Letters
LETTERS to the Editor Crime and Punishment Francis J. Flaherty is mistaken when he suggests ("Crime and Punishment," September issue) that Jean Valjean would have felt right at home with the...
...While this movement is a genuine form of conscientious objection, it is inappropriate to link it with a pacifist slogan such as "Neither shall they learn war any more...
...Cynthia L. Shartzer Houston, Texas A House Divided It's a slap in the face to women that the only article in The Progressive's Seventy-fifth Anniversary issue on the movement for women's rights is Jean Bethke Elsh-tain's negative, accusatory piece ("Feminism: A House Divided," July issue...
...It is unfortunate that the American public is not exposed to those few responsible scientists who try to warn us about technologies that are unsafe, destabilizing, or useful only to control, monitor, disrupt, poison, and extract money from individuals...
...In the early days of the CIO, unionists marched arm in arm against fascism...
...Such a connection would probably be repudiated both by pacifists worldwide and by the Israelis described in this article...
...Some believe that the consumer boycott tactic, used successfully on several occasions by the United Farm Workers with the support of organized labor, may be more beneficial than coverage under the NLRA...
...Jane Slaughter is absolutely right: We need a spirited labor party capable of holding up a vision worth fighting for...
...For the National Organization for Women, for example, that vision includes military service, up to and including combat duty, as "essential" to citizenship in a democracy...
...Through the use of innuendo and undocumented assertions, Elshtain makes an indictment that is utterly un-supportable...
...And unions support the arms race by building omnicidal weapons...
...Union leaders became fat and lazy...
...She writes: "Labor relied on the expanding American economy rather than on the mobilization of its membership...
...Union concern about illegal immigration has not focused on farmworkers but on immigrants who foupd their way into industrial and construction jobs...
...Meantime, defense contractors who rip off the taxpayers at unbelievably ridiculous rates not only get off scot-free but continue to be defended by legislators of this noble and pure republic...
...One of the major points of the article was, in fact, that many Israelis who resist military service are not pacifists but simply object to ser-1 vice in Lebanon...
...While the American people know the Ayatollah as the lawless brigand who kept Americans as hostages, the American Government continues to look upon the Teheran regime as a "bulwark" against the Soviet Union...
...The massive "give-backs" of recent years make for a sorry situation, and farmworkers are among the worst victims...
...However, since unions do not have unlimited manpower, unlimited financial resources, or unlimited legislative clout, priorities must be set, and they must be based on the realities...
...It may mean that they do not endorse the vision of equality they believe the ERA evokes...
...Intriguing articles and engaging graphics will inspire more action for a better world than will repetitive downers...
...Finally, Tattersall misses completely my point about "equality...
...By presenting us with a poorly written, obscure, negative article as a progress report on the women's movement, The Progressive has taken an anti-feminist position...
...The insistence, for example, on such spellings as "wimmin" (in order to avoid having to use that nasty word "men") could have helped to antagonize some otherwise sympathetic readers of their publications...
...While the i Government of the United States decries Iran's support for "terrorism," private companies and grain exporters continue to provide the wherewithal for the hideous war with Iraq...
...Further, what is labor doing supporting, until the last minute, a bill that has a racist thrust and makes a mockery of civil liberties...
...But rank-and-file columnists in some UAW shop newspapers showed how the price of the automobile was determined by the labor that went into it...
...Ann Tattersall Eugene, Oregon The author replies: Ann TattersalPs ire swamps her ability to read what I actually wrote...
...I was disappointed and surprised by the negative reactions to the fact that I had lived and studied in Egypt, especially since it was just prior to the signing of the Camp David accords...
...assistance, the Kampu-chean people are determined to survive...
...Victor Hugo intended to show the disproportion of crime and punishment, and yet Jean Valjean, as a quick check in Les Mi-serables will show, was sentenced to only five years for stealing bread...
...The fact that approximately half of the women in the country do not support the ERA does not mean they do not want "equality...
...LETTERS to the Editor Crime and Punishment Francis J. Flaherty is mistaken when he suggests ("Crime and Punishment," September issue) that Jean Valjean would have felt right at home with the draconian sentences imposed today...
...Right now, there is a new role that responsible scientists can assume: reviews of upcoming technologies...
...She states that most "full-time" feminists are upper-class, making the women's movement an upper-class movement...
...Contrary to the title of Hallauer's article, the unions have forsaken no group of workers desiring union organization...
...Nick Kurko Fort Worth, Texas The author replies: Nick Kurko is right when he points out that organized labor has had to work within legislative realities...
...Ronda Hauben Detroit, Michigan Iwould add a few words to Jane Slaughter's excellent article...
...At no time was he sentenced to life imprisonment...
...Feminists have been pointing out for years that sex isn't free for women...
