Letters Letters
Russ Feingold: KO-ing the Money Power Las Vegas John Nichols's cover story "Russ Feingold, the Senate's True Maverick" [Oct. 11], on Feingold's fight for re-election, aroused numerous emotions in me: § Sadness that too many Americans—and Wisconsinites—do not recognize a great public servant when they see one. § Anger that while Feingold acts in the best tradition of the Wisconsin Progressives, his opponent's camp acts in the tradition that produced another senator, Joe McCarthy. § Amazement that even Nichols suggests only that John McCain's "independence" was mere "attentiveness to the media," when it's clear that McCain never was a maverick. § Hope that, just as my senator, Harry Reid, who has done so much to advance the president's agenda and gotten so little credit, shows signs of overcoming his hateful opponent, Feingold can do the same. MICHAEL GREEN His Silver Tongue Has Turned to Tin... Philadelphia If there is one matter that seems beyond dispute, it's that President Obama has failed to use his silver tongue to the advantage of his program and his party. He should have started, on January 21, 2009, to weave a Democratic narrative: who we are, what we've done in the past, what we stand for. If he had done that, framed the issues to our advantage, it would have been much more difficult for the other side to get credence for its distortions. Now the Republicans are telling the stories, and their versions are prevailing. Look how Obama turned things around with his speech on race; why doesn't he use his verbal gifts on other issues? There is nothing—not money, not the GOP, not Congress—to prevent him from speaking out loud and clear. As one of your readers said ["Letters," Oct. 11], "We must fight the right by shouting out what the left has won for us all." Yes! TRACY KOSMAN Waiting for Superman—or Mr. Chips? New York City As a teacher for thirty-four years, I was interested to read "Grading Waiting for Superman" by Dana Goldstein [Oct. 11]. She cites the Finnish school system as the best in the world. Ask any teacher what he or she would want if given one thing, and the answer is: reduced class size. Even bad teachers improve with smaller classes. So I looked up statistics on Finnish schools. The ratio of teachers to students in elementary grades is 15:1, lower in high school. The answer to the question, "What should we do first?" is clear: reduce class size. The Finns do it. Why can't we? DAVID FISCHWEICHER Baltimore As a Baltimore Public Schools teacher, I thank you for Dana Goldstein's excellent review. Waiting for Superman is just another example of how teachers are being brutalized in the media in an effort to destroy the teachers unions. I would argue only with Goldstein's focus on the need for union organizing to appeal to the energetic, enthusiastic young teachers who pour into our schools from Teach for America. Most of these teachers stay for only a few years before they get on with their life (TFA is often dubbed Teach for Awhile), so this is hardly the way to build a long-term teaching force. DAVID KANDEL Oviedo, Fla. Recently I watched the networks relentlessly pushing Waiting for Superman, along with a crisis mentality about the state of education in this country. I was reminded of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. CNN's John Roberts commented, "America's schools are in desperate need of a rescue." But do not despair. There is no shortage of free-market education profiteers poised to capitalize on this media-induced crisis and "rescue" the schools. EUGENE B. PICKLER
Oct 27, 2010 / Our Readers
Name Your Prog Prince (-cess)! Name Your Prog Prince (-cess)!
Peter Dreier's "The Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century" [Oct. 4] drew a tremendous response. We received close to 1,000 nominations from readers, naming their favorites who hadn't made the cut. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Dorothy Day were top picks; other choices may surprise you. Read the full "Nation Readers' Top Ten List," which Dreier has annotated with profiles highlighting their invaluable contributions, at thenation.com/community. Help us start a new list for the twenty-first century. Holliston, Mass. As a history teacher, I found Peter Dreier's list fabulous! So many radical men and women made a more democratic America. They showed "true grit," love of our country and their belief in economic and social justice. All were considered radical or dangerous in their day, and yet we easily accept their views now. A great list. TINA LEARDI Newton, Mass. I scanned your pages for the name of Howard Zinn and was astonished that it was not included. His People's History brought new insights to countless students and workers; he was a civil rights and antiwar activist; his "war is never justified" message still resonates; he was an ally of the Berrigans, Daniel Ellsberg, workers, organizers and prisoners. I imagined his response: such lists are foolish and, worse, a distraction. The Nation's descent to a "top ten" list may be au courant, but it's discouraging. JIM MILLER Ludlow, Mass. Your list was a great learning experience. There were many names I was not aware of and enjoyed finding out about. As an educator, I found it rewarding: there are so many true heroes for students to learn about. One person I think warrants consideration is Howard Zinn, a man who changed how we teach history: hero worship is out; everyday people are in. KEVIN M. BROWN Royal Oak, Mich. You made glancing references to Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel but left them off your list. You may have thought them not influential enough, but the FBI felt otherwise. I propose a rule of thumb here: anybody rated high on the FBI list should probably show up on your list. They've more than paid their dues. That having been said, your list is very, very good. CATHERINE SHEAP San Francisco Your list would have neared perfection with the remarkable Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–77) on it. As a female African-American sharecropper in the most brutally Jim Crow state, Mississippi, she faced obstacles arguably greater than all on your list. In addition to her courageous voting rights activism, Hamer served notably in the women's rights, economic justice and antiwar movements. Her many achievements were accomplished in a short lifetime and despite suffering disabilities from a 1963 beating by Mississippi police. HOWARD WILLIAMS New York City Leaving Noam Chomsky off the list is analogous to leaving Michael Jordan off a list of The Fifty Best Basketball Players of the Century. No human being has contributed more to progressive discourse, or fought more for human rights here and around the world, than Chomsky. DAVID SCOTT MAYNARD Atlanta Imagine my dismay when I found that what purported to be a serious consideration of twentieth-century activists rendered black women nearly invisible. Am I to believe that Dorothy Height, Fannie Lou Hamer, Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Johnnetta Cole and Bernice Johnson Reagon are not any part of this discussion? MARK A. SANDERS New York City Two people I think you left out are Grace Paley and Eve Ensler. Paley was an activist and author who fought tirelessly for progressive causes all her life. Wherever there was a demonstration for peace and justice, Grace was there! Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a world where women and girls are free to thrive rather than merely survive. EVELYN TRIANTAFILLOU Pittsburgh I have some reservations about Margaret Sanger. Everything you say is true—she was the most important proponent of the birth control movement, which indeed helped liberate women—but her push for birth control was in part informed by her belief in eugenics. This makes the label "progressive" somewhat dubious. MARK COLVIN Portland, Me. Apart from Martin Luther King Jr. and Bill Moyers, The Nation appears blind to progressives in the faith community. Michael Harrington, who left the Catholic Church, is deserving, but his mentor, Dorothy Day, is more so. She mothered the Catholic pacifism that bloomed in the protests, initiated by the Berrigan brothers, that marked the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War and generated the US Catholic bishops' 1983 pastoral. She celebrated the dignity of poverty, which spawned hundreds of Catholic Worker houses, and her jaundiced view of capitalism foreshadowed and influenced the 1986 bishops' pastoral. WILLIAM H. SLAVICK Polson, Mont. I'm disappointed that you neglected to place Myles Horton on the list. And if you don't know who Myles was, shame on you! PETER DANIELS Stowe, Ohio The omission of Walter Francis White is a serious error. He transformed the NAACP into the world's most important civil rights organization, advised the American UN delegation and worked tirelessly for people of color all over the world. Fifty? He belongs on anyone's top ten. ROBERT L. ZANGRANDO Sandisfield, Mass. Where is Jim Farmer, founder of the civil rights movement? First sit-in at a segregated Chicago restaurant in 1942 (MLK was 13). Founded CORE that same year. And that's not the half of it. VAL COLEMAN You should include Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as the most influential early suffragists, and Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, as the leaders of that movement when women finally got the vote. DENISE DI STEPHAN New York City Leonard Bernstein threw parties that raised the consciousness and conscience of people not known to be progressive. Smeared by Tom Wolfe as "radical chic," his efforts delivered millions of dollars to civil rights, antiwar and other causes. MANFRED KIRCHHEIMER Los Angeles Congratulations on a wonderful article. I would have included Carey McWilliams—but that's me. EMIL REISMAN
