Monday, July 31, 2006
Surprises right and left
Posted by Harold Henderson on Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 6:28 AM
Some predictable people provoke unexpected thoughts, and it's not even the dog days yet:
- The Ayn Rand Institute--which I'd always thought of as existing to provide rationalizations for right-wing assholes--does the opposite when confronted with President Bush's veto of stem-cell funding: "The government should get out of the business of funding science. But so long as it is involved, it must scrupulously respect the separation of church and state. Its funding decisions must be made on rationally demonstrable, not faith-based grounds. Bush's veto clearly violates this principle."
- And anti-corporate crusaders Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weissman take a week off from Boeing and Wal-Mart to whack liberal/left groups. They draw on a forthcoming book by Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher, How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America: "Fisher's study finds that most of the national environmental, student, and progressive groups have shut down their internal grassroots operations and outsourced door-to-door fundraising to a handful of large national canvass operations. Fisher says these national canvassing operations are the point of entry for hundreds of young, idealistic and politically aware people. But instead of funneling these people into a lifetime of progressive politics, more often than not the national canvass operations, run as secretive corporate top-down bureaucracies, burn their idealism and spit them out onto the trash heap of politics." Woops.
OK, maybe you could have predicted these in hindsight, but they woke me up. (Any current or former canvassers out there who can tell more?)
Comments (3)
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1. loved your great article about John Laesh 2. Where is Sherwyn? I went to Sherwyn's today for some homeopathic meds and Sherwyn's was gone! There was a closed sign on each door and I could see from the cab that the shelves were empty! I should have gotten out to look. I started to think about where was the second best health food store and I was stymied. The next best ones I ever saw were in San Francisco,but I never saw an emporium like Sherwyn's, anywhere. Maybe Sherwyn just decided to retire. I'm his age, and I know that because we went to high school together, and I retired several years ago. Sherwyn's was a great institution and whoosh! it's gone? I couldn't find a clue on the internet and then i thought of you. Arlene Gloria Hirsch Edgewater
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Senior store employee told me couple months ago the store was in financial trouble, owner old, ready to retire. Shelves gradually emptied, employees told to tell customers that stor was being remodelled, hence no re orders. Through this Saturday, the sign on door said "closed for remodelling' but no sign of remodelling and phone # disconnected. I suspect a wonderful store is gone.. unless a new owner rejuvinates it.
I was store owner early 2000-2002 and it was 90% due to Gail sherwyn's wife taking over the company and firing all the store managers (5) and trying to run it herself. She reduced ordering to nil which upset all the customers and then long time employees like Lee Crost left (6 years). Lakeview West
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