OpinionDecember 3, 1999

To the editor: It strikes me that many of the protesters at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle are of the same stripe as protesters of the last 40 years. While some are no doubt sincere in their feelings against the WTO, many in the group are there just to be protesting. ...

Jerry Mitchell

To the editor:

It strikes me that many of the protesters at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle are of the same stripe as protesters of the last 40 years. While some are no doubt sincere in their feelings against the WTO, many in the group are there just to be protesting. I would guess that many of them protest against the death penalty, for pro-choice, for saving the whales, against police brutality, for saving the spotted owl, for saving trees, against mining, against oil drilling, against nuclear power, for anything the ACLU supports and for saving the rain forest, which, I believe, we used to call the jungle.

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In other words, they just like to protest, no matter what the cause.

Their unsaid plea seems to be "Notice me! Notice me!" They remind me of Al Capp's creation in his L'l Abner comic strip, SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything.)JERRY MITCHELL

Jackson

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