Oct 20, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Ten Things? How About Twenty! Thirty! Salem, Ore. Re Thomas Geoghegan's "Ten Things Dems Could Do to Win" [Sept. 27], an eleventh aim: confronting that elephant in the room that feeds on Wall Street and banks too fat to fail—uncontrolled military spending on weapons we don't need, troops yet stationed in WWII venues and two US-provoked, unwinnable wars. T.R. MELTON Albuquerque Here are my additions to the list: 11. Thank the progressive base—stop insulting us. 12. Lead, don't follow—that's what majorities are for. 13. Sell your agenda, explain why it's good for me, using ten words or less per item. 14. Stop using words like "resonate"—try "We care about you" or "The GOP lies." 15. Support public financing of elections. NANCY WOODARD St. Louis I'd add to the list: make election day a national holiday. I bet the increase in the number of folks of little means who'd vote would be huge. They're part of our base. DANNY KOHL Warren, N.J. First, we need to tame the military-industrial gorilla, since half our red ink flows to war. Second, suing corporate officers who loot their firms might knock out Citizens United far faster than the hard slog to a constitutional amendment, but employees who sue need financing and protection from retaliation. Finally, tell us how to end the filibuster. JOHN RABY Montpelier, Vt. Thanks for explicitly advising us to "read, or reread, Marx for what is still the most thoroughgoing critique of capitalism." There is no ending the capitalist menace without Marxist analysis and strategy. CARL MARTIN KIPPsters—Way Kool Houston Pedro Noguera's "Schools vs. Slogans" [Sept. 27] mentions the relationship between KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), the organization I co-founded, and Teach for America (TFA). I have great respect for Professor Noguera, but I must clarify a point concerning the role of Teach for America teachers at KIPP. Noguera states that KIPP "will hire Teach for America fellows only as assistants until they have proven their effectiveness in the classroom." In fact, TFA corps members are hired at KIPP as full-fledged lead teachers, not assistants. Here in Houston, where I am superintendent of eighteen KIPP schools, our TFA members are doing a fantastic job of helping us close the achievement gap. For example, one of our teachers at KIPP Houston, Remington Wiley, is an alum of KIPP and TFA. After completing fifth through eighth grade at KIPP Academy, she went on to Deerfield Academy and Spelman College before joining TFA and coming back to KIPP. We gave her the same responsibilities as any teacher, and she is an incredibly valuable faculty member. Nationwide, the vast majority of KIPP schools have TFA teachers, and 60 percent of our school leaders got their start in TFA. These folks contribute greatly to helping all our KIPPsters climb the mountain to and through college. MIKE FEINBERG DNA=Do Not Apply New York City Re "Freshmen Specimen" [Sept. 27]: In presenting the risks involved in personalized genetic testing, Patricia Williams overlooks what may be the most troublesome recent development in the field: overregulation by public health authorities that prevents people from voluntarily analyzing their own DNA. What happened at Berkeley could not happen in New York, because the state health department has determined that direct-to-consumer marketing of DNA tests is medical intervention and requires prior authorization from a physician. The state has sent cease-and-desist letters to companies like 23andMe and Navigenics, essentially denying such services to many New Yorkers. Mandating medical counseling before you can learn whether you have an increased genetic predisposition to male-pattern baldness or gout may increase the power of doctors, such as myself, but the result is substantially increased cost and decreased access for the lay public. Professor Williams is right to highlight the abuses engaged in by some direct-to-consumer genomics companies. An "above average risk" for breast cancer is obviously not the same thing as "the high risk of pretty much getting it." But the solution to these concerns is to prevent such abuse, not to shut down the industry. Many people have legitimate reasons for wanting to know the details of their genetic code—whether to inform their lifestyle choices or simply to contribute additional data to the collective pool of knowledge, so the direct-to-consumer tests become more accurate. Surely, if my genetic makeup is one of the most important aspects of my identity, as Williams writes, I have a right to know what my DNA says and to use that knowledge as I see fit. JACOB M. APPEL, MD, JD The Mount Sinai Hospital Rigoberta Menchú Redux Paris Re Greg Grandin's "It Was Heaven That They Burned" [Sept. 27]: I rejected Grandin's preface for a new English-language edition of I, Rigoberta Menchú because he and the publisher, Verso, tried to impose it on me as a fait accompli. It was already in press when, by accident, the foreign-rights editor at Gallimard asked Verso to seek my approval. I have had too much experience with macho-Leninism to put up with this kind of behavior. I was also reacting to certain kinds of US academics who think they own the truth about Latin America and who play up a few aspects that suit their agenda, dismissing everything that does not fit. Unfortunately, imperial arrogance is not only a privilege of the right. ELIZABETH BURGOS Middlebury, Vt. Greg Grandin claims to champion crucial details, but he blows past any detail that complicates his search for heroes and villains. What he describes as my "accusations" and "conjectures" are based on research that he has yet to refute. We can be sure that Rigoberta Menchú's father's land battle was with his K'iche' Maya in-laws because of their many warring petitions in government archives. Conceivably Vicente Menchú led a secret double life as a founder of the Committee for Campesino Unity. But after he died alongside five members of CUC at the Spanish Embassy, CUC's obituaries for its five martyrs did not include him. Contrary to Grandin, two years later Rigoberta Menchú was agnostic on the source of the embassy fire because its sole survivor, the Spanish ambassador, attributed the fire to the protesters' Molotov cocktails. Grandin says Guatemalan guerrillas had no tradition of tactical suicide, but cyanide pills were standard on risky operations, as Daniel Wilkinson describes in his book Silence on the Mountain. "Recent research has proved Stoll's thesis about Guatemala's revolution to be mostly wrong"—OK, where is it? As an ex-staffer of the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), Grandin is accustomed to quote 1999 CEH findings he apparently wrote himself while skipping CEH findings that echo my description of peasant neutralism. Certainly there was social support for the guerrillas in some areas—you can read about it in my books—but little or none in others. It was anthropologist Carol Smith who documented that the 1970s were a period of modest material gains for many indigenous Guatemalans, not the deepening exploitation that a guerrilla narrative demands. The guerrilla romance Grandin wishes to revive was in deep trouble, not just in Guatemala but all over Latin America, before I got into the act. I'm surprised Grandin considers me such an influential opponent because the book that he will have to refute is Utopia Unarmed by Jorge Castañeda. DAVID STOLL Grandin Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. Elizabeth Burgos accuses me of presuming to "own the truth" regarding Rigoberta Menchú's memoir. But she literally does: in August 1982, Burgos, acting in Menchú's name, signed a contract with Gallimard making her the sole legal author of the book, discharging the publisher "from rights due" Menchú. Until 1993 Burgos shared the book's revenues with Menchú but then instructed Gallimard, according to a company representative, to stop paying Menchú and remit all future royalties to herself. Around this time the book began to take off