MUDDLED NATION
New York City
On October 11, an alliance of Latinos, blacks and union members came close to a historic victory in New York. Alas, media ranging from The Nation to the New York Post rallied enough white votes to keep Fernando Ferrer from becoming mayor. Even after Mark Green cravenly agreed that Rudolph Giuliani’s term of office should be extended, The Nation reaffirmed its endorsement in an introduction to an editorial by Michael Tomasky that correctly identified Green as “the white-backlash candidate” [“NYC’s Mayoral Muddle,” Oct. 22]. Green played that role with vigor. After having groveled for the support of the Rev. Al Sharpton, he then invoked Sharpton as an evil shade in a Ferrer administration. He denounced Ferrer’s talk of serving “the other New York” as divisive–the classic Republican retort to criticism of legislation favoring the rich.
It is true that Ferrer and Green are both flawed men who have changed their positions. But Ferrer has turned to the left, Green to the right. The Nation‘s editors were evidently muddled by what has lingered of Green’s Naderite past. They overlooked his climbing aboard the Clinton bandwagon in 1990 and his advocacy, in The Nation itself, of “pragmatic idealism,” a neoliberal equivalent to “compassionate conservatism.” If, as Tomasky wrote, many white liberals have been voting for Giuliani, Tomasky himself is partly at fault. He wrote a whole bookaccusing liberals of having all but destroyed New York with their political correctness and their misguided generosity.
Only recently, many good liberals were berating Naderites for clinging to their ideals. They had a chance to go for reform within the Democratic Party, and they blew it. We’ll just have to try again, won’t we?
JOHN L. HESS
We agree with Ferrer that between Green and Michael Bloomberg there’s no contest. We also believe that both our candidate, Green, and Ferrer, regrettably, made it possible for racist demagogues to distort and exploit their nonracist positions; and now Bloomberg, in an ill-advised TV commercial, has entered the demagogy business too. We stand by our endorsement of Green and are pleased that most elements of the Democratic Party, including people of color, seem to be getting behind his candidacy.
–The Editors
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THE RIGHT TO DIE IN DIGNITY
Jackson, Mich.
Carol Bernstein Ferry, in her well-written posthumous essay, “A Good Death” [Sept. 17/24], exemplifies high intelligence, clear insight and a firm resolve that goes beyond courage. By acting with steadfast adherence to the essence of the creed below, Ferry manifested the strength of character it takes to honor in action the axioms of a secular morality worthy of a truly civilized society, tragically not the one we have today. The following four-point creed of a free human being has to be the guide for my colleagues and me, as well as for the patients we have helped:
(1) I know myself.
(2) I have sovereignty over myself.
(3) I will do and say what I firmly believe to be correct.
(4) I will in no way unjustifiably harm other beings.
JACK KEVORKIAN, MD
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
Santa Monica, Calif.
Following your publication of my letter and Katha Pollitt’s mention of our Peace Flags website, Peaceflags.org [“Letters” and “Subject to Debate,” Oct. 22], we received a barrage of hate e-mail (“the Taliban is first, you and your peacenik buddies could be next!”). Complaints were filed against us to Yahoo, to our web host and to our own e-mail boxes. A businessman threatened to do everything in his power to see that we were put out of business. Someone hacked into our computers and prevented us from communicating with customers. Domain Direct shut us down because someone sent a series of porn spam from our website to create a backlash of complaints. Before all this, orders were swelling daily, and hundreds of people were expressing relief to find that we existed. We started Peaceflags.org to prove a point–that people are conscious, and have a right to dissent against this “war.” We’re now back in business again, very much sadder but wiser.
J. LANDRUM
RELIGIONS [HEART] WOMEN–REALLY
Madison, Wisc.
Katha Pollitt is incorrect when she states that all major religions attempt to subjugate and marginalize women from the very first [“Subject to Debate,” Oct. 22]. I am an atheist, but I’ll point out that, for example, early Christianity was fairly liberal in its treatment of women (agape being as close to genderless communism as you’re likely to see in human history), even if the establishment church in Rome later became virulently “antifeminist” and produced misogynist ideologues like the notorious St. Jerome. Buddhism and Hinduism are also, at base, not antifemale. Rather, as happens with any system of belief, secondary interpreters and “scholars” introduce their own biases, and patriarchy being what it is, those biases come out as antifemale dogma in secondary texts.
