LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor Gavel to Grovel Gavel to Grovel" (September issue) was a masterpiece. Many of us watching the Iran-contra hearings were outraged at the performance. You said it best. David...
...Rocawich is correct when she points out that correctional policies do affect the size of the prison population...
...In fact, I am so hooked on The Progressive that I have never uttered one word of complaint against your tasteless, ugly, unattractive, and, at times, repulsive illustrations...
...Gary Gibbs Biddeford, Maine The Prison Solution Iwould like to share with you two experiences that help explain why the U.S...
...It was a barbarous act of physical violence...
...The Food and Drug Administration requires labeling for all irradiated products except those whose irradiated ingredients make up only a small part of the total product...
...We must simply choose among them, opting for what is least dangerous...
...There is no more mild and meek person than Richard Miller, No...
...Vince Bielski Cindy Forster Dennis Bernstein San Francisco, California Writing letters for Amnesty International, I read a lot about torture and mistreatment of women...
...But the illustration on Page 17 of Corea (naked, on her back and legs apart) with an FBI agent (naked, with an erect penis) by her side completely misrepresents the facts in the article by portraying the assault in sexual terms...
...Last week, some friends and I were walking the streets of Paris, eating, shopping, museum-visiting, and smoking hashish in between...
...Name withheld on request As one who recently spent more than two years in American jails and prisons, I greatly appreciated Linda Rocawich's article about the growth industry of incarceration...
...incarceration rate is "about double [that] in most Western European nations," as Linda Rocawich reported in "Lock 'em Up" (August issue...
...There is no secrecy...
...The story of Richard Miller, a peace activist with whom I served time in the Federal prison at Sandstone, Minnesota, is a case in point...
...Paul, Minnesota The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...That fourteen countries are irradiating food merely shows that greed and ignorance are not confined to the United States...
...In July, Corea was abducted by three men who beat her, cut her, burned her, and then raped her with a wooden instrument, all to make her talk about her fellow activists...
...Charles D. Hornig San Jose, California As a practicing sociologist active in local politics, I am very much aware of the evils of our society, including the destruction of decency by a rogue Government led by the extremely dangerous Reagan clan...
...Studies published in the world's most prestigious scientific journals, such as Science and Nature, have reported that irradiated food can cause cancer, mutations, and gross birth defects...
...We are victims of our own arrogance, delusions of moral superiority, and historical xenophobia...
...Nowhere in the image is there a sense of torture...
...An FDA spokeswoman, Betty Campbell, says no labeling is required if irradiated food receives further processing...
...Thirty-four countries have approved irradiation in some form, and fourteen are actively treating food with ionizing energy to provide their citizens with more nutritious and healthful food...
...Nothing good is effected by locking people away...
...I shudder at the thought of doing the same thing in almost any city in America...
...Food irradiation has been studied and tested for more than thirty years...
...Knowing that such a charge would be controversial, we were very careful to provide documentation...
...I do not need to be shocked with pictures of violence and rape as in your latest issue...
...Gary Gibbs misinforms your readers by citing studies that have been refuted by well-known scientists around the world...
...For many readers, this sensationalizing probably had the effect of discrediting the article as well, which is a shame, since the evidence is sound...
...Do we really need another story about some saps who go to the big city, lose thousands of dollars, and wind up living on the streets...
...Paul Poresky Myrtle Point, Oregon You people have lost your minds or your souls...
...Americans, who like to think of themselves as "the freest people in the world," simply are not...
...I have nothing good to say about the system...
...How many will want their offspring to enjoy that repulsive item...
...Studies claiming that irradiated food is safe have often been published by the International Atomic Energy Association, whose job it is to promote nuclear proliferation...
...John McWhorter Redwood City, California Zap, Crackle, Pop Gary Gibbs's story on irradiated foods ("Zap, Crackle, Pop," September issue) deserves comment...
...Rob Coleman Wantagh, New York (See the Editor's Memo on Page 4.) Under the Boardwalk Boy, was I disappointed in Barry Jacobs's "Under the Boardwalk" (October issue...
...Richard A. Schwarzlose Evanston, Illinois Ihave been a subscriber to The Progressive for over thirty-five years and believe that you have the greatest publication of truthful political comment in the world...
...If irradiators are proud of their work, why do we see no labels announcing, Treated with Ionizing Radiation...
...Wim G. Jansen Rehoboth, Massachusetts Are you trying to sell copies of the October issue to the Death Squads so they can include your obnoxious drawings with their next death threats...
