Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    Thank you so much for the article on Austin Pride [“The History of Pride in Austin,” News, Aug. 9]. It is a very well-written and largely accurate account of the first moments of the founding of the Gay Liberation Front and subsequent developments in the Gay Rights Movement here.
    I have a couple of quibbles and one disagreement. The quibbles first: The first meeting of GLF did not happen in the University YMCA. It happened in Sutton Hall on the UT campus. Four meetings later, we moved to the Student Union. Some time after, the University kicked us out. That is when we moved to the Y. This is important because the facts demonstrate how opaque the issue of a gay presence on campus was to the authorities.
    Secondly, the observable gay population of Austin, before GLF, largely white middle-class men, was not specifically political and certainly not radical. That population was, however, acutely aware of its status as a second-class citizenry and came around with some speed once GLF appeared, however much it disagreed with our leftist leanings.
    A larger and more troubling squabble erupted in the opening days of our attempts to organize and to establish our movement’s connections to the larger liberationist struggles of the Civil Rights, anti-war, and women’s movements, dialectically.
    Six months or so out, the Lesbians said, and I quote, “These are men,” and left GLF, hooked up with straight women, and founded their own organization.
    Accused so, the men answered, “Yes, we are men, but we support your struggle and we wish you would not bifurcate our mutual gay energy and [instead] help us mount a united front.”
    “Nothing doing,” they answered, and proceeded to mount a feminist argument and analysis against us in The Rag and elsewhere.
    It turned out that the Lesbians did not have enough numbers to sustain their organization and a year later [they] came back to GLF demanding control of the consensus-directed meetings and that Lesbian and women’s issues be given priority even to the point of placing an “L” at the forefront of all and any future abbreviated designations.
    This was done.
    I said, as I am saying to the Democrats today: “I do not believe in hierarchies of oppression. The oppression of one is the oppression of all. As to the feminist claim to a priority status with regard to primary issues, it seems quixotic to me to claim that the domestic repression of women’s rights has greater historical resonance than working in a coal mine or being drafted into the trenches of World War I or onto the beaches of Tarawa and into the Battle of the Bulge, with all due respect to the suffering and struggle of our foremothers.”
    I did not believe back then and I do not believe today in identity politics. Such is an inadequate analysis of the predatory policies of capitalism and such plays into the policies of divide and conquer by which means the ruling classes control the game of Life.
    Thanks again for your article.

Dear Editor,
    While I agree with the specific complaint about the Travis County commissioners in Lawrence Delarose’s letter in the August 9 edition [“Selfish, Outrageous Behavior,” Feedback], his closing sentence misses the bigger picture: “They are supposed to be public servants working for us, not us working to support them.”
    That is the big lie taught to those of us who endured a public school education, told by government employees beholden to the politicians who pay them from taxes coerced from us. Politicians are not “public servants.” They do not serve us. They are self-interested individuals who enjoy wielding power over and confiscating income from the rest of us proles, regardless of the D or R or whatever after their name.

Dear Editor,
    Thanks for the walk down Memory Lane with your recent list of old Austin gay bars [“An Incomplete Compilation …,” News, Aug. 9]. I am afraid you missed some of the better/bigger ones.
   
   Private Cellar
   The 505
   Green Parrot
   Backstreet Basics
   Waller Creek Saloon
   Snuffy’s Saloon
   Round Up
   Texas Colorado Street Bar
   
    Can you run an update next week? I am sure others will be adding to the list as well.

   Qmmunity Editor Sarah Marloff responds: Thank you for your note, Russell. As we noted in the piece (and headline), it’s an inexhaustive list due to time limits and space constraints. However, we are hoping to put together a complete list in the near future and are asking qmmunity members to let us know which bars are missing. If you remember a gay/lesbian/queer bar that we didn’t mention in “An Incomplete Compilation of the Gay Bars Austin Has Loved and Lost,” please email qmmunity@austinchronicle.com with the name, location (if you can remember), and any other info or anecdotes you remember. We’d also love to see some photos if you have those as well.

Dear Editor,
    A few days ago, I was on my lunch break with a co-worker; we enjoyed our meals and took the rest to go. The waitress handed us two Styrofoam takeout containers, which made me wonder, where is this trash going to end up when I’m done with it?
    Much of this trash is ending up in our Texas waterways – the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico – and it is not only polluting our water, but endangering our wildlife. Plastic has been found in every single species of sea turtle and about half of our marine birds.
    Texans alone throw away over a billion foam cups every single year, and this material never breaks down. Nothing we use for a few minutes should be allowed to pollute our world and threaten wildlife for centuries.
    We only have one option: We must push Governor Abbott to agree to pass a statewide ban on single-use foam products in the next legislative session. He needs to see our power, so please call his office, write him a letter, post on social media, and encourage him to take a stand and put wildlife over waste.