ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Life in West Virginia

ETS!,

At this point from reading ETS! I know more about Seattle politics than I do D.C. or Baltimore. It is interesting to be able to compare the devious and inane legislative shenanigans of Washington state with states I'm closer to and more familiar with.

I love the humor and the biased news stories. But why was that fellar (name withheld) whining about only making $9.80 an hour? Are those really considered low wages in Seattle? And if he feels uncomfortable using subsidized housing, food stamps, etc., why doesn't he just get the hell off them and then he won't feel so guilty about the fact that he is an overprivileged white(?) male with no dependents and that there are many people (mostly women and children) in much more desperate situations who aren't getting anywhere near the assistance they deserve?

I'm sorry that a college degree didn't land him a better paying gig but I can't really take his criticisms seriously. I was making $5 an hour last year in W.V. driving a delivery truck. My benefit package consisted only of all the tofu products I could eat. I don't begrudge people who go on food stamps or welfare if they need it but if you can get by without it, why put yourself in that dependent/humiliating position with the government?

Alan Benson, Berkeley Springs, WV

Live-In Sweatshops

ETS!,

A little snippet from the 4/1/97 P-I Biz section reads (in full):

Eddie Bauer recognized for fighting bad working conditions Redmond-based Eddie Bauer was among three companies added last week to the U.S. Labor Department's "Trendsetter List," a directory of garment-industry companies fighting substandard conditions for workers. Esprit de Corp of San Francisco and Phillips-Van Heusen of New York also were added to the list for working to battle sweatshop conditions, bringing the total number of companies on the list to 34.

The interesting thing about this is that Eddie Bauer uses prison labor at our own Washington State Reformatory in Monroe. If they don't use it outright, they do it through a contractor, possibly called Redwood Industries (I'm looking into the details). I guess that switching to prison labor could be construed, in a very narrow technical sense, as "battling sweatshop conditions," in the sense that conditions are pretty good at Monroe, better than they would be anywhere else Eddie Bauer might have chosen for its labor (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc). But there are a couple of niggling little problems. One is that prison laborers are paid less than the minimum wage. How can Eddie Bauer get away with this? Because of a little loophole in the U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIII, which states that slavery is illegal unless you happen to be a prisoner. I fail to see how making use of slave labor is much better than making use of sweatshops. But this is typical Clinton administration.

Dan Tenenbaum, Seattle

Fringe Cultures

ETS!,

On your Judi Bari article (#27), a critical observation on your comment about fringe cultures. Do you dislike the genre (which is not defined in my mind--all anti-corporate actions?)? Do actions that "accept" participation by "fringe cultures" fail some test of efficacy or strategy? How do we make fringe cultures not alienating to middle America? Isn't ETS! a fringe culture that would be alienating to Middle America?

This paragraph seems to want to say something important about our actions and strategies for change, but instead it strikes me as just criticizing undefined things rather harshly.

Scott McClay, Seattle

Ed. reply: As with much we write about in ETS!, limited space means we sometimes compress big issues into offhand remarks. Scott's question is a good one. The passage he cites, in assessing the late Judi Bari's political work, reads: "Bari's campaigns, like most others of the genre, have been plagued by in-fighting and the visibility of fringe cultures profoundly (and needlessly) alienating to middle America."

The "genre" I referred to was specifically anti-logging campaigns based in the woods. Despite extensive and courageous efforts by Bari and many, many others, those trees are still falling at horrific rates, as fast as corporations and their government enablers can strip what's left of legal protections. In that context, it's not clear what would work. Any such effort faces the formidible challenge of overcoming massive wealth, a legal and political system rigged to protect the wealthy, and a media and pop culture that have trained us all from birth to discount anything (like trees, or ozone layers) without a price tag.

Given those odds, there are still political choices that can make our work more or less effective. With the battle against clearcutting--as with so many other grass roots struggles--the biggest self-inflicted wound isn't the tactics of direct action or the people involved. It's credibility, and the gap between political action to change policy and political therapy so that activists feel better.

Direct action by itself has slowed but never stopped clearcuts; it must be combined with other legal and political strategies. Shifting the focus to alliances with displaced loggers (as Bari tried, but generally failed, to do) might be an effective route. Having as your media spokesperson, say, Mr. Sunglow Moonblossom, who was himself a Northern Spotted Owl in a previous life (WHO! WHO!), and who has never supported a family or held a long-term job in his 22 years, is not effective in building those alliances, no matter how kindly and well-intentioned a soul Mr. Moonblossom might be. If anything, Sunglow, and organizers who fear that suggesting someone else volunteer to be spokesperson instead might interfere with his free expression and the non-hierarchical society we all adore, give corporate strategists a perfect scapegoat for a guy whose job is tenuous and who can't just pick up and move to the next adventure when the cameras leave.

Traditional "leftists," whether they're peace, labor, solidarity, environment, identity issues, whatever, have powerful issues and explanations for what's wrong in peoples' lives under the corporate state. By and large, these explanations don't connect, and it's not all because "they" control the money and media and laws. Way too many progressives (even when they have the free time and commitment) would rather engage in socially comfy circle jerks than even talk with people from different backgrounds or values--much less shut up and listen, or live those backgrounds and gain common ground.

I like Earth First! a lot; but in all of Bari's mythical labor alliances, how many EF!ers--realizing that trees would fall, no matter who cuts them, until a much larger movement was built--went out and hired on in the woods, learned what it's like, worked with and gained the respect of the people they wanted to lead? And stayed there for months? Years? The point isn't that a non-logger can't have legitimate and important views on forest policy. It's that such a strategy, as a way of building alliances and learning what's important to other people, probably didn't even occur to 95% of the activists who had the time to spend months camped in the woods. On this and a wide variety of other iss of corporate nest-foulers, we help create our own marginalized, "fringe" cultures. In the process, we also patronize the hell out of many of "the people." ETS! is a fringe publication by many measures; we don't have ads, or a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate owner, for starters. And we try to present issues the way we actually feel (and many folks actually talk) about them, rather than hide behind the myth of objectivity. But we also try to document our rants, not attach them to labels or ideologies, and to present issues in a way people from other perspectives can understand-- whether or not they agree. The problem vis-a-vis "middle America" isn't someone's appearance or lifestyle per se; it's respect, and the impossibility of gaining empathy on a political issue with someone you hate or someone who thinks you've just beamed down from Mars.

Life In Hell

ETS!,

I noticed that you are incorporating other projects into ETS!. I humbly offer my own "News Watch" for your inclusion, should you so desire. I realize that the name is quite similar to Media Watch, but if you're interested, we'll see what we can do about an alternative title. Or, feel free to simply steal my pieces and stick them in ETS! when appropriate; the distribution of this information is more important than my own ego or personal glory (although it can be kinda nice.)

Keep up the good work.

Jake Sexton, Los Angeles

Ed. note: Jake started up an alternative news e-zine a couple months ago which has been quite good; he needs contributors and readers both! To get a copy e-mail him at jsexton@ucla.edu. Also, check out another very good Southern Cal. zine project, Fragments, at: http:/www.mindspring.com/~fragments. Finally, Ben Attias, who's been maintaining ETS! on the web since Week One, is also based in L.A. and has links to all sorts of other interesting stuff at his site: http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/.