The Brattleboro Reformer from Brattleboro, Vermont • 4

Opinion Brattleboro Reformer www.refonner.com, Friday, September 15, 2000 Greek ah MesrWjrreN ms UWEpaVDeASTHOP BuTMK.gUSH fAK.6USH(FW)Y(temE A question of accountability MW, HE Sfte NAlLyjtSMFUL MEDIA IT ifWAomSi SDW LEAGUER, ASTHOtt? Skiing is a dangerous sport. Anyone who takes to the slopes knows that the apparently simple act of hopping on a chair lift, riding to the top and skiing down is fraught with risk at every step. Chair lifts, especially those without a slowing mechanism at the terminals, require care for even the experienced rider. For the novice, as Richard Martin of Northfield, found out to his'cost, they might be flagged hazard. Martin, a retired teacher, fell off a chair lift shortly after he boarded it at Maple Valley ski area in Dummerston in January.

He fell headfirst and suffered long-term injuries, according to his attorney, including aphasia, which affects the ability to speak, gesture and understand others. Martin is suing the ski area because, he alleges, staff did not give him sufficient assistance after he had told them he needed help. He claims the lift attendants failed to make sure he was securely in his chair, and adds that the lift itself was traveling at an unreasonable speed. There is no doubt that lift attendants should do all they can to ensure skiers safety. They should be prepared to accommodate small children and inexperienced skiers, and must exercise caution whenever appropriate.

If, indeed, they showed a lack of care in this instance, then the mountain should be held accountable. Most ski injuries are preventable. When they occur, a skier or snowboarder is usually at fault. Ski areas stress safety and urge their customers to ski within their ability. Most lift attendants are conscientious.

But, if theyre not, an accident may happen that is not so clearly the skiers fault, even though he may have signed a release agreeing to hold the mountain harmless for injuries he suffers on the slopes. Its tempting to say that skiers should know their limits and stay within them, and everything will be fine. But when it comes to getting on and off the chair lift, the mountain has a responsibility to ensure, to the best of its ability, that no one is hurt just because hes inexperienced. Letter box Nonviolence on public TV BRATTLEBORO Vermont public television is running a two-part series on nonviolent resistance. The first part plays on Monday, Sept.

18. The second part is on Monday, Sept. 25. Ive not seen the documentary, but I have been involved in the nonviolent movement beginning with civil rights in the early 1960s. During thk 1960s, nonviolence captured the imagination of political activists and was very much in the news.

Sits-ins, freedom rides, vigils, and various other acts of civil disobedience destroyed legal segregation in the South and helped bring the war in Vietnam to an end. In the 1970s, the New England Clamshell Alliance mounted a nonviolent campaign against nuclear power that put an end to the construction of nuclear power plants in the United States. As a member of the Clam, I spent a week at a prison-farm for sitting-in at the nuclear construction site at Seabrook, N.H., (I was but one of 1,414 arrested). In retrospect, I believe we did the utility industry a favor by forcing thern to stop their financially disastrous nuclear investments. The PBS program focuses on the student lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement; Gandhis use of nonviolence to win India its independence from Great Britain; the consumer boycotts that helped defeat South African apartheid; the Chilean resistance movement that helped topple the U.S.-backed fascist dictator, Augusto Pinochet; and the Polish Solidarity movement in which trade unionists forced the Soviet Union out of Poland.

I wish the program would cover the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia. There, intellectuals, writers, students, jazz musicians and rock rollers led the movement against Soviet domination. In this country, alternative culture often distracts from political action. In Czechoslovakia, dissident culture mobilized people to stand up for democracy. To be sure, communism in Eastern Europe was doomed by its own internal corruption.

But the Poles and Czechs could have started a futile armed resistance and ended up in a bloodbath fighting Soviet power. With nonviolence they were able to exploit the Soviets illegitimacy, the point where Russia was most vulnerable. Nonviolence is a tenet of pacifism, but one can be an advocate of nonviolence without being a pacifist. Pacifists take an absolutist position against all violence. For non-pacifists, like myself, nonviolence is a pragmatic political strategy.

Pacifism has the advantage of principle; pragmatism, I acknowledge, can end up a slippery slope. The war for American independence, the Civil War, World War II, the South African armed struggle against Apartheid, many Third World wars of liberation were, to my mind, justifiable, as are armed interventions, as in Kosovo, to stop ethnic cleansing and other forms of racial, religious and tribal bloodletting. Nonviolence, as a political strategy, is not passive. It asserts truth to power and seeks to confront injustice at every turn. As a concept, it is still new and experimental.

