[Peace-discuss] News-Gazette

[C. G. Estabrook]

[On Sunday our local example of the Free Press published a
letter from one Perry Albin of Newman, attacking "Urbana
radicals" (that I resent) for "railroad[ing] ... questions
about the war and impeachment ... onto local town ballots." 
I've sent the N-G the following in response.  --CGE]


Under the headline "Voters can repudiate anti-war
malcontents," a letter recently appeared in the News Gazette
that condemned actions of the annual town meetings in
Champaign and Urbana:  referenda were placed on the fall
ballot, asking whether voters approve of withdrawal from Iraq
and the impeachment of the administration. 

The letter says that I am "quoted as a spokesman for the
effort" (which was in fact organized by the local anti-war
group AWARE in consultation with members of the Green party),
which has as it ends "the destruction of all that is
traditional, and the advancement of a nihilistic agenda
resembling that of the radicals of the 1960's." 

In fact, the voters at the town meeting used a traditional
democratic mechanism that had fallen into desuetude in order
to obtain the most traditional of American ends -- a free,
public vote on matters of national concern.

The author's contempt for democracy (and the democratizing
movements of the 1960s and '70s) is all too typical of this
administration and their supporters.  Far from "free[ing]
people in Afghanistan and Iraq and ... stop[ping] terrorism,"
their war has killed tens of thousands of people and their
families and increased terrorism. 

Local war supporters worked hard to prevent their fellow
citizens' having a chance to vote on these matters.  One can
easily understand why: as more of us come to understand how
the present administration lied and manipulated us into a
criminal war, support for the referenda will grow. 

--Carl Estabrook