Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

I Love You, I Love You

When I started college at the Art Institute, I was more than happy to find that we had the City Paper every week. I have lived in Philly all my life but had never come across the paper before then. Now I feel as if I have missed something if I don't get the new one first thing. I find that the City Paper talks to me in a way that no other paper before has. For once I want to read the stories in the paper. I am a die-hard hip-hop fan and you cater to us well. And I have found that I am hooked on the "I love you, I hate yous." They are to me what soap opera was to my mother's generation. Keep up the good work.

Kendria Clark
Philadelphia

Justice For Gilbert

I found the article on the Weather Underground film and interview with Mark Rudd of interest [Shift in the Wind, Sam Adams, Sept. 4, 2003]. But why didn't you also include an interview with Columbia SDS founder David Gilbert, who is still imprisoned at Attica State Prison in upstate New York? In an interview that appeared in the 1999 pamphlet "Enemies of the State," Columbia SDS founder Gilbert made the following reference to the Weather Underground Organization: "The Weather Underground Organization (WUO) arose from a commitment to raise the level of struggle in solidarity with Vietnamese and black liberation. We also felt that such solidarity in practice was the cutting edge for building any truly revolutionary movement worthy of that name among white people.

"You have to understand the context of the times; this wasn't some narrow conspiracy of a handful of people. In the context of powerful Third World struggles, there was also a surging antiwar militancy among white youth: Hundreds of Armed Forces ROTC buildings, military recruiting centers and Bank of America branches were burnt to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of people participated in demonstrations that involved breaking windows at government buildings, or disrupting meetings of bigwigs, or resisting arrest. And there was a significant minority among the millions opposing the war who supported armed struggle. It was also a time when Vietnam offered a concrete example that U.S. imperialism could be defeated, especially if it was overextended by having to fight on many fronts. "

Like former Philadelphia Black Panther Party chapter activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, Columbia SDS founder Gilbert has been locked up within the militaristic U.S. establishment's prison system since 1981. But to finally end economic racism in Philadelphia and U.S. militarism abroad, a step forward would be to demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal, David Gilbert and all other imprisoned late 1960s activists be granted amnesty in 2004.

Bob Feldman
Via E-mail

Clarification

Last week's Pretzel Logic column meant to report that the Katz campaign blamed Street for not responding immediately to the alleged Molotov incident, not for the incident itself.

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