Smokin' mad over poor-bashing

Please cancel my subscription! I object to Kristian Gravenor's "hotter than a crack pipe on welfare day" line ["Hey neighbour, turn down your %8@/@$# stereo," Sept. 24].

This letter is being hand-delivered: we don't have money for a %*@/$# stamp. Unless we spend, oh, about two hours picking up bottles and cans.

Don't cancel our subscription: we have no money to read anything else but the free journals. Our TV was pawned a year-and-a-half ago, our only news comes from our $25 pawn-shop radio.

Our wedding rings went six months ago. The bicycle, a year ago. We sleep on the floor (no boxspring) and live on over-cooked veggies from the soup kitchens most of the month.

And then some little yuppie (if you can call your kind of writing a profession!) throws out that old, tired, poor-bashing, "welfare bums on crack" trash.

Happy 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to you, too!

We "live," if you can call it that, on welfare. After bus pass, medicines and rent we have, oh, about $3 left over for food. And that's for two people, per day. It doesn't buy much more than a package of "chicken dogs" and day-old bread, on sale.

Where are you finding crack for $3 a hit? The crackheads I know are prostitutes (who disdain "welfare," they are proud working people!) or thieves (ditto!). Welfare is for honest "losers"--like us.

I am hotter than the tailpipe of your f*!@king little import car as it spews poisons into our city that you have, once again, made it look like welfare bums on crack--all of them, of course, pregnant single moms--is what "respect" and "human rights" are all about.

By the way, our stuff was pawned not to buy drugs, but to buy meat or protein--we need a "fix" of decent food every once in a while.

May you lose your job, with a pregnant wife and kids--no scratch that, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

May you get some understanding, that's enough.

-LesliAnne and Eric Côté

(no phone, it went six months ago)

The indie question

Chris Yurkiw writes about Juliana Hatfield: "Nice to have Juli back in the indie sack..." [Compact discs, Sept. 17] He writes that after identifying the album as on Zoë/Mercury Records. Excuse me, but Mercury is part of Polygram (recently bought by Seagram's), the biggest record conglomerate in the world.

To me, indie means the band or record label is not part of one the biggest corporations in the world. But then again, I don't think it's possible to be alternative when you're owned by Quebecor.

-Lou Melamed

No votes for election campaign

The candidates running for public office in this fall's city election are not involved in serious issues in their campaigns ["Mario Tremblay for mayor!" Sept. 17].

Although voters want to hear more about different issues in the campaign, there is more talk about personalities and very little about what really affects people: Medicare, urban renewal, Chinatown, cultural communities, taxes, bilingual signs, the environment, the unity debate and other larger issues that play a more direct role in people's lives. Hence, people feel confused for whom to vote because the scope and quality of the campaign is fuzzy on many fronts. Is it because politicians think the issues are so complex that only they--the politicians, the experts and the professionals--should decide what issues to talk about? What can voters possibly know about municipal affairs which, some politicians say, are too complex!

All that we've been hearing thus far is the promise of a glowing future for the city of Montreal, if elected.

Public opinion polls aren't reliable as to what voters will actually do, who will be the mayor and who will fill the 51 spots in city council.

One may conclude that people should get on with the business of everyday living rather than bother with politics and fighting among themselves over who to vote for.

-Tony P. Fernandez