TOM LASKIN
BACK INTO THE QUAGMIRE
Mount Vernon, Wash.
I was impressed with your editorial “A Great Wound” [Oct. 1]. It is painfully clear that George W. Bush is using this tragedy to crush all violent opposition to US and Israeli domination of the Muslim world. There will be no national debate; Bush has already decided for us. George and his party have accepted $400 million in bribes from the energy lobby, among whom are the “Seven Sisters”–American oil companies operating in Saudi Arabia. I’d like to know how much George and his party received from the Jewish lobby and how many Americans will die in battle as a consequence of this bribery.
Bush & Co. believe they can destroy the terrorists, just as LBJ & Co. believed they could crush the Vietcong. So now we’re back in 1964: The Tonkin Gulf Resolution has been passed by Congress; our carriers, special forces, CIA and troops are ready to go in, allies are being cajoled to join. Only this Vietnam stretches around the world, and no place on earth will be safe.
We can end this conflict by working through the UN, Interpol, the Arab League and the World Court to attain justice. We can pull out of the Persian Gulf and allow the UN to bring peace to that region. We can “bomb” Afghanistan with water, food and money. We can land troops of experts and equipment to get Afghanistan back on its feet. Or we can seek a worldwide military solution and go back into “Vietnam.”
BILL BOKAMPER
Vietnam veteran
‘ENLIGHTENING & COMPASSIONATE’
Washington, D.C.
The reverberating trauma of September 11 called for a poet, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s “Babi Yar in Manhattan” [Oct. 15] was enlightening and compassionate, pointing us with the language of poetry to a reasoned response to crimes against the sanctity of life. The smart bombs are falling on Kabul, but will they remove the cancer in the hearts and minds of those so committed to their cause that suicide is an accepted weapon of war?
DAVID GRINNELL
OUR OWN ANTHRAX TERRORISTS
Tulsa, Okla.
Anthrax suddenly has become major news [Bruce Shapiro, “Anthrax Anxiety,” Nov. 5]. The media and the legislature now face the same fear as abortion providers, who have received anthrax letters and threats from “right to life” extremists for at least five years. But it was never front-page news because it “only” involved abortion clinics. From January 1998 to April 2001 there were 172 anthrax threats in the United States, a third of them against abortion clinics. In one recent week, 110 Planned Parenthood affiliates received envelopes of white powder and a letter stating it was anthrax. The media report these threats under the general category of “terrorism,” which they have made synonymous with “Muslim terrorism.” Antiabortion terrorism is not by Muslims but by our own home-grown Christian terrorists. The violence at our clinics is the product of religious extremism, no different from the mindless extremism that brought down the twin towers.
Perhaps when Americans must routinely wear bulletproof vests to go to work, as abortion providers do now, they will understand the meaning of terror and the determination not to let the terrorists win!
BARBARA SANTEE
Executive director
Oklahoma National Abortion and
Reproductive Rights Action League
FROM THE BELLY OF THE AGRO-BEAST
Iowa City
Thank you so much for your attention to the Slow Food movement [Alexander Stille, “Slow Food,” Aug. 20/27]. It is often surprising to many that slow food has become so strong in America, the birthplace of fast food. Even more surprising is discovering that it is not merely a bicoastal phenomenon but that it’s here in the heartland. We have branches in Champaign, Illinois; Madison, Wisconsin; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and even here in Iowa. It’s quite appropriate that slow food established a “beachhead” here, because it is certainly the belly of the agro-industrial beast.
KURT FRIESE
Slow Food Iowa
Evanston, Ill.
I’d like to pass on to your readers a brief description of an excellent nutrition group, the Nutrition for Optimal Health Association (NOHA), located near Chicago, and the URLs of two websites. NOHA has always opposed the use of toxic pesticides in agriculture and has tried to encourage more consumption and growth of organic food. For more information, visit www.nutrition4health.org and www.puregrassrootsinfo.org.
ANDREW T. FISHER
ABOUT THAT $43 MILLION…
Christopher Hitchens, in his October 8 “Minority Report,” referred to the Bush Administration’s $43 million “subsidy to the Taliban.” Many readers have asked for more information. At a May 17 press briefing, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a “package of $43 million in new humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan” that “bypasses the Taliban” and includes wheat, food commodities and a search “for ways to provide assistance to farmers who have felt the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome.”
