0 OPINION Page 4 Monday, October 6, 1986 The Michigan Daily :a City has anti- authoritarian 'zine 1 By Leslie Eringaard and Henry Park This is the last of a three part series. D: What is the philosophy behind your paper? Why do you publish Popular Reality? N: I think of it as the 'zine of feuds and in-fighting. We gossip a lot about each other. It's sort of the National Enquirer of the Left. I never wanted it strictly to be a political paper. I wouldn't dare name the philosophy. We want give and take. We're for loners. We're anti-authoritarian. We once put the words "social nihilist" on the masthead and a lot of Duke D'Reato sez ...taking nothing for granted in P politics and have an anti-organization bias. People feel good about Popular Reality because it gives them something to blame their problems on. A kinship of thousands of strange people having the same problems makes people realize they can't blame everything on themselves. They discover in Popular Reality that there's people crazier than themselves and there's reasons for it. Society encourages people to blame things on themselves, but there are people to blame. Two percent of the people own 60 percent of everything. Under the Reagan administration, 10 percent of the middle class dropped below the poverty level. D: What about the work ethic? I guess I'm a primitivist when it comes to the work ethic and technology. Before industrialization, hunter-gatherers were well-off and they didn't have to work so hard. Anthropologists have found that before the world market, life was not so backwards, not so rife with disease and war as we think. People were not generally unhealthy or dying young. We can't live in society with peace, justice and equality with all the technology we have. I don't know if we can go back. I have a strong suspicion that we've" already poisoned the environment beyond what will make life possible. We've .o - 1Tif W0 N h ? 7 1 opular Reality destroyed the Ozone layer. The polar icecaps may melt and flood the coastal cities in the next 50 years and not the next 500 years as scientists predict. I don't know if already it's too late, if maybe we're seeing the last gasp of the planet. Maybe the only thing left to do is to genetically engineer the next species and evolve or we could start interplanetary travel and fuck up other systems as well. D: Yes, but our life expectancies keep increasing. Of course, money is directed towards curing illnesses under capitalism, but still technology improves. C: Very likely, things aren't as hopeless as I think. If it's funded right who knows what humans are capable of. One of the most ominous trends is federal funding of science. Special interests are behind most research. There is no free-thinking or scientific inquiry. Many people think refined sugar is as dangerous a drug as heroine. It's an anti-nutrient. It depletes the nutrients your body needs to create energy. Yet, we never hear that because all the research on sugar is done by the sugar industry. The sugar industry is one of the world's biggest industries. D: What do you think of the phrase "anarchy is organization without hierarchy?" C: There's always been a hierarchy. You know I've been in groups that operate by "consensus," and all that means isthat you argue till youagree with the leaders. You stay up till 3 a.m. and then you give up. That's how you get consensus. D: What do you think about religion? One thing I know is that I hate organized religion. It took me a long time to believe in myself instead of other people. It took me a long time to learn not to worry about what other people think. My mother raised me to be guilty as hell. She always emphasized that I wasn't doing enough for other people. Guilt was the basis of the liberal politics I was raised with. It took me a long time to reject the guilt that motivated me so much. Christianity relies on authority. People don't learn to think for themselves. They only trust the minister. It's a mind-controlling relationship. A fundamentalist church I belonged to told people whether they could get married or not. D: You say you're anti-organization. Where do you draw the line? Clearly you are talking to the Daily about Popular Reality and you organize Popular Reality. Is it a class thing? Would you say the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has organizational capital? C: I want to see Popular Reality increase. I'm 36 and I'd like to have an influential paper and make a living at it. Right now I don't have any wage-slaves, but when it gets big I'll have to pay people. That may cause some of the people who work with me to say I've sold out and maybe they'll be right. I'm not concerned about the RCP. They're not a threat anymore. Back in 1979 and 1980, a lot of people were joining. [On the other hand], churches establish [organizational] capital. Tax-exempt status for churches is the biggest joke. A lot of churches just deal in real estate. The main supporters of Popular YOU YOUNG FOOLS HAVE NOWS AAPASIN-, A4SRE4PY SERVEP MY IF Ou ALUU'YOUR a o u'r Now van wAw FO ^I AA5 s ...Popular Reality lampoonvPP 0o a favorite target Reality are underground ant individualistic. I'm really against groups that try to influence things or take theip over. to do with I have nothing against a person whb is a healthy bragger. We need a world of masters and no slaves. Everyone should have the right to be treated as demi-Gods. Too often leftists say "sacrifice for the revolution," but I think everybody should be rich; everybody 'should be respected. Everybody should have certain comforts of middle-class life. Popular Reality is a craft. Everyone should have a craft. 