Views in brief

They nearly killed my son

I JUST read your article about the Broome County Jail ("The ghosts of Broome County jail"). I live in North Carolina and raised my children here, but originally am from the Broome County, New York, area.

My son, then age 24, went to the area to visit family. He had never been in any kind of trouble, but had a couple family members call the law on him. To make a long story short, the Endicott police picked up my son and took him to the Broome County Jail for a misdemeanor charge. They stripped my son of his clothing, starved him, put him in a chair and tied him and beat him to a pulp!

His father went to the jail to try and see him and they refused his visits until the next week. When his father did get to see him, his face was so badly beaten you couldn't even recognize him! He was held there for over a month without being able to be bailed out.

I cried and called the jail every night. They wouldn't even let him have a phone call. Here my son was in a different state that he had never been in before, and when they did release him, he didn't know where he was at.

He now suffers with mental illness from the torture he endured at the hands of people who are suppose to protect and serve. What happened to you're innocent until proven guilty? These correctional officers killed Salladin Barton and almost killed my son!
Michelle Cranford, from the internet

The continuing struggle at Yale

IN RESPONSE to "When we took a stand in Wisconsin": As a clerical worker at Yale in the 1080s, I remember the power we as a majority of women felt organizing and supporting each other during our protracted first strike. The administration vastly underestimated us, considered us to be earning "pin money" and easily demoralized. We stuck it out with the help of the maintenance workers in UNITE HERE Local 35.

So my question is: What were the lessons learned in Wisconsin? More outreach to community groups, better organizing? Local 34 has used a variety of tactics, especially working with city government and community groups, massive marches and rallies. But it has been unable to get the teaching assistants recognized by Yale or to organize workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital after many years!

Now Yale seems to be undermining itself by ignoring the racism at Yale, with the latest debacle with the firing and then rehiring of a dishwasher who smashed an offensive window at Calhoun College, not to mention the uproar this past year among undergraduates over lack of equality and respect for minority students. So far, Yale has only increased anti-Yale feelings in the New Haven community.

As with the election season, the message seems to be "Keep woke" (to borrow the Black Lives Matter phrase). Keep organizing, protesting, reaching out to others and choosing to go with one's conscience rather than "voting for the lesser evil."
Elizabeth Neuse, Hamden, Connecticut

Stein courts an anti-science crowd

I HAVE spent the last two weeks or so defending Jill Stein's position on vaccines and homeopathy. I am a supporter of the Green Party in general, and of Stein's bid for office. While I have called for a smart-state voting strategy and the necessity of defeating Trump, her comments on vaccines have really set me off.

Stein has been asked many times to clarify her position by myself and others, and she now has. In an interview with the Washington Post, she detailed her views. Much of what I had defended was correct, she does see them as valuable and believes many people have an issue with the money in the health care industry that leads to the distrust in vaccines.

Yet then she really lost me, because she kept talking. The problem is she is pushing that fear of the industry, just as she does with genetically modified organisms (an issue I have been vocally opposed of with her platform).

Here is one part of the Post article:

"I think there's no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases--smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication," Stein said. "Like any medication, they also should be--what shall we say?--approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think right now, that is the problem. That people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence." [emphasis mine]

I don't have an overall issue with this statement because she is correct, people do have issues with those institutions. Wrongly, but they do. Not everyone is scientifically literate. People fear what they don't understand, and they fear that profit is too much of a driving force in science and medicine. Of course, this is misplaced distrust, but we know it exists.

Here is where I blew my lid, and where I have to hold Stein accountable for pushing this distrust:

"As a medical doctor, there was a time where I looked very closely at those issues, and not all those issues were completely resolved," Stein said. "There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant, the toxic substances like mercury which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don't know if all of them have been addressed." [emphasis mine]

Just, no! There is no scientific evidence that the low levels of mercury in vaccines is unsafe. A medical doctor should know this. Also, mercury hasn't been in most childhood vaccines for more than a decade.

Stein is now stroking the anti-vaccination movement fears and playing right into their hands. Does she think vaccines work? Yes. "We have a real compelling need for vaccinations," Stein said. However, you can't use bad science as a way to fight for better regulations, or a not-for-profit health incentive.

While I still feel okay saying Stein is not "anti-vaccine" I cannot confidently say she is not anti-science and that she does not overly pander to the anti-science and anti-vaccine crowd. A leader needs to stand up against the movement that is killing children, not court their vote.

I am not one to make rash decisions, abandon a candidate based on one interview. Yet this has me beet red and writing this while basically punching my keyboard.

I can overlook some bad science positions--no one is perfect. But when it comes to GMOs, Stein couldn't be more wrong. "Monsanto lobbyists help run the day in those agencies and are in charge of approving what food isn't safe," said Stein, while touting her platform that calls for a complete halt of all GMOs in the country.

I can debate her on that and maybe change the party's mind. But when it comes to vaccines, that is a make or break for me. I am mad, disappointed, and let down by this Harvard educated medical doctor. We have to do better.
Dan Arel, San Diego

Aiding and abetting the blacklist

IN RESPONSE to "How do you stop a blacklist?": The blacklist began before Joseph McCarthy, the scum, moved into the spotlight.

There were massive arrests, deportations and killings of leftist labor leaders during the Wilson administration, as well as repressive anti-immigration laws designed to keep Italian and Jewish leftist labor organizers out of America. Wilson killed the American leftist labor movement.

Roosevelt refused to lift the immigration restrictions, out of fear that to do so would cost him the election in 1936, thereby condemning millions of Jews and other European citizens to death at the hands of the Nazis. He also interred Japanese, Italian and German Americans.

At the end of the Second World War, Truman, salivating and dripping with blood, created the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. With his strident bullshit anti-Communist/pro-capitalist rhetoric, and with assistance from the media, he set in motion the repressive House Un-American Activity Committee hearings, the Hollywood witch hunts and a climate of fear and intimidation throughout the country.

It was not until 1949 or 1950 that McCarthy moved into the spotlight. Truman and the Democrats were more than happy to hide in the shadows and become relegated to the dustbins of history as the creators and sponsors of the horror. John Kennedy was another major anti-Communist blowhard and his brother, Robert Kennedy, from the school of opportunism, was a lawyer for Joe McCarthy.
Pepe Le Moko, from the internet