Change for Better
North Haven
February 9, 2026
Dear David,
I read with mixed feelings the piece by Steven Gaines (“Guestwords”: “About That Swamp Memorial,” Jan. 29) concerning the former gay nightclub and restaurant site being proposed as a memorial.
Some places can change one’s life and their community for better, even if they are operated by seedy and scurrilous people. A lot of bad stuff took place there, but also some important good stuff that deserves to be remembered.
These places often functioned outside the margins of prevailing social mores, but they allowed many good, healthy, and productive relationships to form. Lasting friendships and productive relationships were free to develop, often resulting in important political changes.
This place represents all that too. I realize there is merit to rethinking what we are trying to memorialize. Do we honor the commercial businesses once there, or is it the significance of the social changes that took place there that we honor?
People gather for various reasons. Many want fun and to discover a safe and compatible community. Meaningful relationships often develop, giving confidence and a sense of social freedom. The opportunity to develop careers and to nurture activism builds greater strength and healthier politics, behavior, and legislation.
Mr. Gaines states the obvious: “The Swamp wasn’t the Stonewall,” which he finds worthy of recognition. He implies that the Swamp was just another tawdry gay bar that operated outside of the laws of the land, accommodating gay behavior that was anathema to general society.
What he missed noting is that the Stonewall designation is not of the Mafia-run business itself, or the remaining section of the building that houses a new gay bar profiting from its association with history. The Stonewall National Monument designation is for the “Stonewall Rebellion” that took place there. “Stonewall” is the social change that exploded in that place after another police raid at 1:20 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, 1969.
I was in the Stonewall that night to celebrate finally being at peace with myself, but not long after entering the place all hell broke loose with the now-famous police raid. As a community, we had had enough of the abuse and quickly became outraged and rebellious, so we challenged the police. The history books tell various versions of that extraordinary story.
The Swamp, the Annex, and, ultimately, the Star Room all just petered out commercially with no obvious rebellion taking place. But a different rebellion actually found strength at that venue, and went on to make important social and legal changes and cultural contributions. It is that which we choose to memorialize.
The Stonewall bar is no sacred site either, because it was a mafia dump protected by police payoffs. That’s the difference, and the similarity. We fought back!
Edie Windsor and many others in this gay-friendly community came together and fought back against all forms of discrimination, each in their own way. This activism needs to be the basis for this memorial. It’s another rebellion that was germinating right here in Wainscott, by the highway.
Never forget that personal pride within our community is what this is all about. Gay Pride took place in Wainscott, too.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
ANTHONY CORON
Bad Bunny
Amagansett
February 9, 2026
Dear Mr. Rattray,
So much to talk about it’s overwhelming. But since you and my 19 readers already know where I stand politically, I’m going to spare you another Ted Talk from your favorite letter writer.
I do want to say something about Bad Bunny’s halftime show, which I’ve just rewatched. I loved it. What a joyful romp! I think Mary might have enjoyed it even more, having taught Spanish for 25 years and helped establish Southampton Elementary’s dual language program, which has been recognized by the Spanish Ministry of Education for years.
But back to my rewatching of the performance on YouTube: I always like to check out a few of the comments after viewing, in this case tens of thousands. Favorite: “Bad Bunny had more yards than the Patriots in the entire first half.” What do they say? LMAO? (The F is silent.)
Okay, back to watching snow melt.
Atentamente,
LYLE GREENFIELD
Need a Kidney
East Hampton
January 31, 2026
To the Editor,
I need a kidney.
My son is willing to donate but has suddenly become aware of a reason why he may not be able to donate his.
I have a very good team who has cleared me, even at my age, to be a kidney recipient. This doctor does not consider age as a deciding factor but looks at the entire health of the person needing a transplant. I am in excellent health other than my failing kidneys.
I am also working with Renewal, a group that is vital in bringing together donors and those who need transplants. They, in fact, make it economically doable for someone to donate. And, I will say, now a person donating will live a normal life with one kidney. Add to that the knowledge that a donor will be high up on the list if a need should arise when they may be in the same position later in life.
So, if you who read this have questions or would like to discuss being a donor, please email me at [email protected]. Thank you now for any interest you have or any questions that come to mind.
