LETTERS

...You could even let her use the words that Mother Jones wouldn't, including "eat pussy...

...We will live where she lives...

...The so-called Democrats have made it abundantly clear that they would much prefer to be Republicans...

...Unfortunately, the great majority of us ignore the ugly truth: We have a part in promoting and supporting the disease which is eroding our society...

...The Democrats became, similar to many organizations, "fat, dumb, and happy...

...What does not get reported is that many queers do not think that we should be equal-opportunity killers but, rather, that the military should be disbanded...

...I would like to be an ostrich, bury my head in the sand, ignore the news of the next year or two...

...Heavens to Betsy, is there still some Democrat who is that old, who can use "class warfare" and win...

...I don't hear any angels...

...Stuart Van Orden Perkins, Oklahoma This election shows that we misjudged the power of money, and the unity of the Christian Right...

...I did, however, stop looking for any coverage of queer issues in it...

...I ran with the communists in the 1930s when, actually, at great personal cost, we organized seamen into that waterfront revolt that changed the welfare of seamen for the next sixty years...

...However, while it is great that The Progressive is now covering queers, most of the coverage still appears to be from a heterosexual perspective—that is, it is primarily either about gays in the military or about AIDS...

...And they forgot the need for local organizations and candidates who spoke for them and to them...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...The evidence, some of which June Jordan cites, is all too clear...

...Williamson Clackamas, Oregon Where I Live Now June Jordan's searing indictment of things as they are in January's Progressive offers welcome relief from the persistent tendency of leftish pundits, editorialists, commentators, aspirants for office, et al., to see light at the end of the tunnel...

...however, you'd barely know it from reading The Progressive...

...We do know that we can sometimes intervene to our own advantage in local affairs...

...Like me, but for different reasons...

...Uh, uh...

...Why don't you hire Sarah Schulman to write a regular column...

...Not only was Schulman as provocative and thoughtful as ever, it was extremely refreshing to read a piece in The Progressive from a radical queer perspective—a perspective that is rarely seen in these pages...

...We ought to understand, however, the extent of our failures to transform habitually destructive behavior that now, it is clear, compromises both the human and the American futures, which are all of a piece in any case...

...I'm not poor, but I am a busy member of a dual-career family, and I have, with some regularity, shopped at Wal-Mart...

...I am not fooled by Wal-Mart's propaganda, but I am not taken in by Main Street's, either...

...The point is, the people just aren't there...

...And praise is needed where something positive happens...

...The poet June Jordan makes the statement in clear, eloquent, and passionately personal language...

...Another thing that works against your third party is that masterful deception, the pledge of allegiance...

...Only 37 percent of the electorate voted in the last election...

...We come from the same social instincts...

...This will be hard in the next two years...

...Where I live now," she says, "California will spend two-and-a-half times as much money on prisons as it will spend on education...

...If you promise me that you will give up this hilarious premise of salvaging this farce called "democracy," I promise you that you can have the ribbons and medals I have squirreled away around this joint...

...In this case, Sarah Anderson's blatant boosterism, culminating in her pride in the new teal green awning, is painfully ironic, celebrating, as it does, a Main Street in a small town in Sinclair Lewis's home state...

...Unlike Schulman, I did not stop reading The Progressive in the mid-1980s...

...They started a third "Pacific Party" here in podunk Portland, Oregon, during the frenzy of approaching the Gulf war...

...I dragged my ass into it, hoping to hear that we had learned from Vietnam...

...If neither party can excite, interest, or energize almost two-thirds of registered voters, what can anyone expect from a minority government...

...I guess that would make Congress a corporate day-care center for predominately greedy children playing at being responsible leaders...

...I wish that I had...

...When the vanishing Left can understand that there are few reasons for hope and good reason to acknowledge the fact then, paradoxically perhaps, there will be reason for hope...

...When they drew up a slate to run for state offices, the lead dog boasted of his participation in the decimation of that nation's people as a U.S...

...There also needs to be a stress on positive achievements of labor unions, the ecology movement, our legislatures...

...While the criticisms of sprawl are legitimate, the concern with "one-stop shopping culture" signals the smug self-righteousness of an elitist who would never be caught dead in Wal-Mart...

...When he was asked why, considering his voting record, he hasn't changed registration as no one asked Richard Shelby of Alabama, he simply said, "I can't because the Republicans have always represented the party of the rich and my people don't relate to the rich folks' problems...

...was correct in noting the impact of PACs...

...Her willingness to see a "useless, huge light above our perishing reasons for hope" is honest and healthy...

...Speaking as an abandoned Democrat, I was tempted to stay home out of pure frustration and disgust...

...Randal Holden Weimar, California Wal-Mart's War on Main Street Iam disappointed, though hardly shocked, to see The Progressive get sucked into the capitalist versus capitalist fight against Wal-Mart ("Wal-Mart's War on Main Street," by Sarah Anderson, November issue...

