LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor No Ounce of Cure Your remarks on health-maintenance organizations ("No Ounce of Cure," Comment, December issue) did a grave disservice to an industry that may develop into...
...Each person reading this—to focus the issue again where it belongs, on our personal involvement in life and death—was at one moment at the exact stage of development at which thousands of fetuses are being aborted today...
...If you want magic and a lot of hoopla, hire your own staff of attending physicians—and pay through the nose...
...I hope Colman McCarthy and other advocates of peace will learn to base their beliefs on affirmations of the rights of all of us...
...But there is a vast difference between forcible murders of humans and abortions...
...When we start separating ourselves from the grass roots—for whatever reason— we cease to have a movement...
...Yet the opportunities for these students seem limited, at best...
...Andrea Freedman Food First San Francisco, California Antinuclear Nonviolence Though I was pleased to see the "Open Letter to the Antinuclear Movement" signed by Petra K. Kelly, Gert Bastian, and other German peace activists (Reflections, October issue), I believe it must be put into perspective...
...H A freeze, phased reduction, and eventual elimination of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons...
...To end where I began—on the topic of grief-taking—I disappoint many in the anti-abortion movement by not being especially adenoidal in my opposition to the other side...
...I realize that I'm male and Catholic, and probably have a few other liabilities—I forgot, Irish—that should be the masking tape over my mouth when I want to speak on this issue...
...It quotes Zappa as calling himself a "businessman," and notes that he and his wife "have been accumulating their own version of worry-free investments...
...Overpopulation is a major cause of war and human violence...
...Barbara J. Easterling Executive Vice President Communications Workers of America Washington, D.C...
...For several years, the Communications Workers of America has urged the Federal Government to conduct an inquiry that would examine links between work with VDTs and possible risks of adverse pregnancy outcomes among female telephone workers...
...Marc A. Catone Ithaca, New York Batya Friedman and Steve Lyons seem to have had some difficulty defining Frank Zappa—"a rock musician who seems to defy categorization...
...President Alan Garcia unleashes his military on prisoners...
...I'm thinking of the leading feminist in Congress, Representative Mary Rose Oakar, who votes against abortion bills...
...Andi Weiss Bartczak Chapel Hill, North Carolina The author replies: When I wrote my article, I was tempted to leave out any reference to the life-taking violence of abortion...
...It calls for: 11 A verifiable comprehensive nuclear test ban...
...An organization called F.A.C.E...
...Mother Teresa, who says, "If you don't want your baby, give it to me...
...Or else I would have had to endure the larger grief of slinking away from an alliance of radicals, liberals, and feminists that risks much more than I do in its opposition to abortion...
...If people resort to violence because they are not being heard, the solution is not to limit their voice still further...
...I suppose I needed the grief...
...For us poor folk, HMOs are a godsend...
...I guess Zappa said it all in 1967 when he spoke of his intent—and his stock portfolio: "We're only in it for the money...
...Of course it is...
...we represent more than 400,000 workers who use VDTs to perform their jobs, including the 4,000 female operators the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health wishes to study...
...the Music (Fans Against Commercial Exploitation) conducted a massive letter-writing campaign to manufacturers, advertising agencies, and music copy-righters which resulted in ridding the airwaves of two commercials containing the Lennon-McCartney classics, "Help" and "Good Day Sunshine...
...In today's world, where estimates run as high as twenty-five million abortions a year, just to survive to birth is an achievement...
...I cannot be nonviolent about one activity of mine and violent about others...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...they are deciding what is best for them and their world...
...The way to decrease abortions is to create the conditions in which newborn life— i.e., ex-fetal life—can at least be sustained and can possibly flourish...
...Nations that deprive women of decisionmaking rights usually are violent nations...
...Since I find none of these alternatives "peaceful," I would be interested in knowing what alternatives Colman McCarthy can offer...
...Peru has one of the largest military-aid programs going...
...The preliminary findings of our research are available in Education for Action: Food First Guide to Graduate Study with a Focus on Social Change from Food First Books, 1885 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103...
...Unfortunately, in the anti-communist climate in this country, such efforts tend to be ignored as politically naive or not worth mentioning...
...I hope that when students in McCarthy's classes learn about Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., they also study the sexism these men accepted and perpetuated...
...Even clinics within the HMO have begun competing for the scarce resources of limited-policy holders by beefing up their services...
...We must honor the sacredness of other lives...
...Martin Luther King Jr...
...was a Baptist minister who never refuted the sexism of that religion and never encouraged women—even his wife, Cor-etta Scott King—to achieve leadership in his organization...
