Reading an item in today’s paper was salt in a fresh wound. Seems that dogs in my neighborhood are fair game for animal control officers, who now have the authority to shoot them. Thanks to Lexington County Council’s recent revision of law, “nuisance dogs” may be shot after other methods of trapping them fail.

This news pains me deeply. As an animal lover and passionate vegetarian, I already find it hard to live in a place where hunting is glorified and animal welfare is so low on our list of priorities. But this license to shoot dogs is shocking.

I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Ours is a culture that buys into property rights in a big way, which in turn feeds a mindset that dominion and ownership afford the powerful the right to control the powerless. It is how, I believe, we tolerate such high rates of domestic violence and child abuse. Small wonder we are also the home to organized fighting using dogs, hogs and gamecocks. Violence isn’t just accepted, it’s entertainment.

The fresh wound? It happened Sunday. I was out running in the woods near my home when I came across a dog that was severely malnourished and appeared to have been on his own for way too long. He wouldn’t let me touch him, but I coaxed him to follow me back to the house, where I gave him food and water. After several hours of working to get him to trust me, I was able to get close enough to read the tag on his collar.

I left a message for the owner, Pierre Lybrand, who called back and said he was on his way to retrieve the dog. He said he’d just gotten out of church. But what I’d thought would be a happy reunion turned ugly after the man showed up. The dog cowered when approached, and Pierre ended up dragging him to the truck and throwing him into a cage in back.

When I asked how long the dog had been missing, he said “since yesterday.” That’s when I lost it, and threatened to call the Humane Society. He said, “He’s a hunting dog,” as if that explained the clear neglect. “I’ve got 12 dogs. Go ahead and call them.”

I knew I wouldn’t. The dogs would be removed and euthanized. I couldn’t do it.

So instead I’m left with a profound sense of guilt and sadness, wondering if I did the right thing. I can’t shake the look in those eyes as the dog was hauled off, back to his life of abuse. God bless him. And God help the rest of us.

Becci Robbins

South Carolina voters indicate that a candidate’s platform on teen pregnancy prevention and family rights and privacy will influence their decisions in upcoming elections.

A recent survey measured how South Carolinians view important life decisions such as comprehensive sex education, birth control access, and other family health issues.

The survey found that:

* 80 percent rank addressing South Carolina’s teen pregnancy rate as very important or critical
* 89 percent support teaching both abstinence and pregnancy prevention to teens
* 90 percent agree that all women should have access to birth control
* 92 percent strongly respect a family’s right to privacy in family planning choices
* 79 percent say that a candidate’s position on protection, planning, and prevention strongly influences their vote

“For months, we’ve been pointing out that mainstream South Carolinians, regardless of their political affiliation, value both personal responsibility and social responsibility. They believe access to information is essential for healthy families. And they believe families should have the right to make intensely personal, private choices without government intrusion. This survey bears us out. Fifty percent of our respondents characterized themselves as conservatives or independents, seventy-eight percent as faith-influenced,” says George Johnson, President of the South Carolina Reproductive Health PAC.

The survey was distributed to more than 20,000 South Carolina female registered voters. These voters were selected as “independents” based on having voted in the past two national general elections but not the corresponding primary of either party. Of the recipients, 825 successfully completed the survey. This took place during the summer of 2007.

South Carolina Reproductive Health PAC is a non-partisan state political action committee, formed by citizens to promote healthy families. They provide campaign funding and other assistance to South Carolina candidates who support comprehensive, medically sound family planning policy.

What does one say in an obituary about the true legacy of a man who did more in his lifetime to polarize American politics on the basis of race than any South Carolinian since Coleman Blease? Apparently nothing! Harry Dent’s true legacy, the Republican “Southern Strategy”, employed seemingly innocuous coded terminology to cloak the racist politics of the era in a polite vocabulary. Terms such as “states rights,” “strict constructionist” and “law and order” were used in the strategy to clearly convey to discontented racist white Democrats that the Republican Party would keep African Americans in their place at a time when the Democratic Party was becoming more open to desegregation and equal justice.

Racist white Democrats abandoned their party to African Americans and to whites who supported their equality. Once these former Democrats had joined the ranks of the Republicans they were duped into believing that the interests of those who controlled the Republican agenda were the same interests as their own. This is the cruel irony of the Southern Strategy. Millions of working class white people were duped into voting against their own interests by wealthy Republicans who convinced them that voting with the Democrats would create giveaway programs for welfare mothers and others who didn’t deserve support. The truth of the matter was that during the Nixon Administration the welfare went to the Republicans who controlled the military industrial complex and who were profiting from the war in Vietnam.

Instead of telling the whole truth about Harry Dent in the article they published about his death, the Post and Courier chose to highlight how he allegedly helped resolve the 1969 Charleston Hospital Strike, never mentioning nor explaining his infamous Republican Southern Strategy. How ironic that Harry Dent’s obituary should cloak his true legacy and the racist reality of the irreparable harm that he did with a depiction of Dent as a civil rights hero.

Charlie Smith, Charleston

On Wednesday evening, as hundreds of Columbians travelled to Louisiana to join in a national protest, hundreds more gathered at the State House in a show of solidarity for the “Jena Six.” They sang. They prayed. They listened to speakers and spoken word artists. They joined hands and promised to stand united against racial injustice.

It was moving to see that sort of unity, which grew organically from a shared sense of outrage. It was the first rally I can remember that wasn’t organized by one group or anyone with an agenda. No political grandstanding. No pre-printed signs. Just people who came together on short notice to add their voices to the chorus saying, “Enough!”

While it was gratifying to see such a large and hopeful crowd, it was disappointing that there was no effort to take the next step. With all that energy, there was no talk about where to direct it. What now? Nobody knows. And with the local media pretty much ignoring the event, it was a missed opportunity all the way around. (Does a rally happening in a void make a sound?)

To see more photos from the rally, click here.