Re: let's build a unified movement, not fight each other

["Toxics and Environmental Health - Ketchikan" <rtkp@ptialaska.net>]

  Sam, et al,
  	Let's please not get into a flame war about generalized view of 
  bureaucrats and activists.  I work with both agency folks and  NGOs 
  and I would hesitate to draw conclusions about them as individuals.  
  
  	What is important to note is that there is a basic problem
  with the agencies.  There is a world view that is regulatory in 
  nature, that looks for paper solutions to real problems.  eg. the 
  woman with the dying baby has no use for the agency's 
  ineffectual, non-enforcement of "protective" standards.  On the 
  otherhand, there can be nothing more useful and effective than the 
  right person in the right position.  I am quite familiar with the 
  water quality specialist who is unable to get the action he wishes 
  through the process and looks to us, the activists, as partners in 
  his team to get an bad apple out of the basket.	
  It is very important to reward and protect those individuals who feed 
  us information, demand the data with which we can take the bastards 
  to court, and especially those rare individuals who demand and expect 
  compliance..  Those folks are the heros who deserve our praise.
  	Unfortunately, for every one of them there are 20 who either just 
  collect a pay check, or are happy pawns of the industry.  They take 
  jobs with the industry they regulate,  they believe every thing the 
  industry tells them, and they consider their job to be to protect the 
  economic system not the health of the community.
  	Let's be sure to give those parasites the hell they deserve, 
  but distinguish them from the heroes.
  
  eric hummel
  
  
  "Today he plays jazz; tomorrow he betrays his country."
  Stanlinist Slogan in the Soviet Union (1920s).