ATIAS RESPONDS
In your endorsement for the Rochester School Board, you mischaracterized
my statements about the district’s budget. I stated that I have pored over the
budget report that is made available to the public. It is impossible to
identify waste in spending when the district refuses to allow the public to see
the entire budget. It appears that your expectation is for me to develop
solutions to problems without having all the facts.
My opponent
has stated publicly that the budget is too complicated for anyone but an
“insider” to understand. In my interview with City, I guaranteed that once I had the complete budget at my
disposal I would have concrete fiscal solutions. Until that time, I have been
calling for district finances to be completely transparent.
To dismiss
my ideas because I am not an incumbent is not just illogical, but
irresponsible. My platform is based on 15 years’ experience working with
children in the city. My opponent has offered no solutions to our problems,
because he claims the RochesterSchool
District is on the right track. Ask the students,
parents, and teachers in the city if they agree. Your own editor has stated
that she does not.
Also, to
include race as a partial reason to endorse a candidate is a dangerous
precedent to set. One thing you neglected to mention is that it is the
non-Latino candidate who has been advocating for the AHORA report to be dusted
off and implemented. (The AHORA report is a host of suggestions presented by
members of the community — mostly Latino — to spur greater achievement
among Latino students in the district.)
While I
have always been a supporter of City
Newspaper, I am concerned that its editorial view has become, like the
Rochester School Board, stuck on one party.
Dave Atias, Rochester (Atias is the Green Party candidate for Rochester School
Board.)
SHALLOW COVERAGE
As if issues decided political campaigns, KrestiaDeGeorge, in common with
the Democrat and Chronicle, continues
City’s longstanding tradition of
writing naive and even shallow analyses about politics (29th Congressional
District coverage, October 20).
The two
newspapers’ political analyses as well as their editorials almost totally
overlook the most significant matters in all political campaigns —
districting and funding.
Outside of
one clause, where is the analysis of which counties in the Kuhl-Barend
race vote Republican and which vote Democratic? And are there any that swing,
or stray from party loyalty?
And, even
more significant, where is the analysis of funding? If DeGeorge
had researched his article adequately, he would have learned that a national
millionaires’ organization, the Fund for Growth, has declared publicly it will
fund Kuhl up to the legal maximum.
That, as
well as registration and party loyalty, will determine the winner in the 29th
District, because money permits a candidate to get his or her message out and
keep voters from straying, no matter what the candidate’s position is on the
issues.
Mitchell Kaidy, Crittenden Road, Brighton
KrestiaDeGeorge’s
response: The primary purpose of our political coverage has never been to
accurately guess a winner. It’s to educate voters on some of the issues we
believe to be important. We assume our readers cast their votes intelligently
and our goal is to help them do so. As for fundraising, Barend’s
campaign has raised slightly more money, but has more than double the amount of
Kuhl’s cash on hand.
ABSENT FROM DEBATE:THE ENVIRONMENT
There is no doubt that the war in Iraq,
national security, our economy, and the loss of jobs must be debated before the
electorate. However, these issues should not completely eclipse our attention
to our life-support system: our environment.
The tragedy
of the Bush administration — beyond its deplorable record on the environment
in the last four years (see Sierra Club’s “Keeping Tabs on George W. Bush,
http://sierraclub.org/wwatch) — is that they have created an atmosphere where
serious debate about pollution and global warming does not exist. And sadly,
taking their lead from the administration, the media have stricken most of the
news about our environment from this year’s election coverage.
The Bush
administration does not get it. They do not get that corporations’ short-term
needs cannot take precedence over our need for a stable environment. When our
environment collapses, so will our way of life. Regardless of one’s political
beliefs, pollution and global warming have a way of getting in your face. For
example, global warming may have influenced the four major storms that just hit
Florida, but there is no
political courage to fund the studies to find out.
Moreover,
there is no indication that four more years of the Bush administration will
change this hostile attitude toward our environment, even though (according to
the Union of Concerned Scientists) most scientists do not agree with Bush’s
environmental science.
Regardless
of the attitude of the Bush administration, the media, or the public, the
environment will go on. We just might not fare so well if we do not react to
our environmental problems with reality. A world where you can pollute as much
as you want and survive, or where you can make a compromise with nature, is a
world that does not exist. Fashionable or not, environmental concerns should be
nonpartisan and a top priority for the media.
Frank J. Regan, Belmont Street, Rochester(Regan is conservation chairperson for the Sierra Club’s Rochester
Regional Group.)
WHY I’M FOR KERRY
In 1970, when my son was 17 years old, he announced that if
his draft number was called, he would become a conscientious objector. Although
moved by and proud of his decision, my heart sank. I remembered reading a novel
by Ring Lardner, Jr. about the harassment of conscientious objectors in World
War II, and was sickened at the thought of him having a similar fate.
At about
the same time, I was visiting my mother in Toronto
with my then 14-year-old daughter, and by chance, a parade was scheduled that
weekend by Canadians on behalf of the Vietnam
draft resisters in their midst. I took my daughter, and we marched along with
thousands of others through the city. For political and security reasons, the
young Americans there were not allowed to participate officially, but they ran
alongside the marchers on the sidewalk, shouting their heartfelt gratitude for
this demonstration of support.
This was the
state of the world back then — a world abased by such Orwellian terms as
“gooks” and “being wasted” and “collateral
damage” — when a decorated young soldier came back from Vietnam
to speak before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of his wartime
experiences and electrified the country.
That
soldier, of course, was John Kerry, and I remember hearing him give his
soon-to-become-famous line: “How can you ask somebody to be the last man
to die for a mistake?” and feeling as though a window had opened and hope
again wafted in the air. Hope not only for the Vietnamese people and those
thousands of young men still in Vietnam
whose lives might be spared, but also for those who were peripherally affected
like me, whose son would not have to make the choice between love of country
and love of humanity.
