BREAKING NEWS
I was a bit surprised to see Richard Esposito use a piece I wrote for the Left Business Observer in 1996 in his strangely cop-friendly take on the World Economic Forum demos in New York ["Law of the Fist," <http://villagevoice.com/issues/0204/esposito.php> January 29]. Esposito seemed to confuse my critique of author David Korten-the MBA who did a stint with the U.S. Agency for International Development-with my critique of the founder and funder of the International Forum on Globalization, former sweatshop magnate Doug Tompkins. My point in highlighting the elite and business connections of Korten and Tompkins was to criticize them for not being militant enough, and for leading discontented activists along a path of fantasy and compromise. I didn't bring them up to promote any faux working-class sympathy for cops.
My feeling is that most of the violence at these headline demos over the last few years has come from the police. Smashing a window now and then is hardly serious violence in my book, but smashing the heads of demonstrators is, and there's been a lot of it.
Apologias for cops joined to smears against anarchists-who follow an honorable political tradition, even if it isn't mine-aren't things I expect to read in The Village Voice. I guess that's why I don't read the Voice much anymore.
Doug Henwood Manhattan