Monthly Archives: October 2004

To my relatives

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I have to write you. The country is divided, and families are divided over very profound issues. Do we let these divisions stand?

I say we owe it to each other and the world to try to understand the other. This is no time to agree to disagree. Not while iraqi civilians are dying, while the environment is being ravaged, while economic policies are causing death and suffering to billions, including bringing deprivation to millions at home.

You may have heard of a half million protesers in NYC the day before the RNC. You may have heard it was “tens of thousands.” (Technically true: FIFTY tens of thousands.) Why this fact was misrepresented to you is for you to figure out. But conversely, why would anyone want to exaggerate it?

Do you doubt the 500,000 figure? And do you think those protesters were out there on some kind of ego trip? Some kind of adventure to mix it up with the cops? Do you doubt that those social conscious political groups, labor unions, health care activists, civil rights advocates, students and seniors, were out there on the streets for delusional reasons?

Think back about what we know know about Vietnam. Think about those who protested the war. From the very beginning didn’t they prove to be right? Wouldn’t we all have wished to have been on their side?

Have you seen any protesters who’ve turned out to be wrong? Lynch mobs perhaps, or the KKK or other moral supremists I suppose. But mass protests led by students and social reformers, have been about progressive causes now fully embraced by their opponents.

Think of the causes: for the abolition of slavery, for women’s right to vote, for the rights of workers, for civil rights, and against things like colonialism, like apartheid, like the tanks in Tieneman Square, like the Berlin Wall. When students and intellectuals protest, it’s usually against really bad things.

These days all over the world the protests are against totalitarian oppression by way of war and trade, against corporate malfeasance, against environmental devastation.

(To be continued.)

The thank-the-soldier-not-the-poet chain email

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Zell Miller resurrected the “THANK THE SOLDIER, NOT THE POET” spiel at the RNC. It had circulated more than a year ago as one of those sappy emails. I dug up the response I used back then.

Hello!
Thank you for your lovely “The Soldier” poem. I have to disagree with your point a little. While it makes sense to be thankful to the soldiers who have served to protect our freedoms, their task is nothing to glorify.

For example, you can thank the 11 year old child laborer in Indonesia for making your running shoes, certainly you should. But do you want to glorify and justify the necessity of her role? Her daily ordeal is as involuntary as what we are requiring of our soldiers.

I don’t believe a soldier has rarely been anything more, throughout history, than the hapless uneducated joe who didn’t know enough to get out of the way.

Whatever has been accomplished through war is to the credit of leaders and politicians. Would you agree perhaps that when leaders and politicians have aspired to moral and humanitarian goals it would have been due to the influence their education? The extent of that education was no doubt courtesy of: the poet, the reporter, the campus organizer, and I could add, the minister.

Supporting our troops does not mean checking your brain at the door.

Get your own radio station

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I took umbrage with the INDEPENDENT reader last week who responded to a call for more public input into public radio station KRCC news programming with the cry “Get your own radio station!”

Isn’t that the old “love it or leave it” retort?

While efforts to develop a community owned radio station are underway, let’s not ignore that the Colorado Springs public already has its own radio station: KRCC. We love it, and we’d love for it to be better.

No one wants to politicize KRCC. Rather, we’d prefer to see more balance in its news coverage. If NPR is your idea of non-partisan news reporting you are mistaken. Last week’s Indy “white wash” issue was full of stories you didn’t hear even on NPR. What does anybody have against hearing the real news?

NPR beat the war drums like every other corporate mouthpiece. Even this summer they under-reported the half million turn-out at the RNC peace march. NPR’s political agenda is I believe unforgivable.

The traditional obstruction to public input at KRCC is always exasperating. A Prairie Home Companion would not be on KRCC but for the lobbying efforts of KRCC listeners. Imagine that! The Thomas Jefferson Hour as well.

The KRCC managers are not neutral, they are obstinate. Let’s get them to air some real grassroots news and see how much more popular the station will become, again thanks to its listeners.

If you’d like your programming opinions to be heard, The Pike Peak Media Alliance has set up a website to gather your ideas. At myKRCC.org we can accumulate public input into a groundswell KRCC management will no longer be able to deny. Let’s reclaim KRCC for the public radio station it is supposed to be. The music’s fine. Who’s afraid of a little informative news?

Reprinted from The Independent