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Portrait of the Artists Sandy Zipp in his review ("The Battle for San Francisco," April 2) and Michael Calderon-Zaks in his letter to the editor (April 30) both seem to think that defending artists is an indefensible position of mine, perhaps because they have narrowed down the broad spectrum of artists to mean latecomer, middle-class visual artists who are focused on their own careers and complicit with gentrification. Given that my book Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism opens with the then-about-to-be-evicted Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, ends with the artists Johanna Poethig and Jennifer Wofford who can no longer afford to live in San Francisco but still work with the city's youth, and, of the dozens of community-based and activist artists it portrays, gives the muralist (and Mission District evictee) Juana Alicia more attention than anyone else, theirs is not an accurate reading. Zipp takes from my book the saga of the artist-created "life-work space" zoning-code exemptions, which I called "the biggest Trojan Horse artists ever dragged into a city," but leaves out my accounts of the many artists who vehemently opposed it to conclude: "Solnit soft-pedals the bohemian factor in gentrification for, in part, deep and abiding emotional reasons." I'm not sure how he gained access to my deep and abiding emotional life, but attention to the full range of my facts would have been more relevant. Calderon-Zaks devotes much of his letter to the longer history of urban renewal and its effect on vulnerable communities, with the implication I overlooked it. I wonder if he made it to chapter two of Hollow City, which is a history of that renewal, or noticed the book's historic photo essays by David Johnson and Ira Nowinski documenting the communities that were ravaged in the process. It is because of the roles of artists like the Coltrane Church's musicians, Juana Alicia, Poethig, Wofford, Johnson and Nowinski in nurturing community life and preserving radical histories that I argued for the importance of artists to cities in the first place. Rebecca Solnit
Politics Counts Ted Kleine makes a number of errors and omissions in the story "Counted Out" (April 16). The premise of the story is that the Bush administration, through Commerce Secretary Don Evans, made 3.3 million people disappear by not using adjustment or sampling in the 2000 Census. The story says: "Evans refused to allow the Census Bureau to use the scientific process of sampling, which would have adjusted the population figures to correct for undercounts in minority and immigrant neighborhoods." But the fact of the matter is, the professionals at the Census Bureau themselves recommended to the commerce secretary that he not adjust the Census. To suggest that Evans suppressed this information is wholly inaccurate and misleading. What's more, it was the Democrats who for months wanted the Census Bureau professionals to have the final word on the Census. However, when the bureau professionals decided against adjustment they suddenly decided they didn't want the professionals to have the final say. While In These Times certainly has the right to editorialize on any particular side of an issue, it should not do so in its news stories. Your readers have an expectation of factual content in your reporting. Chip Walker Ted Kleine replies: I'm in favor of census sampling for the same reason Chip Walker is against it: because it will help elect Democrats. If a Democrat had been in the White House, the Census Bureau would have released sampled figures. The party in power will count people in a way that favors itself. Once Evans stripped the Census Bureau of the final decision on sampling, there was no question sampling was dead. As a partisan Republican, Evans never would have approved a count that added 3.3 million marginal people--most of them Democrats--to the official population. Walker's party got what it wanted, so what is he complaining about?
Dare To Reconsider Before Americans consider a new direction for U.S. drug policy, we should take a long, hard look at where we've been ("What's Your Anti-Drug?" April 16). Not another dollar spent, prison built, innocent shot, cop corrupted, war waged, right repealed, DARE program taught or drug raider deployed, until someone, somewhere, somehow, outside the halls of the government created anti-drug industry, takes a long, hard, unbiased look at what, just may be, nothing more than a hysterical witch-hunt run amok. Have we actually accomplished one tangible thing of note, besides enriching those who espouse and implement these draconian measures? Now that DARE has been exposed as having produced exactly the opposite effect we desired, one must question the achievements of the other freelance anti-drug acronyms. What exactly does our dollar buy? Do they actually encourage, rather than prevent, drug use? It's time Americans revisit the whole issue and look at what we've done to our fellow citizens and our children in the name of the war on drugs. Shouldn't we critically review the current scheme, and, at the very least, consider cheaper, more effective, less harmful approaches to America's drug problem? It's never too late to reconsider. Mike Plylar
Queen of Comedy I just got the April 16 issue of In These Times, and I've already gotten my money's worth after only reading the last two pages. Male that I am, on picking up the magazine, I immediately noticed the fetching cartoon that illustrates "Operation Queen Esther." Paula Kamen's piece was a great stress reliever during these early dour days of Dubya. I laughed and I cried, thinking over and over as I read, would it not be so! Bring back Paula soon. Burnis E. (Gene) Tuck
Giving to Indians Many thanks for "Indian Givers" (April 2). It is appalling that white people are still ripping off indigenous people. However, a few Indian causes are worthy of praise. Some of the best are Olympic gold medal winner Billy Mills' Runing Strong for American Indian Youth, Allies of the Lakota, the Dakota Indian Foundation, Wounded Knee District School, the Native American Scholarship Fund and the American Indian College Fund. C. Knuth Fischer
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