GIVE US OUR PROPS
I write in response to comments made by Elise Marshall, aide to Vera Katz, in the article "What Derry Jackson Said" [WW, Sept. 5, 2001]. What Ms. Marshall said without observing Jefferson High School staff is so far from the truth that it demands a visit and a heartfelt retraction.

First of all, as a veteran teacher who has taught in four Portland high schools and has a son in another, I can unequivocally state that our students are easily as respectful as any other school in our district. No one here fears an ambush. As a matter of fact, about 25 of our staff members live in the Jefferson attendance area and another 25 live in North-Northeast or near-in Southeast. We live and work amongst our students.

I know of no teacher who leaves at 2:45 and many who stay well past 4:00 helping students, preparing lessons and going to sporting events of those same students we are supposed to fear. Numerous staff have entertained classes at their homes to celebrate achievements in the classroom. Jefferson staff care about their students.

In terms of dedication, ask outsiders who come here to help us with school reform what they think of our faculty. They will tell you that we are one of the most interested, serious faculties they have ever seen. Almost every member of our English department has given up part of her/his summers year after year to gain further training in literacy and writing. Note also that our test scores are rising. Not bad for a school that a short three years ago lost 95 percent of its staff and has seen six new principals in four years.

Give us our due. Recognize us for what we are: a group of fine, thoughtful, willing educators whose vision is an equal playing field for all students. Quit spewing unfounded verbiage that hurts both the school and the community. Visit us to see the truth.

Peter Thacker
Literacy Instructional Specialist
Jefferson High School

CLASS DISMISSED
There are many poor people in America, and the majority of them are white. Many Oregon children grow up with a relative poverty and hunger, and the majority of them are white. My only problem with the Derry Jackson cover-story interview ["What Derry Jackson Started," WW, Sept. 5, 2001] is its unquestioned equation of "white" with "affluent."

The rageful resentment that fuels young white racists is in part a response to being culturally, as whites, blamed for a systemic capitalist poverty which they have not themselves

created, but have indeed bitterly experienced in their own "whitebread" version.

The most taboo word in America is "class."

Barbara Mor
Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard

THE TURN OF THE SPEW
At the beginning of the latest Derry Jackson article/roundtable ["What Derry Jackson Started, WW, Sept. 5, 2001], it was written that "[I]t was a shame it was Jackson who spoke" (the words about Jews).

If it had been a white Republican male, you guys would have had a field day, spewing invective and hatred around about white racists and the Republican Party in general. But, unfortunately, it had to be a black, liberal Democrat. Kind of screws up the ol' stereotype, doesn't it?

Daniel K. Pursley
Clackamas

JUNG TURKS VS. OLD GUARD
Without defending Arnold Mindell (Process Work does not interest me), I had to laugh at the beginning of David Shafer's "Dream Academy: And you thought your degree was useless..." [WW, Aug. 29, 2001]. I have been reading and admiring Jung and Jungians for years and have noticed with wry amusement how hostile certain psychologists are to his ideas, especially cognitive behaviorists and the like. Shafer quotes skeptics from the psychiatry and psychology departments at OHSU and the U of O. In my experience as a college student in Eugene, it was clear to me very early that a lot of cognitive behaviorists are dismissive of Jung and his ilk and that mentioning his name in my psych class would invariably bring a polite
but bemused expression from my professor.

So Mr. Shafer, by quoting these two experts, has brought to light a terrible scandal: Conservative and traditional schools of psychology think analytical psychology is for nuts. GASP! Wow, he has exposed something so horrendous and amazing that
everyone must be warned! Here's a newsflash: Harvard and other
Ivy League schools have integrated Jung, William James and other
forward thinkers into their
curriculum.

Mindell might not have the perfect school. Who really knows, since the article didn't tell the reader much, but quoting your clinical psychiatrist and psychologist in regard to some of the new schools of thought in psychology is like asking a Creationist to review the works of that weird old dude Darwin.

Elizabeth Studer Graham
Southeast Morrison Street

PROCESSED CHEESEHEAD

I am a licensed clinical social worker, teacher and psychotherapist in Wisconsin. As a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley and current faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I can affirm that my eight years of formal training in Process Work has been meticulous in establishing ethical principles and standards of practice and certainly exceeds other schools in preparing their graduates for psychological interventions with individuals, families and the community. It is one of the reasons that I, like many other professionals, continue to study with Arnold Mindell and his associates in Portland, when I could easily stay closer to home and receive a less rigorous program and graduate in a far shorter period of time.

Roberta Hanus
Milwaukee, Wisc.