The pro-union employees of the White Dog Cafe should read The Grapes of Wrath to get a sense of what the labor movement stood for when it was born [Cover, "Bite the Hand," Doron Taussig, June 15, 2006]. I think the men and women who gave their lives for the labor movement in America would openly laugh at the prospect of unionizing a business like the White Dog today. Unions are, by nature, completely destructive to the notion of hospitality. I truly wish Judy Wicks the best of luck in weathering this storm.

Craig Strimel
Brewerytown

How can an article about union organizing focus on whether people "like" the owner? Union organizing is about job security and having control over your working conditions. Regardless of how "liberal" the White Dog may or may not be, there is still a power structure in place that—as it now stands, without a union—ultimately puts workers at risk.

Nina Swanson
Fishtown

As a professional food server, I'm grateful for the many benefits I receive as an employee of Judy Wicks. And as a human being, I'm glad the world has people like her in it. The suggestion that Judy's concern for people is merely fashionable strikes me as merely wrong. She has voluntarily provided her employees with benefits that have made a real impact on our lives, much more impact than the bitter accusations of ex-employees. Ultimately, there is no union at White Dog Cafe because the vast majority of us don't want one.

Mark Gratman
Center City

As a former server of local and chain restaurants, I sympathize with and commend the labor organizers. However, although there certainly needs to be a louder movement for organized voices in the restaurant business, I question if the White Dog is the best place to make the battleground. I worry that one of the few truly sustainable businesses with a locally fueled economy will be driven by a nationally backed labor union, defeating the purpose, or future restaurant proprietors will shy away from the progressive ideals that bellwethers like Wicks aim for, in favor of a "safer" conventional atmosphere. What we need is to take the brains of the gallant labor organizers of White Dog and stick them inside the apathetic clones over at Applebee's and Chili's.

Ali Glaser
Fairmount

The City Paper and the White Dog Cafe have grown up together over the last 25 years, both bringing a creative and progressive edge that has served Philadelphia well. I am shocked, therefore, that you would jeopardize the White Dog's reputation by mocking its image on your front page for a story about an internal issue. Perhaps you intended to set the record straight by exposing how a few rotten apples can spoil a very nice barrel, but in today's sound-bite world, most people only remember the headlines.

George Hoguet
Media

Judy Wicks proves she is not perfect, but also demonstrates why she is a unique civic leader, a visionary for social progress and a smart and compassionate businesswoman.

Jack Malinowski
West Mt. Airy

I am a public school teacher here in Philadelphia (read: union member, sometimes even proudly so) and a business owner who is a member of the Sustainable Business Network. I support both unions and sustainable businesses. I wish those workers the best of luck in securing acceptable working conditions. I'm just curious as to whether the organizers and union can point to a similar progressive restaurant that has unionized successfully. I don't really care about the rhetoric, I want to see results. When questioned about why organize at the White Dog when other businesses are far worse, their only answer is why not. Tell us which restaurants you look to as models for how it should be done correctly. If they don't exist, maybe you should be organizing differently. Do you really believe that unionizing will improve the working conditions at the White Dog? Can you be sure that bargaining will begin at your present level of wages and benefits and go up from there? If you aren't sure, you should consider other paths. I would wonder why SEIU and the Teamsters were not interested and why small restaurants are not a "growth market."

I also wonder how many of these workers have ever belonged to a union? Young progressives tend to idealize unions. These folks will be at the bottom rungs of the union structure and will not have an equal say. Unions are great for negotiating benefits and pay but little else. They are in for a shock, I think. Have they ever sat in a union hall with other workers? They will not be sitting around discussing theoretical aspects of Marx's ideas and neo-progressive ideology. What qualifies them as advocates for the working classes? Surely there has to be more to it than having a dead end job they are frustrated with.

As a teacher, my union basically has the attitude that they will tell me what they think is important for me to know and that I just have to trust them on the rest. I don't get that elusive "voice" that these organizers say they are clamoring for. It's more frustrating than rewarding trying to carve a niche and create a voice. I even get sample ballots come election time telling me who to vote for, not why though. You are kept in the dark about most things. The tradeoff is that they come through with the benefits and wages so you put up with the secrecy. Sometimes it is worth it and sometimes it is not.

This was especially true for the last contract for teachers. There was a rumor going around that we were going to have to pay for part of our benefits with the new contract.

