Jennifer Welsh-Zeiter. Real Estate Attorney. Well written ma’am! But can we count Tucker Carlson’s Fox News talking points as fact? In your piece, “Defending the Soul of America”, you attacked Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, a Fulbright Scholar and a New York Times best selling author as a “trained Marxist.” Trained Marxist is truly a key Trump talking point and an inflection point to stop reading any further. You might have spell checked Khan-Cullers name before you submitted the piece. The organization co-founded by Khan-Cullors, the Black Lives Matter Global Network, is hardly the face of the real movement that keeps rocking on.
In this piece, you’re a clever criminal attorney defending a guilty client. When a rapist is guilty as charged, go on offense and tactically pin the blame on the victim for the crime. Many ask if the Indy has become a forum for right wing trolls. It’s important that the Indy publish opinions like yours. You won’t change anyone’s mind. Respectfully I believe, your opinion is important. It destroys all doubt that unless we support groups endorsing equality for all, then this November, we get Trump for for more years. Thank you, Jennifer.
Jeff Smith, Laguna Beach
Regarding Jennifer Welsh-Zeiter’s column “Defending the Soul of America,” in which she referred to Black Lives Matter people as Marxists, it looks like we are returning to the early fifties when Senator Joe McCarthy called half the people in the State Department Communists. Red-baiting is alive and well in Laguna Beach!
Mike Mang, Laguna Beach
In Jennifer Zeiter’s July 17 column, “Defending the Soul of America”, her lack of due diligence and facts is lazy and irresponsible, but more importantly, it’s dangerous. Many conservatives insist Black Lives Matter is a Marxist, anti-police, radical movement that wants to tear down America. Meanwhile, most liberals simply view BLM as a heroic movement and powerful slogan signaling support for racial justice and opposition to police brutality. Unsurprisingly, many conservatives, including Zeiter and Trump, have bashed the radical formal organizations and falsely claimed that they are fully embraced by the Democrat Party. As in most disinformation campaigns, there is a grain of truth to it, upon which is built a mountain of lies. The formal Black Lives Matter organizations views are alarming to anyone who believes in the Constitution, capitalism, and civil society as we know it. They apply their reflexive response to all supporters of the very distinct BLM movement which has become a socio-political group signifying the simple goal of an end to racism.
In conservative circles, everyone is well aware of the obscure history of the BLM formal organization’s founders’ Marxist roots. But the average person on the street or who shares the hashtag are most certainly not. They are rallying to a movement that has become far bigger, broader, and more benevolent than the original organization. Some on the Left fail to acknowledge, or likely even know, the Marxist roots of the official BLM, and thus, paint anyone who objects to the organization as racist. This kind of conflating of a widely popular movement with the actions or positions of a single element of it, makes it easy to baselessly paint critics as extreme. Yet this is a reductive oversimplification that serves only to divide. So too, liberals, Democrats, and others who support the movement must take responsibility to distance themselves from the distinct radical organization.
Such a divisive ideology only fuels perpetual conflict, not progress toward reconciliation. We need more clarity in our discourse. Right now, the debate over “Black Lives Matter” is muddled and confused. Liberals and conservatives alike need to make an effort to listen and understand the other side’s perspective.
When Ms. Zeiter sees BLM as “a movement more intent on destroying American culture” the vast majority of these people do not support ending capitalism, dismantling the family, or abolishing the police. They would just like to acknowledge that black lives matter.
Jill Cooper, Laguna Beach
Thank you for maintaining your position of publishing different views from our community. It is good to read thoughtful, knowledgeable, well researched contributions to your paper. I, too, have done research and given thought which is more in line with the article by Jennifer Welsh Zeiter and appreciate her style of keeping to facts and not given to personal attacks to those who have a different point of view. Events in life tend to come and go, but there is a definite danger recently given the name “Cancel Culture.” Thank you for recognizing the freedom of speech which is such a wonderful right in our democracy.
Linda Shepard, Laguna Beach
I agree with Jennifer Zeiter ‘s well-written, informative opinion piece. BLM is a Marxist organization that has nothing to do with correcting injustices. You have only to look at its well-publicized goal of defunding police to discover that. Disbanding police and replacing them with self -defense organizations is a traditional Marxist goal that ensures a citizen’s private property could not possibly be protected. How are streets safer? How does this lift people out of poverty? It’s a blueprint for despair not justice. Moreover, I take former convicted terrorists/current BLM leaders Alicia Garza, & Susan Rosenberg, as well as Weather Underground protégé, Patrisse Cullors, at their word when they describe themselves as “trained Marxists”. And then there’s those pesky “peaceful protests” going on in Portland and Seattle as well as other cities in which rioters have destroyed buildings, businesses, sculptures and hard-working citizens’ livelihoods. Regardless of Antifa’s violent assist in this destruction, I haven’t heard Garza, Rosenberg or Cullors speak out against it. How can the authors of the two anti-Zeiter letters not see the obvious?
In North Korea children are sent to prison camps for the sins of their ancestors. We are not our ancestors nor are we guilty of their sins and to say otherwise is ludicrous. You have a right to self-determination in this wonderful country of ours, not a right to equality of outcome. That’s for Communists and Socialists, where the outcomes are equally miserable. So please, spare me the misplaced repentance for the sin of slavery which was settled by the Civil War. You want to talk about systemic problems? How about lack of school choice, which condemns every child stuck in a poorly run inner city public school to an inept education that will undoubtedly limit their future. How about corrupt city officials who line their pockets with 70% of the money ear-marked for programs for the poor, while those in need only see 30 % of it. (Forbes) That’s called systematic betrayal.
Katy Norton, Laguna Beach
