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.

Undesirable Tenants

ETS!,

Thank you so much for ETS! I have become so disgusted with the local adpapers that occasionally (accidentally?) have news in them; yet I find myself guilty of purchasing them in a futile attempt to obtain local coverage. Your publication bridges a gap for me by focusing on the local political issues that will directly affect my future. Since you have hit a weekly 8-page format I am giving up both local newspapers, neither of which adequately covered national, international, or local issues.

Speaking of which--in the Times a 4-12-97 letter to the editor addressed the 11-hour standoff downtown with "The Swordsman." A sentiment that I have heard more times than I care admit resurfaced: "Why didn't the police unleash a hail of taxpayer-funded bullets?"

I am quite frankly disgusted that so many people feel the lives of "undesirable tenants in the condominium of life" are so cheap that they should be discarded for disrupting traffic and business. But, hey, he's a homeless lunatic and I gotta get my haircut...

David Crispin, Seattle

Ed. reply: We don't cover local or global news adequately either! The impact that ETS! has had--put together with no money by a handful of volunteers in a few hours a week--simply underscores the desperate need, in any and every city and town, for enterprises that treat news as a necessary commodity rather than as mind candy and/or corporate ass-kissing fill material between the ads.

Another ETS! reader suggested we run the Swordsman for mayor or city council. We like the idea: here's a guy who's patient, has stamina, determination, and focus, knows how to handle city officials and the police, and people respond when he talks. Proven leadership and the ability to babble incoherently in public for hours on end! It's a natural! Not to mention it's the only conceivable way he'll get access to the health care he probably needs.

Short Memories

ETS!,

Regarding stadiums: I hope that ETS! and other alternative media can make a difference by refreshing the public memory at crucial and strategic times like elections. It's nice to read about this stuff now--it feels good to see things I agree with--but it needs to be followed up at election times and other appropriate "I told you so" moments, where a politician's past statements and actions can be resurrected for maximum damaging effect.

As another example, anti-Pageler posters could mysteriously appear on telephone poles all over the city, reminding people that she's the Anti-Poster Lady (the caption!). A picture of her, caught mid-harangue, with a flying ropelet of spittle in freeze-frame stasis, all done in false color...

The IWW used to have a slogan, "We Never Forget!" Pity that's now obsolete, superceded by "civility of public discourse."

--Kurt Cockrum, White Center WA

Huh?

ETS!,

I think that you have a great publication, and I think that you are doing wonderful things, however a comment on your analyses of not paying taxes. You failed to mention that those of us who don't pay our taxes are decreasing the amount of money the government has, and the way they will get more is to tax the non-super wealthy more, and make those who do pay taxes get a larger burden on themselves.

--Stephen C. Phillips, Seattle

Ed. reply: A more realistic model is that governments, like any other institution, seek first of all to maintain and expand themselves. In the example of tax policies for a corporate-dominated government, this means the corporate state getting as much money as possible from, and spending as little money as possible on, other parts of society; and, conversely, taxing itself as lightly and enriching itself as much as politically feasible.

More importantly, the argument of "If I don't do it [pay taxes, work for Exxon, buy Chinese, torture prisoners], someone else will" is an argument for powerlessness and cooperation with evil. The Gandhi quote comes to mind: "Whatever it is you can do, it is most important that you do it." Many folks simply aren't in a logistical, financial, or emotional place to consider taking on the IRS and the risks involved with tax resistance. But- -as with every other political act in our daily lives--there are risks to be weighed and choices to be made, and the more consciously and intentionally we make them, the better.