Letters: Portrait of de Blasio as a Young Idealist

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Re "Possible Mayor Now, but Then a Young Leftist" (front page, Sept. 23), about Bill de Blasio's work in support of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the late 1980s:

I did not vote for Mr. de Blasio in the Democratic primary, and he has not yet won my vote for mayor. But I hope that New Yorkers will read your profile of his youthful leftist days not as a cause for consternation but as the story of a young person's mature and canny commitment.

For readers who did not spend their youth in activist circles, the term "democratic socialism," as once used by Mr. de Blasio, can easily be misunderstood. Among young activists in the 1980s — when I was committed to many of the same causes as Mr. de Blasio — the phrase democratic socialism signaled the thinking of a person who yearned for fundamental social change, but who especially identified with the humane and calm agendas of the labor parties of Europe and Latin America.

Young people who went under the banner of democratic socialism knowingly distinguished themselves from the knee-jerk, anything-goes left. The young Mr. de Blasio sounds like a thoughtful and discerning activist. I hope he brings the same traits to the mayoralty should he win.

MITCH HOROWITZ
New York, Sept. 23, 2013

To the Editor:

The article on the young Bill de Blasio's support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua leaves the impression that he was somehow "taken in" by them. It also treats this divisive issue as having no clear moral implications, with the Reagan administration denouncing the Sandinistas as "tyrannical and Communist," and liberals defending them as "building a freer society."

Yet we now have a mountain of evidence to show that the abuses of the Sandinista government in the 1980s were minor and sporadic compared with the extensive killings, largely of unarmed peasants, carried out by the armed forces in Guatemala and El Salvador, whose regimes had the staunch support of the Reagan administration.

The policy adopted by the United States government toward Central America at that time was one of the most shameful chapters in our nation's history, and no one need apologize for opposing it.

BARBARA WEINSTEIN
New York, Sept. 23, 2013

The writer is a professor of Latin American history at New York University and a past president of the American Historical Association.

To the Editor:

Bill de Blasio recalled having an "epiphany" at a health clinic in Nicaragua, when he saw a "map posted on the wall, which showed the precise location of every family in town." The article continued, "The doctors used it as a blueprint for door-to-door efforts to spread the word about the importance of immunizations and hygiene."

As a doctor, I was part of a team that used efforts like this in the 1980s in Somali refugee camps, reducing infant and child mortality rates by 50 percent. At the World Health Organization in the 1980s and 1990s, we applied similar efforts using health outreach workers to improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

I am very encouraged by Mr. de Blasio's enthusiasm for this public health technology still greatly underused and desperately needed in the United States.

GARY SLUTKIN
Chicago, Sept. 23, 2013

The writer is a professor of epidemiology and international health at the University of Illinois School of Public Health.

To the Editor:

¡Viva de Blasio!

This story about a young man's thirst for social justice will likely incense New York's greedy elites. But those who aspire to live in a decent society would take a mix of European social democracy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and liberation theology any day over the cruel free-market fundamentalism that we have now.

MARC EDELMAN
New York, Sept. 23, 2013

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