More News: Good, Bad, and Ugly

THE GOOD: Warren Eckstein of THE PET SHOW, a nationally syndicated radio show, has interviewed some members of Unleash the Beach and he will air this in L.A. on
Saturday November 12 at 11 a.m on KRLA am radio. He is completely in favor of the dog beach and will promote it from now on. He expects to attract many new supporters to our cause.
He will also put Unleash The Beach on his website, http://www.ThePetShow.com or www.WarrenEckstein.com The taped interviews will also appear on his website soon.


THE BAD: Thank you to the many many people who sent in messages to the Santa Monica Daily Press on their recent survey about the dog beach. Unfortuately, they chose to print the very SMALL percentage of negative ones without stating that this was by far the minority opinion. I am sending a copy of the letter to the editor I wrote to them.

Dear Editor,

I and my colleagues are very disappointed to learn of the way that you have handled your q-line survey about the dog beach pilot program in Santa Monica.  I am told that you had an overflowing amount of positive responses from people who passionately want to enjoy a dog beach. And yet you chose to print the few negative responses you got because they called in on the first day.  This is an outrage. If you are going to have a survey, even if it is informal, and say it runs all week, it is not fair to only print the first 5 people who called. And especially without saying anything about the hundreds who sent and called in positive responses. This is unfair and unbalanced. Many papers have online surveys where you can click yes no or indecisive. But even if you didn't have that, what you print should surely reflect the essence of what the public in good faith sent in.

Georja Umano
Unleash the Beach
Santa Monica

WHAT to do about it:   If you still have those letters you sent in to q-line, re-send them as letters to the editor, and there is a good chance they will get published Also, send a copy of them to council@smgov.et and manager@smgov.net to give support to our local politicians and staff who need fortitude to deal with the state.


THE UGLY:  Despite a very convincing conference call from the City Manager's office to the state in which many promises, approaches and concessions were put on the table for a pilot dog beach in Santa Monica, the response from the members of the State Parks and Recreation was completely negative.   This is where YOUR LETTERS will count. Keep writing and encouraging Santa Monica to keep going.  If necessary, we will ask them to lobby our state representatives if we have to go the legislative route. We will keep gathering support and we will NOT QUIT until we have a fair usage of our public beach.