TOM FRIEDMAN
Now in the Bay
Amagansett
February 8, 2026
To the Editor:
The iconic “stilt house” falling into Gardiner’s Bay (Leigh Goodstein, “Stilt House Surrenders to the Bay”) is an example of what I call “glitch theory” in our thinking. We say, “That happened!” and stop there without sufficient, or any, analysis, of the context, the connection to other conditions and events, the system problems which might have led to the “glitchy” result.
Not to accuse Leigh Goodstein of burying the lede (it was a quality article and up to The Star’s high standards), but the most thought-provoking element was the second photograph in the continuation of the article on page 9, superimposing the old tax map boundaries over a more current aerial photograph. This reveals that hundreds of feet of land — property — on the old map are now in the bay, and the caption reveals that at least one other house went more quietly in the interim.
Examined sub specie aeternitatis (yes, I am a show-off) the fall of the stilt house is not only something colorful and unfortunate that happened to one homeowner. It is the future.
The quote from Jim Grimes was very instructive: “When your property goes underwater it no longer exists in the eye of the law.” You thought you were buying a house, but you actually purchased an egregious ontological error!
The punchline: What are we actually doing about this in our planning? I have a flash of memory, from the days when I went to almost every town board meeting to watch (what I still thought was) democracy in action: The two representatives of the coastal resiliency assessment plan committee had just appeared before the board — at 1:30 in the afternoon, when almost all the audience had long since departed.
“Do they always schedule you at this time?” I asked.
Also, it seemed neat word-mongering to call the plan and the committee “CARP” instead of its actual acronym.
An irresistible side note: I so much appreciated the quote from Nancy Atlas, whom I have seen at the Talkhouse and elsewhere more times than I can count over the years, especially enjoying her New Year’s Eve shows, to one of which she wore a hat with what appeared to be a detailed if small wooden ship model perched on top. I don’t think I have ever before suggested a change in The Star’s reporting style, but I would personally very much enjoy it if you quoted Ms. Atlas more (without insisting on her owning a home in proximity as a reason).
For democracy in East Hampton,
JONATHAN WALLACE
Informing Voters
Amagansett
February 9, 2026
Dear David,
It’s absurd that some Democrats are calling independents registering as Democrats “party raiding.” You’d think they’d welcome people who want to participate, bring new ideas, and engage in the democratic process.
Independents currently cannot vote in primaries unless they register with a party. Jerry Larsen is simply informing voters of that fact, not manipulating anyone. Suggesting that independents are only registering to support one candidate is arrogant and dismissive of voters’ ability to think for themselves.
No one should be discouraged or demonized for registering with the party of their choice. A party that fears new voices and new voters isn’t protecting democracy — it’s protecting the status quo.
VICKI LITTMAN
Want a Voice
East Hampton
February 9, 2026
To the Editor:
The recent letter accusing Jerry Larsen and East Hampton voters of “party raiding” mischaracterizes both the law and the reality facing our community.
As an independent voter, I changed my registration to the Democratic Party. Changing one’s party enrollment is not an act of sabotage; it is a lawful, transparent, and time-honored expression of voter dissatisfaction.
Independent and unaffiliated voters are choosing to enroll as Democrats because they want a meaningful voice in the only primary that effectively determines our next town supervisor. That decision is driven not by manipulation but by frustration with years of failed leadership, fiscal irresponsibility, and the current administration’s unwillingness to address residents’ real concerns.
To suggest that voters should remain silent or be excluded because party leadership has already chosen a preferred candidate undermines the very democratic principles that are claimed to be under threat. Democracy is not preserved by protecting incumbents from competition. It is strengthened when voters engage, participate, and demand accountability.
If the current Democratic supervisor’s record inspired confidence, there would be no surge of Independents changing enrollment to support an alternative candidate like Jerry Larsen. That shift is not orchestrated, it is organic and it reflects a growing belief that East Hampton deserves better stewardship, stronger fiscal discipline, and leadership willing to listen rather than deflect.
Primaries exist to test ideas, leadership, and performance — not to rubber-stamp decisions made behind closed doors. Voters who follow the rules, meet the legal deadlines, and participate openly are not gaming the system; they are using it exactly as intended.