as an international bestseller, so the proceeds from then on were considerable. I have always thought defenses of Menchú based on her vulnerable position as an indigenous woman came up short. Yet Burgos's arrangement is perverse: Menchú, having barely escaped unimaginable terror, got the opprobrium while Burgos, nestled comfortably between the Seine and the Luxembourg Gardens, got the cash. Neither Verso nor I tried to "impose" my preface on Burgos, because neither of us knew she had exclusive power to vet all editions, in all languages. To justify this injustice, Burgos tends to present herself as Menchú's primary interlocutor in the creation of the memoir. I suspect that what rankles Burgos is that my essay, though generous to her interviewing method, reveals that the book was a collective endeavor, with others, notably Guatemalan historian Arturo Taracena, involved in its interviews, transcriptions and editing. David Stoll accuses me of writing the CEH report. He is wrong. I left the CEH before it moved from the research to the writing stage. Its full report can be read at http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/mds/spanish. Readers can decide if it supports Stoll's interpretation of the causes of the Guatemalan genocide. The truth commission was largely staffed by UN and other human rights careerists who had no particular sympathy for left-wing politics, yet they had no problem understanding that racism and poverty were the cause of the genocide and not, as Stoll insists through his deconstruction of Menchú's memoir, tit-for-tat reprisals between the military and the guerrillas. As to the cyanide pills guerrillas supposedly kept, surely Stoll can distinguish between taking one's life to avoid torture and what he accuses Menchú's father of: participating in an act of mass murder to create revolutionary martyrs—not to mention that civilians who died in the Spanish Embassy were not guerrillas. Stoll shouldn't be so modest. He is influential enough. I've taught students who call Menchú a liar, and they cite Stoll as evidence. Even writers of minor reputations can make names for themselves by tearing others down. GREG GRANDIN
Oct 13, 2010 / Our Readers and Greg Grandin
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
China's Crouching Tiger? New York City The Nation editors must have been giddy over breaking the Fuck Barrier three times in one article, Robert Dreyfuss's "China in the Driver's Seat" [Sept. 20]. WILLIAM GAMBLE Berkeley, Calif. Robert Dreyfuss obscures the serious debate within the AFL-CIO over how to work with China's insurgent labor movement challenging the decrepit dictatorship. He muses about China as a new world power, unencumbered by antiquated remnants of the past century like trade unions and a free press. International corporations have found a gold mine in the cheap labor offered by this gangster regime. The debate in the AFL-CIO is more serious. As a union member since the age of 16, I think Andy Stern and Katie Quan are right. An obvious analogue of the ACFTU, the official Chinese union, is John L. Lewis. A classic labor bureaucrat who worked to elect Herbert Hoover, Lewis was also a shrewd politician. He responded to the labor upheaval provoked by the Depression by leading the fight to found a new federation dominated by industrial unions. The ACFTU seems to be playing a similar role. But like Lewis, the ACFTU is reacting to a popular movement from below. And groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are, in fact, the best allies of unionists like Stern and Quan. They help keep the pressure on the ACFTU by highlighting the crimes of the Chinese authorities and popular resistance to them. The Nation should invite contributions from the contending sides in the AFL-CIO debate, as well as human rights groups. E. HABERKERN State College, Pa. I have been to China, and having spent a large chunk of my life as part of the working poor, I picked up on some situations that seem to be invisible to upper-middle-class academics. China is a brutal, self-serving oligarchy that, unlike Russia, at least has the decency not to have democratic pretensions. The Chinese people are doing what they've always done, for emperors, colonial masters or politburos, only now the whole world can witness the "miracle." China is the laboratory for a new quasi-feudalistic economic model led not by dynasties but by a corporatist state. There is no safety net—either work for pennies or die. Most of the "middle class" are related or somehow connected to the Politburo (the new emperor, if you will), and a large peasant class is a familiar and comfortable component of Chinese culture. The idea that China will allow a comfortable existence for 20 to 30 percent of its population is a projection of Western liberalism. This type of progressive idealism makes me wonder if I am the only blue-collar liberal left in America. No wonder we're getting our butts kicked. TIM DUNLEAVY Seattle As an instructor of Chinese history, I must point out that China's rise to relative wealth is not a story of a government seeking global dominance but of a people escaping centuries of exploitation by using the very philosophies that were used against them. When Western ships started to trade in southern China 200 years ago, the Chinese did everything to keep them out and preserve their own way of life. Britain used "free trade" to justify launching the Opium War, as its government supplied massive support to its "private" adventurers (of course, Britain was heavily in debt to China). Two hundred years later, the Chinese have learned to beat the barbarians at their own game. To call this "authoritarian capitalism" is a little ironic. MAHLON MEYER Clover's 'Busted' Cambridge, England I'm sure many readers, like me, found Joshua Clover's review "Busted" [Sept. 20] an outstanding piece of work—clear, forthright, brilliantly penetrating, written with refreshing informality and above all saying what so much needs to be said; what, on the whole, practically nobody on the left is saying. I imagine Clover must be pretty young; he wonderfully sounds it. Poetry and political economy? Tell me! I want to know more about this extraordinary writer, to read more of his work. He is my poster boy of the year. JOAN HALL Oakland, Calif. I would like to make explicit a narrative within Joshua Clover's excellent review "Busted": no account of the crisis can surpass UCLA historian Robert Brenner's. He recounts how the post–World War II global manufacturing sector experienced high rates of growth for a quarter-century as economies were rebuilt and consumption boomed because of wage growth and modestly worker-friendly governments. This ended by the early 1970s, as the manufacturing triad of the United States-Germany-Japan ushered in a chronic state of overproduction and declining profits. Eventually the United States ceded the field to its former opponents, with the result, as Clover makes clear, that US capital investment headed for the financial sector; manufacturing jobs took flight. The collapse of Communism and the later emergence of China as workshop of the world exacerbated the problem. Low-wage workers entered the global labor force and governments became willing to get tough with workers, resulting in slower wage and consumption growth. But the earlier breakdown of the Bretton-Woods agreements had allowed governments to run unprecedentedly large budget and trade deficits without rampant inflation. The result was, and is, a global economic system of huge-surplus and huge-deficit countries, in which financial bubbles are increasingly common because of money flowing into countries that issue debt instruments to cover their deficits. It is hard to conceive of a way out. Those who look to consumption growth in surplus countries (China, Germany) don't see that growth there is structurally dependent on consumption in debtor nations. Those who think that government spending at home is holding back growth in the private sector fail to see that the boom years of the pre-crisis economy were predicated on debt all along. Talk of "recovery" or "double dip" relies on the profoundly uncritical assumption that the economic foundations are sound. Clover is right to demand that our explanations go deeper and take stock of the very basis of capitalism as a social relation, its foundation in the extraction of "surplus value" from the worker. We should follow him in this, or live with the mystifying explanations of policy-makers and apologists, who amid the cutbacks and austerity measures can be heard echoing that familiar but still shrill neoliberal war cry: "There is no alternative." PATRICK MADDEN Pound Foolish A fact-checking error in D.D. Guttenplan and Maria Margaronis's "Labour's Fraternal Struggle" [Oct. 4] caused the figure £15 billion (the total of all budget cuts) to be given for cuts in benefits to Britain's unemployed. Those cuts will total £4 billion.
