Missing ingredient to stop grafitti

I read with much interest the Moorpark Acorn article about a task force being formed to combat graffiti. A missing ingredient to ultimate success in this effort, I feel, was some young school students as part of the effort. It may be the key to the solution as it was some 49 years ago when my peers and I were presented with challenges to social justice and what was necessary to do.

A federal judge, when swearing me in to citizenship, charged me to appreciate what was going on in my life by becoming a citizen of the United States of America and emphasized the responsibilities underlying the gift of citizenship.

Fifty years later we are faced with similar challenges, and I find it sad to read leaders using the terms instigators, agitators, etc. I would say being called an agitator puts one in good company and fine examples. John Kennedy when he said "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Martin Luther King when he urged Americans to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Why would our elected and past leaders try to characterize the free expression and legal assembly in such a demonizing way, instead of understanding that like the late President Kennedy and Martin Luther King that they had before them people sharing a dream? Maria M. Hagman Moorpark