|
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
|
|
|
|
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
|
|
The B in BLT
To the editor: I read your recent “PETA = Food Fascists?” article (June 5, 2003). PETA and its tactics provoke argument. The article discussed each plank of PETA’s platform and interviewed pro-PETA and contra-PETA experts on each of those planks. It was a workmanlike article. The following week I saw three pro-PETA letters to the editor, complaining about the Weekly’s “negative” coverage of PETA.
In my opinion, the article left out two points. First, man was born an omnivore, but each of us can choose what we will eat. The food industry will try to seduce us. PETA will try to bully us. We each choose. I choose to use real “B” in my BLT. If PETA’s tactics are fascist, then I suppose PETA is a bunch of food fascists. Second, with so many activist groups resorting to uncompromising hardball tactics, I fear for the future of free thought and free choice in our community.
David W. Olson
Arlington
To the editor: Enough with the wailing outrage by the Jewish community in reaction to the PETA campaign comparing slaughterhouses with concentration camps. PETA certainly didn’t fabricate any of the information or photos, and the premise is perfectly sound, not to mention obvious. The purpose of the campaign is to enlighten people as to the horrors of factory farming and the slaughterhouses. For every angry person who resents the comparison of dead slaughterhouse victims to dead concentration camp victims, there are probably three people who angrily insist that the Holocaust never happened at all. Superiority and condescension are unseemly on the part of a group that was itself spared continued suffering and death only because others took pity on them. How quickly they forget.
M.J. Brooks
Ridgeland, MS
To the editor: People can say what they want about PETA, but PETA gets the work done.
I can understand why people might be offended by comparing the Holocaust to the cruelties of the meat industry. However, as a Jew and an animal rights activist, I don’t think it’s off the mark.
The idea that animals don’t experience fear, joy, and forgiveness is the same one the white slave traders used about Africans. Animals aren’t allowed to have emotions, and neither were blacks, or Native Americans during the western expansion, or the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others the Nazis considered enemies of the state.
We seem to place a higher value on dogs and cats than on other animals, although we still use them in atrocious medical/scientific “research.” In the end, the decisions that we make affect our world. What’s your decision?
Enid Breakstone
Dallas
Meth’s Aftermath
To the editor: The bad news is that there are many, many Tarrant County addicts of meth and other drugs just like Terry Hodges (“Meth Madness,” May 29, 2003) who live out their lives in jails and institutions. The less lucky ones are dead. There is a solution that works. Just ask any of the 500 or so of us recovering drug addicts here in the Fort Worth area.
Narcotics Anonymous is a worldwide fellowship of recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean. The Fort Worth area has 25 groups; several of them meet five times a day, seven days a week. It’s free, and, unlike many other solutions, N.A. is a program of attraction, not promotion. We’re not lawyers, doctors, therapists, or authors trying to sell a book. If we live the program, we stay drug-free.
Addiction is an illness of isolation, unreality, grandiosity, and loneliness, and it gets worse, never better. If something else works for you, stay with it, but if you’re ready for a new way of life, give us a call. Terry Hodges has the same story as many of us. Maybe he’ll find N.A. while he’s locked up. Some of us did.
Melisa B.
Fort Worth Area Narcotics Anonymous
24-hour helpline: 817-624-9525
http://www.fortworthareana.org
Editor’s note: Fort Worth Weekly’s policy is that letters must include the writer’s full name. We agreed to make an exception in this case.
To the editor: I received the link to your “Meth Madness” article from Keri [Olson]. I spent the last five months with Keri in Kansas. The statement that she was a habitual drinker I believe to be false. She is a sweet and innocent girl. I talk and write to her weekly. She did drink and hang out with friends, but she was working two jobs, so drinking all the time was not an option. The fact that she received four years for her small part in the crime I think is absurd. I believe she needs to pay for her crime, but — come on. She regretted what she did from Day One and immediately tried to correct it. Your article is well written, and I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write and leave Keri, to some extent, out of it. She fell in to the wrong crowd, and now she’s paying for it. I wish there was a way I could help her through this. All I can do is keep in touch, send money, and miss her.
Ronnie Shipley
Denver CO
Editor’s note: Keri Olson told reporter Jeff Prince that she drank heavily in the months before her sentencing. Also, she might have regretted her role in robbing a bank, but she did not immediately try to correct it — she went on a 10-day beer and drug binge with her boyfriend and helped spend almost $13,000 in bank loot before turning herself in.
Email this Article...