Oct 6, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Heckuva Job, Becky! Iowa City Rebecca Solnit has done an excellent job of putting the coverage of Katrina in context in "Reconstructing the Story of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina at Five" [Sept. 13]. When Katrina hit, I was working at a newspaper sixteen hours from the gulf. Our news staff was debating who would drive down to find stories—of pillage, devastation, conflict, anything—to resonate with our Midwestern audience. We were after the same stories as other reporters: pain, misery, racism, destruction. Five years later, we see the stories we and the rest of the media missed. There are cultural explanations for why media didn't cover what Solnit wanted them to. The way media understand themselves and how audiences understand media are to blame. These are the immeasurable cultural aspects of news work; they create familiar narratives based on myth; they resonate with the mass audience and the interpretive community, journalists. The story of Katrina uses collective memory—how we remember or wish to remember. And collective memory, in turn, fuels the myths and narratives that we saw in news coverage: poor blacks, the hungry, the marginalized, the flooded and destroyed. All the images look the same. Analysis of news that misses the cultural element of how and why that news was produced limits what we should have learned. Assessments of news coverage must go deeper to seek out the roots that reach into fiction, myth and narrative and resonate with values. If the cultural explanations aren't explored, what we could have learned from Katrina ends with Katrina. ROBERT GUTSCHE JR. Green or Gassy, Cars Gotta Go San Francisco A half-dozen letters responded to "Freedom From Oil" [Aug. 2/9] with conventional and constructive suggestions (plus battery-operated clothing) ["Letters," Sept. 27]. Certainly, green cars should be encouraged. There is a problem, however, with the exponential growth of that twentieth-century invention that saved us from the health hazards of horseshit. That sixty-mile traffic jam in China: well, I anticipated that an event—could be on the I-95, or in Tehran, Bangkok or on any of hundreds of autoways—would draw attention to the dysfunctional symbiosis that we, the weak bipeds, the keepers/attendants, have with those stronger, carapaced creatures. That dominant species demands ever more buildings and smoothed surfaces to accommodate its rising population. We, the auto deluded, are being colonized. JERRY BRONK Anchor Babies Aweigh! Rhinebeck, N.Y. Right-wing hysteria over "anchor babies" is absurd, but the Fourteenth Amendment is becoming more and more anomalous [Robin Templeton, "Baby Baiting," Aug. 16/23]. The amendment, the intention of which was to grant citizenship to freed slaves, is out-of-date and outmoded. The right of citizenship to all those born on US soil is unique to our country. I hope the furor from the left over right-wing efforts to repeal it is a feint. The anti-immigrationists' obsession with the amendment does, however, present progressives with a marvelous opportunity to negotiate immigration reform. Repeal of the amendment, if not retroactive, will cause little hardship. Meanwhile, a quid pro quo could be reforms such as a fast track to citizenship for established and productive "illegals." Repeal could be a win-win situation for immigrants. SAMUEL REIFLER Princeton, N.J. I've been studying Mexican immigration for thirty years and have interviewed tens of thousands of current, past and prospective illegal migrants; in all that time no one has ever said they wanted to come to the United States to have a baby. They come for economic reasons mostly—responding to US recruitment and labor demand and seeking to use their US earnings to finance a project at home. They don't plan to stay very long, and would prefer to make a few trips of twelve months or less and return home. This is exactly what happened from 1942 to 1964, when there was a large US guest-worker program, which at its peak, in the late 1950s, brought in some 450,000 Mexicans annually, mostly men, on temporary visas. There were no quotas, so Mexicans with ties north of the border could settle down. In the late '50s, settlement by legal immigrants ran at around 50,000 per year. This changed in 1965, when Washington ended the guest-worker program and imposed quotas, closing off legal entry. Since US labor demand continued unabated, cross-border flows continued, with or without documents, and were overwhelmingly male and circular. From 1965 to '85 for every 100 entries there were eighty-five departures, yielding a small net inflow. Things changed again in 1986, when Congress criminalized the hiring of undocumented workers and required employers to inspect documents (which caused an immediate boom in fraudulent documents). The United States also began a two-decade militarization of the US-Mexico border. The militarization of the border made crossing difficult, costly and risky, and rates of return migration plummeted. As male migrants spent more time north of the border, pressures for family reunification mounted, and women and children increasingly joined husbands and fathers. The militarization of the border backfired by lengthening stays, diminishing rates of return and promoting permanent settlement rather than circulation. In the 1990s net undocumented immigration doubled, not because more people were coming in but because fewer were going back home; and those settling were increasingly bringing in families. When young, healthy, married men and women are united, they do what comes naturally: they have babies. Mexicans do not come here to have babies. They have babies here because men can no longer circulate freely back and forth from homes in Mexico to jobs in the United States. Husbands and wives quite understandably want to be together. Not only are Mexicans not coming to have babies—they are not coming. According to estimates from a variety of sources, including Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics, net undocumented migration fell to zero in 2008 and since then has been negative, with the undocumented population falling by around 1 million between 2008 and '09, including a drop of 100,000 in Arizona alone. Where labor demand has evaporated and hostility to immigrants is surging, Mexicans are not coming to drop "anchor babies" or for any other reason. DOUGLAS S. MASSEY, co-director Mexican Migration Project; Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University Liberal Innumeracy Dan Bischoff's "Rand Paul's Kentucky Derby" [Sept. 27] cites 18,000 unionized coal miners in Kentucky. The correct number is 800. Thomas Geoghegan, in "Ten Things Dems Could Do to Win" [Sept. 27], stated that the cap on the Social Security tax is at $90,000. The cap is at $106,800.