...Then, a few years ago, The Progressive, like much of the straight Left, "discovered" that the modern queer movement had been around for twenty years—a "discovery" that seems to have been made more because of queer activism than because of a sudden understanding of homophobia and/or heterosexism...

...As a retaliatory measure we might try cutting back on our conspicuous consumption, and maybe even take a run at boycotting some of the more offensive corporate machines...

...I hate to add the Religious Right, but add them, and your plurality is gone...

...You watch these suckers, from union meetings to city hall, repeating this nonsense, and you will know why it ain't gonna work...

...But when you get the Third Party itch, just lock the door, close the blinds, don the fruit salad, and parade around until you get to feeling better...

...Then there is always Ross Perot and his loyal followers, "United We Stand," to free the chimeric MIAs and POWs of Vietnam...

...I am not sure, however, that this poses much of a threat to our national well-being since, it seems to me, corporate interests run this country and most of the world...

...Your coverage is a step in the right direction, but, while well-intentioned, it also displays the lack of an out queer writer to report on queer issues from a radical queer perspective...

...I quit voting when Ronnie baby was elected, after fifty years on the Democratic ticket...

...Robert Kaplan San Francisco, California The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...June Jordan is wonderful, but she can't do it all...

...The influence of Ralph Reed's calm, transparently reasonable approach, even Pat Robertson's quasi-humorous perspectives, plus the Rush Limbaugh support, have created a new kind of volunteer that the older Democratic machines did not have—middle-class people who feel that somehow God is on their side...

...While I am a long-time avid reader, the biggest drawback to The Progressive is its susceptibility to sentimentality...

...Indeed, there is a lot more to queer life and politics than just these two issues...

...Pardon me while I barf...

...Sure, I'm an old guy, victim of three wars, and, laughably, a "veteran...

...The lone Democrat in Oklahoma who survived the onslaught was Bill Brewster, who is on the board of the NRA...

...the last, that government, from local to federal, skinned me well...

...One nation, under God (whoa...

...No, sir...

...I hope to see a grass-roots movement started here in Massachusetts for the New Party and/or a coalition of third parties...

...Furthermore, while AIDS is certainly important, not only is it not a gay issue per se, many PWAs are living, not dying...

...I paid my dues, believe me...

...indivisible (hee hee hee), with liberty and justice for all...

...Peter W. Denzer Houston, Minnesota It's Howdy Doody Time Thanks to Susan Douglas for her column, "It's Howdy Doody Time" (October issue), with its references to "sand-lot journalism" and the juvenile antics of many politicians...

...I wonder how many of that 63 percent didn't bother for the same reasons...

...I hear June Jordan...

...While a national mood is trumpeted by the talking-to-each-other pundits, 63 percent of the voters in this last election voted for none of the above...

...Has anyone bothered to ask where the other 63 percent was...

...It is time we progressives, liberals, and leftists united on minimum goals...

...I'm sorry The Progressive is now belittling those who "would die for a cheap pair of underwear...

...One leg of my tripod stool says I have been screwed by the very unions I built...

...Human destructiveness, violence, stupidity, greed, and ignorance seem to be building toward some increasingly awful climax...

...But from the left and the right we pretend to hear herald angels promising better times...

...The other factor that is either disregarded or overlooked is the so-called Christian Coalition...

...They will show up for the shearing, oh my yes...

...Voters have every reason to be cynical, since the basic human values most of us share (and which our political representatives advocate vociferously) are continually subverted in the opportunistic push for increased corporate profits...

...But anything else...

...Daniel H. Neubourg Millersville, Pennsylvania New Party Time Re: "New Party Time" (Daniel Cantor, January issue...

...We need to catch the weaknesses of our chosen representatives, Republican and Democrat...

...another, that the ship owner did me in...

...There is no reason in a universe "without design or intention" to expect any particular outcome in ongoing processes of any kind...

...This minority made the difference in many races throughout the country...

...Maryellen Lake Becket, Massachusetts Ed Garvey's "Can the Democrats Be Saved...

...Stir in Rush and his ditto heads and you have a pretty goodly number of lost souls...

...Gone, Dan...

...Very, very different reasons...

...Let's take back some of our power...

...The Republicans have acquired two subsidiary groups that were involved enough to get out and vote: the NRA and the Christian Coalition...

...Army captain...

...To do that, we need unity, analysis, and hope...

...Nancy E. Macdonald Sumter, South Carolina An Interview with Sarah Schulman Thank you for publishing the interview with Sarah Schulman (October issue...

...But while Congress plays, the oligarchy goes on about its business in a deadly serious fashion...

...At the age of eighty-two, I wonder, as I look at the Twenty-first Century, what will happen...

...I can't tell you what they are for since I sure don't know...

...No shows...

...I wish I could advise you where to go to surrender...

...Unfortunately, the opposite is necessary...

...As long as we addic-tively seek to indulge our wants, while pretending they're our needs (when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping), we will continue to put our money, and consequently our power, into the hands of those who are the real abusers of humanity...