Letters
Letter to the Editor Coal Wars Again Jim Motavalli's "Coal Wars Again" (July issue) tells a very familiar story. Many in my family were immigrants or sons of immigrants who went to work in the...
...We hope its findings will be swiftly communicated to the prisoners...
...But where is she coming from...
...How fortunate we are that stool or semen are not the bodily emissions tested...
...She and her group alone know what is right, what is good for the family and for the community...
...I've been there...
...No one is listening...
...Many in my family were immigrants or sons of immigrants who went to work in the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania when they were thirteen or fourteen years old...
...The symptoms include diarrhea, weight loss, bloating, and constipation...
...Elshtain is like many feminists or conservatives who say to women, "Don't do what those groups are trying to force you to do against your better judgment," but don't come right out and state the corollary, "And my group and I are going to make sure you don't get a chance to make up your own mind whether you want to do it or not...
...Prisons are exploding all over this once great land, and they will change the face of America...
...I believe every person, man or woman, has a right to say how many children she or he will have...
...We have already received several inquiries as a result of The Progressive's fine work...
...In Storms v. Coughlin, a New York case dealing with prison urinalysis regulations, a Federal district court ruled that the degradation of prisoners was permissible under the Fourth Amendment since it was necessary to curb drug use in prison...
...At least I am glad he portrayed me as going up a hill instead of being over the hill...
...The only difference is that the companies now use the state police instead of private Pinkertons...
...Since room and resources are scarce, he or she should not be forced into parenting a seriously handicapped offspring...
...Political history should speak the truth about them...
...Eugene W. Feldman Lewistown, Pennsylvania The illustration by J.D...
...Whenever there's a problem at Marion, it is compounded by the silence enshrouding the prisoners...
...The miners' homes, owned by the company, were not much more than rundown shacks, without running water or toilet facilities...
...No one will tell them what is going on...
...Not Margery Gilchrest-Hesse, who comes out of the chute in a mad rush for individual rights, including the right of a man who has "accidentally impregnated his partner" to tell the woman involved that if she refuses to abort, he will "assume no form of responsibility for the child...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain Nashville, Tennessee Truth in Advertising I was pleasantly surprised to see New Outlook: Middle East Monthly's logo in an advertisement published by the Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME) on the back cover of The Progressive's June issue...
...Several years later, Rubin admitted their guilt on charges of conspiracy, even though the courts had declared them not guilty...
...Margery Gilchrest-Hesse Lansing, Michigan The author replies: Let me see if I've got it...
...Margaret N. Smith Evanston, Illinois Upheaval in the East Robin Blackburn's article, "Upheaval in the East" (July issue), was a refreshing antidote to the blather of most of the mainstream media...
...Considering the precarious position in which our planet now finds itself, it's good to know there are people like Blackburn around who still have their heads screwed on straight...
...Some of us haven't forgotten the main issue of the Abbie Hoffman-Jerry Rubin group trial following the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago: conspiracy...
...The streets were the sewers...
...I, of course, nowhere claim there is a "natural motherly instinct," contrary to Gilchrest-Hesse's willful misreading of my article...
...This is a positive development, since CDC is the Federal agency responsible for monitoring outbreaks of infectious disease...
...I am a card-carrying member of Amnesty International, about a dozen animal-welfare organizations, PEN, several political-science professional organizations, and a couple of video-rental clubs...
...I know about Appalachia, Bluefield, Dante, and Grundy...
...She alone understands that William Stern's concern for his family continuity (yes, of his own genes) is selfish male patriarchism, while Mary Beth Whitehead's concern, after she allowed herself to become attached to an infant she knew from the start would be someone else's, is natural motherly instinct...
...King on Page 15 of the June issue—a large, close-mouthed bird in the same nest with a youngster chirping loudly from his shell-speaks eloquently to the tragedy of Abbie Hoffman's death...
...The coal-mine owners and operators there exploit the miners much as they did in the Pennsylvania anthracite area...
...Now there is a new problem...
...William L. Fisch Teaneck, New Jersey The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...What priest or guru ordained her to deliver judgments on what I or any other intelligent female must believe...
...Besides, I am adviser to the men's crew team...
...I find it a bit difficult to square Gilchrest-Hesse's celebration of the Male Abscon-ditis with her proclamation of a "natural fatherly instinct...
...Our committee has received word that several prisoners have come down with a stomach parasite called Giardia lamblia, which is commonly found in contaminated water or food...
...Who is going to speak up for women...
...I wouldn't hold an enrollment of 300 upperclassmen a semester, including many athletes, if I looked like that...
...I think there is...
...I was wearing my tight black leather pants, black leather fringed boots, sequin-studded cowboy shirt, and bomber jacket, along with my motorcycle helmet...