...Union organizers observed that employers could easily intimidate these workers by threatening them with deportation...
...The end of the war brought spiraling prices and a debate in the labor movement over how to deal with the problem...
...There has been much debate among union organizers about how useful the National Labor Relations Act would actually be in any effort to organize farmworkers...
...Herbert Meredith Orrell Albuquerque, New Mexico An Orphan Nation John Spragens's article, "Kampuchea—An Orphan Nation's Struggle" (August issue), presents an interesting and comprehensive explanation for Kampuchea's impoverishment...
...Apparently, she prefers that children sit home alone or roam the streets while their mothers work...
...Life may be a bummer, but wallowing in it with neurotic graphics and gloomy journalism will, I predict, cost you readers and effectiveness as a voice for social change...
...Robert Hallauer Eugene, Oregon Fan Hail Your publishing of gray and burdened drawings reinforces an impression I've been getting from what I read in The Progressive: Your view of the world is becoming increasingly grim and humorless...
...On the contrary, he would have been horrified...
...My point was to insist that breaking down old arrangements is not enough— that one must go on to specify what limits will or should exist in a transformed social world in the matter of sexuality...
...But I suppose every movement has to go overboard a bit in its initial enthusiasm before it can strike the right balance...
...Lack of resources, legislative realities, yes...
...There seemed no reason to risk biting the corporate hand that fed labor...
...Why should they determine the fate of people of the female sex...
...Eric Bledsoe West Lafayette, Indiana Unions and Farmworkers In "Labor Forsakes the Farm" (August issue), Robert Hallauer offers inaccurate conclusions based on shallow research...
...just read the AFL-CIO press and convention materials...
...Employers, using union-busting lawyers, have been able to raise many delays in the election process and in the processing of complaints about labor law violations...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain Amherst, Massachusetts Iwas interested in Jean Bethke Elshtain's plausible explanation for the failure of the ERA, but I wonder if some of the feminists themselves did not have more influence in defeating their own purposes than they realized...
...The war is now a bloodthirsty stalemate fueled by shipments of bombs, rockets, tanks, and shells from other powers...
...The implication of her complaint is that the only form support of a movement can take is uncritical celebration...
...Many women and men and feminists disagree...
...It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, when a regime of lawlessness has been graduated to the status of "friend and ally" by the exigencies of geopolitics...
...Prices could not be set arbitrarily by corporations...
...today they demonstrate against environmentalists whose efforts will, they fear, rob them of jobs...
...A few specific points: First, I challenge Tattersall to find textual support for her claim that I either indict day-care advocates as family destroyers or state that feminists endorse free sex...
...Frank W. Goheen Camas, Washington Anti-Arab Prejudice I enjoyed Pat Aufderheide's I essay, " 'Arab': Did you Flinch...
...She claims day-care providers and advocates are out to destroy the family...
...He served nineteen years because of time added for four attempted escapes...
...It's expensive, centralized, and un-proven...
...The solution put forward from the ranks of the UAW was a cost-of-living escalator clause as the means of dealing with inflation...
...Whatever the source of the statistics Elshtain claims to possess proving that women don't want equality, opinion polls were not relied on by progressive people to The Gripes of Roth THE WASP DEMOCRAT PARENTS WHO, DURING THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, INFORMED THEIR CHILDREN THAT THEY ARE NOT BLACK, HISPANIC, OR ETHNIC ARNOLD ROTH determine whether to support equality for people of color...
...There is, for example, the little-known story of how the cost-of-living adjustment was won by the auto workers...
...But why get halfway in bed with Ronald Reagan...
...trade with Khomeini's Iran ("Iran: A Great Leap Backward," August issue) is a monument to the hypocrisy that reigns in the American approach to other countries...
...Thus, when the cost-of-living clause was won in the 1948 contract, it was the result of an extensive grass-roots campaign, not a gift from the company...
...Short of the demise of either Khomeini or Hussein, it will go on consuming lives, ruining economies, and making money for international bloodsuckers in the armaments and oil trade...
...It doesn't take much research, superficial or otherwise, to learn that labor has abandoned its efforts to include farmworkers under the Act...
...they never had much to give back...
...John Gale Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Corporate Science Sam Day's review of The Politics of Science (Books, September issue), points to the connections between corporate interests and the scientific community...
...But that, of course, is the quickest way to guarantee a slide into stale dogma...
...We live in a world of comsats, cruise missiles, wrist television sets, automated bank tellers, advertorials, infomercials, robots, and nuclear spills...
...Chris Roth Racine, Wisconsin Learning War Ifound the title of the article regarding conscientious objection in Israel ("Neither Shall They Learn War Any More," August issue) very misleading...
...Unions began declining during the affluent 1960s...
...All survey research indicates that men and women are divided down the middle on endorsement or rejection of the ERA...
