Mailbox

[March 14th, 2007]

BOOKSTORE SHOWS ITS HORSE SENSE

One of the reasons PSU Progressive Student Union and our coalition of 17 campus groups moved our weekly Progressive Film Festival on Saturday nights to Laughing Horse Bookstore in the fall of 2006 was because Laughing Horse, as shown in your story on the recent Mary Starrett controversy ["Changing Horses," WW, March 7, 2007], knows its right from its left.

Besides being a pro-life advocate and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, Starrett, if she had spoken at Laughing Horse, in some ways would have continued to drain away needed energy from actual organizing, whether to stop the war in Iraq, stop the genocide in Darfur, to support the Coke-Odwalla Boycott for human rights and union rights in Colombia, or even address global social justice issues like AIDS and poverty.

Activists in Portland will recall that Ace Hayes, who used to run guns to the Sandinistas, for a long time held "Secret Government Seminars" in S.E. Portland. Ace did great in helping the Sandinistas overthrow the U.S.-backed dictator Somoza. But when conspiracy theorists spend years researching intricacies of alleged conspiracies, or whether 9/11 was an "inside job," that isn't organizing.

In addition to supporting international, progressive films, activists at PSU have successfully gotten the Taco Bell outlet in the cafeteria removed from school in support of the now-successful national Taco Bell Boycott for a living wage for Florida farm workers. We organized the PSU Conference on Darfur, Sudan and Genocide (with Mohamed Yahya, from Darfur, and Ruth Messinger, anti-genocide activist from New York City), and the PSU Conference on Human Rights and Labor Rights with keynoters Scott Nova from WRC, the Worker Rights Consortium, in Washington, D.C., and Liana Foxvog, municipal sweatfree coordiniator for SweatFree Communities in Florence, Mass.

Moreover, individual Laughing Horse Bookstore volunteers (the store is an all-volunteer store, with no paid staff) have generously donated of their own money and time for anti-war, pro-labor projects PSU Progressive Student Union has organized. To quote the bookstore's own slogan, "Be the Revolution." As the recent decision to nix Starrett talking at the store reflects, that revolution includes women's reproductive rights as a fundamental value.

Lew Church, Northeast 10th Street

SINS OF OMISSION

Re: Your story, "The latest battle between Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and Dan Meek rages over voter registration cards" ["Party On, Party Off," WW, March 7, 2007]:

The Secretary of State refuses to print accurate voter registration cards (VRC), insisting upon using outdated cards that omit two new political parties. We are not claiming that omission of the Independent Party and the Working Families Party is meant to benefit the Democratic Party. This omission hurts all citizens relying on the VRC for information. Omitting the names of some political parties misinforms citizens at the crucial time they are choosing how to participate as voters. It is especially damaging to new parties, because the voter may well assume the new party has ceased to qualify. After all, its name is not on the official voter registration card!

Here's another example. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) prints two versions of the VRC under "Motor Voter" laws, supervised by the Secretary of State. The Working Families Party qualified as a minor political party in June 2006, and the Independent Party submitted sufficient signatures on December 6, 2006. Yet, the DMV printed a year's supply of new cards in January 2007 but left off both of the new parties. Imagine if DMV had omitted "Republican" from the January printing. Do you really think that the Secretary of State would claim that it didn't matter because "anyone can write Republican on the ‘other' line"? Or that the inaccurate cards should continue to be used only because it would cost a few thousand dollars to print correct cards?

Linda Williams, Chief petitioner, Independent Party of Oregon

SINCERITY COUNTS

In reference to "Truck You," the article about Darius Hardwick's anti-abortion rolling billboard [WW, Feb. 28, 2007]:

Am I nauseated and offended by Hardwick's rig? Yes, indeed--but not for the reasons he would like me to be. I am nauseated and offended because people of Hardwick's ilk are so bleeping insincere. He doesn't do this to stop abortions; he does this because he likes to shock, he likes the attention, he likes to cause a sensation, he likes to be a momentary celebrity.

Like so many of his anti-abortion compatriots, Hardwick is missing the boat. For starters, pro-choice people are not pro-abortion; we just recognize that this is an option that needs to be available for women in certain circumstances, and that it should be safe and legal. Additionally, many in the anti-abortion crowd are doing a great job of making a lot of noise on the issue, but doing very little in a practical sense to achieve their purported goal.

If Hardwick et al. really wanted to reduce or maybe even stop abortions, they would work at eliminating the reasons women have abortions. But how many of them teach teenagers about birth control? Make sure birth control is available to all who need it? Provide financial support to someone who just can't afford another child? Employ a woman who can no longer perform her job because she's pregnant? Provide a home for a young pregnant woman whose parents have kicked her out? Or adopt an unplanned child themselves?

Until the anti-abortion crowd starts doing these things, and doing them in large numbers, they speak empty words and wave meaningless banners. And, apparently, drive ridiculous rolling billboards that simply make us take them less and less at their word.

Linda C. Pritchard, Vancouver, Wash.