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"I thought that nothing you
could show me about Iran could greatly
shock me. Was I ever wrong!"
A REAL MINIMUM WAGE
Thank you for alerting readers to
women's stake in "welfare reform."
Lynn Phillips' article, "Safety Net Performs
Vanishing Act," and her "Seven
Step Program" (Fall 1994) were right
on target. This program calls for a
$1.10 hourly increase in the minimum
wage. That would help. But three times
that increase is needed to bring the
minimum wage up to its relative worth
in the 1930s.
I agree that it is criminal to talk of
cutting women and children off welfare
when the number of available jobs
is millions less than the number of
unemployed. The Guaranteed Annual
Income demand is central to the
Phillips program or any other rational
solution. My family was on welfare
during the 1930s depression. A guaranteed
annual income would have spared
us the indignity and insult of being on
"welfare."
The best way to reduce welfare is to
provide real jobs. Bring back the WPA.
Massive public works programs with
jobs at union wages, combined with
on-the-job training, would solve many
problems beyond the reduction of welfare
rolls. Included could be child care,
housing for the homeless, and repair of
our crumbling cities. Members of Congress,
Matthew Martinez and Maxine
Waters, have introduced such a bill,
the Job Creation and Infrastructure
Restoration Act
of 1994, HR
4708. It asks for
$250 billion in
five years, an
women
A Feminist
SEND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR TO
amount that
would save money
in the long run.
The billions being
spent to build new prisons would be
better spent on preventing crime by
creatingjobs.
Beatrice Lumpkin
Chicago, IL
EAT YOUR WORDS!
In an otherwise fine article about hysterectomy,
("My Uterus, Myself,"
Spring 1994),Elayne Clift describes her
fears as being "terrified that I would go
crazy, forget my children's names,
become suicidal, obese and/or dysfunctional."
Those of us who are fat must
object to being included in such a list
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ON THE ISSUES
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of awful fates. Sometimes feminists are
the worst offenders when it comes to
size acceptance issues, and it would
help if Ms. Clift and the editors of ON
THE ISSUES would read (better yet—
publish!) some literature, so that they
would understand that there is some
disagreement about what causes people
to be fat. "Obesity" implies that it is
caused only by compulsive overeating.
Some of us are sane, happy, and competent,
and many of us have children
whose names we remember very well.
We don't belong on the "awful" list.
Lizbeth Binks
Baltimore, MD
BLAME CAPITALISM
I have read with interest the article on
and immigration, "Needed:
Immigration Policy,"
by Eleanor Pam
(Summer 1994)
and was appalled
at her ignorance
and nationalism.
Like her, I come
from a Holocaust
family, only mine
was not so fortunate.
The Depression-era anti-immigrant
scapegoating worked to keep
most of my family out of the U.S. As
she should know, the Nazis were also
anti-immigrant and the end result of all
anti-immigrant policies are concentration
camps. Haiti, for example, is one
big death camp.
Our economic problems are not
caused or aggravated by immigrants.
They are caused by capitalism, the private
profit system, which has enriched
a few people greatly, and impoverished
the rest of us to an even greater extent.
We do not need "a coherent plan that
serves all our national interests" but
rather a world view that sees all of us as
citizens of planet Earth, who have a
right to seek work and personal safety
wherever it may be, just as the multinational
corporations have a right to set
up shop wherever they wish.
As to the views of the reactionary
Federation for American Immigration
Reform and of the National Review,
people are known by the company
they keep. No feminist can keep company
with these fascists.
Lee Heller
San Francisco, CA
I recommend that Ms. Heller read my article
42 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995