Letters

...The actions taken against the Moscow Eleven (including job losses, interrogations, house arrests, and psychiatric internment) do not bode well for the fragile movement Pooley describes...

...Michael Parenti Washington, D.C...

...The Greens' economic policies aside, Hitler also usurped an ancient Sanskrit symbol, the swastika, as his emblem, and exploited the German educator Fichte's ideas on health...

...Pooley explained how the Reagan Administration could support the East German movement by offering meaningful arms reduction proposals...

...There is, in fact, a need to acknowledge the common threads of the resistance experience, from whatever background we come into it...

...May both publications continue to help us ordinary people surmount and survive...

...If the State were to begin to perceive the peace movement as a force with political clout, it would go far beyond its present awkward attempts at suppressing it...

...The Greens have restored the word's true meaning by applying it to the preservation of the environment, which is indisputably our only "living space" on this planet...

...Gaillard might also have noted that the provost, despite Langland's failure to take advantage of existing processes of the University, conducted an intensive review of Dean Jacque Voegeli's decision in Langland's case and in every other tenure case considered by him as dean of the College of Arts and Science...

...Rather than being arrogant, Voegeli has conducted himself with patience and restraint through an extended period of time during which uninformed and sometimes irrational attacks have been made on him...

...Generally, the point is well taken, but in this case, it involves some false distinctions: East German and Russian peace groups are not working toward "a separate peace...

...If ever a historical imperative gave rise to a political movement, the Greens can claim such origins...

...Alex Kuzma Plymouth, Massachusetts Idisagree with Eric Pooley's suggestion that the East German peace movement is a political force at this time...

...Over last Easter weekend alone, more than 200 people were arrested at various sites across the United States...

...The provost found no basis whatever for the charge of sex discrimination, and his findings were subsequently confirmed by the president of the University...

...I would like to point out, in a friendly spirit, that I make no such statement about progressive legal work in my book...

...may actually subvert the Left's ultimate goal of fundamental change by dulling popular discontent and inducing political acquiescence...

...We are all indebted to you and William Sweet for his provocative piece, "Can . Green Grow in Germany...

...Such attacks may amount to "business as usual" for the Soviet authorities, but it's disturbing to see the degree to which the American peace movement has tolerated these abuses...

...I agree completely with the view so ably enunciated by Blum and Lobaco: Short of revolution, the people must struggle for substantive gains and these gains strengthen democratic forces...

...Nancy Frank Milwaukee, Wisconsin The New Resistance The New Resistance," by Samuel H. Day Jr...

...Kris Nyrop Seattle, Washington I'm sorry that a magazine that calls itself progressive permits an editor to approve of the mass dementia of stoned youth at a rock concert...

...Hence they are designed to placate public opinion without really dealing with the problems created by capitalism...

...Jeff Tracy Amersfoort The Netherlands Can Green Grow in Germany...

...Gaillard's column is the latest, if not the last such attack...

...The New Yorker, like The Progressive, has been consistently gutsy...

...I'd like to add a note on alternative public-service announcements: With a couple of dollars and an hour or two of time, anyone can make a PSA for radio...

...The nuclear threat requires no less than a movement that transcends the rigid ideologies of the pre-nuclear age, a movement that when it says life, means life...

...If the PSA makes a pitch for an organization, that organization should be nonprofit...

...April issue), provided an accurate and hopeful picture of the growing antinuclear civil disobedience movement in this country...

...Gaillard refers in his penultimate paragraph to the "arrogance" of Dean Voegeli, and then draws the conclusion that it "makes for bad public relations...

...JeffCarr Vice Chancellor Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee The Grateful Dead As one who was turned on to the wisdom of the Grateful Dead and The Progressive at the same time, and who has been a devotee of both through the intervening fourteen years, I was grateful for Milton Mayer's Last Word ("An Aged Deadhead," May issue...

...LETTERS to the Editor Reform and Revolution In their article, "The Left and the Law" (June issue), Bill Blum and Gina Lobaco say that in my book, Democracy for the Few, I express the fear that "progressive legal work...

...As a result, the movement will surely grow stronger...

...Mary Sprunger-Froese and Kathy Jennings took part with four men in the action...

...The Dead and their heads are a distinctly creative force, and they carry their lifestyle and vision with them for all to see and accept or reject...

...I'm currently investigating a regulatory agency as part of my continuing study of corporate crime...

...Their independent activity may be a challenge to the Soviet military establishment, but their efforts are perfectly consistent with the Western nuclear freeze agenda and its challenge to the Pentagon...

...Richard Glasman Berkeley, California Surmount and Survive Thank you for publishing Ben Bagdikian's article about The New Yorker ("The Wrong Kind of Readers," May issue...

...Those of us who are fighting for a nuclear freeze in the United States have a moral responsibility to close ranks with our German colleagues and to defend the rights of all citizens— Soviet, East German, and American—to resist the draft and to criticize their government's arms buildup...

...Many religious re-sisters share the interests of pacifism, feminism, and earth consciousness...

...Richard Ohmann Wesleyan University Middletown, Connecticut A Separate Peace Eric Pooley's fine article on the East German peace movement ("A Separate Peace," March issue) should provoke some serious discussion and honest soul-searching within the American peace community...

...Thank you for making the risks I face quite clear...

...There are two points we'd like to make...

...Now my only hope is that I find the courage to speak the whole truth despite the risks...

...The Church is the only institution that could transform a number of independent peace groups and activities into a single movement—and as Pooley correctly observed, the Church is unwilling to do this...

...The second point concerns what Day referred to as two paths of civil disobedience moving forward along parallel tracks—one religious path proceeding from faith, in the tradition of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dorothy Day...

