Very nice letter, dk.

Unfortunately, these right-wingers aren't our only "fifth column" in the US. Here's a link to a story from Alameda County, CA, and the Wall Street Journal's summary of the story.

http://www.alamedatimesstar.com/S-ASP-Bin/Ref/Index.asp?PUID=609&Indx=1090676
Dispatch From Barbara Lee's District
We hate to say it, but when California's Rep. Barbara Lee cast the lone dissenting vote against last week's resolution approving the use of force against America's enemies, she may have just been reflecting the views of her constituents. The Alameda Times-Star sends a pair of reporters out to local high schools and gathers a series of disgustingly smug quotes:

"It didn't happen in Oakland, it could have but it didn't, so I don't feel scared or nothing. Why should I go fight in a war and die for nothing." -- Hieu Le, 15, Castlemont High School

"I'm not risking my life for that, I love myself too much. If they came after me I would have to run." -- Amir Kellogg, 17

"How are you going to defend a nation if that nation can't defend against things like homelessness? I'm not in a rush to help our country because our country is already messed up." -- Jamaal Germaine, 15, McClymonds High School

"I think the United States deserves it. It's pretty sad for the poor people, but the United States does the same thing. We're probably going to do the same thing after this. We're not going to send anybody into the country, we're just going to bomb them like they did us." -- Patrick Rizzo, Berkeley High School

Berkeley High, you may remember, is the school that banned military recruiters from campus. "I felt it wasn't appropriate to have weapons simulators on the high school campus given all the violence at schools recently," Berkeley school board member Joaquin Rivera said at the time.

I want to respond to this one because this is my neighborhood. Here is an instance where I can see how the press distorts something because they omit some crucial information. (Although I expect AyaK will come up with something to refute me, but, LOL, this is simply what I see in my community.

The community of Berkeley (and Oakland) still hosts a goodly number of people who marched for peace in the late 60's and other citizens of anti-war persuasion. That's public knowledge; however I doubt very much that their children are being quoted here.

All of the high schools quoted above are public schools. Sadly, in this area, that means underfunded, overcrowded institutions full for the most part of underprivileged kids. To be frank, we are talking about ghettoized education. I don't personally know any friends or neighbors here who don't send their children to private schools from kindergarten through high school, whether or not they can afford it. People will live in a small house and drive an old car to keep their kids out of the public schools; they have a bad rep!

Don't take this to mean that these schools don't have dedicated faculty and that none of their graduates attend high school (untrue and not my intention to disparage them), but I drive by Berkeley High a few times a week when it's either lunch break or school getting out and I see these teenagers.

They live in a society that doesn't take care of their needs, where their peers die of gunshot wounds and drug overdoses. I don't expect them to sound off patriotically; they inhabit a dog-eat-dog world. They try to step around the trouble if they want to make it, until the trouble comes to their doorstep. So let's not condemn these teenagers... to them the World Trade Center probably represents the economic system that oppresses them and a place far away that they'll never have the money to see.

The press should have gone to high schools that gave them a socio-economic sampling before they came up with these "representative" quotes.

That said, I did talk to a high school boy helping me with grocery check out the day of the disaster (I posted this on another thread but I'll repeat it) who was extremely disgusted with his classmates for their nonchalant attitude. I don't know what school he attends, but he was bright and full of concern.

By the way, U.C. Berkeley has a "Peace and Conflict Studies" department that offers a B.A. and a minor, which a former prof of mine helped found. It focuses on the complex issues surrounding confrontation in the global society and on possible solutions, preferably non-violent (but pragmatic)--so perhaps the reporters might have gone there for an interview and located some more concerned and articulate young people (who are likely to actually be Berkeley registered voters) while they were blowing through town...

OFG, I have no intention of disagreeing with any of your points save one. You say, "They live in a society that doesn't take care of their needs..." However, earlier in your post, you talk about the way that the parents that you know sacrifice to keep their children out of public schools "whether or not they can afford it." (e.g., "People will live in a small house and drive an old car to keep their kids out of the public schools."). It sounds to me as if these children have a legitimate complaint about their needs not being addressed, but that complaint should not be directed at American society as a whole. Instead, the target of their anger should be their own parents.