In some situations, most especially in the civil rights movement, it was remarkably effective. In Kosovo, the Mus lims had a strong bu( doomed nonviolent movement against Serb oppression. The failure of the United Nations to act decisively against the Serbs in Bosnia, and the Kosovars own refusal to use the ballot to unseat Serb leader Slobadan Milosevic (they mistakenly boycotted an election) undercut the effort. NATO knows how to wage war but doesnt know beans about waging peace. American politicians still push for more weaponry; what is needed is a stronger United Nations and an effective, highly trained peacemaking force.

Marty Jezer Nonviolent activists, especially in America, have often put too much emphasis on direct action (street demonstration and civil disobedience) while ignoring the ultimate nonviolent tactic, political elections. No doubt elections in this country, dominated as they are by corporate money, are unfair and undemocratic. Promoting the idea of full public financing ought to be priority for those who believe in nonviolent action. Nonviolent resistance may not work in all situations. But the record of violence raises questions about the efficacy of force.

World War II didnt save many Jews or gypsies. Wars of liberation, however just their cause, have been continually undermined by revolutionary leaders who wont give up their military authority. Fidel Castro is a tragic example of a leader who would not take off his military uniform. Nelson Mandela, who turned to armed struggle as a last resort, and George Washington, who fully respected the rights of conscientious objectors, are the most notable examples of revolutionary leaders who embraced the idea of civilian rule. The two-part PBS documentary can only touch on the nonviolent story.

As an organized movement and as an individual act of conscience, nonviolence has shown it has the power to change hearts and create justice. Sit-ins by autoworkers in Flint, led to the right of working people to organize labor unions in this country (a right greatly eroded in recent years). Women filled jails and went on hunger strikes to force male legislators to grant them the vote. The writer Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay a tax to support the Mexican War a war he believed was being fought to advance the cause of slavery. The famous exchange between Thoreau and his philosopher friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was probably apocryphal: Emerson: Why are you in jail, Henry? Thoreau: Why are you not in jail, Ralph.

Out of his experience, Thoreau wrote On Civil Disobedience, an essay that inspired Gandhi who, in turn, inspired American civil rights activists. A simple act of human courage, Rosa Parks refusal to sit in the back of a segregated bus set in motion a movement that changed the world. Rosa Park knew about nonviolence. One hopes that the PBS documentary will renew interest in nonviolent action as a strategy for peace, justice and political change. Marty Jezer is a free-lance writer who lives in Brattleboro.

He welcomes comments at mjezsover.net. Trio of candidates will represent all Editor of the Reformer: Its an appalling thing that Tuesdays primary vote was hailed for its extraordinary turnout: 29 percent of registered voters. (Fifteen percent of the voting-age population?) That is why we urge you to vote in November for the candidates of the Vermont Progressive Party: for governor, Anthony Pollina; for state Senator from Windham County, Richard Davis; and for representative from Brattleboro District 3, Sarah Edwards. 1 All three are careful and intelligent in their approach to public issues, and all have exceptional records of public service. But these things can be said as well of some other candidates.

The thing that makes these threfe that they will work to represent us all not only those who are comfortable and those with power and influence, but also those who are not so comfortable, who, though they do the bedrock work of our communities, are largely taken for granted. Pollina, Davis and Edwards will work to give the people voice who cant spare money for campaign contributions, who have no lobbyists or corporate clout, who didnt vote on Tuesday not just because theyre busy making it to tomorrow but because they dont believe our political system is for them. As long as a large part of our people feel that governments a game theyre not a part of, a game thats played for others benefit, we will not have a real democracy. And we will not solve the root problems of our country. Vermont is a good state with a better chance than most to build truly democratic government that works for all the people where, instead of 70 percenrof us staying away, 70 percent will feel it matters to vote.

This November we can take an important step, by voting for the people who will serve us all: Pollina, Davis and Edwards. Lee and Byron Stookey Brattleboro Real change comes via Progressives Editor of the Reformer: There is one death from starvation in the world every 3.6 seconds. One percent of the worlds population has 90 percent of the wealth. The 400 richest people in the world are Americans and together they have as much money as half the world. Forty-five million Americans have no health care.

Thirty-five million Americans dont have enough to eat. The jails are filled with the mentally ill and untreated drug addicts. The number of homeless working poor is growing. The schools of the poor are crumbling. There is no affordable child care.

There is no living wage. Where wages are decent, employers move, or hire illegals whom they hardly have to pay at all. Meanwhile, even though most social ills could be treated nicely using the cost of a few stealth bombers, the U.S. spends more money on the military than most of the world put together. The U.S.

produces more weapons of mass destruction than any other country. The U.S. is the biggest arms dealer it the world. The U.S. has armed forces stationed all over the globe.

