Letter: Regret Phillips’ behavior

To the Editor:

Mr. James Phillips, “The Fox,” was a lesser environmental vigilante than most. But it is not proper for the editors or the Little White School Museum to extol one taking the law into his own hands. (Kendall County Record, April 28, p. 21: “Oswego Museum exhibit honors environmental crusader”).

Why should trespass, property damage, inducing dereliction of duty (county officers looking the other way) and stealth be honored? Dumping a bucket of waste on the desk of a receptionist at U.S. Steel’s Chicago HQ (not the “white rug”) is an “exploit”? A court called it a misdemeanor and fined him.

I believe unions and the minimum wages they support have caused incalculable harm by destroying jobs and causing poverty for millions. Should I sneak around plugging up union hall drain pipes? Dump trash from a closed steel mill on a union receptionist desk? Why are we indoctrinating children into beliefs like this?

Let us regret Phillips’ behavior and wish he had legally advocated pollution mitigation.

Requiescat in pace.

Alphonse I. Johnson

Lisbon