Hi AyaK, I'm glad you pointed out one of the many holes in my post. , so a couple clarifications. I was trying not to open up the "race" discussion because it's so complicated and so hard to talk about without offending someone.

The people I described who make sacrifices would be (roughly) the middle income people. (The upper brackets have all fled the public schools.) So now the public schools here are mostly poor children of color--and most of these schools have problems with drugs and gangs and weapons.

These students may or may not be happy with their parents' efforts to raise them out of poverty, but they definitely feel disenfranchised by society when their families have multiple generations living in the ghetto. Their parents can barely afford the housing prices here (and other costs of living)--much less private school. All the money that has come into this area from Silicon Valley-related prosperity has not trickled down well.

The East (San Francisco) Bay has come a long away in the last decade towards reducing racial tensions. Ten years ago I was afraid to drive in parts of Oakland that now feel safe and multi-cultural. On the other hand, there's still a large chunk of East Oakland where most people--of whatever race--may feel nervous even driving through. And the kids from these neighborhoods go to the public high schools, which are overcrowded and not in good physical condition either, while middle class Caucasian families are afraid to send their kids to them out of concerns for safety and poor scholastic achievement, so the schools keep spiraling downwards.

I have strong emotions about the erosion of the quality of California public schools--because I went to public school in L.A. County and got a good education in the 50's and 60's, and so did most kids I knew. There were parochial schools, but they were for Catholics, and exclusive schools for the rich, but in general the public went to public school. And in my humble high school, I wasn't the only one to get SAT's over 1500, whereas now the scores are just appalling, and parents who want their kids to go to college feel like they need to send their kids to private schools. So I grabbed my soapbox and jumped on it...

Point of my post though--the reporters don't make it clear that they're not interviewing a real cross-section of local youth; they make it sound like they cruised the three main high schools and came up with apathy.

LAST EDITED ON 09-18-01 AT 07:36 AM (EST)

Didn't Oakland (and San Francisco for the quake) receive a large amount of federal help during the wildfires that spread through the city a few years ago, as well as during the 1989 earthquake? We all have to band together in catastrophic times, whether you may or may not approve a certain measure.

(Edit to clarify that the "you" is used in a general way, not to be taken specifically against any one person)

"Permit me to introduce myself. I am Pepe Le Pew, your lover."

LAST EDITED ON 09-18-01 AT 04:09 PM (EST)

Pepe, I'm going to reply (even though it's a tangent on the thread topic) because I would like people to not get wrong impressions about our area from what I consider bad journalistic practices.

Edit: One of the things I love about this board is that people are from all over the U.S. and we get the wonderful Canadian perspective. I seem to be the only member based in the San Francisco area, so I will offer what I can of our local views.

In this area people are coming together en masse, just as in other parts of the country. I have not heard Barbara Lee's reasoning dicussed here, but to connect her stance with local apathy is just wrong. The newspaper who wrote that article is based in Alameda, the site of the now-closed naval base, a neighborhood with a large population of career military people with a pro-military agenda.

So to prove their point that our area is unpatriotic, they go out and interview high school kids from the ghetto who live in the midst of a terrible homeless crisis, all taking place only blocks from where people are spending money like water. They collect these kids' comments and print them as representative of the uncaring constituency... Yikes. It's simply BS.

On the other hand, because Berkeley was a major force in protesting the Vietnam war, there ARE numerous people here who remember to fear when a government wants blanket permission to go to war. My guess--they are a little nervous that the people will get swept up in something that spins out of control. They are not unpatriotic nor are they apathetic. They are full of compassion, but also mindful of history's lessons.

