Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to [email protected]. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor, 


    The signs that fill my neighbor’s yards reading “CodeNEXT is BACK, SAVE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD” would make you think that the black plague has returned in full force. After becoming involved with Students for Transit, a UT-Austin student group that recognizes the benefits of public land transportation, and reading about the environmental impact of this Land Development Code in your article "Austin’s Land Use Debate Returns to the Spotlight," [News, Oct. 11, 2019], I can’t help but disagree with my neighbors.
    The new Land Development Code paired with Cap Metro’s Project Connect, a plan to expand transit capacity across Austin, is exactly what our city needs to become more environmentally conscious. Hundreds of people move to Austin every week with their cars emitting carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Austinites need to step up to support campaigns and projects that will help to reduce our environmental footprint. While my neighbors argue that the new Land Development Code will destroy our neighborhoods, I believe it will help grow our communities in ways that can support the high-capacity transit that Project Connect envisions. 



Dear Editor,
    Briefly regarding Ken Paxton’s barring employees from donating to Planned Parenthood [“Paxton Bans State Employees From Donating Pay to Planned Parenthood,” Daily News, Jan. 13]: If corporate money/donations are free speech then donations to Planned Parenthood are also free speech and cannot be prohibited by the Texas A.G. It is a violation of Citizens United.

Dear Editor,
    I’m trying so hard to not lose my faith in humanity. I know there are good people out there, but in the last week I’ve seen two horrible displays of inhumanity Downtown. The building housing Gold’s Gym on Sixth Street has somehow lost all sense of shame and installed outdoor speakers blasting an air horn sound every 30 seconds or so next to several “No Loitering” signs very clearly intended to run off homeless people in the vicinity. After that brazen display of assholery, I thought I had seen the worst anti-homeless harassment coordinated by a business. But the Library Bar on Dirty Sixth said, “Hold my watery bottom-shelf cranberry vodka.” They chose a truly disgusting and illegal plan to “eliminate the homeless” as they told me when I asked them about the new addition in the alley. The Library Bar installed sprinklers above their back doors facing the alley behind the bar to water a large area of asphalt and recycling and trash dumpsters. They claim the sprinklers go off for a minute straight every hour to soak homeless people in the alley IN THE WINTER. The awful, entitled door guy at the Library Bar would not entertain that their sprinkler installation was anything other than heroic. Is this who we are now? I’m so sad to know that there are multiple people out there that were willing to agree to this type of harassment and lacked the empathy and shame that would keep them from going through with it. And I’m worried that there are probably many more people that are just fine with this.

Dear Editor,
    I enjoyed your story on my dear friend, Gina Lalli [“In Memoriam: Gina Lalli,” Daily Arts, Feb. 19, 2019]. I wish you’d included Gina’s Bhagavad Gita and chanting classes, and, as well, her work as a local counseling astrologer. She was truly a “Renaissance woman.”
    What you did include was very well-written.