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Coleman Young
Deserves Respect
In "Brooks Patterson is Our Coleman
Young" (Jan. 30, page 29), Ben Falik
characterized the two men as similar
— angry and racist with a big mouth.
This does a grave injustice to a man
who worked tirelessly for others:
Coleman Young.
A friend of mine once mused:
Would Coleman have been different
without the hatred and slammed doors
he encountered early in life? He was
turned down by schools due to his race
and lost jobs as retaliation for union
activity. Still he became a leader in
helping working people through union-
ism, equal voting and open housing.
Young served his country as a
Tuskegee Airman. He stood up to
the House Un-American Activities
Committee — courageously refusing to
answer questions regarding his associa-
tions and instead exposing voter sup-
pression and other racist activities. He
was the result of his experiences, good
and bad. One could dislike his language
but know that his actions had their
foundation in early discrimination,
rejections and struggles for justice.
In 2012, Jack Lessenberry wrote
"Forty years ago, Oakland County vot-
ers elected [Patterson] their new pros-
ecutor. He was brash, swaggering and
highly quotable. The year before, he
had latched on to an anti-busing activ-
ist named Irene McCabe and rode her
S
to prominence. Though he would soon
drop her cause like a used gum wrap-
per, Brooks realized bashing Detroit
— especially Mayor Coleman Young —
was a ticket to success"
Patterson never encountered — or
fought to overturn — the institutional
racism that Young did. Cursing does
not make him "Oakland County's
Coleman Young" Young had concern
for others in his soul.
Cynthia Brody
Beverly Hills
Misinformation On Israel
Found In Many Textbooks
One August night in 2011, this "heli-
copter mom" was helping her 11th-
grade daughter with summer Advanced
Placement world history homework.
The same book, Traditions and
Encounters, is still used by the Walled
Lake School District. I came across this
passage and chuckled:
"... and about 1250 BCE, according
to the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses took
the Israelites out of Egypt into the land
of Palestine ...where at times they wor-
shipped the deities of other Palestinian
peoples"
Really? Then I read her AP English
summer reading novel, Zeitoun, which
denigrated Christianity and supplied
the prayer about how to convert to
Islam! My heart sank when I began to
connect the dots.
The Hebrew Scriptures/Torah in
hare the joy of your simchah
with the community in the
JN's March 20 Celebrate!
issue.
We're inviting readers to send in
photos from their weddings, bar/bat
mitzvahs, brit milah, baby namings
and other ceremonies from 2013-
14 for our annual "Community
Portraits" feature.
Photos must be high-resolution
jpgs (500k-lmb) and not taken by a
professional.
Email
photos by March 6 to
jheadapohl@renmedia.us along with
a caption that identifies the people in
the photo, their city of residence, the
ages of any children pictured, and the
date and place of the event.
Any questions? Call (248) 351-
5110.
Exodus calls the land Canaan. Why are
they calling it Palestine? To confuse
teenagers about the Jewish claim to the
land? Interestingly, the writers knew
Canaan existed since on the next page
the name "Canaan" is associated with
the Phoenicians.
Then I discovered that parents across
the country are complaining about anti-
Israel and anti-Semitic statements in
textbooks, such as equating "terrorists
as freedom fighters" This problem has
been studied since 1990 by Dr. Sandra
Alfonsi of ACT! for America, who spoke
to ZOA on Feb. 11. She explained that
since 1975 Saudi Arabia and other Gulf
nations have been pouring billions into
the American educational system for
their purpose of "historical revisionism"
Dr. Alfonsi illustrated how Pearson
Prentice Hall, Glencoe, McGraw Hill,
Houghton Mifflin and others have
been printing factually inaccurate
information, which they refuse to
acknowledge, yet alone correct, for
more than 20 years.
These issues blindside our children
with a distorted reality. How can
we allow this manipulation of our
children's education to continue? You
need to get involved!
Ruth Moss-Katsnelson
West Bloomfield
ZOA Misrepresents
Iran Negotiations
Zionist Organization of America
President Morton Klein does himself
and his organization no service by
deliberately misrepresenting the agree-
ment reached with Iran in the P5+1
negotiations. ("Vigilant And Skeptical"
Feb. 13, page 26). In case readers are
interested, here is what Iran agreed to
in order to get sanctions lifted:
To halt producing 20 percent
enriched uranium by stopping the
operation and installation of more cen-
trifuges. Further, to halt construction
on the Arak plutonium reactor and to
neither fuel nor start this reactor, so
that if Iran violates the agreement the
reactor could be bombed without dan-
ger of radiation.
Iran also agreed to eliminate exist-
ing stockpiles of 20 percent enriched
uranium by either diluting it complete-
ly or converting it to an oxide useless
for further enrichment. This part of the
agreement will take the less-enriched
stockpile to zero.
The agreement also provides that
Iran cannot build additional centri-
fuges except to replace broken ones.
Letters on page 6
,IN
February 20 • 2014
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