Opinion
On August 24, at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, Angela Davis and her colleague Gina Dent reported to a packed room on a trip they took to the Occupied Territories of Palestine last year. Their articulate description of what everyday life is like for Palestinians under the 45-year long Israeli occupation, and among the illegal settlers who have moved to Palestine after the 1967 war, was an eye opener to many in the room, but reinforced what many others with direct experiences of the Palestinian situation already knew. In both tone and intention it was meant to be, and essentially was, about Palestinians and Palestine, not Israelis and Israel, although one can hardly avoid discussing all four in such a program.
With no car lanes, no stop signs and no one directing traffic on the water, safety among boaters is critically important. And most boat operators are polite. A customary wave is exchanged between two helmsmen when they are in a constricted area.
But in recent years and especially this summer, there appears to be a change in this custom. Some helmsmen are driving their boats unsafely, their heads pointed straight ahead, ignoring others around them.
The Food and Drug Administration is now dealing with a suit regarding false and misleading information in a case against Chobani, the Greek yogurt company, for listing “evaporated cane juice” as a major ingredient in its pomegranate-flavored yogurt. The FDA has the power to regulate product labeling and can ask for a change if it deems a rule violation has been committed.
If Alan Dershowitz, the self-appointed avatar of the new political correctness in America, could have brought himself to attend a meeting at which he was not a featured speaker, he would have heard Angela Davis and Gina Dent give a moving presentation on the apartheid-like conditions under which 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank have lived for the past 45 years.
The Oak Bluffs selectmen have decided to take away our right to vote. The roundabout was not allowed on the ballot. The rest of the Island voted against the roundabout and I believe Oak Bluffs would have, had they the opportunity.
In your article about Angela Davis, you mistakenly describe her as an advocate of rights and liberties. She is anything but that. As a longtime leader of the American Communist Party, she has adamantly refused to speak up on behalf of the civil rights or civil liberties of those oppressed by Soviet Communism and others on the left. Let me recount an experience I had with her, which I reported in my book Chutzpah.