Letters
LETTERS to the Editor First Amendment As the attorney for Citizens Against Nuclear Power and the Chicago Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, I was generally pleased with Carol...
...The fact is that both cows and corn exist only because they are man's food...
...In her article, Dennis lists her party's "mistakes," but utters not a syllable about the militant support it once gave, and has yet to deny, to that regime of slave labor and mass murder...
...It is disgusting to see such tired, stale, and overworked petty bourgeois cliches being used in the slighting of what I call, quite simply, "the best damn newspaper in the world...
...No doubt it's pleasant to dream of all airline workers stopping at once and bringing the U.S...
...less forest...
...my attention centered on the effects of the whole McCarthyism sweep...
...That I have done this and continue to do this does not in any way enhance or detract from what I have written and will continue to write about the McCarthyism experience or about any other subject...
...This was no "flop...
...Likewise, wild teosinte was transformed into domestic corn by active selection against those characteristics that encouraged its survival in the wild...
...If one chooses not to support the beef industry, so be it...
...It should not be significant to the reader of my article on McCarthyism that I have for some twenty-five years, both inside the Communist Party and especially in the years since leaving that party, publicly spoken out and written articles (in The Guardian, In These Times, The Nation, Freiheit, Pacific Sun Literary Quarterly, Socialist Review, in forums and on radio interviews, and in my book Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life) condemning the Stalin crimes, and putting the spotlight of publicity on manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union today, the violations of principles of socialist democracy, and the persecution of dissent...
...Joe Uehlein Special Representative Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO Tupelo, Mississippi Your Comment in the October issue made sense...
...It was a wonderful beginning...
...They are creations of ours just as if modern genetic engineers had made them...
...LETTERS to the Editor First Amendment As the attorney for Citizens Against Nuclear Power and the Chicago Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, I was generally pleased with Carol Polsgrove's Reflections ("Citizen Science," October issue) on our deceptive advertising complaint against the Commonwealth Edison "Kimberly" ad...
...those against eating other primates not nearly so widespread...
...It is easy to nit-pick...
...There is strong scientific evidence that exposure to low-level radiation causes cancer, genetic disease, and premature aging...
...I was opposed to the House Un-American Activities Committee from the time I was old enough to know what it was...
...Just because these foods may cost less than meat doesn't mean students would be getting less food value in their lunches...
...involvement in Vietnam from its outset...
...Neither can exist without us...
...Healthy political organizations survive despite mass murder and long-term imprisonment of their leaders and members such as the Communist Party of the United States never confronted...
...Just where, I might ask, did Granma go wrong—aside from being published in a proud little nation that has survived a twenty-year colonialist blockade and bearing on its masthead, "Official Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba...
...The organization and the bureaucracy are important to keeping our movement strong...
...Your lack of understanding of the labor movement is obvious when your describe as "squandering time" our push for labor law reform under the Carter Administration...
...John D. Shepherd Macon, Georgia...
...Witness the "Animal Rights" view expressed in your letters column and elsewhere...
...Should cows vote ("more hay...
...Edison's ad may lull the reader into a sense of false security, and may promote unnecessary exposure to deadly radiation...
...These should be viewed on their merit...
...I opposed the Korean war from the day of its inception...
...In other words, I come into the court of public opinion with clean hands...
...A move away from meat in our diets would be a healthy change...
...It was finished as an effective force in the political life of the United States...
...I would direct Hurvitz to that part of my article in which I note that the mistakes of the Communist Party regarding its uncritical and blinkered adherence to the Soviet Union, horrendously in error as they are, do not constitute a Federal felony and did not justify the repressions unleashed in the 1950s...
...Leon Hurvitz contends that one cannot confront McCarthyism without simultaneously confronting Stalinism...
...I opposed the incarceration of the West Coast Japanese when it happened...
...I appreciated the article very much, and I thank you for printing it...
...It is important to remember that in the middle of an anti-communist war, Peggy Dennis was able to organize an amnesty campaign in behalf of her husband and other Communist Party members— convene a nationwide conference, enlist hundreds of non-communist civil libertarians, send mass mailings, raise tens of thousands of dollars, hire lawyers, travel and speak from coast to coast...
...Carol Polsgrove Oakland, California Vietnam War The way the U.S...
...But how can you ignore the fact that the air traffic controllers agreed never to strike when they accepted their jobs...
...We must get away from the erroneous notion that a nutritious diet must include meat...
...Indeed...
...The main threat was job loss...
...Many "vegetarians" eat eggs and fish but not mammals...
...The American labor movement is diverse and autonomous in make-up and structure, and whereas some unions will work with the present Administration on certain issues in order to protect their perceived self-interest, organized labor is united and will continue to assert itself as the most powerful and most consistent voice for social and human concern this country has ever known...
...Does Peggy Dennis also feel that way...
...So what if William Winpisinger of the Machinists "was not even given a place on the program...
...Elsewhere she speaks of her opposition to the Smith Act...
...We will continue to be, as we always have been, at the forefront of the battle to achieve social and economic justice for all people...