...Jon Brockopp Frankfurt, West Germany Frank Zappa's Revolt Frank Zappa should be applauded for his zeal in combatting the prissy blue-noses of the Parents' Music Resource Center ("Frank Zappa: Revolt Against Mediocrity," November issue...
...Our organizational endorsement and support of the national freeze movement has always been within the context of our work for unilateral initiatives that are necessary to set the stage for any bilateral agreements...
...Study War No More Thanks to The Progressive and Colman McCarthy for "Study War No More" (November issue...
...Disco occurred around 1975, and music has not been the same since...
...It is an insult to the collective memory of an entire generation that music by the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, and the Beach Boys-music so influential to our values and sensibilities—can be used for the purposes of crass commercialization...
...Life is stopped...
...I haven't made up my mind about Shining Path, but I have made up my mind that I want a better analysis...
...If it is, then how much more violent is birthing, which has killed many women, not all of them pregnant by choice...
...It almost seems that a plot was devised by the music industry in the early 1970s to dilute the lyrics and inventiveness of the great music of the 1960s...
...Army to fight a "drug war" in that region...
...Recently, however, those experiences changed...
...Peace movements are simply not top-down affairs...
...Richard Deats Fellowship of Reconciliation Nyack, New York Abortion and Violence Peace studies sounds like a wonderful idea, but it's only an empty hope if those studies are sexist and oppose women's rights...
...But I do have one qualification, as does everyone else reading this: We're all former fetuses...
...I, too, support nonviolence, but I respect and honor the work of the Plowshares people...
...That is why the Fellowship of Reconciliation four years ago began to place major emphasis on U.S.-Soviet understanding as a necessary counterpart of our disarmament program...
...Zappa is also right about the state of Top Forty contemporary rock music—pure pabulum with little insight or innovation...
...Juli Loesch of Pro-Lifers for Survival, a group that opposes militarism, capital punishment, abortion, and other terrors as a matter of consistency...
...McCarthy's experience leads him to believe that there may be hundreds of thousands of students out there, "waiting to have their hearts turned...
...I feel empowered when I hear about Greenham Common women cutting through a fence and dancing on a missile silo...
...Colman McCarthy Washington, D.C...
...And the religious biases of antifeminist "pro-life" (pro-mandatory motherhood) factions of society should not be permitted to define the viewpoints of peace studies...
...The President of the United States is sending the U.S...
...It's about time we stopped perpetuating the myth that college students have no social consciousness and started providing inspiration to study peace, social change, preventive health care, democratic management, and other tools of a more just society...
...The article was well-balanced—too much so...
...To suggest that Shining Path is responsible for all this is ridiculous...
...Their portfolio of government bonds and seven stocks...
...This has included establishing links with both officially sanctioned and independent bodies in the Eastern bloc, sponsoring peace-oriented visits by Soviets and Americans to each others' countries, and carrying out educational efforts that deal with U.S.Soviet relations...
...I have been working as a staff member with a German peace group since last September, and I have had close ties to Germany for a number of years...
...With the introduction of competitive HMOs, the services in my HMO, which previously went unchallenged, were radically improved...
...Though no one wants to defend violence, the fact is that some people have become very cynical and angry because of the consistent refusal of the German government to do anything about nuclear-power stations, fuel-reprocessing plants, or, of course, Euromissiles...
...The letter you published has caused a fair amount of division here...
...Alice Begun West Palm Beach, Florida The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Does anyone see abortion as a life-enhancer...
...There are hundreds of professionals, in traditional disciplines as well as in alternative programs, who are teaching and doing research with a social-change perspective...
...Women who do not have the right to safe abortions all too often become dead women, victims of back-alley abortions and infections...
...By seeking to squelch such a study, the "pro-family" Reagan Administration is chilling the right of female VDT operators to know whether they are unwittingly jeopardizing their ability to bear normal children by carrying out their job duties...
...With other groups—Pax Christi, Sojourners, Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and more—we underscored the importance of the Soviets' cessation of nuclear-weapons testing and called for a similar test ban by the United States during four days of civil disobedience in early August...
...Someone thought our development was sacred enough to let it continue...
...Daniel Berri-gan and Dick Gregory, who believe with Gandhi that "nonviolence has to be all-pervasive...
...11 A transfer of resources from military to human needs...
...There are basic reasons for the fact that peace is not given a chance in most of the world, or in our lives...
...For a woman, the alternatives to abortion are birth, suicide, or madness...
...Deryle Perryman Denver, Colorado Fan Mail Philip C. Roettinger's story of the crimes committed against the Guatemalan people ("The Company, Then and Now," The Last Word, August issue) deserves every award given for telling the truth—if such awards exist...