...And most of those who engage in civil disobedience as a political tactic would acknowledge the profound sense of empowerment— personal and spiritual as well as political—that peaceful resistance bestows on its practitioners...

...Some nuclear freeze advocates in this country have downplayed altogether the relevance of defending human rights in Eastern Europe on the grounds that all other concerns and injustices are dwarfed by the overriding threat of nuclear war...

...Lessons learned about planning and executing actions, jail solidarity and doing time, avoidance of burnout and building community, all need to be shared among religious and secular re-sisters...

...Gaillard might have noted, for example, that a faculty grievance committee composed of elected members of the faculty senate was available to Langland for review of her charge of sex discrimination...

...Does it follow that we should henceforth view Sanskrit scholars with suspicion, eschew fresh air, indulge in dietary excesses, and avoid physical exercise...

...The threat of extinction cannot be neutralized by narrowly defined political parties doing business as usual...

...Following that review, and in response to her continued insistence that she be awarded tenure, the University offered Langland two additional reviews...

...High Price of Free Speech I'm not sure whether to express gratitude or dismay in reaction to Nat HentofFs article on libel law, "Free Speech: The Price Is Going Up" (May issue...

...If Western peace groups do not mount an effective campaign to defend the Soviet peace group, the stage will be set for similar repression against antiwar activists in East Germany and other Soviet-bloc countries...

...In both cases, she declared her wish that the matter be resolved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...

...This view is developed more explicitly in the recent fourth edition of my book...

...Mark Nichols Beverly Hills, California Please thank Milton Mayer for expressing so artfully my thoughts on the Grateful Dead...

...Lebensraum was in the German vocabulary long before the Nazis concocted their noxious ideology...

...We believe these tracks often cross...

...I was overwhelmed...

...Here's hoping that the imperative will cause the Greens to grow not only in Germany but throughout the world...

...Please do not ascribe to me the view that reforms are undesirable because they dull revolutionary impulses...

...Stetson Kennedy Jacksonville, Florida In an otherwise informative article on the Greens, it was shocking to see Lebensraum—a perfectly good German word— linked to "Nazi rhetoric...

...Jack Cohen-Joppa Felice Cohen-Joppa Tempe, Arizona Ad Nauseam Thanks for Keenen Peck's article on the Advertising Council ("Ad Nauseam," May issue...

...Langland elected, however, not to have her claim heard before her peers...

...Considering the risks they are running, it would be callous, in fact, to do no more than admire their daring from afar...

...May issue...

...The first is a factual one: The six activists who climbed over the fence at the Pantex Nuclear Warheads Assembly plant near Amarillo, Texas, in February 1981 were not all men...

...The prospect of planetary sterilization, I gather, is basic to the Greens' concerns...

...They are fighting for arms control just as we are...

...As for Gaillard's concern for the University's public relations, and his own contribution to it, I trust that thoughtful citizens will remember that there are values within a university, including a commitment to scholarly achievement, quality, and fair treatment, that are at least as important as public relations...

...My research may well turn up some unsavory facts, but since I am in no position to pay $50,000 or more in legal fees to defend myself against a groundless accusation of libel (groundless because I intend to write only the truth), I now feel the chilling effect of libel law running down my spineless back...

...Finally, it might have been noted that Langland then elected not to await the outcome of the EEOC investigation but instead requested and received a right-to-sue letter from the EEOC prior to a determination...

...To defend these groups' right to free speech and freedom of assembly is to defend peace itself...

...The point I make about reforms is somewhat different— namely, that most reforms fail to help the people for whom they are supposedly intended, and that their purpose often is to give the appearance of reform without delivering much of the substance...

...It isn't enough to draw inspiration from the East German peace dissidents...

...But we should not overstate their aims or their achievements...

...Yet Pooley stopped short of discussing the role that Western peace activists can play in protecting their vulnerable Soviet-bloc counterparts...

...There is one small bone I would pick with Sweet's article— his aside suggesting that the Greens may harbor Nazilike propensities...

...And what if, indeed, "some cynics are reminded of Nazi rhetoric about the sanctity of forests and streams, and of how that rhetoric provided a smokescreen for the reconstruction of the German military-industrial complex...

...The words are theirs, not mine...

...Mary Irwin Oreland, Pennsylvania...

...This is an easy and cheap way to get critical views on the air and displace some of the Ad Council's heart-rending propaganda for life as it was in 1830...

...the other "an amalgam of interests—pacifism, feminism, environmentalism, and others—which see nonviolent action less as a personal witness than as a political tactic...

...It has been almost a year since the Soviet police moved to crush the independent peace group now known as the Moscow Eleven and to date there has been only minimal, half-hearted protest on the group's behalf...

...The succeeding paragraphs in Frye Gaillard's "Fossils Among the Oaks" (Datelines, April issue) do little to increase the informed reader's confidence in the accuracy and completeness of Gaillard's description of the context in which Elizabeth Langland has brought suit against Vanderbilt University...

...As the most responsible persons in our society are saying, "Dope is for dopes...

...This is no less absurd than to say that since both have been known to use torture, capitalists are communists, or vice versa...

...Ingrid Komar University Heights, Ohio Fossils Among the Oaks Few who know the Vanderbilt University campus, including alumni who indulge in nostalgia, would think of it as being "nestled in a little valley in Nashville...

...Students here have made and aired PSAs for gun control, draft counseling, etc...

...Such statement is not only inaccurate but could prove a real hindrance to the further development of peace work in the German Democratic Republic...

...Peace work has been allowed to grow in the GDR in recent years precisely because it is not regarded as a political force...

...We in the West have an obligation to support our fellow peace workers in the GDR, whose efforts are inspiring and diligent...