Sep 30, 2010 / Our Readers
Readers Enter the Obama Forum Readers Enter the Obama Forum
Somewhere in Cyberspace I am transformed from defeat to victory by the insightful articles in your forum "Debating Obama" [Aug. 30/Sept. 6]. Thank you for defending the idealism of President Obama in a shark-infested Congress. RON SMITH Somewhere in Colorado I'm furious about "Debating Obama." The picture of Obama on your cover creates an impression of sadness and failure. The forum begins by saying how disappointed people are in his presidency. Then you tell the real story: how the Bush legacy, the structure of the Senate, the power of money, the culture of finance, entrenched ideology, the aggressive dishonesty and partisanship in the conservative media, and the weaknesses of the MSM are the reasons Obama has had to compromise on his pledges. Why not make that the lead instead of making the reader feel bad at the outset? Give Obama some help instead of putting him down! GAIL MOORE SUGGS Hollywood, Fla. Count me among the disappointed progressives. All the forum responses were brilliant. As a black man I was impressed by Salim Muwakkil's comments on Eric Alterman's reluctance to include an analysis of how race has affected Obama's presidency. Many white Americans continue to deny that the Tea Party is driven by mostly elderly white people's refusal to accept a black man as president. Michael Kazin's statement that "no presidential campaign...can substitute for a social movement" is true. But forgive this political idiot for believing we had such a movement when I watched the cross section of society at the victory rally in Chicago. I agree completely, however, that "the American right cannot pose a single serious answer to any problem plaguing the United States or the world." In this lies my hope that we will not be annihilated in November. EVAN JULIEN Inverness, Calif. The "Debating Obama" forum spotlighted some big obstacles to progressive change, but the discourse was notably hazy about presidential accountability for calamitous policies. It was a bad sign that the word "Afghanistan" did not appear anywhere in the forum's seven pages. (What would we say about a "Debating Johnson" forum in August 1966 that didn't mention Vietnam?) Whatever the limits to the president's options, he wields gargantuan power—and makes fateful choices. While the political terrain is cemented with structural factors, no systemic analysis should absolve government leaders of moral responsibility or basic accountability. "The system" may be to blame, but since when does that let the president—or anyone else—off the hook? After eighteen months, we should be discussing how progressives might try to bell this cat—a president who has clearly embraced what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism," in tandem with an array of other grim policies, including promulgation of extensive corporate agendas in the guise of "reform" and continuing encroachment on precious civil liberties like habeas corpus. The discussion is spreading inside the Democratic Party. In mid-August, the entire leadership of the California Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus—by most measures the largest caucus in the state party—mustered a directness in addressing the president that eluded the seven writers in the Nation forum. "We worked very hard for your election as we do for all candidates who seem able and willing to work for progressive social change, and to make a better life for our citizens and for the world," the caucus's executive board wrote in a letter to President Obama. "Your rhetoric often suggests that you share this goal, but your actions frequently prove otherwise. We do not simply disagree with you on a single small issue. Unfortunately our unhappiness and disappointment has a broad scope." The letter said, "You campaigned against the Bush imperial presidency, and then you expanded it.... In our opinion you have failed, in whole or in part, to deliver on many of your commitments. Instead, you have continued and supported some of the Bush policies that many hoped and believed, based on your utterances, you would quickly terminate." And the letter declared that presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs, like chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, "is not the real problem, Mr. President. We fear you are." Such deep concerns are widespread—and increasingly corrosive for the Democratic base. Bleak poll data on inclinations to vote this November reflect the demoralizing and demobilizing effects of Obama's triangulation. Below the radar, many party activists are agonizing and questing for strategies as we try to prevent Republican gains and push for progressive policies. If progressives seem to be making excuses for Obama's corporate policies, it casts us as defenders of an untenable status quo—and helps corporate-funded "populists" of the right wing to masquerade as the agents of change. NORMAN SOLOMON, national co-chair Healthcare Not Warfare San Antonio How could Obama not have foreseen the behavior of the Party of No? The only way you beat the Republicans is by going on the offensive and beating the crap out of them. Period. Not trying to be BFFs. Now everything is half-assed at best: a healthcare plan with no public option; an energy plan based on nuclear power loan guarantees; an "end" to the Iraq debacle, as 50,000 troops remain; an Afghanistan policy that will achieve nothing—all contingent on the idea that we will build on these policies in the future. Let's remember NAFTA, which guaranteed that labor and environmental issues would be addressed in the future. The future never came. Mexico is run by drug lords, US workers are competing with 22-cent-per-hour Cambodian workers and the environment is lost in the corporate search for profits. Obama may be right to walk so delicately on the political landscape. But my solar plexus keeps telling me we have missed an enormous opportunity. ERIC LANE Ormond Beach, Fla. I was halfway through the forum when it occurred to me that neither the word "war(s)" nor the phrase "military-industrial complex" appeared anywhere. Americans could have been proud of a commander in chief of the armed forces who, as Job One, had stopped the killing of Middle Easterners as a start to dismantling the empire, which is bankrupting us economically and morally. EDWARD J. FLANAGAN New York City I offer this addition to Eric Alterman's paragraph on the Senate: the fact that the rural states, no matter how sparsely populated, are allotted two senators each, while the more urban, highly populated states are limited to the same number, is not only antidemocratic; it also makes it well-nigh impossible to advance an urban agenda—one that would adequately support, for example, educational and cultural institutions, sound urban infrastructure and high-quality public transportation. It will be virtually impossible to change this imbalance, because it would require a constitutional amendment, which the rural senators would never sign on to. ROXANNE WARREN Denver The forum's pile-up of lefty despair whined about centrist Democrats instead of shouting down Republican obstructionists. Over the years the right has opposed Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, the Clean Air and Water acts, and the decriminalization of homosexuality. Without decades of struggle by progressive citizens, enlightened jurists and politicians, we would still be divided by apartheid and breathing toxins, knee-deep in social and literal sewage. We are not. We are breathing freer in a cleaner, more equal society. The evidence abounds here in Denver, which has gone from 200-plus bad air days annually in the 1970s to zero—zero!