Alas,
Richard Nixon did not share my enthusiasm; he directed Charles Colson and his
cohorts to find another Vietnam
veteran to discredit John Kerry. And find him they did in the person of
spick-and-span John O’Neill. From their point of view, it was a great choice.
John O’Neill was everything that John Kerry wasn’t; his short hair as neatly
cut as Kerry’s longish hair was disheveled, his clothing as starched and tight
as Kerry’s was rumpled and loose, his viewpoint as programmed and misleading as
Kerry’s was nuanced and sincere.
John
O’Neill didn’t get very far at the time; the audience on the Dick Cavett Show, for instance, clearly preferred Kerry. Who
would have imagined that O’Neill’s vendetta would reach its apogee over 33
years later, under the aegis of another Dirty Tricks contingent, with his Swift
Boats for Truth campaign? If Kerry loses the election, this will certainly be
one of the major reasons why.
Ever since
that first introduction to Kerry, I’ve watched his career closely, and found
that he represented my own views in just about every issue of the day, be it
health care or the environment, civil rights or foreign relations, domestic
security or campaign finance reform.
I travel
widely, and all across the country I’ve heard people talk about ABB — Anybody
But Bush. That isn’t the reason I’m voting for John Kerry. I’m voting for him
because I recognized his integrity over three decades ago, and time has only
served to strengthen that conviction.
Like many
Kerry supporters, I listened to that first presidential debate with
apprehension, for I feared that he’d been Dukakisized
by the ferocity of the smear campaign launched against him. Not only by the
major efforts of O’Neill, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and their ilk, but in the minor
ones as epitomized by the Band-Aids worn by delegates to the Republican
Convention decorated with a Purple Heart.
To see John
Kerry come back in that debate against all odds, like the great warrior he is,
was as electrifying for me as that first time I heard him speak. Hope again has
wafted in the window.
Marianne LangnerZeitlin, Warren Avenue, Brighton (The writer is a novelist and literary critic.)
IRAQ’S THE ISSUE
This
election is not about who you’d rather watch Sunday football with, not about
who has better hair, not about who seems more natural in front of people, not
about who’s better in front of a camera, not about the candidates’ Vietnam War
record or National Guard service, not about whether the candidate uses simple
sentences or complex ones, not about whether the First Lady is proper and
traditional or outspoken and exotic.
This election, first and foremost,
is a referendum on our nearly unilateral, preemptive, ill-informed, and
speciously justified invasion of Iraq. It is about
whether this administration has demonstrated intelligence, creativity, and
flexibility in stabilizing Iraq, whether the
continuing loss of life is justified, whether its plan to make our country
safer is the most effective plan. Our invasion of Iraq and its
countless ramifications for our national economy and safety and our
relationship with the world is the most important issue about which we are
voting.
The current climate of polarity is
unsettling and usually engenders more heat than light. Typical is a recent
letter to the Democrat and Chronicle in which a woman suggested beheading a Muslim prisoner each time a terrorist
beheads an American. This mentality makes us as depraved as the terrorists.
Though we keep hearing that this is a
new kind of war with a new kind of enemy, we keep fighting in the old-fashioned
way. It’s ironic that a country so adept at advertising doesn’t do more to sell
its way of life to the people likely to become America-hating terrorists. Until
their hearts and minds are won over, terrorism will continue.
A final thought on character and
intellect: These are complex times and call for a leader with the intellect to
see complexity, the courage to not turn his back to it, the humility to admit
error, and the flexibility to change. We are not well served with a zealot in
the White House. Emerson warned us that consistency is the hobgoblin of a
foolish mind. If we want to climb out of the hole we’ve dug, the White House
needs a little more Hamlet and a lot less John Wayne.
Zealots can be terrifying,
regardless of their religion or politics, because for them faith is more
important than facts, pride more powerful than humility. Ignorance might be
bliss for some, but it’s hell on earth for the rest. I
hope we elect a president who isn’t adverse to seeking
the truth, wherever it leads.
Rick
Taddeo, Irondequoit
STUDY
— AND VOTE
Four
years ago, I did not vote in the presidential election because I was too busy
to buy stamps for my absentee ballot. Besides, I did not see how politics could
affect my life. Watching the events of the past four years, I came to realize I
was wrong: Politics has everything to do with me and my life. I was angry with
myself for being so apathetic, and I promised not to repeat my mistake.
Today, I am still angry. I am angry
at all the people who haven’t educated themselves on the issues and candidates’
stances. I know how easy it is to be apathetic: Not so long ago, I didn’t know
Enron from a flavor of Perry’s ice cream. My fear is that many undecided voters
are similarly intelligent but indifferent people who plan to sit down at some
point and study as if cramming for a test.
The truth is, an individual’s vote
is not weighted according to how much information went into the decision-making
process: My supposedly educated vote holds just as much clout as a ballot cast
on the flip of a coin. It is not enough just to get out and vote. You need to
vote responsibly.
I beg all the undecided voters:
Please, start your study session now.
Politics is not static; it does not stand still. You need to base your
decisions on perspectives across a broad span of time, and there is precious
little time left. Read. Think. Listen. Pay attention and ask questions. Don’t
let yourself be bullied by those of us with strong opinions. Challenge us.
Then, get out and vote.
Harmony
Button, East
Avenue, Rochester
WRITING TO CITY
We welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication.
Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.
Our
guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and we ask that you include
your street name and city/town/village. We don’t publish letters that have been
sent to other media. While we don’t restrict length, letters of under 350 words have a greater chance of being published. We
do edit letters for clarity and brevity. And in general we don’t publish
letters (or longer “op-ed” pieces) from the same writer more often than about
once every two months.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2004.
