Don’t you forget about me
Last week’s C-VILLE recognized people in the Charlottesville community [“C-VILLE 20,” June 21]. One of those people who is a tireless advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is Claire Kaplan. She works hard for domestic partner benefits at UVA and does an amazing job at the Women’s Center. My concern with the article that featured her as one of the C-VILLE 20 was that the piece does not recognize all the other people who worked hard to get Charlottesville’s City Council to pass the resolution condemning the Marriage Affirmation Act.
Meredith Richards worked countless hours to write the resolution, and we need to recognize her for that. Wendy Repass worked hard to get people to the City Council chambers to support it. We need to recognize everyone who showed up in the City Council chambers that night in November that it passed. Blake Caravati sponsored this resolution, still the only one to have passed in the Commonwealth, and we need to recognize his courage for that. We need to recognize all four City Councilors who voted for it, David Brown, Kendra Hamilton, Kevin Lynch and Blake Caravati, and thank them for making Charlottesville the leader on LGBT issues.
My concern with the article is that it gave one person the majority of the credit for something that many people worked on and believed in. Thanks to everyone who worked tirelessly over the last year on LGBT issues here in Virginia and especially to all those who helped to get this important and historic resolution passed by Charlottesville’s City Council.
Michael Pudhorodsky
Charlottesville
The price is wrong
I read your “C-VILLE 20” profile of David and Elizabeth Breeden with deep dismay. The Breeden’s 1,000-acre tract on Old Lynchburg Road is a local treasure and its sale to high-end housing developers is a loss to our community. You write: “Elizabeth points to the need for development close to Charlottesville so that people aren’t pushed farther into Albemarle…” Does Ms. Breeden really believe she’s performing a public service by turning her still-remote property into low-density housing for the rich? I’ll try to remember that as my taxes rise to pay for the new schools and infrastructure.
Aaron Wunsch
Charlottesville
We feel his pain
I am writing in regards to your recent article “Road to recovery” in the C-VILLE [June 7]. Though I found the article interesting, I am once again very disappointed in the type of article presented, and specifically in what I believe to be an unfair and unbalanced report. Though your story
is about addiction, it helps to continue
the myth that methadone equals heroin addiction.
Though methadone, the primary drug in your story, can be used for heroin and other opioid addiction, it is also used more and more as an effective drug for chronic pain control. Not everyone who uses methadone is an addict, and not everyone who uses methadone will become an addict. In fact, most studies and information out there shows time and time again that methadone and other opioid medicines that are used by people especially for chronic pain have little or no addiction (less than 1 percent).
The problem that bothers me is that articles like yours not only give, but perpetuate a false assumption that opioid drugs (like methadone) are bad, as are the people taking them. To sum it up, this is wrong.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Chronic Pain Association estimate that half of all Americans suffer from chronic pain. Many of these people are on disability, and sometimes unable to function. In many, if not most cases, opioid drugs are the only thing left after all other forms of prevention and rehabilitation have not worked. Most importantly, the overwhelming majority of these people who
do use opioid medications, including methadone, are not addicted.
I wish you and your paper would write another article with a more fair and balanced position, or a whole new article spotlighting methadone as an excellent treatment for chronic pain. Maybe if these drugs—methadone and oxycontin—were understood and seen in a more positive light and not as yet another story of a drug addicted person going to recovery, people could get the medicine they need and not worry whether doctors will help them due to negative stigma.
So please consider this when writing your next story. Please take time to offer a more fair and balanced picture of methadone, or any medicine that can be used for pain relief, and not just as another addiction story.
And by the way, I do use methadone for chronic pain relief. No addiction, no recovery, just functioning better from disability.
Ken Hoff
Charlottesville
The Scheem of things
I would like to address an article in a recent issue of C-VILLE Weekly regarding radio station WNRN’s “Boombox” show [“Hip hop hooray,” The Week, May 31]. This show is a true blend of hip hop, hosted by DJ Illustrious, but was soured by the misrepresentation of an artist.
