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Letters to the Editor
IMPORTANT WORK
Editors, Daily Planet:
It was disturbing to see Mr. Spitzer’s diatribe (Letters, Daily Planet, Sept. 19-22) against the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). His words were an attack on each of us who have volunteered with ISM. The charge that we “aid and abet the murder of innocent Israelis” is without factual foundation, and must be particularly hurtful to groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, and all those who have supported ISM in its brief two year history.
Contrary to Mr. Spitzer’s assertion that human rights groups have distanced themselves from ISM, a consortium of human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have issued a statement of concern regarding the increased harassment of human rights monitors, such as volunteers with ISM, by the Israeli government. The statement calls on the Israeli authorities to “put an end to harassment, intimidation, threats, and deliberate attacks on human rights defenders” and demands that the Israeli authorities abide by the Declaration on the Protection of Human Rights Defenders adopted by the UN, which states that “Everyone has the right…to promote and strive for the protection and realization of human rights …at the national and international level.”
This is what Rachel Corrie was doing, and what ISM continues to do—promote international law and human rights as the path to a lasting peace for all the people of the Middle East. We will not be deterred by false accusations and the violence of those who would rely on a military solution. This work is too important for all of us.
Jim Harris
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A NEW LOW
Editors, Daily Planet:
I thought that I was pretty inured to Israeli spin, but Dan Spitzer’s attempted justification of Rachel Corrie’s murder (“In sum, Rachel Corrie, who probably died by accident, was a young woman whose ideals were superseded only by her ignorance”) struck me as a new low of callousness. In sum, the rationale of Zionist imperialism here triumphs over Jewish ethical traditions.
Such arguments as Spitzer’s typically begin in the middle of a chronology of injustices about which the American public is woefully uninformed. Can he, or anyone, enlighten me about the meaning of “Greater Israel,” or why there are any (let alone expanding) Jewish-only colonies on Palestinian territory?
Furthermore, why am I—an American taxpayer—made to finance these expropriations and their perpetual incitement to further violence both there and here?
Gray Brechin
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YES ON PROP. 54
Editors, Daily Planet:
There is a difference between the Berkeley Daily Planet under the present management and that under its previous one. As with many things in Berkeley, the present management appears comfortable, both with a masthead that is false as to the paper’s frequency of issue and also with its tight reins on expression not totally congruent with local political correctness. I am in alignment with most local liberal viewpoints but am not a Birkenstock mentality.
Given that Proposition 54 spells out clearly that it exempts, from all medical clinical and medical research activities (as well as from all law-enforcement uses for identifying individuals), its mandate of cessation of all our state government’s “classifying” (“collection and use,” as termed by the legislative analyst)—“in the operation of public education, public contracting, or public employment”—of information on “race, ethnicity, color, or national origin”—I would like voters to question why so many people appear to accept this proposition’s opponents’ frantic screams that its passage would greatly impede both the clinical and research health concerns of the people of this state.
This opposition relies on argumentation of this sort contained in the section on Prop. 54 in the voter’s guide mailed out by the state. But the authors of those spins are mostly either an executive whose departments would be diminished after passage of this proposition (with the saving of public funds) or an ex-bureaucrat who hasn’t forgotten such manner of thinking. While the medical profession may be notoriously looked up to in our state, every day in the papers we are treated to facts that indicate truth is not as pervasive as we might desire in much of medicine. Instead, any voters who don’t believe that the wording of Prop. 54 will be adhered to should note that the racial/ethnic classifications of the state are very far from any biological-science categories that are useful either in care of individuals’ health or in determination of their relative susceptibilities to disease as consequent to their genetic makeups.
It is further incongruous why Steve Geller (Letters, Daily Planet, Sept. 19-22) should fear, that we might have “to pretend there’s only one sex,” should Prop. 54 pass. As the state’s legislative analyst comments, Prop. 54 “[d]oes not prohibit classification by sex.” The functions of the state mentioned as subject to the mandate of the proposition clearly have functional interests in the sexual classification of persons they deal with. Given this concern, Mr. Geller could also demand that the three Prop. 54-targeted functions of the state be required to record the religions of those with which they deal.
Political correctness should not be allowed to transcend otherwise sound horse sense and science.