East Hampton residents deserve a fair, competitive election and the right to choose change when they believe change is necessary.
Sincerely,
TIFFANY SHAW
Pay-to-Play
East Hampton Village
February 8, 2026
David,
Not sure I’ve come across a more positive correlation than Jerry’s 14 $5,000 campaign benefactors and patrons of the East Hampton Village Foundation. We could know if Jerry practices what he preaches — transparency. Jerry?
Jerry calls the $132,000 “the largest fund-raising total ever recorded.” I’d characterize it as a pay-to-play.
His $5,000 contributors, primarily corporations and L.L.C.s, accounted for over 50 percent of his total haul. Perhaps these contributors have been indoctrinated to the “Jerry Way” of doing business.
Hopefully, the electorate will take the sources of contributions on primary day into account.
DAVID GANZ
‘Come Round’
Montauk
February 6, 2026
Editor,
J.L.
Jer Lar
Jerr Larse
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
LOU CORTESE
The Kennedy Center
East Hampton Village
February 7, 2026
Dear East Hampton Star,
A lot has been going on in all of our lives and like everyone I’ve been having a hard time digesting it all. While there are a lot of very important things to address, both locally and nationally, I feel that I must speak out on a subject on which I have special experience. I’m speaking of the decimation of the Kennedy Center.
My relationship to the Kennedy Center is through my late father (for those who may not know, he was Sheldon Harnick, lyricist and songwriter, who was one of the creators of “Fiddler on the Roof,” among other shows).
My father had a long relationship with the Kennedy Center. It was one of the venues which put on an experimental production of the show “Rex” about Henry VIII. Later, he was asked to help write a young people’s musical based on “The Phantom Tollbooth,” specifically the Kennedy Center’s Theater for Young Audiences. And, of course, he was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Award. So, as one of the stewards of his legacy, I was horrified when the center was taken over by President Trump’s thugs.
The act of adding the last name of Donald John Trump to the official name of the center is, in my mind, the equivalent of smearing feces on the walls of the Capitol building. Worse, the Kennedy Center is not just a theater but a memorial to a beloved president who was assassinated. John F. Kennedy might not have been the greatest president of the United States, but he was high on the list. He deserves his memorial, and to have the name of arguably the worst president ever to hold the office added to its title is both a figurative and literal crime. And now we get the news that there is going to be a “two-year renovation.”
We all know about how President Trump promised that his new White House ballroom project would not touch the existing edifice. Now the entire East Wing has been demolished. I fear that the Kennedy Center, which is a fantastically beautiful building both inside and out, is about to meet a similar fate. And once the shiny, probably gold-plated, new edifice is raised from its ruins, President Trump will want to get rid of the Kennedy name altogether. And he’s not stopping there. He just tried to hold the funding for the new tunnel project in New York City ransom to get both Penn Station and Dulles Airport named after him.
This just reminds me of the Bonwit Teller Building fiasco when he destroyed all the beautiful bronze work in the process of making way for Trump Tower. This was the first evidence I had in my life that this man who is now our president had no real care for art or sophisticated culture.
My father lived long enough to hear President Donald Trump claim that “Fiddler on the Roof” was one of his three favorite musicals, and was not at all happy about it. It’s fairly clear that President Trump was just choosing famous titles that had been “winners” as his other two picks; “Cats” and “The Lion King” shared the title of longest-running show on Broadway at one time or another.
My point is that this president is on track to put his name on quite literally everything, thus claiming ownership of it. It might be a tad juvenile but I’m reminded of a villain from Hanna-Barbera’s “Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space” called Tyran who had the catch phrase, “Everything comes to Tyran!”
I know this has been a bit long so I’ll wrap it up here. Rest in peace, dear Kennedy Center.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
MATT HARNICK
Common Sense
Montauk
February 9, 2026
Dear David,
I don’t claim to know everything regardless of what B.C. claims, but I have common sense. I read constantly and paid attention in school.
School is where I learned history. It’s where students hid under their desks during air raid tests. It’s where I was taught propaganda; ministry of propaganda comes from newspapers, radio. In today’s age, it comes from Hollywood stars, movies, television. Some athletes are voicing “ICE is Nazis,” Trump is a Hitler reborn.
