streets, he said fatalistically: “The lights are going out all over Europe, and they will not be relit in our lifetime.”
By Tom McEnery
Published on November 11, 1993, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
THE TALLEST TREE IN CHAVEZ PLAZA
ONE BRISK morning in 1989, a construction worker in San Jose’s downtown made an unusual find. Curt Elrod was working hard, busily completing the renovation of Plaza Park in front of the Fairmont Hotel. As he prepared to uproot a scrawny and nondescript tree at the north end of the park, a glint of metal caught his eye.
By Tom McEnery
Published on June 6, 1993, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
DIVIDED L.A. NEEDS MAYOR WHO CAN LEAD
IT was once the city of the angels: Los Angeles. All knew that here was a place of endless opportunity and boundless optimism. The second largest city in America, four times the size of San Jose or San Francisco, it is sometimes called the capital of the Pacific Rim, but today the boosters are silent.
By Tom McEnery
Published on April 15, 1992, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
THE FACES OF MR. BROWN
JERRY BROWN’S quadrennial yearning for attention has come again to the American political scene. It is too much to hope that it ended with his third place finish in New York. No such luck! To those of us in the Golden State, living with his legacy, we find others’ flirtation with this phoenix-like chameleon quite difficult to fathom. Quite frankly, it confuses us. His once promising career in public life has been reduced to a cynical caricature, as the charge of the
By Tom McEnery
Published on January 26, 1989, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
MORE PARKS, MORE HOUSING, MORE FOR ROADS
MANY in our city have said we must protect what’s left of the old San Jose. Preserve the ring of hillsides around our city, not just for the moment, not just long enough for the next development proposal, but forever. And don’t stop there. Give San Jose parks, worthy of her heritage as one of the greenest places on Earth. Make the Guadalupe a river park and garden, not a generation from now, but today.
By Tom McEnery
Published on December 4, 1987, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
KEEP VIOLENT CRIMINALS LOCKED UP
TIME after time those convicted of violent, terrible crimes are paroled with an insensitivity and cavalier regard for the local community. The system seems more concerned about the welfare of criminals than the well-being of citizens — more concerned about safety in prisons than safety in our neighborhoods. It’s not just the John Bunyards or the Archie Fains — they are only two among 200 violent crime parolees released to this county alone in a given year — but individuals
By Tom McEnery
Published on January 25, 1987, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
VISIONS AND COUNTERVISIONS OF A BUSTLING SAN JOSE PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM, LANDMARKS AND PARKS WILL DISTINGUISH DOWNTOWN
On Wednesday, San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery delivered his annual State of the City Speech. Following are excerpts.IN 1881, the generations before us knew San Jose as a small town with the spirit of a bustling city. Silicon Valley waited 90 years in the future. Yet thanks to a dreamer and visionary, San Jose stood at the forefront of a new technology. On December 31st, in 1881, James Jerome Owen, publisher of the San Jose Mercury, saw his dream flash into reality