Letters
LETTERS The Political Spectrum I am writing this in hopes of waking up at least The Progressive to the active independent candidacy of Eugene McCarthy for President. It is a legitimate campaign,...
...The public must be shown that the food you eat does not get on your table by some small family farm...
...It must be functional, addressing itself to such realities as available resources, energy, and trained personnel, and the actual needs of our people in order to live a free, secure, and satisfying life...
...Yet in spite of this concerted government assault, more than 90 per cent of the charges against hundreds of Native Americans at Wounded Knee ended in dismissals or acquittals...
...Technocracy's program is still available...
...It is a legitimate campaign, and so far the national media have avoided him like the plague...
...it comes from a conglomerate farmer...
...VirgilJ...
...I would like to suggest that The Progressive seriously consider Frank Zeidler, candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket...
...Jimmy Carter, whatever his virtues, represents more of the same...
...I was especially impressed with the "Comment," "Ethnic Purity Nonsense," by the National Secretary of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, Jack Clark...
...Vogel Socialist Candidate for Governor of Illinois Northbrook, Illinois Your lead editorial, "The People's Message," in the August issue was excellent...
...In this you are completely wrong...
...the time is at hand to build a new political movement in America—a movement that addresses the realities of our lives, a movement that summons us to begin building the society enshrined in our best dreams...
...The lies and distortions about the treatment of Native Americans continue, with one of the greatest contradictions being the public image of the FBI versus the terror tactics it employs in its attempt to suppress Native American struggles...
...I hope you can see the light and feel a responsibility to inform your readers that they at least have the right to know there is an alternative to the two major parties' candidates...
...It seems that you are the ones who are paralyzed, telling us every four years what a bum system it all is, too bad there is no alternative, and then urging us to vote for a "lesser evil" that is progressively less desirable...
...In situation after situation Greer demonstrates the nearly complete inability of government, bureaucracy, and elected officials to do anything at all (if they had really wanted to do anything about pollution in the first place, which is of course an unlikely probability...
...there is also the problem of big government doing next to nothing for the people except keeping a large bunch of bureaucratic parasites paid...
...That is the argument of the anarchists, who denounce all electoral politics as a shell game...
...The 1975 Rockefeller Commission Report on the CIA lists the American Indian Movement as Number 5 on the CIA list of more than 1,000 targets for its illegal domestic "Operation Chaos...
...You have said...
...I urge greater coverage of abuse of government power against Native people, and urge your readers to help provide financial support for legal defense efforts...
...Alyn Hess Milwaukee, Wisconsin Native Americans A political cartoon in your April issue showed still another attempt by the Government to distort and cover up its atrocious conduct, in this case the ruthless massacre of unarmed Indian people at Wounded Knee in 1890...
...I will go along with that with one qualification—this movement cannot be political, because politics is no longer capable of giving America effective governance...
...Baird V. Helfrich Springfield, Illinois I for one could support an alternate humane politics...
...It remains, as it has been for the past forty-four years, the only alternative to an obsolete system on the verge of complete collapse...
...Frankly, considering all that has passed in recent years, I fear that change is not forthcoming until the United States of America is all used up...
...I also liked "The Way We Saw It" column on Presidential campaigns in the July issue, especially the quote from September 1948 regarding Norman Thomas...
...As early as 1932, Technocracy's program for a functional governance of North America was complete in every detail and ready to install...
...You typify how rotten liberalism can become...
...We are "expending the energy of dedicated volunteers," which would seem to be a meritorious endeavor, but no, for you say "In most places they will not even secure a position on the ballot—or, if they do, they will not manage to get their votes counted on election day...
...Granted that it is the industrial technology which creates the pollution...
...You could just substitute "1976" and "Frank Zeidler" and it would be appropriate today...
...Roberta Fries Zeidler-Brisben Campaign Committee Milwaukee, Wisconsin Congratulations on the July issue of The Progressive (worthy of Bob LaFollette) questioning the practicality of the current primaries in both parties, where candidates seem to avoid all issues and talk nonsense, which we the public are supposed to regard as "unquestionable...
...George N. Heflick Old Point Discomfort Garrettsville, Ohio Big Government Edward Greer's article, "Filthy Flows the Calumet," in the June issue, amounts as much to a libertarian analysis as to a socialist one...
...Hermosa Beach, California On your editorial, "The Issue Problem," in your July issue: Many times in the past, The Progressive has exhorted its readers to envision and actively support alternatives to the present irresponsible, inefficient, wasteful, and destructive system...
...There must be a rational food policy, and the ideas that Alice Shabecoff listed would make that policy a working tool for the people...
...The 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee was used by the government as a trial run to employ U.S...
...If city folks don't know what a conglomerate farmer is, let us tell you: "A Conglomerate Farmer Farms Farmers...
...You call their efforts "fractional, futile," but it is Olympian people like you who make it so...
...David and Sheila Misso TuleLake, California...
...no prospect of significant change...
...Yet you put down, in the most disdainful terms, the efforts of the tiny minor parties which are working themselves ragged trying to provide an alternative...
...But you were never sincere about it, because when serious suggestions were made, you chose to ignore them...
...Why, instead, do you end up calling minor party efforts to provide some alternative "paralytic sectarianism...
...The FBI continues to participate with a vengeance in the criminal prosecution of Native American leaders...
...I can assure you that their task has never been tougher than it is this time—for the message 1 read among voters is cynicism and indifference...
...We have a small farm that is very much the underdog in the farming game...
...John Bogdanovicz Jessup, Pennsylvania In your editorial for July, "The Issue Problem," you mourn over the quality of this Presidential campaign, and yearn for an alternative to the major party offerings...
...While this is not a "politics," it is certainly something "unlike any we have seen in this country before...
...The radical campaigners are the heroes and heroines of this election year...
...The current Bicentennial "celebration" seems to forget that the United States was founded on the new principles of democratic self-government, and instead of trying to regain the momentum that our founding fathers started at great personal risk, our current candidates seem to be more interested in quoting the most courageous incidents in our history than in retaining a genuine democracy by a rejuvenation of debate on current vital issues...
...But as Greer clearly stated in the article, it was the government, despite clear warnings before the Gary plant was built, which allowed us all to be subjected to its effects...
...You say again, "There is a constituency for a new politics, a base on which to build—but there is no one beginning to do the building...
...The current media coverage of illegal intelligence community activities has failed to report adequately the ongoing program of the CIA and FBI to disrupt and destroy the organizing work of progressive Native Americans...
...Thus a basically socialistic writer demonstrates that the problem is not just the huge power of the biggest industries to do what they please...
...Its tactics include illegal wiretaps, warrantless searches, falsified reports, destruction of evidence, perjury, and the use of infiltrators and provocateurs...
...William M. Kunstler MenloPark, California Farming Farmers Alice Shabecoff hit the nail on the head with her article, "Middlemen on Top," in the July issue...
...Truly we do not need, on top of everything else, a below-the-belt clobbering from The Progressive...
...Donald R. CroleyJr...
...Why doesn't The Progressive urge support of the efforts of minor parties to get on the ballot, and why does it not work to change discriminatory ballot laws and dishonest counts, instead of ridiculing and blasting the efforts of those who undergo the agony of flinging themselves against that evil system...
...military counter-insurgency techniques against domestic groups, in violation of Federal law...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