...Thus, the example of Jean Valjean is even more to the point than Flaherty thinks: The man who stole pizza in 1983 got twice the sentence of the man who stole bread in 1796...
...No amount of propaganda from Baghdad and Teheran can change the fact that the original reasons for going to war were long ago replaced by blind fanaticism and national hatred...
...Increased wages were not the cause of higher prices, but they would mean lower profits...
...Maybe the word "forsake" in the title was unfortunate, but if labor has any strategy for confronting the new ethnic realities of today's farm labor force, it's still a well-kept secret...
...Such a title suggested a full-scale Israeli pacifist movement...
...A similar history of grassroots struggle at the local level is documented in UAW shop papers for other gains of the period...
...If the NLRA is not the appropriate vehicle, as labor now believes, what is...
...I know of plenty who work four to seven months a year, and the trend is toward longer seasons and more regular work...
...labor's power isn't what it was...
...Workers could count on reaping greater material rewards year after year, even if they were losing control over the workplace day after day...
...M. C. Morris Moorestown, New Jersey Labor Pains In her article, "Labor Pains: The Unions Regroup" (July issue), Jane Slaughter traces the concessions negotiating of our times back to the period following World War II...
...So far, I think, we agree...
...Thus, she dismisses tens of thousands of working-class and middle-class feminists whose labors, writings, and organizing efforts are apparently not worthy of consideration...
...He says the unions' commitment to extend the protection of the National Labor Relations Act to farmworkers waned in the 1950s and early 1960s, but at no point from the late 1940s on have the unions possessed the legislative muscle to obtain passage of amendments favorable to labor...
...I have spent several years researching shop papers of United Auto Workers locals during that postwar period, and I find the portrayal of a "corporate hand that fed labor" different from the history documented in these labor papers...
...Joy in the world, in articles about the world and in the visual arts, is just as real as misery and grimness...
...As I read the article, it became clear that this certainly was not the case...
...Second, I aimed to deflate the claim of ideologists who endorse day care as "preferable" to mother care, thereby implicitly indicting those who do not choose full-time day care or those to whom it is unavailable as perpetuating, perhaps unwittingly, women's oppression...
...Scientists have a largely unfulfilled obligation to explain to us the possible consequences of developments on the horizon...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...Does Tattersall...
...Recruiting became listless because the unions had nothing to offer, particularly to professional workers...
...My only disagreement with Kurko is about labor's shift of emphasis over the years, to its current nonstra-tegy regarding the NLRA and farmworkers...
...How would farmworkers benefit from NLRA coverage if they worked but a few weeks at planting and harvesting time...
...The overall effect of her list of unambiguous assertions is to proclaim a "feminist" unity that does not exist—the whole point of my essay...
...Some believed it was useless to fight for higher wages, since that would just lead to further price increases...
...Anna Speicher Chicago, Illinois Trading with Iran The fact of continuing and growing U.S...
...I experienced similarly awkward reactions from my peers and acquaintances when I returned, in 1978, from a junior year abroad at the American University in Cairo...
...Union people have never maintained that they have a monopoly on virtue, but they are subjected to enough biased writing in the general media without finding it in The Progressive, too...
...Despite the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese invasion, and the restrictions on U.S...
...As a result, labor has given strong support to legislation that would penalize employers for hiring illegal immigrants...
...But then Kurko wonders how farmworkers would benefit if they were covered by the NLRA, since "they work but a few weeks at planting and harvest time...
...Even the Peoples' Republic of China, by all accounts a terribly repressive society, is now considered on "our" side...
...Walter Reuther and the international executive board of the UAW opposed the LETTERS to the Editor idea and criticized the five locals in Flint, Michigan, for advocating it...
...The war between Iran and Iraq is a source of riches for arms peddlers and their ilk...
...One would never know from Tattersall's letter that there is any diversity within feminism or any division between self-consciously identified feminists and those women not so identified...
...Michael Jones Boise, Idaho The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Last Word, August issue...
...Elshtain attacks the idea of women as a monolithic force by dividing us into two monolithic forces, creating categories in which, for example, blue-collar feminists cannot exist...
...Unions certainly do not have unlimited manpower, as Kurko also points out...
...Spragens is right: Kampuchea is beginning to recover from almost a decade of war and brutality, although there is still much to be done...
...The recognition of this reality by the AFL-CIO should not be interpreted as "waning interest...
...Thus it is absurd to accuse the women's movement, as Elshtain does, of promoting free sex...
...Fusion energy, for example, is a technology that has escaped virtually all criticism...
...If unions are to survive, they must be more than instruments for increasing salaries and benefits...
...At the same time, nonunion companies were matching, if not exceeding, the benefits that had been won in the past by the unions' determination and hard work...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 10