—throughout the 2000s. Down the street, the struggling public school has steadily improved into a magnet for kids and parents. The public housing projects I deliver meals to are sparkling clean and packed with free therapeutic programs. My neighborhood has been transformed by rapid transit, free bicycle kiosks and traffic calming. We must fight the right by shouting out what the left has won for us all. LEE PATTON Bay Harbor Islands, Fla. I would like to express my growing impatience with the political politeness that prevents even progressives from calling things by their real name. When President Obama named Larry Summers head of his economic team (placing the fox in charge of the hens), he betrayed a promise of candidate Obama, i.e., to fix the economy. Obama owes his victory to the millions who saw in him a real promise. And also, of course, to the many more millions—of dollars—that Wall Street poured into his campaign. As shown by his choice of Summers, he decided to favor the latter over the former. JULIO RODRIGUEZ-LUIS Alterman Replies New York City I thank all the forum respondents and those who wrote in, pro and con. Space does not permit the replies they deserve, but I offer here a few clarifications. With regard to Evan Julien's—and Salim Muwakkil's—comments about race, I agree. But I don't see their relevance to my argument regarding the roadblocks to progressive legislation under a liberal Democratic president and a Democratic Congress—which was, after all, the topic of my essay. Regarding the many comments about Afghanistan: I share these concerns and wish Obama had decided to approach the issue in a radically different fashion. But it behooves us to remember that whatever we may think of his decision, this is one campaign promise Obama is keeping. He campaigned on a surge in Afghanistan, and we got one. It is a separate issue from the ones I addressed, which were largely what I saw to be structural impediments to his ability to keep the progressive promise of his campaign. As for "beating the crap out of" Republicans, as Eric Lane suggests, well, this again, is not the campaign Obama ran on, and it is not clear how he would do it with a divided party, which is just as beholden to some of the same corporate interests as are the Republicans. That does not mean there is no difference between the two parties, as some would have us believe; rather, it means progressives need to work harder and smarter to remake their party, as conservatives have remade theirs. I hope to address some of these issues in my book Kabuki Democracy, to be published by Nation Books in January. ERIC ALTERMAN
Sep 22, 2010 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Get Out, Exit, Scram, Beat It, Go Home... Frankfort, Mich. Your editorial "Getting Out of Afghanistan" [Aug. 16/23] was right on the money! I've served in Kabul, and after hoping that a more nuanced policy would emerge from the White House (it clearly hasn't), I agree that we should get out. Thanks for this seminal contribution to US foreign policy. TED CURRAN Real Heroes: Those Who Speak Out Exton, Pa. As a 76-year-old Korean War veteran, I can well appreciate Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey's "WikiLeaks in Baghdad" [Aug. 16/23]. My heart goes out to Josh Stieber, Ray Corcoles and Ethan McCord, who are true heroes of the ill-advised and immoral war in Iraq. They describe not only the desensitization, dehumanization and even corruption of language soldiers face; they showed rare courage to speak out. The three young men showed their basic humanity and decency when they saw the brutalization of Iraqi civilians. NORMAN K. SMITH, US Army (retired) Population Bomb Falmouth, Mass. Andrew Ross's "Greenwashing Nativism" [Aug. 16/23] has much to say about population issues and environmentalists. But Ross doesn't acknowledge the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program ([email protected]), which explains the club's population strategies. Readers may be interested in the club's advocacy training program and its population program, which will soon visit Texas. ROBERT MURPHY Rising From Its Ashes? Redwood City, Calif. Phoenix is not "ground zero for the national housing crisis," as claimed by Marc Cooper in "John McCain's Last Stand" [Aug. 16/23]; it is in third place behind Las Vegas and Merced. Nor is it the "bull's- eye of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere," as claimed by Andrew Ross in "Greenwashing Nativism." Phoenix is in trouble because of excessive development and real estate speculation. MARIANNA TUBMAN Oasis on the Upper West Side Bellevue, Iowa In her lovely, graceful remembrance of Iris McWilliams in "Noted" [Aug. 16/23], Katrina vanden Heuvel quotes a longtime friend of Iris and Cary McWilliams as saying of their apartment, "The intelligent and decent civil liberty types all drifted in, and as discouraging as the country seemed, the possibilities of an open and sane society seemed alive there." I wish The Nation to know that I feel about this magazine as did this friend about the McWilliams place. Thank you for keeping alive the hope for decency, inclusivity and community, all of which seem of so little value in this brave new barbarous world we have created. GREG CUSACK Back to School—II Hayward, Calif. Thank you for shining a light on the importance of education reform and for highlighting leading voices for meaningful reform ["A New Vision for School Reform," June 14; "Letters," Sept. 20].Linda Darling-Hammond remains a beacon of sanity and good sense. She provides an excellent overview of education reform efforts over the years. There is no silver bullet—the entire system needs an overhaul to address the many years of neglect. When No Child Left Behind was instituted, the air was sucked out of classrooms across the country. The rote, uninspiring drill-and-kill method of teaching that the law has spawned has prevailed with no discernible positive effect for the students it proposed to help. As Diane Ravitch accurately points out in her article ["Why I Changed My Mind," June 14], the rise in accountability through high-stakes testing has resulted in a "measure and punish" approach that radically narrows the curriculum, affecting students and teachers alike. Now with even fewer resources at our disposal, we are at last being asked to reignite the imaginations of a generation of educators to engage, inspire and educate our youth. The challenges of creating a bridge to brighter landscapes are welcome, but the designated pathways are full of pot holes. A positive offered by Race to the Top and the new focus on creativity and research is the opportunity to share successful practice. In Alameda County we are proud of our ability to put in place some of the exciting models of excellence mentioned by Pedro Noguera: schools as service centers; partnerships with higher education and business as pathways to college and careers; and comprehensive curriculums that include arts and civic engagement. SHEILA JORDAN Alameda County superintendent of schools Do Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well Baltimore In 1980, when Bush the elder referred to Reagan's "trickle-down" theory as "voodoo economics," he was making the legitimate point that the theory was nonsense. But Voodoo (or Voudon) is no more nonsense than Christianity, Buddhism or Zoroastrianism. It is the name of a syncretic religion with African animist and Catholic roots, practiced by some Haitians. It's disrespectful to use the term [Jordan Stancil, "Europe's Voodoo Economics," June 28]. ED MORMAN
Sep 15, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Bubble Bubble, Oil and Trouble Los Angeles Thanks for your "Freedom From Oil" issue [Aug. 2/9]. Many of the ideas proposed—e.g., getting the military to buy green—have been around for a long time; it is disappointing that they remain mostly unimplemented. The most compelling argument for getting off our butts and doing something about peak oil is energy return on investment (EROI), the ratio of the energy delivered by a process to the energy used in that process. Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has reported that the US EROI of oil and gas extraction has decreased from 100:1 in the 1930s, to 30:1 in the 1970s, to roughly 11:1 as of 2000. So for every barrel we expend, we currently receive around eleven barrels of oil. If you add the costs of damage and lost livelihood from oil spills, the EROI will be even lower. Once it takes a barrel to get a barrel, oil will be useless. SANDY MALIGA East Moline, Ill. You suggest using the government's purchasing power to spur the green energy market. President Obama's executive order is a good step in that direction, but it should also be passed as legislation, because executive orders can be overturned. We must push every state, city, county, school district, park, community college, etc. to do likewise: establish these measures by executive order, then follow up with legislation. Here in Illinois, State Representative Mike Boland has passed legislation mandating hybrid, flex-fuel or biodiesel vehicles be purchased as the state replaces vehicles, and that Energy Star lighting replace incandescent lights as they burn out in state buildings. Boland also passed legislation requiring that all new state buildings or major renovations meet LEED standards. He was joined by the Green Party candidate for governor in pushing for a $1 billion Green Capitol bill to fund local governments and nonprofit groups to "green" their facilities. Multiply those kinds of efforts by the thousands of state and local governments across the country, and you will speed our nation's clean, green economy. MIKE HUNTOON Chief of staff to Mike Boland Brookline, Mass. Regarding "Freedom From Oil": yes, Americans should drive their X number of miles to work in energy-efficient vehicles. But they also must cut back on