At every meeting, I asked what is the status of the benefits negotiations? They kept saying they couldn't talk about it, but they still expected me to support their possible walkouts and other actions. They shared nothing and expected uncritical support. We knew nothing about the fate of our benefits until the contract was presented to us. There is a mysterious nature to some union work. The participatory environment the people of the White Dog now work in would not continue to exist. The unions don't particularly care about the progressive causes that the organizers seem to support.

For example, I was harassed and assaulted two times this year at a school by the same group of students. The school district did nothing except refuse to transfer me. The union engaged in some sympathetic hand wringing, I wish there was something we could do but … , etc. I was stonewalled until I hired a lawyer. Within a week, I got a letter saying my transfer would go through immediately. The union was unable or unwilling to address the issue. This showed me the very real limitations of unions. The issue of harassment based on sexual orientation was not high on their list of priorities to deal with so I was left hanging. They have no mechanism or process for addressing the issue then or now. That's not what I call progressive. Don't assume the union will support your laundry list of progressive line items, they might give it lip service but not much else. Having lived most of my adult life in Berkeley and Oakland I find the unions here very disappointing in terms of progressive causes.

However, when I attend SBN functions and meet other SBN members I am humbled by their commitments to economic fairness and social justice. I feel truly inspired by these people and their work and I am given a dose of hope. This is a true progressive community. I rarely feel that at a union meeting. The typical union member will write these organizers off as too young and idealistic, lacking real life experience, and not to be taken seriously. The typical union member will care more about nuts and bolts issues that impact their daily life than with rhetoric about rabble rousing and whistle blowing.

Name Withheld
Mt. Airy

My father was affiliated with a union for more than 50 years. When he started, it was to help the working man in the struggle for decent wages and good benefits. He stood up for his people but always tried to be fair to the employers also. I think that, even he, would see this as a grab for power.

If you are getting a living wage and a good benefits program, what can a union offer you? A chance to line someone's pockets with your dues. I've seen this happen too often now. The union contract only helps the slackers or the malcontents. Why work hard [when] you're protected? I wish it wasn't this way, but anymore it is. I've known Judy Wicks for a few years and have found her to be the most socially conscious person I know. She's a throwback to the activist "60s and puts her money where her mouth is. I hope this works out in her favor. That would be the fair thing.

Tom Brown
Upper Darby

I am writing as a former employee of the White Dog Cafe and a longtime and continued customer of the restaurant. I was in no way involved with the union organizing and I maintain friendships with employees who are both for and against the union. I speak only for myself.

To include the myspace comments between the two women whom you interviewed was wildly unfair. Those were personal conversations, never intended to be read by the public. It was disrespectful to a woman who put herself and her job on the line to give you a reliable source. Further, to portray the union momentum as the activism of a few KWRU-trained Cheri Honkalites devalues these people's experience as workers. Regardless of their past affiliation, the organizers of this union were some of the most respected employees, and had been committed to the restaurant for several years.

While Ms. Wicks must be respected as a brilliant businesswoman, my experience at the restaurant has shown me that the restaurant belongs as much to the employees as it does to her and to management. White Dog employees don't just come and go, and they feel a sense of ownership over the product they've helped to create. I really do not understand why everyone is upset that a movement towards unionization should occur. It makes perfect sense that an atmosphere which claims to value dialogue and respect for workers would be conducive to union organizing, especially at a time when the staff felt threatened by changes and disorder. I'm not surprised that these discussions, led by Judy's best, would become a part of the White Dog's history. I am only surprised by the hostile response of ownership and management.

My time at the White Dog Cafe marks one the best work experiences that I have had to date, due to the unique sense of community and the commitment that the staff shares toward the good of the business. I'll always be proud to be a part of that community. From what I saw initially, Judy did make an attempt to create a culture that encouraged discussion and maintained openness between staff and management. But the attempt seems to be as far as she'll go. The experiences of many of my friends, from the front of house to the kitchen to the work of the White Dog Foundation and the Fair Food Farmstand, show that Ms. Wicks offers unexpected disappointment when it comes to paying people what they are worth and respecting their contributions.

Taussig writes, Wicks "really didn't want a union." But many of her employees claim that they did, and feel that they were silenced with hostility. It doesn't take a weatherman. in fact, it sounds like a rollback of progressive values to me, at a time when the liberal elite could have stepped up to the plate. Judy should be afraid that patrons assume that she cannot walk the talk. In barring receptive discussion of the union and compromising the safety of the workers who bring it to the table, she and management have shown just that.

