Letters

letters

What do you think? 

Please send letters to: AGENDA, 220 S. Main St, Ann Arbor, Ml 48104. 

In Praise of AGENDA 

This letter is written in praise of AGENDA, in praise of alternative press. Readers should not think that there are publications like AGENDA all over the world, even all over the United States. After years of looking for and at such alternatives, I would suggest readers find another such press they love to hold onto before discarding this publication, our publication. To do that, don't go too far from a campus. 

In the University of Florida community where I currently hang out I find a reasonable facsimile called the "Iguana." Other choices are available locally, including a stem FACT. I found similar opportunities at or near other college campuses, e.g., the University of North Carolina at Chapel, the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 

Obviously none of them for me has the air of nostalgia, the ability to revive the memory of the Quad, the debates of the Ann Arbor left, the pleasures of collective living, the camaraderie around the molding of ideas. But in these “foreign" alternatives, there is enough in shared reminders, e.g. of how vulnerable we are to críes of "political correctness," or how we can and do survive such nonsense with our own music, film, art, etc. 

Much of the United States doesn't have alternative media to conjure those shared experiences. Perhaps in places like New York, a Village Voice provides some relief, although it takes pages and pages to do so. But millions of others, in places like Orlando, Florida, orFairfield, Connecticut, don't have that option. Assuming most readers of alternative press are the kinds of addicts who can even scratch matchbook covers, or lists of nutrients on cereal boxes, for literary insight, their entries - my entry- into the real world can be a profound shock. Imagine being in Ann Arbor and assuming the world begins and ends with The Ann Arbor News- nothing else, nada, except other mass media to reinforce stereotypes. 

Now don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting, say, that The Ann Arbor News is anything like The Orlando Sentinel or vice versa. Each of the more than 16,000 one-newspaper towns, cities or regions has its own local flavor. But what most of them share in common is a distaste for going beyond a set spectrum of acceptable pros and cons. That’s us. Hey. Those are our ideas you're discarding without... 

What I discern as most pernicious is the willingness of much local press to fall in line with the views of the local chamber of commerce. Without an alternative press, criticism of a community, exploration of grassroots existences, advocacy of alternative lifestyles, are muted. We live in a time of government by consensus, that is, agreement by those who are economically satisfied to keep themselves that way. If you thought only Marxists wouldn't let politics interfere with economics, just visit Rochester, Minnesota, or Santa Fe, New Mexico. There seems to be some agreement out there that to help others is no longer is needed, now that those in power have declared the cold war to be over. Sure, knock a few nails in for Habitat for Humanity, but don't tell us we're building ghettos to lock out people of color. Can you beat that? Lock out, not keep in. 

In much of what some of us used to call Amerika, local politics is carried on as if people were performers in "Our Town." Oh, to be sure, today we might have the town Black on the city council along with the village drunk, but not much else has changed. Still go to church on Sunday, still pay attention to who is seeing whom, especially if they might be getting married. 

In response, nowhere is the local daily becoming more valuable than as a sounding board of the hopes and fears of the economically satisfied. Dailies themselves are quick to sense and diffuse any politically different ideas especially if they threaten economic stability. For instance, it's okay for people of color to get more jobs, as long as they don't come at the expense of whites. It's all right for them to go to public school with the rest of us as long as they don't muck up the tracking system we can use so well to segregate by classroom. 

Perhaps most of all, AGENDA reminds me that the alternative press can contribute in keeping a community honest. That itself would be enough for me to renew my subscription wherever I went.

Gabe Kaimowitz

Gainesville, FL