Raymond A. Chamberlin
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Editors, Daily Planet:
I agree completely with Janice Thomas’s opinion piece (“Save Canyons for Open Space,” Daily Planet, Sept. 26-29). There should be no development in Strawberry Canyon. But if Thomas is head of the Panoromic Hill Association, she should admit that her house and the house of other association members are also development in Strawberry Canyon. When it comes to generating traffic and reducing the canyon’s value for recreation and wildlife habitat, each resident does more damage than each UC employee who commutes into the canyon.
Thomas writes that she considers it a privilege to see owls, foxes, and quail near her house. But I don’t think those animals consider it a privilege to have her and her neighbors living in the canyon and constantly driving through their habitat.
Charles Siegel
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Editors, Daily Planet:
After reading the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America endorsement of Bustamante (Letters, Daily Planet, Sept. 26-29) I won’t be surprised to next see Stalinists for Schwarzenegger (which would make more sense).
At this point, no one can predict with certainty the recall outcome. What can be safely predicted is that if a Democrat fails to win the governorship, there will be much whining, and blaming Indie Arianna and Green Camejo as “spoilers.” Never mind the continual betrayal of progressive goals by the Democratic Party and its centrist strategy. This strategy gave us George Bush via failing to fight over the 40,000 African American Floridians purged from the voting rolls and Gray Davis with a 40 to 1 prison funding budget compared to education. This centrist strategy has been the “spoiler.”
The recall is an opportunity to reject the expedient short term view that only results in the lesser of two evils, always netting a lesser, still evil.
Still, Schwarzenegger is a horror. So I suggest voting no on the recall and voting your visionary conscience for a possible replacement.
Maris Arnold
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Editors, Daily Planet:
Berkeley sidewalks have been hazardous and obstructive for many years. Fred Lupke rode in the street to avoid breaking his wheelchair, and lost his life.
As a disabled citizen of Berkeley of more than thirty years, I want to mention the efforts that I have made in the past 10 years to have Berkeley sidewalks cleared and repaired. This is not the first accident to a disabled citizen in Berkeley this month (Karen Craig was also hit by a car).
In the past two years I have three times cut myself on objects left by merchants or drivers on sidewalks (on Shattuck in the past month). I have fallen over planters several times on sidewalks. Often I have tripped over recycling containers or rubber cones which are obstructive to people in wheelchairs, to those on crutches, and are particularly dangerous to blind pedestrians (when suctioned down in a stationary position).
Once when I reported a dangerous situation, I was threatened by a police officer with a ‘5150’.
The last time I reported being cut on the street, I was told by a city employee (Department of Public Works) that the object could not be found.
Arlene Merryman
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Editors, Daily Planet:
AWOL-dot-Com
As terrorists rained death upon our land
He darted through the air, here, there, and back
Emerging later as if in command,
A tailored leather jacked stuffed with flak.
He lit upon the Lincoln like a flea
To take a sound-bite and pop off again
And smirk and then incite the enemy
To kill our kids, on whom we all depend.
He cannot face the soldiers whom he leads,
He cannot beat the people he invades,
He cannot face the record of his deeds
Nor face himself as he ducks and evades
Us all, less like a president than thief,
Our AWOL-dot-Commander-not-in-Chief.
Jonathan Christian Petty
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Editors, Daily Planet:
Food, politics and much humor. Marty Schiffenbauer’s article (“Selective Satiation”) was a gem. How clever of the editors to run this just before the “How Berkeley Can You Be?” parade. Keep up the good work. The Planet is terrific.
Burl Willes
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Editors, Daily Planet:
In the movie “Field of Dreams”, the hero hears a voice which says: “Build it, and they shall come!.” He was building a baseball field, his own field of dreams. The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), along with the Berkeley City Council have their own version of this movie in which they take that field of dreams and create a parking lot! The plot thickens as the Berkeley Adult School (BAS) is ripped from it’s present home (against that neighborhood’s wishes), and stuffed into the Franklin Elementary School Site. Dragged along are 1,200 car-driving students.
The first of many miracles now occurs when the BUSD’s “Field of Parked Cars” is found to have more than enough parking spaces for all the students and faculty.
The second miracle unveils itself when there is absolutely no impact on pedestrian safety, noise or gridlock in and around the neighborhood.
Later, the hero faces the BUSD and in a passionate plea states: “Your plans fly in the face of Berkeley’s Measure L (1986) in which the city promises to jealously protect all existing open spaces and aggressively create more whenever possible!”
“We have decided,” answers BUSD, “That open space is not all that it’s cracked up to be, and besides, We answer to a higher authority!”
“God?” asks the Hero?
“No,” retorts BUSD, “The state!”
Saul Grabia
