Letters

    Sisters and Brothers of the SUN,

    It's good to see your continuing interest in improving the health of our community through eating natural food. But we feel you may be making a mistake in pushing "Mountain High" ice cream as a "natural high" in your latest issue of the SUN. "Mountain High" advertises itself as a "totally natural food", but if you read the list of ingredients on the carton you will find that it contains "raw sugar". This should not fool anyone - "raw sugar" is just a hype, and just as unnatural as any other sugar.

   Firstly, sugar is grown using synthetic fertilizers and weed sprays, and the fields are burned just before harvest. Then it is refined until it is 99.96% sucrose. It is even against the law to sell sugar that has not been refined. Lastly the refiners add back a little molasses to make the so-called "raw" sugars - 13% molasses for the darkest grades.

    So don't let yourselves be conned, at the least this "raw sugar" is 87% the very same white sugar that robs the body of B vitamins, disrupts calcium metabolism and seriously harms the nervous system. No wonder "Mountain High keeps very quiet about the sugar it contains! The supposedly all "natural" ice cream contains the ultimate unnatural ingredient!

    Our advice is to be aware of massive advertising campaigns, read labels closely, and if you want ice cream, stick to one sweetened only with honey.

              For all the people at                           Eden's Foods,                              David Rickard

    (The Sun contacted the local distributors of Mountain High Ice Cream who are now forwarding the above letter to their manufacturer.

   The ad for Mountain High in our last issue said, "There are no chemicals or artificial flavorings added to Mountain High Ice Cream. Just fresh fruit and lots of honey."

   The distributor pointed out that the first sentence is true and the second sentence was not meant to imply that the ice cream contained no sugar - there are lots of other ingredients besides fresh fruit and honey, one of which is a minimum of raw sugar. All the ingredients are listed right on the container.)

Letter to the SUN:

    Unfortunately some in town do not know their real enemies from their brothers and sisters in struggle, and are ignorant as to the meanings of certain words tossed about in public to discredit certain groups. At the June 24 Free Concert at Otis Spann Memorial Field, the front of the stage was spray-painted with "Rainbow Corp = Pig Capitalism". This vandalism to community resources is in line with similar trash directed at organized rainbow people in Ann Arbor.

    Last winter the entire front of the Washington Street Community Center was painted with slogans like "Smash Rainbow Prick Power" and the front of the newly painted R.P.O. house on HUI St. was spray painted with gay liberation symbols. That vandalism was done by certain elements of the gay activist movement. I don't know exactly who painted the stage, but it is truly a drag to have to speak again to the infantile and divisive nature of such "political." attacks.

    It is obvious that some people do not fully understand the nature and purpose of Rainbow Multi-Media (non-profit corporation) or the Rainbow People's Party, and also that many people have negative attitudes as well as sincere criticisms of both organizations. But the point I want to focus on is the equating of either organization, or for that matter, any people's attempts to attain independence and freedom, with the institution of capitalism and its proponents, the pigs.

   To engage in a non-profit corporate business is not capitalism; capitalism is based on an exploitative relationship between owners and workers where people are oppressed for the purpose of making profits for a few. It is detrimental to the political development of our community, especially to idealistic and already brainwashed young people, to confuse capitalism with anything else we might oppose; yet it is historically typical for oppressed and colonized people to be suspicious of organizations and to vent their anger and frustration on those closest to them since the real enemy is usually safely entrenched in some villa or bank office. And it is this separation between poor and oppressed people and the capitalists that makes the oppressor a pig.

   Pigs are in our midst, but they are agents of the big pigs and vampires who colonize and exploit us. Their techniques for control (schools, TV, confusion, metaphysics, etc.) have left us all with piggy attitudes and behavior, but it is wrong to define anyone or any group we are critical of and is of the community as pigs. The pigs are here to create separation and fear. On the other hand, Rainbow Multi-Media, Inc. and the RPP and many other people and organizations who work hard on the Free Concerts have shown by their practice to be concerned with bringing us together and making us strong so we can move over the pigs and replace capitalism with communalism. All power to the brothers and sisters who unite to fight the real enemy.

                Skip Taube

To our brother & sister weed dealers:

    The Sunday Free Concerts at Otis Spann Memorial Field are a great place for our people to gather and get high. Dozens of people work in between each Sunday to insure these events are of a high quality, and as a conscious community the thousands of people who boogie on down every Sunday donate upwards of $500 weekly to supplement the City budget for these programs.

   A policy of mutual support is in effect at the Concerts whereby local businesses (e.g. Eden's, Mt. High Ice Cream, Rainbow Trucking, etc.) donate a portion of their profits (10%) to the Community Parks Program. What I would like to encourage is the donation of a percentage of the profits made by the brothers and sisters who deal marijuana at the Concerts. This could be done easily if our weed merchants would just toss in some extra bills during the weekly bucket drive conducted by the Psychedelic Rangers.

Think on it, and let's work together to Stay high

             Signed, Anonymous