[Mb-civic] Letter

[Ian]

From: Ian 
To: letters at nytimes.com 
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 4:05 PM
Subject: Letter


The situation surrounding the removal of an active red-tailed hawk's nest by the Co-op Board of an East Side building ("No Fighting the Co-op Board, Even With Talons," Dec. 11) is indicative of an ugly and arrogant mindset: that we "permit" other life forms to live as long as they do not interfere with our lives.  This, despite the fact that they were here first, and that we interfered - and continue to interfere - far more with their lives than they do with ours.

Indeed, even setting aside our general ongoing pollution of the air, water and land shared by all living things, we think nothing of destroying their biospheres, ecosystems and refuges - and even driving them to extinction - so that we can survive.  But just let one of them dare to try to survive by building a nest on one of our buildings...

In this regard, we should not be angry with the members of the Co-op Board who voted to destroy the nest.  Rather, we should be filled with sadness and pity that they have so little compassion for anything that even remotely interferes with their anthropocentric lives.

Rev. Ian Alterman
New York City
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20041211/b182cf49/attachment.htm