Bob Linden, keep up the anti-war message!

[Guest guest]

I read recently on the San Francisco Bay Area Veg email list that on your

October 6th program (which, try as I might, I could not get to listen

to through your website archive) you announced an upcoming anti-war rally.

Bravo, I am glad to hear that! We veg*ns come in all political stripes,

though I find we tend to be overwhelmingly for peace and justice and against

empire-building and war-mongering. The empire-building and war-mongering

crowd has most of the rest of the radio dial for the rest of the hours in

the day. I know you won't be swayed by those who claim that this alienates

'us' from the 'mainstream'. Veganism may not be mainstream (yet), but war

objectors and protestors are -- except you wouldn't know it, due to media

whiteout on the depth of antiwar sentiment and activity. This whiteout is

slowly being ripped open; even CIA hacks and arch conservatives are

registering their objections to Bush's war drive, albeit for their own

reasons. Still, you can't get more mainstream than that. Your willingness to

announce such actions is a public service. Radio bandwidth is actually

public property, which broadcasters lease, but do not own. The only remnant

of the original compact that broadcasters have to serve the public, in

return for being allowed to lease bandwidth, is the Emergency Broadcast

System (the program that occasionally runs a 60 second test beep). Time was

when all kinds of community meetings and activities were regularly announced

and covered on the radio (and NPR, National Petroleum Radio, has become much

too centralized and degraded to serve this role). The monopolization of the

airwaves by Clear Channel Communications supports a Christian fundamentalist

right-wing pro-war hate-promoting agenda, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh,

Dr. Laura and Mike Savage. Bob, don't take the well-meaning advice of those

who would like the veg*n community to try to fade into the woodwork, so that

we're not too different from, or too provocative of, the so-called

mainstream. We don't need to skulk away from being who we are, just so we

can be accepted. We will be accepted the way we are; anything otherwise is

dishonest and unworthy of us. There also was a time when abolitionists were

considered a fringe element. Should the abolitionists have watered down

their message in order to be accepted by the slave-supporting mainstream?

 

Janice Rothstein

San Francisco