...But no maudlin rationale is required...
...the comfortable porkchoppers ensconced in the unions' Washington palaces," for these are an important part of our movement without which we would not have come as far as we have over the past 100 years...
...This is a job mainly for local union leadership with rank-and-file member backing...
...Roy G. Kidwell El Dorado, Arkansas Animal Rights In his November column, Jeff Stein complained about the rescinded change in the Federal school lunch program that would have included tofu, cottage cheese, nuts, and seeds in the "meat" category...
...Ronald Reagan or anybody else will violate them at his peril...
...The Communists defend the indefensible in everything relating to the Soviet Union by pointing a diversionary finger of guilt at the United States for all its obvious and indefensible crimes against the people...
...I am sure Winpisinger would agree that the main thing is a successful rally and that his presence would not be important...
...It was on some aspects of my personal experiences in the McCarthyism years in this country and my political observations on the mistakes made by the leaderships of the Communists, liberals, and labor movement that exacerbated the impact of the Government's repressions...
...Peggy Dennis Berkeley, California Granma Imust heatedly deplore your November Memo from the Editor, which sought to depict the Cuban newsweekly Granma as one that tends to "run heavily to jargon, slogans, and sonorous propaganda" and is "less than compelling reading...
...October issue), and of all Progressive journalism, helps me maintain a sense of purpose and hope...
...I do not agree...
...I am saddened when your otherwise unblemished journal besmirches its pages by opening them to a Stalinist hack...
...more pasture...
...My memories group themselves around events Peggy did not mention: the Korean war of 1950-1953, the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's subsequent exposure of the crimes of the Stalin regime, the Arab-Israeli war and Hungarian revolution of 1956...
...It is divisive to ask Solidarity to solve the Kellogg steel-workers' health problems...
...I thought then, and think now, that Roger Baldwin and Norman Thomas disgraced themselves with the ambiguity of their reactions to the abridgement of civil liberties in the United States...
...It wasn't repression but its own political blindness and sectarianism that killed the Communist Party, with an assist from hundreds of FBI informers who made "going underground" a joke...
...In your Comment, "Clout, Not Crumbs," you said that labor was "preparing to practice politics as usual—even if that meant collaborating with the ultra-conservative Reagan regime...
...Frank W. Goheen Camas, Washington Solidarity Your Comment, "Solidarity Forever" (November issue), had the negativism you would expect from the regressive press...
...I opposed U.S...
...Joseph S. Houseman Monterey Park, California Your criticism of Bill Winpisinger in the Comment, "A House Divided" (October issue), is totally unwarranted...
...Leon Hurvitz Vancouver, British Columbia The author replies: My article was not on the subject of Stalinism in the Soviet Union...
...Taboos against consumption of human flesh are nearly universal...
...This criticism is misplaced...
...You state that "most union members are appropriately apathetic" about the efforts of labor's leadership, and further offer that "pledges of cooperation with the Reagan White House or lobbying Congress for enactment of labor law reform" will not bring about full employment, a rational economy, and humane social legislation...
...And many anti-communists here in our country hedge their opposition to racism and repression here with a "but" and a "yet," noting the Stalin crimes in the Soviet Union...
...People came out of jail, got other jobs, and life went on, except for the Communist Party...
...Will Siegfried Oneonta, New York Iam constantly amazed by the lengths to which people go to rationalize their particular political and philosophical positions...
...Mary Ivins Morrell Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Ihave opposed the Smith Act since it was passed...
...Philip H. Van Gelder Baltimore, Maryland In the aftermath of Solidarity Day 1981, where more than one-half million people, including several hundred thousand workers, marched in Solidarity under AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland's leadership, I am reminded of your misguided analysis of the labor movement in the February 1981 issue of The Progressive...
...If Dennis is prepared to state for the record that she LETTERS to the Editor is horrified by the behavior of the Stalin regime, that she opposes the one-party state wherever it exists, that she will be satisfied with nothing less than the total abrogation of the judgment rendered against the chiefs of the Socialist Workers' Party (to which I have never belonged) and with their total exoneration—if she is prepared to do all these things, publicly and for the record, then I am prepared to apologize, no less publicly, to her and to you...
...But who else but labor can lead the fight for "a long-range program that represents a genuine and distinctive alternative to the Reagan Administration's atavistic attitudes...
...government continues to make war on Vietnam, with Chinese support, ought to be an issue in American politics, but it is not...
...I was present at a 1948 public meeting in Chicago at which Claude Lightfoot, a spokesman of the Communist Party, said that while the Smith Act was, indeed, unconstitutional, the imprisonment of a handful of American Trotskyists under that very act was just and proper...
...She belonged to an organization that gave militant backing—not merely passive acquiescence—to the regime of the Other Joe, J. V. Stalin, the Number One Murderer of human history...
...Hurvitz falls into the same quagmire as does the Communist Party which he abhors...
...They live to be eaten...
...It is extremely irresponsible and dangerous for Commonwealth Edison and other utilities to tell us otherwise...