that X-mile commute. Yes, people should keep warm in the winter in energy-efficient homes. But in these homes, Americans need to set the thermostat in the forties and fifties, not at sixty-eight. Yes, taxes on carbon-based fuels should be increased and payroll taxes decreased. But the payroll tax should be diminished at the rate of 10 percent per year for ten years, and the revenue burden shifted completely to taxing energy. Taxes should bring the price of energy in line with its true cost, which is several times its current price, when you account for environmental costs and the military cost of maintaining the flow of imported oil. With ten years to adjust to a higher, more realistic energy price, we will figure out how to make transportation more efficient and how to do less of it. Warm winter clothing (possibly battery operated) will become fashionable as we figure out that it costs less to keep the person warm than to heat the whole house. Necessity is the mother of invention. Let us summon up our most important renewable resource: American ingenuity. CHARLES E. ROBINSON Richland, Wash. It is heartening to see The Nation tackling the complex issue of energy, particularly its acknowledging that the transformation to sustainable energy will take time. Of course, our goal should be 100 percent green energy, but there are limits to how quickly this can be done. Solar cell production requires huge amounts of ultrapure water, which the environment can't provide. Components in hybrid cars and wind turbines are often made of rare-earth minerals that exist in limited quantities. Given these natural limits, the only interim technology is nuclear. New generation nuclear plants are much smaller and safer than their predecessors and produce comparatively little waste. Combined with fuel recycling and safety and security measures, they will play an important role between now and when we can fulfill our energy needs with green sources. We can't expect hydrocarbon fuel use to be minimized until about 2050, after which nuclear can be phased out. This transition will take a lot of foresight and patience, which can be difficult to accept. But accept it we must. C.J. MITCHELL, chemical engineer Brooktondale, N.Y. Your "Freedom From Oil" issue presents the conventional vision of a future clean-energy supply based on wind, solar and other technologies feeding a smart grid. But every product that is derived from oil or other fossil fuels can also be derived from some form of biomass. Biomass should be elevated to first priority among renewable energy sources, as it already provides the greatest quantities of clean energy today, will likely provide the lion's share in the future, does not require new or exotic technologies and is the only way to replace fossil fuels. Policies supporting biomass energy, such as agricultural price supports and a carbon tax, could quickly inject new economic life into rural America and immediately reduce pollution by directly displacing fossil fuels. ED DODGE Pittsburg, Kans. I kicked the petroleum oil habit years ago. I have been using American-made synthetic lubricants in my automobiles for more than thirty years. Every jet and spacecraft in the universe uses synthetic lubricants. They are available nationwide and are a serious green solution to petroleum lubricants. I am a synthetic lubricants dealer, I sell them to friends and customers and I have registered others as dealers of synthetic lubricants, which can be used for all kinds of oil and grease applications. So, if readers are serious about kicking the oil habit, my e-mail address is [email protected]. F. EUGENE GARMAN Big Bad Book Dealers Carlsbad, Calif. Regarding Colin Robinson's excellent and accurate "The Trouble With Amazon" [Aug. 2/9], it should be noted that besides the unfair discount advantages Amazon receives from publishers, unlike independent bookstores, it is not required to charge sales tax. ROBERT ARNOLD Hinesburg, Vt. Colin Robinson's piece is excellent as far as it goes. But it suggests that Amazon's predatory behavior is out of the ordinary. It seems to me merely an instance of the extension of the "free market" to all areas of existence, one of the incidental consequences of which is the impoverishment and uniformization of what remains of our culture. Every country has its pathologies, but at least in France, with the 1982 Lang law prohibiting discounts on books of greater than 5 percent, the condition of independent booksellers is healthier than in the United States. Any such provision is, of course, unthinkable here. GEORGE HOLOCH
Sep 8, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Back to School Chillicothe, Ohio As a retired teacher, union officer and reformer, I appreciated "A New Vision for School Reform" [June 14], your special issue on education. But deeper exploration is needed. Schools have not "failed" in their mission. They were designed as inculcation factories; their job was to keep the kids off the street, teach them work skills and turn our nation of immigrants into one nation—e pluribus unum. They did that job pretty well. After Brown v. Board of Education, schools had the task of integrating our society, with which they've struggled mightily and had some successes. Those schools were more humane, more student-centered than today's, which aim merely for high test scores. What's been left out of the story is the meanspirited retaliation from the right for teachers having entered the political fray, endorsing Carter for president and getting an Education Department. Reagan promised to abolish the department and created A Nation at Risk, which blamed the schools for the failures of business. That report was thoroughly debunked, but the press bought the idea that our schools had failed. Make no mistake: public schools and teachers have become targets. Sadly, some Democrats, including, apparently, President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, are using bribe money to get cash-starved school districts to agree to rate their teachers by student test scores—as ludicrous as that is—firing people, responsible or not, for our society's neglect of the poor. Creative, conscientious teachers will be leaving in droves. Good recruits will be harder to come by. And the poverty that kills kids' chances will still exist. JACK BURGESS Philadelphia As an educator, I am fascinated by your excellent articles referring to the negative impact of No Child Left Behind. The comments by Diane Ravitch, who changed her mind about "school choice," resonates especially with me. She calls Congress's stubborn support of this law "puzzling." It is not puzzling at all if you consider the education budget, hovering around $800 billion and rising. NCLB has been used to create new and innovative ways for the business community to latch on to education dollars through charter schools, test publishing and prepping materials—even through the fallout of a poor education, the exploding prison population. There is gold in educational entrepreneurship, and the Obama administration has done nothing to curb this trend. GLORIA C. ENDRES Morristown, N.J. Bravo! for your critique and analysis. Yes, the Obama administration is pursuing yet another futile and simplistic path of "reform" with its emphasis on charters, teacher demonization and more testing. Boo! to the hopes for top-to-bottom "bold" reforms that mirror those of ministates like Finland and Singapore. Why? Because, once again, the roots of the problem have been ignored. We have known for decades which children will be ill served by public schools: they are poor, they go to school with other poor children and they live in a family where English is not the first language. The gap at kindergarten with children of the middle class is nine to eighteen months, and they are only 5! They lack the vocabulary, language, general knowledge and familiarity with books they need to have a fighting chance of leaving kindergarten with the knowledge required to be strong readers by third grade. To narrow this kindergarten gap, every poor child must be provided high-quality preschool, followed by an intense focus on literacy in K-3. Look to the schools that produce literate third graders, and you will find schools that emphasize the needs of poor kids. Readers have a chance. Nonreaders don't. GORDON MacINNES, fellow The Century Foundation Columbus, Ohio Your special issue on education gave a pass to Barack Obama's dastardly public school policies. If continued, they will further privatize K-12 education on the backs of taxpayers. Obama is more effective than Bush in undermining public education. Under Bush, school districts lost federal funds if they failed to meet specific benchmarks. But Obama's Race to the Top program won't give fiscally strapped states money unless they remove