USAC, MEChA fail to respond The Daily Bruin
Editorial Board seems to think “El Plan de Aztlán”
is an irrelevant document fit to be ignored by campus
powers-that-be. But Bruin Republican members would agree that MEChA
subscribing to “El Plan de Aztlán” would certainly
pass the clear and present danger test for inciteful speech.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that “El Plan de
Aztlán” is a racist creed that should not be housed or
sanctioned on our beloved campus. Imagine the acrimony that would
result if this were a white race-based “community
service” group with such a doctrine. Critics from the
Undergraduate Students Association Council and the Daily Bruin have
belittled this anti-MEChA campaign as a hollow publicity stunt when
it is in fact much more. The members of the Bruin Republicans
signed on to this campaign because there was a consensus that
“El Plan de Aztlán,” as
MEChA’s founding spiritual document, is patently
offensive. More offensive still, though, is USAC’s (and
MEChA’s) utter failure to respond to the moral mandate the
Bruin Republicans have presented them. USAC members sit on their
laurels and ignore the fact that “El Plan de
Aztlán” is an affront to UCLA’s mission. I suspect
that many board members act this way for fear of losing
the support of the MEChA membership in upcoming elections. The
Bruin Editorial Board sounded incredibly stupid wagging its finger
condescendingly at the BRs with statements such as: “This
activity … was nothing more than useless public relations.”
Plain and simple, any group that clings to a document as racist as
“El Plan de Aztlán” should be banished from
participating in any official capacity on the UCLA campus. I wrote
this letter of my own accord, but I, as a member of BR, wish to
defend our decision to launch this campaign.
Justin Williams Third-year, civil engineering Bruin
Republicans member
Welcome to Planet Garin, now go home From
reading the columns of Garin Hovannisian it has become clear to me
that he is from another planet and simply hasn’t been here on
Earth long enough to get clued in. While the administration of
President Bush guts the U.S. treasury, shifts the tax burden from
the rich to the middle class and hands out money, favors and
moralizations like candy to all the business interests and members
of his right-wing power base you can shake a stick at, everything
on “Planet GH” is hunky-dory. In fact, Hovannisian is
up on his high horse, tirelessly dispensing right-wing spin with a
shopworn, formulaic approach. His Dec. 8 column, “Despite
gloomy forecast, the world is improving,” set up the straw
man. Those terrible, terrible media people, just giving us bad news
all the time. Who is he kidding? Hovannisian’s latest
missive, “Patriot Act protects citizens,” (Feb. 4)
feebly attempts to smear any group opposed to the Patriot Act as
“choosing terrorism.” Hovannisian does a disservice to
his readers by reducing the complexities of a book-sized document
to a few bland security measures, which, he suggests, are fully in
the spirit of existing law, and he even laughably invokes the
“values of the founding fathers” as their justification
(Oh, I get it, Patriot Act). Implicit in his reasoning is the claim
that the literally dozens of city councils across the country who
have lodged formal protests of the legislation, are all wet. I
think I understand where he’s coming from, but why does the
Daily Bruin give so much space to this one-man spin machine?
Richard Waldman, Ph.D. UCLA Medical Center Division of
Digestive Disorders