Letters to the Editor.

I would like to voice my disappointment with Ruth Conniff's article "On the Bus with Bradley" (March issue).

I was a volunteer for the Gore campaign helping out at the event she so roundly criticized. The situation was very chaotic. The event was supposed to be for identified uncommitted voters, but a local newspaper published the time and location of the event, and the result was pandemonium. I remember the couple that Conniff describes in the article. They just barely got in at the last minute. The notion that their question and his response were staged is ludicrous.

I took more than a week of vacation from my job as a software consultant and went to Iowa and New Hampshire on my own expense to help the Gore campaign. I was joined by hundreds of others. When Gore becomes President, he's going to do right by the environment and nominate justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade.

Meanwhile, The Progressive will whine that Democrats are just like the Republicans, that you shouldn't bother to vote, unless it's for Ralph Nader or the Socialist Party. It will run article after article about some obscure protest that nobody ever heard of and which doesn't change anyone's life.

If Conniff had stopped by one of Gore's campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, she would have seen a diverse coalition of students, teachers, housewives, gays, union members, and retirees getting active and making a difference. Is it so inconceivable that Gore supporters are idealistic, too? Do you deem virtuous only those with no chance of winning?

Dan Ryan Washington, D. C.

Wanted: Death Penalty Investigations

The Comment entitled "The Case Against the Death Penalty" (February issue) was lucid and comprehensive. You correctly write, "People have been executed who very well might have been innocent."

There's an overwhelming need now for investigative journalists to look at any of the several dozen examples in the past two decades of executions of prisoners who probably were innocent. Without media exposure of these cases, death penalty proponents will continue to assert smugly that no innocent person has been executed. Meanwhile, Virginia prosecutors refuse to allow DNA testing of evidence that could help to show that Joseph O'Dell, who was executed in 1997, was innocent, as he had claimed.

Two of the many other cases of executions of likely innocent prisoners include Jesse Tafero in Florida and Wayne Felker in Georgia.

Tafero's co-defendant was freed on evidence that also could have exonerated Tafero if he hadn't already been executed. Felker was convicted with tampered and probably perjured evidence, and the state concealed massive amounts of evidence favorable to Felker, including another suspect's confession.

Wrongful convictions are a rampant problem.

William Kreuter
Washington Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty
Seattle, Washington

Your editorial against the death penalty, although thorough in its scope, missed one very important reason for opposing capital punishment: It doesn't work.

Proponents often drag out the argument of deterrence as a rationale for executions. Curious how Texas, Florida, and California--those states that implement the death penalty the most--also have higher violent crime rates than other states.

We all want to eliminate crime and violence. The appeal of the death penalty is simplistic. Eliminate the problem by eliminating the people responsible.

No surprise, then, that rich, white juries are more likely to see poor defendants of color as needing elimination. Or that states that invest so much time and energy into eliminating people consequently invest so little in getting at the cultural and economic circumstances that bring about crime and violence in the first place.

Eric Merrill Budd
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Caution: Doctors Under Stress

I enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich's article "Fact-Checker to the O.R.!" (February issue). Humor is a good thing.

I worked in a hospital, and I know that doctors are not enthralled about the cutbacks, and perhaps many are not as intuitive as activists who can take a bird's eye view of the situation. They are stressed, like everyone in the health care field seems to be these days.

No excuses, just explanation.

Lisa Thurman
Hendersonville, North Carolina

ESPN Got It Right

This is in response to "ESPN's Faulty List" (February issue). While Fred McKissack's points about Michael Jordan's off-the-court actions are accurate, ESPN was simply ranking the "Greatest Athletes of the Century." All that should factor into the ranking is the individual's athletic prowess. What Jordan did on the basketball court has not been, and will not be, paralleled by any other athlete.

Had ESPN called its list the "100 Most Influential and/or Bravest Athletes of the Twentieth Century," I would certainly agree that Jackie Robinson would get the nod over Michael Jordan.

However, Robinson would still not deserve the top spot on the countdown for one reason: Jesse Owens. Owens's athletic accolades speak for themselves, and as if that were not enough, imagine a black man competing in the Olympics against Hitler's "master race" of athletes. Not only did Owens dominate the games of 1936, he also sent a very powerful message to Nazi Germany and the world over.

Nick Kovner
Port Washington, New York

Direct Action Slighted

I appreciate your coverage of the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO), most of which was quite good ("Now What?", John Nichols, January issue). But I do have a couple of nits to pick.

Nichols relies heavily on the staff of Public Citizen for information and quotes, in the process slighting the dynamic grassroots coalition of the Direct Action Network (DAN). He even quotes Lori Wallach of Public Citizen bashing DAN without offering anything from DAN's perspective. While I acknowledge the hard work the folks at Public Citizen did in educating people about the WTO and turning them out to Seattle, the massive Public Citizen/AFL-CIO march would have received about fifteen seconds of coverage on the evening news and would have had no impact on policy if it were not for the heroic and nonviolent direct action of DAN in shutting down the opening day of the WTO talks.

My other nit is with the way the people smashing windows were treated as violent and ignorant. I do not support what they did (I think it was very poor tactics and extremely disrespectful to the rest of us who had all agreed, through DAN's democratic coalition, to a no-property-destruction rule).

However, as a staunch pacifist, I must protest equating property destruction with violence. What the window-smashers did was absolutely trivial compared to the violence of the rioting riot police (who were smashing heads, not windows) and the violence of multinational corporations targeted, which are responsible for massive human rights violations and ecological destruction.

Private property is not sacred, and--while it pushes the limits of nonviolence--property destruction can be appropriate in extreme circumstances, such as sledge-hammering nuclear weapons and sabotaging machinery in last-ditch efforts to save old growth forests.

I hope you take these matters into consideration in your future coverage of social movements and protests. It weakens your otherwise good writing when you accept the establishment's standards.

Matthew Williams
Somerville, Massachusetts

The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive. All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness. Letters may be e-mailed to: [e-mail]. Please include your city and state.