In schools, professors teaching journalism is really activism.
A 37-year-old woman driving around recklessly because she heard Trump is a racist. Her wife taping this show was uncalled for, but did they listen to the propaganda? The outcome was pitiful, but did she really need to be there? Questions could be answered by the so-called laughing wife. Domestic terrorism ?
In God and country,
BEA DERRICO
There Was a Time
East Hampton
February 8, 2026
Dear David:
Every so often something happens that takes your breath away, not because it’s surprising, but because it’s so painfully revealing.
The latest stunt by Donald Trump — reposting a meme on his social media site in which the faces of Michelle and Barack Obama are superimposed onto the bodies of primates — is one of those moments.
Depicting the Obamas as primates isn’t a joke. It isn’t satire or an accident — it is one of the oldest racist smears, one now embraced by a man who swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. When Trump shares that smear, he’s not being edgy; he’s reopening wounds that America has spent decades trying to heal.
When the president of the United States signals that this kind of racism is acceptable, it gives permission to others. It tells the kid being harassed at school, the family being targeted by a hate group, and the voter being pushed out of the polling line that the cruelty they’re experiencing is justified. It tells the bullies and thugs of ICE as they do their “Kavanaugh stops” — targeting people solely based on race — that they’re on the right side of power. And it tells the victims that it’s their own fault, that they don’t belong. This has right and wrong upside down.
This isn’t just about the real and immediate harm to minorities; it’s about what happens to democracy itself when the presidency becomes a megaphone for dehumanization. At its best, the democratic concept depends on the idea that we’re all political equals. Once one suggests that some Americans are subhuman, that idea collapses. It becomes easier to justify taking away voting rights, ignore court rulings, or shrug when violence follows hateful rhetoric. And it becomes easier to move beyond minorities to target religious groups, the poor, or the sick as being equally unworthy.
There was a time, during the era of Eisenhower and Kennedy, when the presidency stood as a kind of moral north star. Even when presidents like Nixon and Clinton failed to live up to it, even when we disagreed with Bush on Iraq, there was at least a shared understanding that the office itself mattered. The presidency should pull us together, not rip us apart. Trump has spent years doing the latter, and this latest post is another brutally clear example of his racist tendencies.
Just as chilling is the silence from Republican leaders and other elected officials. If they can’t find the spine to condemn such overt racism, what is their line? Silence in moments like this is complicity. It tells people of color in America that their dignity is a plaything in the hands of predatory white Americans.
Pretending this doesn’t matter is how we normalize it and weaken our sense of humanity. And the end point of that is always disaster. America won’t avoid this disaster by minimizing moments like this. We do that by calling this racism what it is, by standing up for one another as equals in our humanity, and by insisting that the presidency and our elected leaders reflect our highest ideals, not our ugliest instincts.
And we get there by electing leaders who openly and proudly embrace these values.
Sincerely,
BRUCE COLBATH
Heart of Darkness
Montauk
February 6, 2026
Dear David,
President Trump’s recent posting on Truth Social that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as apes illustrates very clearly that Trump truly possesses a heart of darkness. Any human being who supports this racist pig should be ashamed. It is as simple as that.
Sincerely,
BRIAN POPE
Sandwich the Facts
East Hampton
February 5, 2026
To the Editor,
Here’s a hard “sandwich” to digest. Consider these two official United States government website postings that sandwich the facts:
Posted on the Department of Homeland Security website: “Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, the hard-working men and women of DHS are fulfilling President Trump’s promise to Make America Safe Again by removing violent criminal illegal aliens.”
Fact: According to a Cato Institute review of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, since October 2025, 73 percent of those taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction and only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction.
Fact: According to Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher, between Sept. 21, 2025, and Jan. 7, 2026, there were 11,296 single-day ICE detentions, but only 902, or 8 percent, of those detained were convicted criminals.
Posted on an official U.S. government website: “For a $15,000 DHS processing fee and, after background approval, a contribution of $1 million, receive U.S. residency in record time with the Trump Gold Card.”
SALVATORE TOCCI