Salvador Protests

In regard to the article on the protests against U.S. aid to El Salvador (Part B, Jan. 18), I would like to relate an experience I had on Jan. 10 when I was one of the people who performed civil disobedience. Upon being released from custody, I encountered two Salvadoran men who asked me if I had been among those arrested. When I answered yes, they thanked me profusely, one of them saying that his father would thank me too except that he had been killed by death squads in El Salvador in 1980. Both would have joined the protest themselves but for fear of deportation.

Simultaneously moved and ashamed, I could only reply that it wasn’t like going to jail in El Salvador and anyway I had no choice; I had to take responsibility for what my tax dollars were doing to their people.

KATHERINE KING

Chair

Concerned Faculty at UCLA