Don’t miss the point of student walkouts
Erika Sanzi’s column, “Atlanta-area schools should not treat student protests as a pass to skip class,” (AJC, March 9), relies on a familiar trick: trivialize student protest and flatten students’ motives in the name of seriousness.
Her claim that these walkouts were mostly about “escaping class and shouting slogans” is not analysis. It is contempt dressed up as common sense.
Students protesting immigration crackdowns do not need adults to manufacture fear for them. Many live with the consequences of these policies in their homes, schools and communities.
To dismiss them as props for outside groups strips them of agency while letting adults off the hook for addressing the substance of what they are saying.
Schools should take safety, instruction and supervision seriously. But teaching young people that civic participation is legitimate only when it is quiet, convenient and easy to ignore is its own kind of failure.
A student walkout is inconvenient by design. Treating their civil disobedience as a greater offense than the policies students are protesting misses their point entirely.
This is the same tired mix of faux outrage and generational condescension used to dismiss young people whenever they speak with moral clarity.
ISABEL OTERO, AUBURN
New housing cannot keep pace with region’s growth
A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article (“Warnock, Ossoff back housing bill to limit investor-owned houses,” AJC, March 9) on U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff backing federal legislation to limit investor-owned homes highlights how seriously policymakers are grappling with housing affordability. While the story focuses on federal action, it also notes that similar proposals are being considered in Georgia’s Legislature to cap how many homes companies can own.
As the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association sees it, Atlanta’s housing challenge is fundamentally a supply challenge. Our region continues to attract jobs, families and investment, but housing construction has struggled to keep pace with that growth.
Home builders across metro Atlanta, are working to close that gap by delivering the housing our growing workforce needs. Policies that restrict who can participate in building or providing new homes risk slowing the very investment and development necessary to expand supply.
New housing is essential to keeping Atlanta a place where teachers, health care workers, first responders and other essential employees can live near the communities they serve.
If lawmakers want to improve affordability, the focus should remain on encouraging construction, removing barriers to development and supporting the production of more homes across Georgia.
WAYNE HIOTT, PRESIDENT OF GREATER ATLANTA HOMEBUILDERS ASSOCIATION
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