Bauen

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

NYTimes Letters to the Editor

Maybe I will try to make this a daily tradition: reprint a Times letter to the editor. Unfortunately, so many of them are just awful, I doubt I could find a decent one each day. Surprisingly, yesterday, the Times printed two good letters. Here they are:

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman assumes a dismal social Darwinism rewarding only those desperate enough to work "a 35-hour day." In his world we're stripped of freedom, strapped to a treadmill controlled by an inexorably globalizing "market." Many can't make it to his "top," and even the lives of those who do are unsustainable.

No. We have choice. Instead of assuming a corporate globalized everything, we can further ecologically sound local production and exchange. Instead of resigning workers to increasing powerlessness, we can seek universal enforcement of international labor standards. Building on these and other practical strategies, we can reject economic determinism and choose a sustainable, satisfying future that includes all of us. Frances Moore Lappé

Cambridge, Mass., June 3, 2005

The writer is the author of several books about hunger and the roots of democracy.


To the Editor:

Re Nantucket exclusivity: The rich do have more money, and it buys the isolation they desire from those whose labor provides them with the ability to live in their chosen, isolated manner, or manor, as the case may often be.

Michael J. Kittredge boasts about his material possessions and ascribes his own success to hard work. John Sheehan, the construction worker who rises at 4:30 a.m. to catch a plane in order to build homes for the super-rich, considers himself to be doing well.

The fact that neither he nor the local school principal and his wife, a nurse, will ever be able to live in closer proximity to the community that provides their livelihood says a lot about what we really think about the values of hard work (which include labor), community, education and opportunity, and about "being" versus "having." Lelde Gilman

Portland, Ore., June 5, 2005

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home