Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor Call Centers Aren't the Answer I read Amitabh Pal's report on the call centers in India ("Indian by Day, American by Night," August issue), and it confirmed my worst fears....
...In 2000, there were twenty-one organized state Green parties-ten with a ballot line-and we had elected eighty-seven Greens to office...
...In effect, an American contractor working in an Iraqi prison could torture an Iraqi detainee without fear of reprisals in the country...
...I wrote many impassioned letters to our elected officials, from the President down to my state representatives...
...post office, for instance, is staffed partly by Malayalees from Kerala who speak English with a distinctive central Kerala accent and partly by Chinese tellers who speak English with a Chinese accent...
...One threat she doesn't mention is that all U.S...
...Thomas admits that journalists really dropped the ball after 9/11 by allowing themselves to be bullied...
...The Iraq War is one of the biggest military mistakes our government has made...
...For more information, go to www.nirs.org and www.citizenalert.org...
...At what point can we expect to be taken seriously by The Progressive...
...I teach communication at an American university, and we never dock our linguistically diverse student body for conducting their presentations or briefings in "accented" English...
...Her reporting on this year's convention in Milwaukee ("Greens at a Crossroads," August issue) was only slightly less disrespectful...
...It should never be unpatriotic to ask tough questions of our elected officials...
...that encourages "outsourcing" of such ancillary work...
...They are not like you and me...
...The bad faith of all this identity-posturing-the accents, the names, the armchair culture classes-would perhaps come to a halt if the call center CEOs knew that in America, people of different accents and different races communicate with each other, especially in the service industry, without much difficulty at all...
...Trained as a bomber pilot and ready to do his duty, he was spared because he was the eldest son of a fatherless family...
...If I get your gist, the Green Party without Nader is nothing...
...I wondered: "Is that supervisor thinking that the inmates are not human...
...Letters may be e-mailed to: editorial@progressive.org...
...For some reason, I thought that the establishment and growth of a progressive third party would be something The Progressive would celebrate-that your editors and reporters would take our budding movement seriously...
...God help us if it is...
...Did it jeopardize the troops to question the war before it started...
...Safety costs money...
...Jeff Robertson San Bernardino, California Scary Edict I appreciated Matthew Rothschild's "Occupation's New Guise" (Editor's Note, August issue...
...Patricia Raynor Burke, Virginia What Inmates Need Anne-Marie Cusac correctly points out ("Abu Ghraib, USA," July issue) that sadism is practiced in American prisons...
...I traveled to Washington, D.C., and participated in one of the largest anti-war rallies held there...
...This edict gives immunity to American and foreign contractors from Iraqi law while making Iraqis driving without licenses subject to jail time...
...Like him, I am encouraged by the willingness of that generation to bear witness to the insanity of war...
...I am a baby boomer, fifty-one years old, and my father died this June...
...My father's brother James did fight in that war and later in Korea...
...How wrong I was, and how disappointed I am...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's inexplicable decision to relax rather than strengthen the reactor fire safety standard (especially in the face of potential terrorist attacks and an increasingly decrepit collection of reactors) makes sense when we keep in mind that the corporations work for profit, not safety...
...Jeff Peterson, co-chair St...
...He became a fighter jet test pilot and one day purposely flew his jet straight into the ground...
...A prison official recently told me during an orientation, "Don't shake the inmates' hands...
...Today, there are forty-four organized state Green parties-twenty-three guaranteed ballot lines-and we've elected 205 people to office...
...All prisoners in any jail or prison in the world deserve to develop their positive potential...
...Let us all fund educational programs in jails and prisons so that inmates can learn the necessary skills-social, cognitive, emotional, and moral-to function in and out of prison with dignity...
...Dad loathed George Bush, and he encouraged me to escalate my antiwar activities...
...Gayatri Devi Richardson, Texas Zinn's Encouragement I just read Howard Zinn's column ("Dissent at the War Memorial," August issue) concerning his experiences at the new World War II memorial...
...We have more than 400 Greens running for office this year, all on a platform emphasizing the same things your magazine stands for: social justice, grassroots democracy, ecological wisdom, and nonviolence...
...My neighborhood U.S...
...I attended the Green Party's national convention in Denver in 2000 and afterward read Ruth Conniff's condescending depiction of us as a "hodgepodge of activists and hippies with a peculiar focus on legalizing hemp...
...reassuring words are cheap...
...Reading about the workers' wages, the bizarre name changes, and the almost sweatshop-like work environment makes me angry at a corporate climate inside the U.S...
...Kimora New York, New York The Media Dropped the Ball Thank you for Elizabeth DiNovella's interview with Helen Thomas (August issue...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness, and may appear either in the magazine or on its web page...
...Please include your city and state...
...Nuclear nonproliferation, including the decommissioning of all nuclear reactors, needs to be at the forefront of political activism in this country today...
...The customers understand the clerks, and the clerks understand the customers...
...Croix Valley Green Party Luck, Wisconsin The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Don't get near them...
...She still managed to quote someone who referred to us as "kooky"-the same descriptor she used four years ago...
...Larry A. Sakin Tucson, Arizona Conniff Wrong About Greens When I helped found the Wisconsin Green Party in 1988, I had already been a Progressive reader for at least a decade...
...Thank you, Howard Zinn, for an encouraging piece of commentary...
...In 1996, there were only ten organized state Green parties-five with a ballot line-and we had elected forty people to office...
...Before George Bush launched his illegal war of aggression, I tried everything I could as an ordinary citizen to stop this catastrophe from happening...
...Vince Lawrence Wintersville, Ohio Reactor Threats Kudos to Anne-Marie Cusac for her timely and chilling piece on the new nuclear hazard ("Fire Hazard," August issue...
...Or is the real danger what they've faced every day now for eighteen-plus months with no end in sight...
...This edict is truly a symbol of Bush democracy in action...
...reactors regularly emit radiation into our drinking water and soil on a relentless and legally protected basis...
...However, he forgot to mention one of the more scary edicts issued by Paul Bremer right before the Coalition Provisional Authority left Iraq like a thief in the night...
...The press corps was supposed to protect us but ultimately failed...
...I never knew him, but I have been told that after Korea he withdrew into himself and suffered severe bouts of depression that eventually led him to take his life...
...As a prison reformer, I routinely teach and conduct research in American prisons and jails...
...You see, he loved his brother deeply and never stopped mourning his loss so many years ago...
...People commit crimes because they suffer from addictions, mental illnesses, and/or because they were told too many times that they "would never amount to anything...
...The cartoon accompanying Conniff's latest column was in the style of posters one sees advertising lost dogs, with the hand-lettered words "last seen November 2000" under a sketch of a forlorn-looking David Cobb...
...Bravo to Cusac for keeping the nuclear nightmare in plain sight- where it belongs...
Vol. 68 • October 2004 • No. 10
