PUBLIC FORUM : NEW `VOLUNTEERISM' IS INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE.

The issue of ``volunteerism'' has been brought to the forefront with President Clinton's Summit For America's Future. This new ``volunteerism'' is also being supported and promoted by retired Gen. Colin Powell, former President Bush, former President Carter, former first lady Nancy Reagan, et al.

Already being implemented is the provision that a student's graduation be contingent upon a requisite number of ``volunteer'' hours served. According to the administration's Corporation for National and Community Service, the goal is to enlist all Americans to provide ``seasons of service'' under federal direction - in other words enforced ``volunteerism'' or free labor. Unfortunately, this mirrors the eighth plank of the Communist Manifesto: ``Equal liability of all to labor.''

This so-called ``volunteerism'' is nothing but a covert and sinister attempt to achieve a social agenda that would so radically alter our accustomed way of life as to bring into irreconcilable conflict an amendment enacted more than 130 years ago to end enforced labor without compensation.

The goal of our newly defined ``volunteerism'' closely resembles involuntary servitude and is therefore in opposition to the 13th Amendment.

I hope that people are beginning to see what's in store for them and will write to their congressional representatives to propose significant legislation to prohibit this style of involuntary servitude.

- Celeste Burgess

Northridge

Ilegal housing

The Encino Park Improvement Committee is concerned about illegal buildings and occupancies all over our city, and has been working on the problem since 1980.

In 1993, we secured promises from then Los Angeles City Council candidate Laura Chick to enforce building and safety codes and reverse the conditions which violate them.

In 1996, EPIC proposed a plan to Chick to help her keep her promises. Our solution was to provide amnesty from fines and back taxes to residents who secure licensed building contractors and building permits to bring their properties to existing codes within a reasonable time - three months - and a special building and safety ``desk'' for amnesty applicants to make securing of building permits and inspections as hassle-free as possible. If property owners do not comply, then they would lose amnesty and be subject to strict enforcement of existing codes and severe penalties.

Chick did not respond.

Then came publicity over eight deaths by fires in illegal garages, with the result that the city Housing Department proposed gutting single-family zoning in guise of solving ``the homeless problem.'' The proposal would have legalized substandard housing, including conversion of garages into apartments, as if there were not plenty of low-cost housing available that conforms to existing codes.

On May 27, EPIC opposed the Housing Department's solution at the meeting of the City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee.

Under Councilman Hal Bernson's leadership, and despite Mayor Richard Riordan's proposal to do more studies, the meeting concluded with a motion to retain single-family zoning; create an ordinance to make illegal renting of garage conversions a misdemeanor; force landlords to pay to relocate tenants and provide fire and other education.

We appreciate that, but have requested that all ordinance violations be made misdemeanors. Otherwise they will get even less attention than now, because there is no enforcement of them.

- Estheranne Billings

President

Encino Park Improvement Committee

`The subway tapeworm'

``Railroaded,'' May 25, was the latest in a long series of distinguished and thoughtful editorials by the Daily News opposing the $350 million-a-mile subway.

For years, you have pleaded for innovative thinking that would bring rail service to the Valley faster and less expensively. But no one listened. Now, as you say, ``Downtown is the only place that has a working subway,'' and the Valley has . . . nothing.

Meanwhile, the subway tapeworm is devouring billions of dollars of federal and local money, starving the county's 88 cities and 137 unincorporated communities of the vital transit projects they need.

Two crucial changes are needed to put the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the right course. First, the board should recruit a chief executive officer from Southern California, who does not suffer from tunnel vision and who would bring the Red Line out of the ground to serve all of our cities and communities.

Second, the board itself should be reformed to break the choke hold of the downtown subway lobby. Among the sensible proposals to accomplish this are the following scenarios for composition of the governing board:

The five county supervisors, who represent the entire county, or;

The five supervisors, one representative from the city of Los Angeles, one representative from the city of Long Beach and four representatives from the other 86 cities, or;

The five supervisors, one representative from the city of Los Angeles, and five representatives from the other 87 cities.

The first priority of the new CEO and MTA board must be to kill the subway tapeworm before it kills the MTA and destroys the possibility of a healthy transportation system.

- Michael D. Antonovich 

Supervisor

5th District

Los Angeles

More on Kelly Flinn

These are additional letters on Saturday's Public Forum topic - the Kelly Flinn case.

The Air Force lost an apparently dedicated and capable flier by getting mixed up in her personal affairs. Prison and court-martials are not the answer. Maybe the time has come for the military to begin some rethinking, kind of move along with the times.

According to the military spokesman before Congress, here we have a 26-year-old female flying a B-52 with nuclear bombs. Are they implying she can let go of these things on her own discretion? I certainly hope they have more and adequate safeguards for preventing dropping those things.

- J.P. Moens

Glendale

If our military officers are so righteous in their straight-laced findings, then why wasn't Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star general who was elected president, never charged or given a court-martial for carrying on his adulterous affair with his secretary when his country was in a state of war?

If Kelly Flinn were a five-star general, would have there been any court-martial charges filed for lying or adultery?

- Benjamin R. Laufer

Sherman Oaks

When females were given leave to enter military service during World War II, I wondered how long it would take before some ``sister'' would be hung out to dry for doing what males, both civilian and military have been at ever since I can remember - which is a long time because I'm now 84.

I am sorry for Kelly Flinn, but her activity did boomerang against an enlisted servicewoman of her own sex - and hell hath no fury like a scorned woman.

- J. Sylvia Gross

Tujunga

First Lt. Kelly Flinn is entitled to her private affairs as does and should any other military or civilian person. The obsessed media is once again making a mountain out of a molehill, like on so many other sex-related issues. Leave the woman alone.

- Sanford Cohen 

Woodland Hills

This is not a case of adultery, as your paper and the media at large seem to be focusing on. It is rather about the responsibility that it entrusted in a person to fly a plane that can carry nuclear weapons.

Kelly Flinn knowingly lied more than once. If we allow such behavior to go unpunished, then we are severely compromising the security of this country and damaging the high standards of our armed forces. We must, at all times, bear in mind the importance of the men and women in our armed forces and moreover, the effect that allowing these crimes to go unpunished would have on them.

- Leonard Carreras

West Hills

As a retired Air Force major, I would like to point out to Kelly Flinn one part of the oath she took while an Air Force cadet, namely `` . . . we will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those among us who do.'' How quickly she forgets this basic philosophy, which forms the standard I and my fellow military officers have sworn to follow.

Military members are sworn to obey orders and as such, must adhere to a higher standard than the general populous.

Lt. Flinn had a distinguished career ahead of her. No one, however, forced her to disobey military regulations; she made that choice on her own. And now she will have to live with the results of the choices she, as an adult, made.

- George B. Pyfrom

Simi Valley

We feel that you unfortunately put the series of questions in the wrong order. The adultery question should be relegated to last. What is important is whether officers of the military should be expected to meet high standards of conduct at all times. The answer is a resounding ``yes,'' since these men and women have tremendous responsibility on them to use good, solid judgment in all of their actions.

If the perpetrator of the actions had been a man, who had disobeyed lawful direct orders from superior officers and who lied to those same superior officers, the case would have simply run its course and the fellow would already be on his way to Leavenworth.

- Dr. and Mrs. Richard J. Warren

Van Nuys

If all in the armed forces, from the lowest ranks to the highest, were held to the same high standards of honesty, personal integrity and morality that Kelly Flinn is being held to, Bill Clinton would no longer be commander in chief.

- Ron Yorke

Reseda