...Kim Crow lie Goleta, California The Witchhunts Taking off from Peggy Dennis's "Memories of the Witchhunts" (October issue), each "survivor" will r,e-member things differently...
...Early men transformed the wild Central Asian aurochs into the docile, sluggish barnyard cow...
...We know that it would be pure folly to abandon what you refer to as "the corridors of Congress . . . bureaucratic blandishments...
...In the first place, under the constitution of the International Association of Machinists, neither the president nor anyone else can call any members out on strike...
...As I write this, the local longshoremen and teamsters here stopped their greedy employer from polluting their members by job action and on the picket line...
...We have not lost our militancy...
...Is it not possible that the jerk-leg "Communist propaganda" virus has caused knees at The Progressive to twitch...
...we all know of Reagan's hostility to strong, healthy unions...
...This view supposes that animals are human equals...
...Solidarity Day has proven you wrong...
...I find it interesting that such gratuitous sentimentality is inversely proportional to the evolutionary closeness of the victim...
...Government to its knees—an "instant victory for PATCO...
...However, I was somewhat disturbed by her statement that it was "fortunate" that the ad was not enjoined from further publication...
...Where else can we find a newspaper that is so consistently devoted to solving the real problems of real people— to attacking the ignorance, illiteracy, malnutrition, miserable health care, and superstition that continually beset the underdeveloped and, yes, even the so-called developed capitalist countries...
...I was, and am, horrified by the judicial murder of the Rosenbergs...
...I opposed the use of the atomic bomb when it took place...
...Under such circumstances, Edison's First Amendment rights clearly must give way to protection of the public health and safety...
...If we need to cooperate with the Reagan Administration on the development of international trade policies in order to preserve the industrial base and the jobs of our members, or cooperate in order to preserve the Davis-Bacon Act, do not begrudge us our duty and responsibility...
...I'd rather not open that door to censorship...
...Oddly enough, the reactionaries took a look at the quarter million demonstrating workers and back-pedaled on their legislative attacks, especially on minimum pension benefits...
...Erwin Knoll, in his Memo from the Editor in the same issue of the magazine that featured my article, aptly noted this, as now does Leon Hurvitz...
...Lens has provided us with a bird's-eye view of a nation that has endured so much physical punishment and death at the hands of the United States and its allies (including China) that to advocate "punishing" Vietnam for the sin of keeping Cambodians from being exterminated by Pol Pot is simply to add insult to injury...
...My article referred only in passing to the fact that the Smith Act was the legal vehicle used against the Communists...
...Painful as memories of that troubled period may be to many left-wingers, everyone "survived" except Julius and Ethel Rosenberg...
...The missed point here is: the exposure of anti-union propaganda that the rank-and-file union members would not follow their leaders and demonstrate and denounce the Reagan Administration on Solidarity Day...
...Sidney Lens tells the effects of that terrible war ("Vietnam: Still at War," December issue), but Americans are not told that the continuing refugee flow of "boat people" is caused, in part, by Vietnam's inability to obtain assistance from Western nations in rebuilding its shattered economy and society, or that the Voice of America and other propaganda organs of the United States are engaged in trying to encourage the refugee flow by publicizing alleged "success stories" of In-dochinese refugees in America...
...Nor can I agree that proper credentials need to be presented before one is qualified to share personal experiences and offer political deductions flowing from those experiences...
...Both sides end up as apologists for the indefensible in each country...
...I detest the deceased Joseph R. McCarthy and the live Ronald W. Reagan...
...Democratic beliefs and traditions are deeply imbedded in this large and various land...
...There is little likelihood that the machinists' ground crews would vote for a suicidal strike in support of a union that has walked through their picket lines more than once without a backward glance...
...What you fail to realize is that organized labor is controlled by the rank and file and has always looked to action in the plants and communities to achieve its goals...
...However, perhaps I should have mentioned that the Smith Act was used in the 1940s against a small group of Trotskyites in Minneapolis and that the Communist Party was wrong when, under the impact of the win-the-war stance, it endorsed that Government move...
...a strike can only be called by a two-thirds vote of the members affected...
...If she is not, then I feel The Progressive owes its readers an explanation...
...Richard Ruble Gainesville, Florida Earth First The seriousness of Dave Forman's article, "Earth First...
...But unions are composed of human beings, and you clearly have much to learn about them...
...The same is not true of Peggy Dennis...
...Jan L. Kodner Chicago, Illinois The author replies: Who is to judge what is "irresponsible and dangerous" and thus should not be said...
...It was not a "one-day wonder...
...I do hope Hurvitz agrees with the main point of my article—that in coping with the crucial survival problems confronting us today, we never again allow, as we did in the 1950s, ideological differences on other questions to impede the essential movements for common struggle...
...Trade union leadership with rank-and-file participation will always be an unbeatable force, and proof positive was the massive turnout for this rally...
...Of course, none of the foregoing justifies in the slightest degree Ronald Reagan's vicious union-busting actions against the air traffic controllers...
...I should like nothing better than to be proved wrong...
Vol. 46 • January 1982 • No. 1
