To the Editor:

In response to “Sustained Effort Needed For Positive Change” which appeared in the Dec. 9-15 issue of North Country This Week: Now that the seven year experiment in the fundamental transformation of the country is about to end, the disappointment and frustration of its adherents is beginning to reveal itself.

The authors of this letter must forgive me if I appear to be afflicted with an understandable degree of skepticism.

The basic thrust of the letter attempts to convince the residents of the North Country that they are abused and oppressed and by default so are all of the victims mentioned in their letter.

Perhaps the authors can identify all the domestic terrorists among them. The average reader may be surprised to learn of the systemic racism, ableism, sexism and class discrimination endemic in our country.

These words are directly taken from a discredited Marxist philosophy and the ISO crowd takes comfort and refuge in them. The angry expressions by the ''chattering class'' in the faculty lounge have little relevance to the man in the street and the gratuitous comments to the courageous activists is overstated.

This is merely an attempt to disassociate themselves from SUNY Potsdam itself thus avoiding any hint of support for the administration and being tainted by complicity in the subjugation of certain elements of the student body to include the LGBTQ community.

The authors triumphantly tout the efforts of the student activists and their allies from Missou to Princeton in their titanic and noble efforts to rid themselves of tyranny and oppression.

I recall these words during the sixties and clearly some of the ISO crowd yearn for a return to the anarchy and internal conflict of that time.

They would be well advised to recall the words of a certain poet of antiquity who admonishes us ''that when the back streets begin to move, the liberals and intellectuals are swept aside.” “I'm sure all the'' oppressed peoples here and nationwide'' are comforted by the soothing words of the Potsdam Branch Of The International Socialist Organization.

It must be frustrating for them to be associated with a small state school in a remote and obscure part of the nation rather than a school like Berkley or Harvard where their philosophy will be understood and appreciated.

Richard Johnston

Formerly of Massena