WW welcomes letters to the editor via mail, e-mail or fax. Letters must be signed by the author and include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Preference will be given to letters of 250 words or less. AD NAUSEAM I applaud your article on 10 stories of 1999 not covered by the mainstream media (March 29, 2000). Story number two caught my eye--it is tragic that pharmaceutical companies put heaps of money into developing drugs that help people with such superficial problems as sexual impotence, baldness and skin wrinkles when that same money could be used to provide cures for people dying of preventable diseases in poor countries. I wonder what creates the market for such silly products in a rich country like the U.S.? Hmmm--perhaps we need look no further than the Willamette Week, a typical issue of which contains ads for anti-wrinkle creams, sex-related products and services, hair removal, plastic surgery and hair salons. I do not blame the Willamette Week for taking such ads, but it does make me think that the scandalous thing is not pharmaceutical companies responding to market demand so much as the fact that the demand exists in the first place. Nathan Teske Northeast Alameda Street THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM I decided to write this upon reading H.V. Claytor Jr.'s March 29 Allah's Math column, "Are You Scared of the Revolution?" I agreed with the author's view regarding the lack of originality coming from "artists" (I'm not sure if that term even applies here) such as Ja Rule, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek and the like. Unfortunately, Claytor has no ability to recognize originality; he states that Eminem is "one of the wackest cats to grab the mic." I myself am not a big fan of Eminem, but I am a fan of hip-hop and can appreciate a truly skilled and original MC. Eminem comes with a style that isn't comparable to anyone else's in the game. Claytor also states that he feels too much hip-hop is made for "the dough instead of artistic props." But at the same time, he feels that Nas, who collaborated on an R&B pop single with Missy Elliot, deserves respect. Hmmm.... It's a shame that you couldn't find someone who knows something about hip-hop to write the hip-hop column. David Speranza Southeast 39th Avenue BOOK LEARNING While recent Reed graduates watched Powell's Books and its owner, Michael Powell, sink into the darkness of stale '60s liberalism, longstanding customers observed other changes ["Powell's City Divided," March 15, 2000]. Do only unreformed '60s liberals presently sniff an odor of arrogance among a number of Powell's staff members? When Michael comes into my Oriental rug store (where he finds merchandise that is appealing but unaffordable for his lifestyle) he is modest and polite. Employees like him, whether or not they know who he is. Shopping at Powell's, we on the public side of the counter would like to respect all of the employees. Some are pleasant and exceptionally helpful. But it's difficult to respect others who reside worlds above us, intoxicated, it seems, by self-immersion in the rectified juices of pure belief, pure justice, and pure politics. Back in the 1970s I asked Michael Powell's father, then proud of his 3,000-square-foot space, what accounted for his remarkable success. He quickly mentioned his son, Michael. No less important, in his view, were his employees. "Always hire people who know more than you do, about something," he said. Sometime in the '80s, in the transition to a more sizable business, it became impossible to uniformly follow that principle. At present many employees seem content with who they are, versus how they might be of assistance. Nonetheless, Michael grew into his father's shoes and expanded his father's spirit of philanthropy in more directions than Powell's has aisles and departments. The issues of the '60s were desperately real and not all of us failed the test. It is tempting to be sad about an era wherein the pursuit of just causes casts such desperate nets that Powell's, an odd but wonderful institution, gets hauled onto the decks of protest. Perhaps it was not obvious in those privileged classes on activism that the pie of justice can be sliced so very, very thin that finally one can not tell whether you're tasting pie or the cutting edge of the knife that sliced it. James Opie Southwest Sherwood Drive 'WELL-COMPENSATED'? GET REAL. Understanding the economic inequality seems beyond the means of most journals. Your coverage of Powell's City of Working Poor is a case in point ["Powell's City Divided," WW, March 15, 2000]. Cover and article both speak of Powell's "well-compensated" employees, comparing their average $9 an hour with the lesser rents paid to clerks at chain bookstores. Get real. A couple working at Powell's would take home under $40,000 a year, which would put them in the second 20 percent