When will Mahoning Valley voters wake up?

When will Mahoning Valley voters wake up?
EDITOR:
I am a native of Youngstown now living in Rochester, N.Y. I have been following the Traficant trial through your articles on the Internet and from talking to my mother long distance every week. I was just reading your recent article on the reaction of area residents to the verdict and have to wonder if the majority of people living in my hometown have all lost it.
Traficant is a man who has just been found guilty of 10 counts of bribery and racketeering, and there are still people living there who would still vote for him. This is a man who has done nothing productive for your community and you continue to vote for him -- he is a laughing stock in Congress and you still continue to vote for him. People, open your eyes.
Youngstown is still the same sad, economically depressed town I left 15 years ago. Traficant has changed nothing. When I tell people in Rochester about Traficant they can't believe that anyone would vote for him once let alone twice or three times. You need to move on -- there has got to be someone else in that town that can represent you in Congress in an honest, meaningful and productive way -- someone who can improve the town both morally and economically. Stop electing crooks -- I've started to get embarrassed to say I am from Youngstown where every elected official gets indicted -- aren't you?
GINA M. JENNINGS
Rochester, N.Y.
All areas of Youngstown ought to be made safe
EDITOR:
I was very upset after reading about the violence near Classique Lounge on Youngstown's South Side. That bar has been a problem for a long time with gunfire, fights and the like. When a bar becomes a nuisance and brings dangerous confrontations into a neighborhood, it should be closed.
Our public officials should not wait till someone is killed by a stray bullet. You can be sure if this bar were in close proximity to our mayor's or police chief's home, it would have been closed long ago.
Shouldn't everyone in Youngstown be just as important when it comes to their safety? This would never be permitted to continue in outlying areas. Why is it permitted here?
No wonder people move out of the city.
We definitely need to enforce our current laws and, if necessary, new laws made to curtail all the crime and violence. This city could be a changed place with the help of the people in authority and the people who live here.
There are many things all of us can do to make a difference. Go to your block watch meetings -- complain about the things you want changed, pick up the litter in your neighborhood and look out for your neighbors. It's a start.
BETTY FORD
Youngstown
Man should conform to church, not vice versa
EDITOR:
Recently we had an event in Youngstown where Planned Parenthood, one of the foremost abortion providers in the country, had a professor from Marquette University for a luncheon speaker: Daniel Maguire is the author of "Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions." He neither speaks for nor represents the Catholic Church, and is of the same ilk as "Catholics for a Free Choice" and other apostates who want the church to conform to their image and likeness, rather than to that of its founder, Jesus the Christ.
How did we get to this state of affairs? For some time now, too many shepherds have not been tending their flocks. Recent exposures of another sort have brought this to light. The rot in the church is wide and deep, reflecting that of society in general, and we have yet to hit bottom.
The Bible says "When the son of man returns will He find any faith left on earth?" Only a remnant.
IDA M. CALLAN
Vienna