September 18-24, 2003

mailbag

Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

Green Sees Red

In the not-so-distant past, Will Mega worked directly for Khalid Muhammad, the former leader of the "New" Black Panther Party (not to be confused with the historical Black Panther Party,

www.blackpanther.org) ["Mega: Green Party Racist," Daryl Gale, Sept. 11, 2003]. Mr. Muhammad was renowned for getting right to the point. Here are some excepts from a speech he delivered at San Francisco University in 1997:

"The so-called Jew claims that there were six million in Nazi Germany. I am here today to tell you that there is absolutely no evidence, no proof …"

"Don’t let no hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, perpetrating-a-fraud so-called Jew who just crawled out of the ghettos of Europe …"

"Our entertainers, our basketball players, our football players, our track stars, our baseball players, our entertainers and athletes are in the palm of the white Zionist Jew’s hand …"

"When it’s Swindler’s list, they call it Schindler’s list …"

Etc., etc.

When asked by me to come clean on his past affiliation with this character, Will Mega had little to say other than he’s no longer a member of the New Black Panther Party. He expressed no remorse, no condemnation of Muhammad, no tale about a change of heart on his part, no explanation whatsoever. That the Greens should be called names by someone with such unapologetic ties to a legendary anti-Semite is hardly an insult.

As for Mega’s charge of racism, a review of the Green Party’s electoral activity in Philadelphia since its founding in 2001 would suggest otherwise. Our local candidates so far have been a Jew, a Haitian-American and a white guy. Our top picks for replacing our at-large council candidate (who withdrew earlier this year) were a Hispanic and an African American. In short, we look to run people of any background so long as their politics are right. If Mr. Mega feels snubbed, he has only himself to blame.

Tom Hutt

Green Party candidate
Eighth District City Council

Help Available

We’re writing in response to ["Risky Business," Daryl Gale, Aug. 21, 2003]. For a number of culturally specific reasons, many Asians and immigrants are a target for crime. They are vulnerable to robbery due to a perception that they have a lot of money, do not use the banking system or do not report the crime. Once victimized, many Asian community members do not wish to prosecute, largely out of fear of retaliation or lack of trust in the legal system to protect them. Language can also be a major barrier to services.

In 2001, Victim/Witness Service of South Philadelphia, Inc. (V/WSSP) established the Asian Outreach Project. The focus is on providing crime prevention information and ensuring quality services to Asian crime victims who reside in South Philadelphia. Through the Asian Outreach Project, we are able to accommodate some victims with limited English skills. We have staff members who speak Khmer, Cantonese, Haitian Creole, French and Spanish.

We provide a variety of direct services to clients, including crisis counseling, support and information throughout the criminal justice process, extensive advocacy and referrals, home visits and intervention with creditors. Our advocates also provide assistance in filing Crime Victim’s Compensation (CVC) claims. If a victim is eligible, CVC can help with medical bills, lost wages and funeral expenses, among other things.

The role of our community organizer, Chhen Heng, is to provide direct services, especially outreach to Asian victims and witnesses of crimes. The purpose of this letter is to inform the readers that there are various agencies throughout the city that offer similar services. Each neighborhood has its own community-based victim service agency. We would be happy to help victims ourselves or to refer them to the appropriate agency. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office also has a Southeast Asian Project with coordinators who speak Vietnamese and Khmer. Being a victim and having to work within the criminal justice process can be very difficult. There is help available. Please call and let us know if there is any more we can do. We can be reached at 215-551-3360.

Chhen Heng, community organizer

Phu Tien, assistant victim advocate

Alison Sprague, executive director
Victims/Witness Services of South Philadelphia, Inc.

Nursing a Thanks

As a Temple RN I want to thank you so much for the excellent article that was written on our nursing dilemma ["Nursing Woes at Temple," Audrey Hoffman, Sept. 11, 2003].

The postcard was an excellent touch and the story well written! Please keep up the good work in relaying our efforts (to obtain and keep a fair working relationship with Temple Hospital) with the public who reads your paper.

Thank you again!

Gail Niedermaier, RN
Philadelphia

Mad as Hell

I can’t contain my outrage that on the second anniversary of the worst civilian attack in American history, you publish such an insulting piece of garbage as "This War is Bogus" [Slant, Michael Meacher, Sept. 11, 2003].

It is one thing to oppose government policy, even resorting to polemics if grounded in fact. Instead, you put out conspiracy crap built on a foundation of distortion. If you had bothered to check the accuracy of Meacher’s cites from "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" in Project for the New American Century (PNAC) at the heart of Meacher’s hatchet job, fully available on the Net (yes, every conspiracy openly publishes its plan; see www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm), you would see he conveniently leaves out the context for the quotes. The "worldwide command and control system" refers to an antiballistic missile system, and has nothing to do with dangerous regimes (p. 53). There are no hints that the U.S. is developing weapons that ""target’ specific genotypes," but rather speculation on the transformation of warfare on different fronts (including bio-warfare) in the next several decades (p. 60).

I could go on but you get the point. Meacher’s thesis is built solely upon his accurate read of the PNAC document, but he resorts to text manipulation and deception to prove his theory. I expect better from you than publishing trash on a sensitive day while we are still at war and mourning the dead, thereby lending credence to this kook. You should be ashamed.

Jay Borowsky
Philadelphia

Triskaidekaphobia

I just saw Thirteen. I wonder if Cindy Fuchs ["New Kids On The Block," Aug. 28, 2003] and I saw the same film? Aside from the fact that it's a pretty poorly done film -- for example, there's no character development whatsoever that allows us to make sense of Tracy's rapid fall from normal prepubescence under Evie's influence -- it is rife with racist stereotypes.

A repugnant film all around.

Jeff Hornstein
South Philadelphia

Slaves to Accuracy

A correction to the explanation of 1780 Act of Gradual Abolition ["Book Marks," Deborah Bolling, Sept. 11, 2003]: This weak law did not free Pennsylvania’s slaves or their children, only the future children of an enslaved mother, born on or after March 1, 1780. And it required those children to work as indentured servants for the mother’s master until age 28. Africans who were enslaved when the law was enacted remained enslaved for the rest of their lives.

Slave owners routinely took heavily pregnant women out of state so they would give birth in bordering slave states such as Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, where the children would be sold. Other slave owners defied the law by not registering the children born in Pennsylvania, and later selling them over the border.

Even George Washington took advantage of a loophole in the law, rotating the eight enslaved blacks he brought to Philadelphia to work in the President’s House out of state every several months, so they could never establish a six-month residency in Pennsylvania and legally demand their freedom.

The text of the 1780 law, and first-person accounts of how it affected the lives of Pennsylvania blacks, can be found at www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse.

Edward Lawler Jr.
Historian of the Independence Hall Association