of non-elderly couples in Oregon [ctj.org/whop/whop_or.pdf]. If income in Oregon is a five-step ladder, Powell's workers get to stand on the second step: Whoopee. Comparing Powell's booksellers to other booksellers makes some sense, but is Powell's compensation "good" by "retail standards," as you claim? Since retail sales folk in our area earn on average $10.16 an hour[www.olmis.org/olmis/olmtest.reg_output?p_areacode=000002], I'd say no. Most important, your article avoids comparing the pay of the workers to the wealth of the ownership. You give room for Michael Powell to say he's put all profits back into the business, but that's hardly selfless, since he owns the thing. I doubt your reporter had the guts to break taboo and actually ask Powell, "How much did you make last year?" And, more significantly, "What's your net worth?" The boss allows employees to stay at his beach house, the same workers who can't afford mortgage for their own house, according to the article. The union campaign raises the question of whether we should have a bookstore, or an economy, where the boss can afford two houses and workers none. Too bad your journal could not. Michael Ames Connor Southeast 35th Place I'D RATHER FIGHT THAN QUIT I am an employee at Powell's and yes, I support the union ["Powell's City Divided," WW, March 15, 2000]. I know we have been accused of being whiners, but how anyone can whine more than the people who write into the Willamette Week about how the ILWU will ruin their favorite bookstore is beyond me. I'm sorry you think that your weekend shopping excursion will be disrupted, but this is my livelihood. I make $7.50 an hour, not $9 an hour as J.P. Davidson (Letters, "Cause and Defect," WW, April 5, 2000) seems to think. While I'm struggling to make rent, Michael Powell decides to raise the rent on Powell's; he is the landlord, you know. This way he can put some extra money in his pocket and show that the company's expenses are too high to give his employees a raise. In addition to this, we've got no shortage of people telling us to get another job if we're so dissatisfied. Well, I don't want another job. I like my job and I like Powell's. I like my job enough to fight for it. In fact, I wish everyone could be as lucky as I am and make a living doing something they enjoy. So next time, before you make your decision, maybe you'll look past your liberal middle-class world and think about the people whose livelihood will be affected, and not just your shopping convenience. Matt Baker Northeast Senate Street UPPTIY AGITATORS Just like Teddi Carbonneau and J.P. Davidson, who were concerned enough to write letters complaining about the attempt of Powell's workers attempting to unionize the bookstore (Letters, WW, April 5, 2000), I too am appalled at the employees' concern about earning livable wages and maintaining, not improving, their current health benefits. Teddi's claim of employee "extortion" is absolutely correct. Equal contempt can be placed on the lazy, chaotic anarchists and whining unionists who organized and won the eight-hour workday (not to mention the winning of annoying, profit-destroying child-labor laws and safety requirements). What are laws compared to profits? It seems only just that a fairly new, inexperienced, anti-union worker is promoted in Powell's shipping department instead of either of the two qualified union supporters. Powell's, "one of the last great sanctuaries of liberal thought" as J.P. points out, should continue to fight for the status quo. It would be horrific to see liberalism radicalized to benefit those who keep the store operating and are investing their life's blood for Michael Powell's profits. After all, they are all just college kids looking for some extra income, right? Well, it sounds good that way, at least. Again, we are shaken from our sleep by "cause hawks" who care about bettering something. Yes, there are many worse off than Powell's employees, so they have no place to defend their future. The same holds true for the homeless in America. How dare they complain when the poor in other countries live under brutal dictatorships, struggle with sanctions and lead war-torn lives? Chris Cardinal Northeast 16th Avenue MORE THAN A HANDFUL How appropriate that a district attorney should write to set the numbers straight about capital punishment ("Truth vs. Fact," WW, Letters, April 5, 2000). Dispelling "urban myths" circulated by death penalty abolitionists and advocates for judicial reform, Joshua Marquis tells us that "out of the literally millions of criminal convictions over the last couple of decades, there have been a handful of cases where it was established that the wrong person was sent to prison." A handful? How many fingers has Mr. Marquis got, anyway? For the record, since 1973 more than 85 people have been released from death row with evidence of their wrongful conviction. During