...Let's hope more musicians will have the courage displayed by Frank Zappa...
...Women who seek to end unwanted pregnancies are not committing violence...
...And I can only wonder what Kelly and Bastian would say to the struggle in South Africa...
...Another abomination has been inflicted on the songs we grew up with in the 1950s and 1960s: Turn on your television set and witness the proliferation of commercials using songs we once cherished as our own to sell everything from raisins to automobiles...
...More Anti-Red Than Thou Suzanne Gordon's article on anticommunism in the peace movement ("More Anti-Red Than Thou," November issue) is regrettably true...
...The well-being of millions of women workers is too important to be sacrificed...
...Who needs the grief that the one line—"abortions account for some 1.5 million deaths to fetuses"—would predictably evoke...
...And while the present state of the educational system doesn't make it easy for people like McCarthy and his students to pursue progressive courses of study, there is hope in the sheer number of students and teachers who can shape the future of this system...
...A Government-sponsored inquiry could shed light on whether VDTs pose no danger to their operators or whether these efficient machines are incubators of tragedy...
...Ernest W. Dopp Madison, Wisconsin Darkness on the Shining Path Something about Lucy Komisar's "Darkness on the Shining Path" (Datelines, October issue) rubbed me the wrong way...
...Ann Forfreedom Oakland, California There I was eagerly reading "Study War No More" when I was stopped in my tracks by "peaceful alternatives to the violence of abortion...
...Like McCarthy, we believe that the picture is not as bleak as the polls of "self-centered" college students might have us think...
...Perhaps an article in the September issue of Money magazine offers some clarification...
...I was born into one of the oldest HMOs in this country and for the most part my experiences paralleled those you mentioned...
...H An increase in people-to-people contact...
...Feminists for Life, a Chicago-based group of pacifists that also says no to all forms of violence...
...For more information, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to F.A.C.E...
...Music should be more than "another hairdo and another zipper...
...I object to the argument that the guerrillas' goal is "to force the militarization of the region...
...Most importantly, a health-maintenance organization's focus is on preventive treatment...
...The right to define and have decisionmaking power over one's body is a basic human right, not an act of violence...
...Each top-ten song has the same disco drum beat, as if done by the same studio drummer...
...Gandhi chose celibacy, forcing his wife, Kasturba, to share that lifestyle...
...At present, we are promoting the People's Peace Treaty (with English/Russian text) that has been endorsed by a number of American and Soviet organizations...
...I have never thought of abortion as "violent...
...has had an average annual return of 20 per cent and is now worth about $150,000...
...Gary Romeo Royal Oak, Michigan Terminal Inaction The Progressive reports that the Reagan Administration and the BellSouth Corporation have sought to undermine a study that would investigate whether radiation emitted by video-display terminals is harmful to VDT operators ("Terminal Inaction," Comment, October issue...
...Unless we deal with the irrational anti-Sovietism in the United States, efforts for disarmament will continue to be undermined by the Cold Warriors in our midst...
...CWA has a special interest in this emerging issue...
...He lists abortions along with military and nonmili-tary wars, deaths by handguns, spousal batterings, etc...
...We recently took up this question at the Institute for Food and Development Policy...
...Colman McCarthy's list of violent acts and consequences around the world and in the United States ("Study War No More," November issue) contains a glaring inaccuracy...
...LETTERS to the Editor No Ounce of Cure Your remarks on health-maintenance organizations ("No Ounce of Cure," Comment, December issue) did a grave disservice to an industry that may develop into the best health-care system in the world...
...Until a comprehensive study is carried out, the question of whether a cause-effect or contributory relationship exists between VDT use and abnormal pregnancies will continue to cast a cloud of doubt over our nation's workplaces...
...I haven't even picketed a Planned Parenthood Center, much less screamed "murderer" at women walking into an abortion clinic...
...Where can students go if they are interested in combining their academic training with their social goals and values...
...McCarthy's firing from American University is just one example of the bureaucratic attempts that will be made to limit both teachers and students to more mainstream, less critical subjects...
...The cost is $3.00, plus $1.00 for shipping and handling...
...the Music, Box 182, Ithaca, NY 14851...
...Colman McCarthy may know something about war, but he has not had to decide what to do, quite personally, about a possible pregnancy...
...Instead, I oppose abortion in what I believe is the more effective way: by working for economic justice, for better health care, for better programs for the poor...
...There fs still the' question, and I am not begging it, Is abortion violent...
...This is made possible by the low-cost mass approach...
Vol. 51 • January 1987 • No. 1