...Nancy L. Blair Executive Director Council for Food Irradiation Vienna, Virginia The author replies: Nancy Blair is correct when she states that electron-beam accelerators and x-rays can produce ionizing energy that probably has the same results as nuclear-bomb wastes...
...Miller is under a four-year sentence for a nonviolent effort at disarmament at the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas...
...Paul Kabat St...
...The many women swimming and tanning topless did not seem to mind, nor did the less adventurous people out for a day at the beach, most of them families...
...Please, no more such illustrations...
...For reasons of principle, he has refused to work at assigned tasks in the prison system...
...Not only are the violent brutalized, but also the nonviolent and the loved ones of all prisoners...
...Two hundred years of experience should be enough...
...Can't you just see poor old Robert LaFollette turning over in his grave...
...to the Editor The art work belongs because it's so strong...
...Unfortunately, that fact offers no comfort to the unfortunate people who eat the treated foods...
...Andre Bacard Stanford, California Death Squad Graphics Upon seeing the graphics that accompanied our investigative report, "The Death Squads Hit Home" (October issue), our sympathy immediately went out to Yanira Corea, whose torture and rape were illustrated in the issue...
...Almost anywhere in the United States, we would have been frontpage spectacles and county-jail boarders...
...We know the FBI gathered intelligence on the activists, and we argue that there is evidence to suggest that the FBI shared some of this information with El Salvador's security forces...
...There is no such thing as zero risk...
...Finally, Blair is wrong about the FDA's labeling requirements...
...The authors weren't consulted...
...David Stall Alice Stall Salem, Oregon Bravo for "Gavel to Grovel...
...Please don't allow The Progressive to deteriorate into a smutty, sensationalist magazine...
...No one felt compelled to "call the law" on us, nor to commit violence on another naked couple, apparently gay, further down the way...
...But there's beauty in being able to express something openly and gracefully and with wonderful clarity, even if it is the result of pain...
...A woman friend and I recently went skinny-dipping at a public beach outside Rome, Italy...
...The whole prison system is a fiasco...
...Nor do we ever say in the article that the FBI is responsible for the attacks on the Salvadoran community or the torture of Yanira...
...I don't like illustrations like that coming into my home...
...Vince Holschbach Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Since my first issue of The Progressive, I've been greatly moved by the art work because it says so much...
...Electron-beam accelerators and x-rays produce ionizing energy that has the same result—destroying microorganisms that can cause food poisoning and parasites that can cause disease, preventing mold growth, and keeping foods fresher longer...
...Fortunately, Contragate has heroes...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...While the casinos are, admittedly, not much more than legalized theft, we can hardly ask them to provide common-sense courses at each roulette wheel...
...We can never escape all risks...
...He will be forced to fulfill the entire four years of his sentence, spending almost all of that time in solitary confinement...
...Whoever approved that illustration for publication has a drive toward literary suicide...
...Beyond this, the editors should have considered the personal anguish the drawing would cause Corea, who has already suffered enough, and stopped its use...
...I don't like to be made a victim of such art work, nor do I want my children exposed to such unnecessarily harsh art work at their young ages...
...Alvira Downey Steubenville, Ohio You have too little faith in the convictions of your readers...
...I must hide this issue from my children...
...You don't have to brutalize us to make us understand the story of brutality you're telling...
...But the illustration of the severed heads with "courtesy of the FBI" written on them greatly exaggerates our charge against the FBI...
...It does a lot more harm than good to all of us...
...Those investigative reporters who have the self-confidence to stand tall for truth, rather than to grovel to authority...
...Your graphics are an offense to us...
...If people find it horrifying or disgusting—well, life can be those things, too...
...Thus, what is lost is the political nature of the act: The Death Squad attackers hoped to beat her into political submission...
...Along the Seine, in front of the Museum d'Orsay, and on the Champs Elysees, no one felt the moral compulsion or desire to purge society of "undesirable elements" by calling the police...
...We don't need to have these things displayed in The Progressive...
...However, no foreign country is currently irradiating a large portion of its diet...
...How many readers pass on their issues to their children to help steer them in progressive directions...
...Irradiating food doesn't necessarily mean that the food is going to be zapped with gamma rays from a radiation source...
...Scores of scientists at well-known research institutions, universities, and health organizations have published papers that support the safety of food irradiation...
...15249-077, but the correctional system will compel him to stay in prison under harsh conditions until the end of his sentence...
...This policy is consistent with other FDA ingredient-labeling requirements...
...Now I am disappointed and infuriated at the graphic on Page 17 of your October issue...
Vol. 51 • November 1987 • No. 11