this same time period, 625 accused criminals have been executed. Some 3,600 are currently awaiting execution. Of course, if the district attorney's letter is any indication of the junk science that prosecutors use to convict people in the first place, the numbers do start to make sense. Josh Wallaert Southwest Palatine Hill Road BUYING TIME I've been working as a buyer in the sidelines (non-book) department at Powell's on Burnside for a little over four months. I started at $7.50 an hour. There would have been an extra 25 cents more had I had 10, yes, ten years of buying experience. Who in their right mind would work for $7.75 an hour if they had that much experience is beyond me. Anyhow, I have now been boosted up to $8 an hour for completing my "training" time. With the current raise structure of 3 percent annually, that $9 figure being thrown around won't come my way for at the very least a couple of years. That number comes from an average, which includes the highly paid (and well deserving) computer folks. It is misleading. As far as being referred to as "rank and file" ["Book 'Em," Letters, WW, March 29, 2000] well, who are you to speak of me or anyone else that way? Why have you been shopping there for 13 years if you feel that we treat you so poorly? Wouldn't you say that's a little odd? My guess would be that you either seek out the single irritated employee, are very sensitive or quite simply are a jerk. Let's hope it's not the latter. However, just as nobody is "holding a gun to my head" to work there, the same holds true for where you choose to shop. The fact of the matter is that I have found a job that is "worthy" of me. I can honestly say that I enjoy my work day. Unfortunately, I can also say that even though I live a fairly simple life, I can't make ends meet. That $9 figure would make me pleased as pie. In the meantime, I doubt I'm the only one who has plans of quitting in the near future. If Mr. Powell and his top managers have no qualms about losing spunky, creative, hard workers, then they are going about things just right. Melissa Mae Anthony Northeast 84th Avenue A FEW BROKEN EGGS It is a shame that well-intended anti-death-penalty people like David Findlay ["End of Innocence," Letters, WW, March 22, 2000] totally missed my message; since, if he missed it, others must have as well. For example, it is hard to believe Ms. Trimble and Mr. Vicino [Letters, March 29] understood what I said; they must have been hung up on the anti-death-penalty line so hard, they did not comprehend the real message. The message is simple: Very few people are falsely executed; however, even if all those executed were falsely executed, your chances of being murdered by a second-time murderer are higher than being falsely executed! The brunt of being killed by a second-time murderer is borne mainly by the underprivileged. Thus, Findlay et al naively do not realize they are net-hurting the law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working, honest people of the world, not the privileged class, as they imply, if they eliminate capital punishment. That is the real-world situation--more innocents die without the death penalty than do with the death penalty, and the innocents mostly come from the underclass. Yes, Ms. Trimble, we do not like the few apparently falsely executed to happen; however, we should also consider the many more innocents improperly executed by second-time murderers, because first-time murderers were not executed. C. Norman Winningstad Newport WW ON THE HORN I am responding to the review of the Horn of Africa restaurant that was published in your newspaper [in the Cheap Eats supplement] on March 8, 2000. One statement in the article depicted the Somali society in such a pejorative manner that it made it obligatory for a representative of the community to respond. The article referred to the "Somali custom of cruising around in automatic weapon-laden Japanese pickup trucks." This grossly inept extrapolation of the behavior of a few is an indictment of an entire ethnic group, a whole nation and all its citizens, to whom the behavior in question is deplorable. I think it is possible that whoever wrote the statement did not mean to be insensitive. It is not improbable that the word "custom" was simply carelessly chosen. Nevertheless, such a thoughtless and subjective statement upset the Somali community for its gross insensitivity both to authentic Somali culture and customs and to responsible Somali nationals everywhere. As the community coordinator, it is incumbent upon me to request that you issue an apology. This would also address the serious concerns of customers of the Horn of Africa, many of whom are Somalis. Jaafar M. Sh. Jama Ridgefield, Wash. Nigel Jaquiss responds: I'm sorry for any offense that my review may have caused. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published April 12, 2000