THERE SHE GOES

Hey, Readers: This is my last issue of The Stranger. I’ve been the
editor since 1995, since we were 48 pages, working out of a musty, cramped office.
I told Tim Keck I could only run the show for a year or so, then I’d have to get
back to writing. But I stayed for four great, wild years. The paper has more than
doubled in size and staff since I started. It doesn’t feel like an experiment
anymore: it feels like a sure thing. I’m leaving to write a book, a pastime careerists
and academics somehow consider the most vital pursuit, but I don’t know if I’ll
ever do anything as vital as The Stranger. It’s a rare thing—a
truly ambitious, angry newspaper full of brilliant, funny writers. It’s almost
like an eighth wonder of the world or something.

Yours Truly,
Emily White
Editor


SHAME ON SCHMADER

Dear Stranger, Shame on David Schmader, along with the rest of the print
and broadcast media, for continuing to refer to gynecologists who perform abortions
as “abortion doctors,” as well as referring to the medical offices at which
they work as “abortion clinics” [Last Days, Feb 11]. The doctors listed on the
“Nuremberg Files” website are gynecologists. Obstetricians/gynecologists provide
prenatal and postnatal care, deliver babies, prescribe birth control, and perform
regular gynecological health care for women, as well as performing abortion
procedures. Obstetricians/gynecologists who have been attacked or murdered worked
at women’s health care clinics. These clinics provide a wide range of health
care for women, including prenatal care, birth control, treatment of infections
and other illnesses of the reproductive system, cancer screening, and yes, abortions.The
murder of an obstetrician/gynecologist, the destruction of a women’s health
care clinic, and the harassment of women patients do not save babies. These
acts deny women of every race, ethnicity, and religious faith access to professional
medical care. They are an attack on American women. The sick, zealous individuals
who murdered Dr. Slepian and other doctors because they performed abortions
have denied women good physicians who will never again deliver a baby or detect
cervical cancer early and save a life.

Our culture does not typically define a physician by one type of procedure he or she performs. We do not call an oncologist a “chemotherapy doctor,” or a urologist a “vasectomy doctor.” The media will continue to incite the violent individuals in the pro-life movement as long as they continue to define doctors and medical facilities by one specific procedure.

Lisa Shaftel

David Schmader responds: Presumably the people who shoot gynecologists-who-happen-to-perform-abortions
do many other things besides shoot gynecologists-who-happen-to-perform-abortions
(drive trucks, have sex with their cousins…), but I doubt you have a problem
with them being referred to only as “killers.” Streamlining information is a necessary
journalistic practice, and crediting the media with “inciting violent individuals
in the movement” is foolish.

RENT CONTROL IS FOR WHINERS

Dear Stranger, Well, I have to tip my hat to Judy Nicastro for having
the good sense not to allow the Freedom Socialists, one of the two local branches
of Trotsky-ites, into her coalition for “rent control.” [“Nicastro Rallies the
Troops,” Ben Jacklet, Feb 11]. Those people are still looking for an issue to
“mobilize the masses for revolution.” Would someone please tell these folks
that they are about 100 years behind the times?But “rent control” is just as
obsolete. All it would do is make it impossible to find a decent place to live
in this town.

The Seattle Times ran an article about an elderly woman who lost her taxpayer-subsidized apartment in Belltown who had to (gasp!) move to Ballard. So fucking what! I’d like to live in Medina next to Bill Gates, but should you have to pay for it? This is just about a bunch of whiners who can’t afford to live in the neighborhood of their choice.

It’s too bad if you can’t afford to live on Capitol Hill. You can still live in Seattle. Try Rainier Beach. Otherwise, go back to the Midwest. It’s still affordable on minimum wage.

Anonymous

STRANGE MEASURE OF SUCCESS

To The Editor, I went to the rent control forum on February 2 and I left
the meeting with a lot of questions. Where were our city council members and
state reps when everything started getting out of control? Who is going to speak
up for low income families like mine? In Ben Jacklet’s article he attacks Guerry
Hoddersen of the Freedom Socialist Party because she asked just those questions.
And she asked Velma Veloria to walk her talk and sponsor a bill that would allow
cities in this state to pass rent control laws. This was not an attempt to ridicule,
but to find a solution to a problem.

Jacklet says the FSP is a flop, but I have seen them growing and getting more involved in helping low income people. As far as Ms. Hoddersen’s getting five percent of the vote when she ran for state rep in the 37th district: To me, that’s a success.

Sincerely,
Ruth Allen

NICASTRO FOR MAYOR!

Dear Stranger, I praise Judy Nicastro’s efforts to bring about rent control
in Seattle. She appears to have a cool head on her shoulders. We poor people
in Seattle have been gouged long enough by landlords. It was so disheartening
to see Mayor Paul Schell in a recent TV interview saying with a slight smile
that he wouldn’t support rent control. The mayor is a mercenary working for
fat-cat landlords. I will definitely not vote for Schell in the next election.
I hope Ms. Nicastro will run for some kind of public office that would be of
benefit to us poor renters. Heck, I’d vote for her as mayor! Go Nicastro!


Chuck Swaim

RED-BAITING, STRANGER STYLE

To the Editor: The Stranger‘s Ben Jacklet and rent control organizer
Judy Nicastro pride themselves on their superiority to old-fashioned red-baiter
Michelle Malkin, the conservative Seattle Times columnist who recently
painted rent control as a “commie plot.” But in Jacklet’s article, they out-Malkin
Malkin by bashing the Freedom Socialist Party and FSP organizer Guerry Hoddersen
for having the effrontery to speak in defense of the issue and actually demand
that legislators do something about it.Nicastro and Jacklet ridicule Hoddersen
for calling on Velma Veloria to sponsor a bill repealing the statewide ban on
rent control. According to Jacklet, taking such a direct route to one’s goal
is “heavy-handed and self-aggrandizing rhetoric.” Nicastro and Jacklet prefer
the “savvy” tack of aspiring to rent control but doing nothing this legislative
session so as not to risk a “failed effort.” To win rent control, Nicastro says
you’ve got to keep the people who are radical enough to actually demand it “in
the background.”

So what does Nicastro hope to gain by presenting a parade of injured tenants while announcing that no remedies are possible for at least another year? Nothing for renters, but a seat in the political establishment for herself: “If she runs a savvy campaign, she’ll be lobbying from the inside.” Looks to me like Jacklet is vying for a spot as her campaign director.

Helen Gilbert

JACKLET DEMOLISHES LEFTISTS

To the Editor: Reading Ben Jacklet’s story on rent control was really
depressing. After a wonderful public forum Feb. 2 attended by 200 renters, he
wrote a story that managed to make the rent control movement look completely
divided, nasty, and vicious. His and Miss Judy Nicastro’s super-slam of Guerry
Hoddersen and the Freedom Socialist Party was spiteful and undermines the good
work done by everyone on the Local Housing Needs Local Laws committee, including
FSP.I get the impression that Jacklet is a lot more interested in demolishing
leftists than he is in promoting rent control. With reporters like him writing
opinion pieces that masquerade for journalism, the landlords must be laughing
all the way to the bank.

Yours truly,
Ann Rogers