Jessica Knapp
Via E-mail

The basic tenet of liberalism is that the world (i.e. somebody else) owes me a living. So why is Judy Wicks surprised that her nanny-state experiment at the White Dog is being attacked from within by professional protesters every bit as greedy as any other group of corporate raiders? It is an unflattering truth of human existence that the more you do for someone, the more they expect you to do, and the less they will do for themselves. Ms. Wicks and future Third World countries like France and Great Britain ignore this truth at their peril.

M.K.F.
Via E-mail

You mentioned that the "dishwashers are universally agreed to have the worst job at the restaurant: They work in a small, hot, stuffy room." I used to work as a dishwasher there and have to say you are slightly misinformed. It's true that it was a small, hot room but it was located in the kitchen next to some of the nicest, funniest and most generous chefs you could ever hope to work with. I never ate so well as when I worked there: they let me eat whatever and whenever I wanted. Every argument I witnessed (or was part of) was settled pretty fairly (an anomaly in restaurant jobs) and the best part was that, being tucked away from the front of the house, I never had to deal with the servers mentioned in the article.

Juliet Wayne
West Philadelphia

Inasmuch as the Senate is using gay marriage to distract the body politic from the woes of the Iraq War, it can be said that the Catholic Church and its apologists are using it for the same ends—but this time to distract their parishioners from the sex-abuse scandal that has gone on for generations [Slant, "Tempered Tantrum," Christine Flowers, June 15, 2006]. What was the solution to the sex-abuse scandal as decreed by the Vatican? Bar gays from the priesthood! It's ridiculous to imply that pedophile priests aren't a threat to the nuclear family but gay priests are. Like our country, the Catholic Church has far more dire things to untangle than what homosexuals (celibate or not) do in their bedrooms.

Joe Monte
Center City

I won't rehearse the same old pro-gay marriage arguments because everyone knows them already (as they also already knew Flowers' reasons against it), but I will say this: the truly vexatious and implicitly "intellectually dishonest" part of the article came at the end, when Flowers asks, (supposedly) rhetorically:

"What of the evangelical who sincerely believes that same-sex unions are wrong and writes an op-ed about it for his local paper. Will he be prosecuted under a hate-speech statute?"

What I've always disliked about the same-sex marriage debates is the ways in which those who are against gay marriage imply that the de facto response to their conservative ideas will be an accusation of hate speech. Believe it or not, us liberals admire the amendments just as much as you Bible-thumping, flag-waving, to-the-word believers, and there is a stark difference between "hate speech" and "dissent." Let's get some perspective here: no one who voices their opinions against gay marriage are under threat of having a constitutional amendment passed banning them or their words. The conservative, be-martyred, "woe is me, my dissent is construed as hate speech" is getting old and insults the (historically stronger and more nuanced) liberal respect for the First Amendment. Thanks, but no thanks, Flowers. Greta Lynn West Philadelphia

I need specific examples of how gay marriage will undermine the family as we know it. Many gay couples (some of whom have children) live as a family and the only piece needed is the "marriage" piece. I put that in quotes because maybe we gay folks need a different name for it; I agree that marriage, as it is, was created for a relationship between a man and a woman and for the biological procreation of children. However, we need something to call our own; we need that intangible thing that can hang over us to look toward so that we can say "no matter how tough this gets, we are still (insert word for gay marriage here) and we can work this out." My partner and I have been together for 11 years and we live as if we were (insert word for being married and gay here).

Ironically, the arguments against gay marriage have been religious [but] I can find a number of churches that would perform a marriage ceremony for my partner and me. We need the secular piece in place in order for this to be legitimate. Government is not about personal religious conviction; it is about providing what is most practical, economical, logical, etc. for the people. Why are we such a threat?

Eric Loudenslager
Center City

It is not fair (and unrealistic) for anyone to try and trample down the religious beliefs of any church and attempt [to make] them to marry two people who love one another and happen to have similar sex organs. It is, however, fair for the citizens of the United States of America to ask to be afforded equal protection under the law. You're an attorney. Tell me that a couple joined by a civil union may expect the rights and goodies as a heterosexual married couple. You can't, because it is not the case, and that, my dear, is what we call separate and not equal.

Jesse Poe
Northern Liberties

In [Philly Blunt, "The Gloves Are Off," Brian Hickey, June 15, 2006], it was incorrectly stated that Bernard Hopkins was the only middleweight to win the light-heavyweight title; Dick Tiger also accomplished the feat in 1966. In [Movies, "Hurts So Good," Sam Adams, June 15, 2006], Cristi Puiu's hometown should have been listed as Bucharest. City Paper regrets the errors.