A revealing question is posed in an interview of Oregon's U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut by Angeela Valdez in the Portland-based Willamette Week.

(Q:) Say you're talking to an anarchist at the Red and Black Cafe who reads Indymedia. What would you say to make them not hate your guts?

(A:) I grew up in a modest family and just chose to go to law school. Y'know, I went to Berkeley. I raise my family in this community. I teach them about respect for the other person, about protecting civil rights, about our freedoms in this country. I don't know if that's helpful....I became a career prosecutor because I thought that was the way that I could help society the most, that I could try to protect people from crimes, but also do the right thing.

We prosecute civil-rights violations, too, so I think the us-vs.-them mentality is a troubling one and a dangerous one. Fighting crime and terrorism is not just my job. It's the community's job. And when I go to groups and it's clear that they would never report a suspicious incident to anyone, we have a breakdown in our society. Obviously, we need to build some better bridges. I need to understand the people who are frustrated—where they're getting that frustration from—just like they need to understand what our jobs are. But I don't think there's a lot of effort to understand what our jobs are.

Ms. Immergut - that anarchist doesn't deserve persuading, and your soft soap wouldn't do the trick anyway. Here's the right answer to the question: "An anarchist who hates federal prosecutors is at the far fringes of our society today. Our government's job is not to worry about domestic anarchists hating us, but to prevent them, and terrorists, from destroying property and taking innocent lives. I would like to think that all reasonable people could support that goal."

This one's for free, Karin.

TECHNORATI TAGS: PORTLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY, KARIN IMMERGUT, WILLAMETTE WEEK, MEDIA TRAINING, INDYMEDIA, ANARCHISTS, TERORRISM

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 18, 2006 11:12 AM

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