The U.S. wages undeclared illegal wars. At this very moment, in the interests of oil, we are sending billions to Colombias military, adding to the death and displacement of a million people, and we are dropping bombs daily on those mysterious no-fly zones in Iraq, as well as continuing the so-called sanctions that have killed and are killing a million people, 500,000 of them children; these sanctions are, by definition, also a military blockade. Arming death squads, bombing and blockades, are unequivocally, acts of war. Our environment, of course, is being trashed as much as people are suffering.

Even Vermont is suffering in a way, as we send our children in the national guard to Saudi Arabia to fly those bombers. Yet, what do I hear every time I turn on my car radio? A BushGoreClinton voice blathering about our countrys unprecedented economic growth and its unparalleled peace and prosperity. Muttering to myself, I always punch the off button, hard, and wait in silence for our countrys latest obscene burst of pathology to be over. Why arent we all yelling, Prosperity for whom? and Peace for whom? Why didnt we all scream, Speak for yourself, Madeleine! when, on 60 Minutes, Mrs. Albright was asked about Iraqs 500,000 dead children and answered, We think the price, (a half million dead children), is worth it? Why are we even thinking about voting for anyone but Anthony Pollina, Peter Diamondstone and Ralph Nader, all of whom ask questions Washington doesnt want to hear, for they address the fact that the United States is just the most recent empire in an old world that has seen it all and finds nothing new in the fields of murder, exploitation, greed and hypocrisy? Arthur Miller wrote, Few of us can easily surrender over the belief that society must somehow make sense.

The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many inno cent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied. Jane Newton South Londonderry World wont benefit from exploitation Editor of the Reformer: Pope John-Paul II condemns as always gravely immoral the exploitation of human beings, created in the image of likeness of God, for their organs and cell tissues. Does Mr. Austin really believe the world will be a better place when human beings are exploited for their cells or organs? Finally, I have a question for the editor of the Reformer Would you have published Mr.

Austin's bigoted opinion if it was targeted at any other religious organization or religious leader in the world today? I didnt think so. The Rev. Charles R. Danielson Administrator, St. Michaels Roman Catholic Church Brattleboro Progressives hold key to states future Editor of the Reformer: Now that the primary contests are over, its time to take a good look at what other options voters have.

From the presidential race on down to our local races, it has become almost impossible to see any real differences between the Democratic and Republican candidates. Where are the candidates with real vision? Luckily, Vermonts Progressive Party is fielding candidates in the gubernatorial race (Anthony Pollina), the Windham County race for state Senate (Richard Davis), and the state representative race in District 3 in Brattleboro (Sarah Edwards). In these races, you do have a real choice. The Progressive platform is centered around concern for all Vermonters: providing health care for all, lowering the cost for prescription drugs, creating a livable wage for all workers, creating jobs and opportunities for folks in rural areas, and making colleges more affordable so that we all have access to higher education. Voting Progressive makes good sense for Vermonters.

Make your vote count in a big way this November. Cast a vote for the issues you really believe are the most important for Vermonters. Vote Anthony Pollina for governor, Sarah Edwards for state representative in District 3, and Richard Davis for state Senate. Youll sleep better knowing youre moving Vermont forward. Rebecca Balint Putney Democratic ideals fade under Bush Editor of the Reformer: Sidney G.

Butler, also of Putney, has written an unintentionally funny letter to the editor which sounds like a parody of Republican attitudes. First establishing his impressive credentials, (liaison officer to the United Nations, retired banker, Wall Street connections), he goes on to say that George Dubya represents the few who are essential for job creation against the many who have no ability to create jobs (like unions). He concludes that we must vote for Dubya so that we can face the fierce world competition coming up. Too bad! We can no longer afford the democratic ideals of Lincoln and Jefferson in this new world order. We must jettison the prime importance of the many and go with the "few" in order to survive.

The recent demonstrations in Seattle and Washington and other places in the world said no way to that advice. No way I Fred Herbert Putney Almanac Alexander Kerensky, the head of a provisional government. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived German Jews of their citizenship and made the swastika the official symbol of Nazi Germany. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain in World War II, the tide turned as the Luftwaffe sustained heavy losses inflicted by the Royal Air Force. In 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev arrived in the United States for a 13-day visit.

In 1963, four children were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala. In 1989, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Penn Warren, the first poet laureate of the United States, died in Stratton, at age 84. Today is Friday, Sept. 15, the 259th day of 2000. There are 107 days left in the year.

Todays Highlight in History: On Sept. 15, 1950, during the Korean conflict, United Nations forces landed at Inchon in the south and began their drive toward Seoul. On this date: In 1776, British forces occupied New York City during the American Revolution. In 1821, independence was proclaimed for Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. In 1857, William Howard Taft who served as president of the United States and as chief justice was born in Cincinnati.

In 1917, Russia was proclaimed a republic by.