4 tOXic wastes ...from Ann Arbor's Neither/Nor press people wrote in to say that they were social nihilists too. Yeah, sure. I'm disillusioned with electoral Social Work graduate student Leslie Eringaard and Opinion page associate editor Henry Park interviewed David Nestle, who is the publisher of Popular Reality. s I'm not a consumer. I don't know what I would do with $50,000 a year. I'll get a word-processor, but I don't need a lot of things. Someone gave me my television; I eat at the Food Coalition and I got my stereo at the Salvation Army Yin the garbage. That's how I get my things. Under monopoly capitalism, people have to work so that they can buy more do-dads. There's no leisure time unless people are spending money at it. ,i_, Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Wasserman Vol. XCVII, No. 23 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. F~c ENETA~ ~KPERS OF O SGL M Safer Poisons The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on September 19th which requires tougher protection of people and the environment from pesticides and provides uniform pesticide levels, eliminating state control. Environmentalists, who initially supported the legislation, fear that the fedral government's levels will not be as strict as the states'. The bill was designed to require more protection for the workers and the environment from pesticides. The legislation requires that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) re-test more than 600 chemicals used in 50,000 pesticides; it sets a stringent nine year timetable for re-testing all pesticides that were registered before 1972. Pesticide manufacturers are required to pay $50,000 to $150,000 for each pesticide being re-tested. The legislation wouldhave the biggest and most badly-needed impact on agricultural pesticides because these constitute the largest volume of pesticides. These chemicals have far-reaching dangers: they contaminate community water supplies; farm workers have little legal or physical protection against them, and most ...o- Acritrr.. . a r hnrl.. n s tha were tested for approval by Industrial Biotest Laboratories (IBL) in tests ruled invalid by the courts in 1972. All 12 tests by IBL on the pesticide Captan were invalidated, but nine million pounds of Captan are still sprayed on U.S. crops each year. After the farmers purchase the pesticides, the state has no way to regulate their use unless it actually watches the farmer spray the crops. Most pesticides are not safe enough to be trusted to such a casual control method. Parathion is a highly toxic chemical easily absorbed through the skin. Ninety- three workers were poisoned by parathion six weeks after it was sprayed in one field. Pesticides commonly drift up to a mile away from where they are sprayed and poison workers. Therefore, even if farmers could be trusted to religiously follow pesticide use guidelines, removing highly toxic pesticides from the market is the only way to ensure safety. Although it seems Congress caved into food industry interests by infringing on states' rights, this recent legislation is a huge step toward safer foods and farms. The new EPA tests will undoubtedly remove many dangerous toxins from use and their removal should \NPATCN~NF-W PAYIA-T PLM TPYe SF-EECT s II =O \MTNE% GSTREMLINED IN AcTIQ\(__ 9/~ DJ2 T 7COMS: . S *1 STh LVT:'D *y ONE OF T~vqOWE \I osr-B~N~ ?~D~cpc I ,, "NE AMDV 'YOU CAN'T A~oI2D To M155 <> i . r LETTERS: Support freedom in Latin America 4 To the Daily: Latins in Support of Democracy. is a new nonprofit group dedicated to supporting the legitimate aspirations of the people of Latin America to a freely elected democracy. Our must ultimately have freedom for everyone (this includes freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of the right to petition the Govern- ment for a redress of griev- ances, freedom of worship, peace and justice. Our membership is open to anyone who so desires. However, members will be required to do at least two hours of community service work per month. For instance, labor could be the Ronald McDonald Hoie Meetings will be held ev~y other Friday in room 3900rn the Michigan Union at7p . We are having a maws meeting October10. For more information, call 764-9611. a I