To the Editor:
On Sept. 15, the Sun wrote about Pacoima Beautiful’s campaign against Whiteman Airport, an effort which risks making the community less safe and depriving locals of many great opportunities.
Whiteman Airport currently serves as a base for a variety of emergency responders who help keep Pacoima, the San Fernando Valley and California as a whole safe. The airport also functions as a gateway for local children and adults to explore new horizons both literal and figurative. Shutting down the airport would mean depriving the community of all of this.
As a pilot with decades of experience at Whiteman, I want to make it very clear what is at stake here for the community: Pacoima’s future.
If the airport disappears, so will the heroic first responders stationed there who help keep residents safe when earthquakes, fires and other disasters happen.
If the airport disappears, so will the opportunities for children and adults both to take a peek into the world of aviation and learn about a field that could inspire them to strive ever higher.
If the airport disappears, so will the dreams of local children who see it as a beacon of hope for their futures. If the airport disappears, those hopeful children will see a symbol of optimism demolished.
In a 2020 press release, Pacoima Beautiful suggested major land development in the airport’s place, including both for industrial use and over 1,000 “affordable housing units.” Pacoima Beautiful has not explained how they could prevent these developments from exacerbating existent congestion, overcrowding and pollution in the area nor how these ideas fit their own calls that the community handle future decision making.
Thinking about this closure effort and what it threatens to take from the community, I remember months ago seeing a young boy walk by me across the airport tarmac with his father towing his little brother in a little red wagon. As the trio passed a pilot preparing his airplane, the boy excitedly shouted, “Cool plane!” to its pilot, who thanked him for the compliment.
I suspect (and hope) that one day I might see that boy again: not marching in front of a little red wagon but behind the controls of an aircraft. It would be terrible to see cheerful youths like him denied their chance at that future just because some people lack the vision.
On Sept. 25, Pacoima Beautiful protested against the Whiteman Airport with a small gathering of around 30 people, including many PB staff, some young children and Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez.
At the same time as the march, a program at Whiteman was hosting an event offering demonstration flights to locals, including walk-ins.
By taking part in it, the youths at PB’s protest were deprived of a chance at seeing aviation firsthand and this gets worse when you realize this was intentional.
In the Sept. 15 article, Pacoima Beautiful policy director Andres Ramirez said PB had their protest on Sept. 25 explicitly in opposition to the airport’s events and outreach that day.
Those flights could have been potentially life changing moments for the children and I feel deeply sorry they were denied to them.
I’m sure the airport will have similar events in the future and I hope the children who went to the march take a look at aviation.
Even so, anti-airport politics need to stop interfering with kids’ futures like they did that day.
Matthew Stone
The letter is a noncommercial pilot who has used Whiteman Airport’s facilities extensively.
One question, where do you live? Because I have spent the last two decades living in front of whiteman airport and those benefits you say our community gets from the airport are anything but apparent to me. Let me tell you in all my life I have never, not once stepped foot inside of that airport despite it literally being a crosswalk away, nor do I know any of my friends or neighbors in the community who have. I mean why would we, we can’t afford the services offered and we are not employed by the airport. No, those people are like you, people who come from different, much nicer areas. People who have to drive over here leaving their nice little suburbs to enjoy their leisure time in the sky. You people don’t have to live here and suffer through the pollution that we do from living in this f*cking area. Now in the time of Covid you don’t have to take meetings or attend virtual classes where you constantly have to excuse yourself when talking because the planes are being loud outside and filtering your voice out. Its not you who has to deal with the trauma of plane crashes happening right outside your homes, and it doesn’t matter if it’s just one crash, it’s one too many for anyone to experience! Let me tell you, I don’t care what PB or whoever wants to do with that land. If its subsidized housing for the homeless I welcome it more than I welcome that airport, at least then it would be providing some kind of service to our people.
But for now I am sick and tired of people like you who sit in their nice little homes while the rest of us get f*cked by environmental racism and classism, things that are actually affecting OUR children’s future unlike those “anti-airport politics” you speak of.
Oh and for the record, you attempt to villainize Pacoima Beautiful by mentioning their rally occured on the airport’s outreach event (which for the record I never heard of despite, you know, living in front of the place) but then forget to mention how some of your people secretly infiltrated that rally. One of them even talked to my dad and tried to make him feel like an idiot for protesting but my dad knows his story and told that to those moles.
Jen, I live a short drive from the airport and have air traffic for Burbank, Van Nuys and Whiteman overhead all the time. It doesn’t bother or scare me.
Cost is not the hurdle you think it is, especially as many opportunities Whiteman Airport offers are FREE. Display days and demonstration programs (like those of September 25th) are frequent and public. Find out when the next events are and look at the place firsthand.
While you may feel indifferent about how the land is used, few share that stance. Public comments from the local community have seen heavy support for keeping Whiteman and allowing it to continue serving everyone.
The various programs offered at the airport include scholarships available to people of all sorts with dreams that reach far and high. The Civil Air Patrol has tremendous potential as a springboard into later paths in aerospace, both civilian and military. Whiteman’s programs function as a melting pot, just as aviation across the globe does.
Environmentalism is color-blind and, for its part, Whiteman Airport has compared favorably to proposed alternate uses of its land. Proposed alternative uses like the ones I cited would exacerbate congestion issues, increase pollution and worsen population density with no meaningful mitigations like the current public services. (The effects of demolition/rebuilding haven’t even been talked about as part of the process to those alternatives either.)
Pacoima Beautiful’s event did keep many of their youth members from taking advantage of the airport’s events. That is me not villainizing PB…it’s just a matter of what happened and by PB’s framing too (they, not I, said the timing was their intention).
I have never heard of any “infiltration” happening and must say I am dubious. Pacoima Beautiful’s event only had a few dozen people show up with most wearing PB logos (PB staff or youth, I guess). Even after several weeks, Pacoima Beautiful hasn’t reported any “infiltrations.”
Lastly, please drop the “you people” labeling. It is needlessly pushes division and exclusion in a talk that is supposed to include all of the community.