...John Ives Attica, New York We in the Committee to End the Marion Lock-down would like to thank The Progressive in general and Linda Rocawich especially for the excellent coverage of the contaminated-water problem at the U.S...
...I've seen the deplorable conditions in which the miners live...
...Unfortunately, the situation at Marion continues to deteriorate...
...I guess it's a pretty weak instinct, easily overridden...
...Nice try, Bob Gale, anyway...
...Hillel Schenker U.S...
...There are "many feminists or conservatives" who are trying to force women to act against their better judgment...
...By the time they reached their late twenties or early thirties, they were "old men," suffering from injuries they had sustained underground as well as the dreaded black-lung disease...
...If JCOME has a constructive role to play in this struggle, it should argue its point of view without recourse to criticism of others who are working in the same general direction...
...Carol Mottl Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania Technology as Destiny After reading Jean Bethke Elshtain's analysis of the threats facing women of reproductive age ("Technology as Destiny," June issue), I was so frightened that if I were not sixty-six years old and had not given birth to my sixth very satisfactory child thirty-some years ago, I would have gone into hiding from the geneticist trying to abort me for the good of society or the lawyer seeking to impregnate me against my will with a would-be father's sperm...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...In other words, the fat-bottomed old lady with the bow legs and the cane is not quite the way it is, though it is a stereotyped picture of most old ladies...
...Representative New Outlook New York, New York Scorned But Not Defeated The artist who illustrated my article ("Scorned But Not Defeated," The Last Word, June issue) depicted what he thought a woman in her late seventies who had had a hard struggle might look like...
...Virginia A. Ingham Fort Worth, Texas Prisoners' Rights I was interested in Erwin Knoll's cogent remarks (Editor's Memo, July issue) on the likelihood that prison administrators will abuse the "broad discretion" vested in them by statute and approved by the courts...
...I am tired of being treated—particularly by senior-citizen professionals and physicians—as mildly retarded and physically fragile just because I am over sixty-five...
...We always appreciate free advertising, but we also appreciate truth in advertising...
...Steven Whitman Chicago, Illinois Hoffman's Conspiracy Permit me a comment on the Abbie Hoffman excerpt, "The Young Have to Be There" (June issue...
...and cites New Outlook, together with two other publications, as having "refused to publish the JCOME statement of principles as a paid ad...
...I immediately tried to find a snapshot someone had taken of me about two months ago...
...We understand that representatives from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are at Marion investigating the outbreak...
...Thank you for printing it...
...Whoever drafted the ad asks, What Do These Jewish Publications Not Want You to Know...
...penitentiary at Marion, Illinois ("Toxins on Tap?," May issue...
...We believe that American Jews and other Americans have an important role to play in the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace, and all of us who are seeking that goal should learn to cooperate...
...If Gilchrest-Hesse wants to charge one of them with engaging in a conspiracy led by me to deprive human beings of their rights, including the right of a father to desert his pregnant partner, she's welcome to try...
...Francelia Butler Storrs, Connecticut In her article, Francelia Butler speaks to my own experiences as an older person...
...If the authorities can invent a scenario in which a minimal "privilege" might be abused, the courts will defer...
...Who is going to say to each individual woman or man, "Make up your mind for yourself what is right for you and your family...
...Elshtain goes on and on about "dehumanization" and "neutrality...
...The article has been very important to the prisoners and useful to us as an outreach device...
...Needless to say, drugs are rampant in the six prisons I've been in over the last three-and-a-half years, and the piss test is Russian roulette played for the diversion or delight of the officers who are assigned to watch us fill the bottle...
...The flaw in this claim is that New Outlook published the statement, without payment, in its February 1989 issue...
...Since contraception is not yet perfect, a man who has accidentally impregnated his partner should have the right to state he would prefer that the pregnancy be terminated and that if the mother refuses (as is her right), he will assume no form of responsibility for the child...
...We older people have accumulated wisdom in living and surviving which we would gladly share...
...We at New Outlook, Israeli Jews and Arabs, and our friends around the world, support a resolution of the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the mutual right to self-determination of both peoples, and call for negotiations between the authorized representatives of both peoples—the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization—to achieve a nonviolent political resolution of the conflict...
...Not Elshtain...
...Their coverage of the tremendous changes taking place in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries consists, with rare exceptions, of self-congratulatory smugness...
...Finally, Gilchrest-Hesse seems determined to tie me to some unnamed "group" of which she heartily disapproves...
...Eulogists who mourn Hoffman's suicide conveniently forget two significant points...
...While Hoffman and Rubin were on the witness stand, they castigated Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation) and mocked him with language worthy of a born anti-Semite...
...Is there no natural fatherly instinct...
Vol. 53 • August 1989 • No. 8