We also have a lot of people here who fled from the Nicaragua/El Salvador fiasco in the 80's. Remember the Contras that Reagan backed without the nation's approval? Edit: As in, the US making unauthorized arms sales to Iran to use against the Iraquis, in order to fund our covert ops support of a right-wing military regime in C. America that was busy murdering in its own citizens? In the name of protecting North America from Communism?

To quickly answer about federal aid, yes, there were FEMA loans for the individual fire and earthquake victims available during the disasters you mentioned, as with anywhere that has hurricanes, floods, natural disasters.

The fire you mention was a terrible disaster, but it didn't spread through the city; it took out the upscale areas in the hills/foothills (although many victims were of moderate means and many were connected to the university and lost their book manuscripts and research, wonderful art, etc.).

The rebuilding/recovery did nothing to help the poor neighborhoods (except it provided work in the construction trades). In fact, it made the contrast between poor and affluent even more painfully visible, as we ended up with a plethora of ostentatious homes covering the bare hills, which the poor kids look up from the flats and see everyday--their own homes meanwhile are hovels with bars on the windows and crackhouses in their face...

I am merely trying to explain why such kids might resent the idea that they're the first line of recruits to get asked to sacrifice their lives if we were to reinstate the draft. How many poor black kids got shipped to Vietnam to die while the college students got deferments? The African-American activists in Oakland have long memories too.

Edit: BTW, Barbara Lee is an African-American congresswoman, which you would not know by her name. Alameda, home of this newspaper, was hardest hit around here by cutbacks in defense spending. Note in the article how they blame Berkeley High for banning military recruiting and imply that's somehow related to the student apathy. Gee, a high school that's struggling with gangs and guns and knives being brought to school, putting teachers and students in fear, decides not to have weapons glorified on campus. How unpatriotic...

File this under the hollow and meaningless category of apologies. Someday people will learn that words said in anger or ignorance can't just be wiped away with an "oops". I do not doubt for one minute that their original statements reflect who they really are. They have nothing to do with the Christianity that is a part of my daily life. And I'm ashamed that these two attempt to speak for me.

Falwell Apologizes for Remarks
Calls Comments Spreading Blame for Attack 'Insensitive'

By Kevin Hall
The Associated Press

R I C H M O N D, Va., Sept. 17 — The Rev. Jerry Falwell apologized today for saying God had allowed terrorists to attack America because of the work of civil liberties groups, abortion rights supporters and feminists.
Falwell said his comments were ill-timed, insensitive and divisive at a time of national mourning. President Bush had called the minister's statement inappropriate.

"In the midst of the shock and mourning of a dark week for America, I made a statement that I should not have made and which I sincerely regret," Falwell said.

He added: "I want to apologize to every American, including
those I named."

Thursday Interview Fans the Flames

In an interview Thursday during religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's TV program The 700 Club, Falwell blamed the devastation on pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way.

"All of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen,"' he said.

Falwell, a Baptist minister and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., also expressed a belief shared by other evangelicals that divine protection is withdrawn from nations that violate God's will.

However, some Christian thinkers warned there was no way to know which sin led to which punishment. Today, Falwell agreed.

"When I talked about God lifting the curtain of protection on our nation, I should have made it very clear that no one on this earth knows whether or not that occurred or did not occur," he said.

He said if the destruction was a judgment from God it was a judgment on all sinners, including himself.

White House Disapproval

Falwell told The Associated Press that no one from the evangelical community or the White House pressured him to apologize.

However, he said a White House representative called him Friday while he was driving to the National Cathedral memorial service in Washington, and told him the president disapproved.

Falwell said he told the White House that he also felt he had misspoken.

Falwell made his apology minutes after Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network released its own statement calling Falwell's on-air remarks "severe and harsh in tone and, frankly, not fully
understood" by Robertson and his two co-hosts.

During last week's broadcast, Robertson had agreed when Falwell said, "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

Angell Watts, a spokeswoman for Robertson's network, did not return calls today seeking comment.

Like I have said Pooh, thsi is not my religion either. Its amazing how ignorant these people are.
GOD BLESS AMERICA