caps on the number of charter schools, force teachers' unions to allow the use of student test scores for teacher evaluation and adopt the new national teaching standards. These requirements have been pushed by right-wing business interests, although there is no empirical evidence that they work. If implemented, they will further erode the public education that's needed for a free people. THOMAS M. STEPHENS, professor emeritus College of Education and Human Ecology Ohio State University Tarzana, Calif. The Nation brings together the best and wisest to present its case for the "change we need" in education to an administration that is not listening. Why? Among the contributors, Linda Darling-Hammond "served as the leader of President Obama's education policy transition team." Like many progressive Americans, we're asking, What happened in the transition from Obama's campaign to the White House? Why are such respected voices not at the table making policy? We need not simply a new vision but a moral one. That America has become, as Darling-Hammond observes, the world's "prison nation," willing to spend untold billions on incarceration rather than invest in its schools, shows a moral poverty that no quick-fix education innovation will alter. To restore our public schools requires a moral restoration; a different kind of great awakening, a public one. JAMES ANDREW LaSPINA, author California in a Time of Excellence: School Reform at the Crossroads of the American Dream Old Glory, Hallelujah! Amherst, Mass. Patricia J. Williams's July 5 "Semaphore" ["Diary of a Mad Law Professor"], on the US Flag Code, brought me a smile and very fond memories. I've been a Girl Scout for fifty years. I learned flag etiquette as a Brownie, but complete knowledge of the Flag Code came from ceremonies, badges and raising the flag each morning at Camp Bonnie Brae. I could not have become a First Class Girl Scout (the equivalent of Eagle Scout for Boy Scouts) without complete knowledge of the Flag Code. I have watched Tea Partyers break every section of the Flag Code. Their abuses of the flag are patriotic in their eyes. Meanwhile, if I arrived at a Tea Party demonstration in my Scout uniform, badge sash, Arrow & Star, and First Class pin and set fire to the flag, they would label me a traitor, although the Supreme Court has ruled it my First Amendment right to burn the flag. Jane Eastwood Weisner
Sep 1, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Inequality—Connect the Dots... Ames, Iowa I am surprised that your special issue "Inequality in America" [July 19/26] skirts the giant elephant in our midst: the obscene piece of the economic pie going to the military. Military spending is not a good way to create jobs or distribute wealth. As Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." DEBORAH FINK Chicago The various contributors to this special issue restate the argument The Nation has been making for months now: wealth to the top, loss of jobs, solution is Keynesian stimulation, etc. One has to admire how Robert Reich manages to describe the past twenty years without stating the obvious: class war is being waged, and both parties have chosen to be on the same side. No, this not a win-win situation where all The Nation's contributors need to do is show Washington power brokers that green solutions will benefit their corporate sponsors. No, it is not a question of Obama having hired the wrong economic advisers because he didn't know Galbraith in Texas would love to serve. Hello! It is not a question of getting the truth out to the people with power. I've been a union carpenter for thirty years. It is a depression out here. The local media say 40 percent of construction workers are unemployed. Of roughly 38,000 union carpenters, only 11,000 qualified for their health benefits last quarter. (You qualify if you worked 250 hours the previous quarter or 1,000 the previous year.) Whatever numbers you believe, and most of us don't believe the official statistics, a lot of people are hurting. When will you get outside the box that limits political and economic debate to the difference between Keynes and Hayek? And please, forget about trying to persuade the power brokers. This is a war. Why not join the counterattack? MYRON PERLMAN Harry Hangs the Laundry Dixon, N.M. In response to Katha Pollitt's "Women on Top?" [July 12], I would argue that having two parents/members of the household working full time spells disaster for the planet. The economic recession—conservation by default—has done more to decrease our carbon emissions than all the resource-consuming alternatives. As Americans, a lot of us pay to work, contributing to credit card debt, stress, bad food choices and climate change. Ecologically speaking, someone needs to stay home, but it shouldn't have to be the woman—this is where men still need to step up to the plate. Hanging up the laundry and forging a relationship with a local grower, then cooking that food with love and care—these are things that shouldn't be optional in our country. We should strive for more balance in work and home life for women and men. Better for us—and better for the planet. FELICITY FONSECA Troubled Oil on Water Los Angeles In "A Hole in the World" [July 12], Naomi Klein asserts that the main issue in the BP oil "spill" is "our culture's...claim to have...command over nature." This assessment shifts blame to a "culture" or a "them," when the real culprit is a world full of individuals, Klein included, who do not comprehend the consequences of their actions. Control over nature is a philosophical issue that few people contemplate. More likely, people consider whether they would prefer to walk six miles to the store or drive. Most drive without considering any ramification beyond the loss of $3 to their preferred energy corporation. I think it is safe to assume that Klein drives a car and uses a computer. These are the issues surrounding this disaster—everyday people consuming everyday petroleum. The gulf will not be made "right," and people will not cease, until they are forced to. The issue is not cultural philosophy but rampant irresponsibility by people (probably including you, dear reader). JIAN NAJAC Boston Naomi Klein generalizes, even psychologizes, the BP disaster, suggesting that the problem is that we think we can manipulate nature. Who's "we"? Humans? Americans? Westerners? However imperfect or uninformed, most people don't seek to recklessly strip the earth of its resources without regard for the consequences: industries do that. And they don't act that way out of hubris; they do it to maximize profits within a frenzied capitalist system uninterested in human or nonhuman well-being. After all, there's no science to ignoring your own employees' warnings, haphazardly dumping toxic dispersants or obscuring better estimates of the leak rate. The problem is simpler, and much more vulgar. CARL MARTIN 'Artsy-Fartsy Francophone' Flicks Forest, Ill. Emily Witt's June 7 "Imperfect Cinemas" is the closest thing I have read to what I experience as the "African identity." Witt gets the fact that those artsy-fartsy Francophone movies Westerners praise for being so "auteur" and "revolutionary" have no appeal to common members of African society. Your explorations, Mr. African Indie Film Director, of the deep-seated neocolonialism in the psyche of the "African" through your dripping faucet imagery may have been praised from Cannes to Sundance, but, I can assure you, your layman Ghanaian or Gambian isn't interested. We want to see someone's marriage being wrecked by an evil mother-in-law, the "big oga's" daughter finding out she's been impregnated by the ruffian from across the street or at least the bush villager finally getting his chance to chase the American Dream. We may not be living up to Kwame Nkrumah's dreams of Africans maximizing their intellectual potential, but what society nowadays does? With America and Britain still in the throes of the "reality" TV revolution—ardently consuming such classics as Toddlers & Tiaras (ironically, on The Learning Channel) and the fist-pumping king of them all, Jersey Shore—we can hardly adjudicate these as intellectual prowess at its finest. When was the last time even I, a college-educated young woman, decided to skip my weekly serving of The Bachelor for a hearty helping of Masterpiece Theatre? I would say, never. It's a sad situation we find ourselves in globally, but that's something we can agree on: it's a global phenomenon. What we do to stop this and who we blame is, of course, another matter. I simply stand to commend Witt on her ability to look past her own interpretations of what the African perspective should be to write about what Africans themselves have shaped as their viewpoint of the world. WILHEMINA HAYFORD
Aug 25, 2010 / Our Readers