[PEN-L:4894] Re: Paramilitary groups (fwd)

[Ellen Dannin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

I forwarded this original message to a friend of mine who teaches at 
another university, and I thought her response might be of interest - 
though it is not written from an economics perspective. 

Ellen J. Dannin
California Western School of Law
225 Cedar Street
San Diego, CA  92101
Phone:  619-525-1449
Fax:    619-696-9999

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Subject: Re: [PEN-L:4814] Paramilitary groups (fwd)

Ellen:  I am reasonably sure the public employees weren't the only target;
rather, they acted as proxies (in much the way that the building was
symbolic of) for a number of other things these groups fear and hate, and
yet find themselves powerless to attack directly so that it must be a
slaughter of innocents.  We have been members of the Southern Poverty Law
Center for some time, and because of that, I read a lot about these groups
in their literature.  One of their targets, certainly, is public
employmees/government, but I think that there are other targets too.  Race
clearly plays a role in all of this.  One of the first things I noted, and
of course only the investigation and trial will reveal "true" motives to
the extent we learn them at all, is how many of the victims were black.  I
based this on the pictures I saw, and the fact that the bomb most heavily
destroyed the daycare and the social security office.  My experience of
public employees suggests a lot of the employees, particularly clericals,
would be black (or Hispanic in OK) and probably use the daycare.  And,
minorities seemed to me to be likely to be a disproportionate user,
perhaps, of social security.  I suppose my thinking also went along these
lines having recently read an article in the Washington Post Weekly which
argued that some of this right-wing blacklash against government is a
proxy for a reaction against blacks, and pointed out that the federal
government is probably the largest employer of blacks and largest promoter
of policies favoring blacks.  Thus, I suppose I could concede that this is
an attack against public employees, but would also add that minorities may
have been an additional or overlapping target of these people.  I suppose
another motive would be a wake-up call to America as well as to the
government qua systems of institutional response that these movements are
to be taken seriously.  So, I saw the message you forwarded as interesting
but too unidimensional in its appreciation of the complexity of human
motivations.  Of course, that's not to say that public sector employees
don't need to prod organized labor to get off its collective butt (They 
very much do) or just ignore
organized labor and do grass roots organizing.  That desparately needs to 
happen.  As
a public employee myself I'm sick of being told I should provide legal
education for "free" i.e. low salary and be described as lazy and feeding
at the public trough.  But public employees and others concerned about the
rise of the right (this week's New Yorker has a great article about the
coming Republic agenda for this summer) need to form coalitions and find
the common ground in this rather than privileging themselves as the only
victims in the sorry state of what passes for politics in this country.  I
suspect this is more of a response than you expected (it was certainly
more than I intended to say - I just got going on the topic). So what do
you think?  Take care, L.