 May 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
LETTER TO THE EDITOR From Jonathan Betz-Zall, Seattle, WA I wish you had done a little research before printing Nat Hentoff's diatribe against the American Library Association's actions on Cuba. Hentoff and a few other progressive thinkers have fallen into bed with a weird cabal of anti-Castro campaigners funded by right-wing Cuban exiles in Florida. As a delegate to the ALA conference in January, I saw clearly that these guys were trying to set up the ALA to help grease the skids for another US invasion of Cuba to establish "democracy" there. Not everyone agreed, but we did agree that two major ALA committees had produced an admirably balanced report that stopped short of giving the exiles what they wanted. So, the exiles have stepped up their public harassment of ALA, and might very well stage an attack on its conference when it's held in Orlando in June. How about a little less one-sidedness in your reporting, eh? "There's no way to peace; peace is the way." Nat Hentoff responds. Peace is indeed the way, but there is no peace when freedom of conscience and expression are crushed by a brutal dictator, and nonviolent dissenters are locked away for 20 and more years. Does Betz-Zall actually believe that Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Matt Rothschild (Editor of The Progressive) and other continuing critics of Bush, Ashcroft, et al have been hornswaggled into a right-wing conspiracy to establish "regime change" in Cuba? They have called for the release of the prisoners, now!
There is a rising rank-and-file resistance within the ALA to the
shameful refusal of the governing council to demand the immediate
release of the 75 and more prisoners of conscience. That demand
has been made by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and
Reporters without Borders. Are they too "in-bed" with
right-wingers?
Previous Article Next Article
|
|
|