The article was opened with the mention of artist Grand Scheem, who resides in Miami, Florida. Scheem’s first single, “The Greatest Scheem Ever Sold,” recently charted No. 37 in the country by College Music Journal—a site that monitors airplay in the college radio circuit, similar to the Billboard charts. Along with this, the artist is being featured in the The Source magazine in September, and is picking up new fans around the country and the world everyday.
My qualm was not that these facts were simply overlooked or not stated in Harry Terris’ article, but the fact that the article misrepresented Grand Scheem’s ideals and purpose. Scheem is a 10-year music industry veteran who hails from Pakistan, but was raised in America since age 1. The reason he left his well-paying position as a regional radio promoter for several major labels was because just making money was not fulfilling enough.
Enter September 11, 2001. Not only did this event change the lives of those involved, but it changed America’s perspective of entire races of people. Individuals who resemble the Middle Eastern or South Asian complexion were instantly recognized as a threat and kept at a distance (whether literally or mentally).
Living as a foreign-born American for the past several years has been uneasy at best. Many of the injustices (murders, hate crimes, etc.) against these communities have been swept under the rug, while the PATRIOT Act and race profiling have taken basic civil liberties away from one group to give another a false sense of security.
These are the everyday forces that provoked Grand Scheem to pursue his project—even in the face of danger and scrutiny—as a mission to stand for what is just. His music and video are offered for free on his website because what he is doing is out of purity, and his goal is to “…impact perspectives not pocketbooks” (see www. ScheemOfTheCentury.com).
I am a fan of Grand Scheem, and have had the opportunity to witness many different peoples’ reactions to his music. This is why I was very upset by the Terris article, without any quotes or input from Scheem’s side.
Bottom line, I hope people recognize true character when they encounter it. Grand Scheem is a stand-up individual who has steadily established his fan-base through a very personal, grassroots basis. If more people would stand for what they feel is right, we would all be better off in the long run.
Raj Cutty
sotcmultimedia@gmail.co
The writer is Grand Scheem’s manager.
Busting the filibuster myth
Frederick Kahler’s letter in the June 7 C-VILLE [“Liberal application,” Mailbag] attacking Sen. John Warner and praising Sen. George Allen on the deal to save the filibuster of judicial nominees is misguided on its main point. Even conservative Senate Republicans have not talked of “nuking” the filibuster for other than judicial nominations. That fact shows that they recognize the importance of the filibuster historically in creating the reputation of the Senate as a more deliberative, moderate legislative body in comparison to the House of Representatives, which has no filibuster rule. They only want to narrowly abolish the rule so that they can pack the courts with arch-conservative nominees nominated (not appointed) by George W. Bush.
As much as Kahler’s attack on Senate Democrats for their filibuster of the nomination of John Bolton as being obstructionist is therefore wishful thinking, it is also disingenuous. I say that because, while I have not checked, I would bet good money that there is no letter to the editor of
C-VILLE during the Clinton presidency decrying the Senate Republicans use or threat of the use of filibuster against Cabinet nominees chosen by Clinton. Lani Gunier, for example, was denied the post of Attorney General because she had, in what now appears to be views far ahead of her time, the audacity to say something good about the use of proportional representation in elections.
As for Kahler’s question as to how a nominee can be considered “arch-conservative,” we only need to look at Janice Rogers Brown, who was appointed recently to the second-most important federal court in the nation as a result of the agreement Sen. Warner helped negotiate. In one of the most warped revisions of history since the Dred Scott case (the history of civilization shows that black Africans are inferior to white Europeans), Rogers Brown has stated that “in the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads led to slavery.”
Not only did liberalism free the slaves (Abe Lincoln, too, was a liberal), it provided a leg up to millions of poor families of all races who needed to keep food on their tables before they could muster a clean set of clothes that even today helps you get a job. No one ever forced anyone to apply for public assistance of any kind. After all, it was a socialist, Frederick Engels, who in a famous essay first pointed out the primary importance of work in the development of modern enlightened individuals.
Charles Murn
Charlottesville