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!, PO Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Whose Race?!

I just read "Whose Race? OUR Race!," and it got me to thinking ... I attended the J20 protest and march downtown this past Saturday and was thinking the same thing while standing in the thick of my "white" neighbors, listening to a black speaker protesting the disenfranchisement thinking the same thing while standing in the thick of my "white" neighbors, listening to a black speaker protesting the disenfranchisement of black voters across the country. I found the situation a bit uncanny ... I mean the (white) REI-clad, middle-aged couple next to me who were holding "re-elect Gore" signs were nodding their heads in agreement of the injustices that prevented blacks from voting ... and of course prevented Gore from being inaugurated that day. Why were there hardly any black people in the crowd? Certainly all of us white people weren't there to voice our anger over the fact that blacks are STILL being oppressed by state and federal government agencies. I believe that most of us were there because we are unable to pick are jaws off the floor in reaction to the fact that Dub-yah is now our President; and so we'll agree and march for any number of reasons that contribute to our disbelief that our President is NOT who we voted for (Nader or Gore or...?). Of course I believe that the people I marched with are genuinely interested in racial equality, but at the same time I'm not sure we'll all see each other at a march for yet another black man who is gunned down in our own city by the people that protect us. I guess I need to ask MYSELF, "why haven't I showed up to support those protests?" After all, me and my girlfriend live in Columbia City, 4 blocks from Rainier Vista ... and we dial 911 at least 3 times a month to report what some black person is doing outside our house. It's usually a difficult call, because although we want X person to stop selling drugs in the school playground or stop beating his girlfriend in the street, we have seen the cops show up and stop the FIRST black man they come across. I DID say the man was wearing a BLUE and WHITE striped jacket, but the man wearing the Navy hooded sweatshirt (hood up) is putting his hands on the front of a police car. So yes, I should be out there supporting a demonstration against abusive practices resulting from rampant police profiling practices. I wonder what is the racial makeup of ETS's readership? Is there a black man out there asking himself, "why didn't I show up at the J20 protest?" Am I being naive for even asking this question? Hmmmm. Your articles are always fuel for thought Geov, thanks! Will Anderson, Seattle, WA

Corporate Extermination

A few years ago I was at a libertarian conference in Silicon Valley. One of the presentations was by these two guys who did computer population modeling. One example they gave was an environment populated by two life forms. One had a limited life span, and the other didn't. Well, duh, guess what, the perpetual life span "organism" eventually drove the limited life span organism extinct. So I raised the question of the implications of Corporations versus the rest of us, and they DIDN'T GET IT! How is it possible for presumably intelligent people running a sophisticated computer model to not understand the problems associated with "perpetual life" beings, a.k.a. corporations?

Eric Arnow, Santa Rosa, CA

Horror!

I was horrified to read the apolgia issued by the ETS! editorial staff in response to an angry letter regarding the ACORN strike. While one might feel, as I do, that ACORN's actions are heart-wrenching given their previous work on behalf of the at-large community, to apologize for them at length while asking half-formed, abstract questions about the workers' veracity and pretending to remain neutral is abhorrent. In fact, this same general pattern is found throughout the corporate media when they are forced by the day's events to mention some labor action, claim impartiality, ask vague and misleading questions that belittle or disparage the workers and their organizations, then again claim impartiality and express hope for a quick resolution. I would have expected better from ETS! than this pattern borrowed straight from the corporate playbook. Shame on ACORN for embracing union-busting tactics and shame on ETS! for apologizing for them!

Rob Dalton, Cambridge, MA

Thanks!

ETS!,

Thanks so much for your website. I've recently moved from ultra-liberal Berkeley to conservative San Diego, whose newspapers actually *praise* Resident Bush ... it's a culture shock I'm not sure I could get through without sites like ETS! to help me out. One thing you said in a recent article seemed to me to illustrate a favorite strategy of the new president's administration: "As for the Wilderness Society, National Audubon, and the others, rapt in their fixation on the Refuge, they seem to be ceding without a fight the rest of the Alaska coast, the Gulf of Mexico and maybe even the Rocky Mountain front." Isn't this, after all, the same thing they did with Ashcroft? That is, amongst many crimes against the conscience, include one so utterly egregious as to draw all the focus to that one so the others can be ignored? I'm surprised that liberals are being drawn so easily into this "lightning rod" mentality. Hey--save the Arctic Refuge at all costs! Hey--stop Ashcroft! Meanwhile, all the other travesties that would otherwise be big news slide under the radar. Rumsfeld? OK ... I guess he's not as bad as Ashcroft. Stop Ashcroft! Or is it that there simply aren't enough people to fight against all of the horribly misguided decisions of the infant Bush administration?

--Gary Schmidt, San Diego