The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.20           May 20, 1996 
 
 
Letters  

Terms too black and white
I've been a big fan of your labor coverage since the CPRS [rail] strike. Where we part company is your stance on international issues. Are Stalinist regimes like North Korea and China worthy of your support? And if those Khomeini heads in the Hezbollah aren't fascists I don't know who is. Such socialists I met during the strike were good-hearted people but, as my wife observed, naive. It's all very interesting - Che, Cuba, and all - but that's all it is. I simply cannot see the world in such black and white terms.

At least you guys are never boring.

Jeff Grab

member, United Transportation Union Local 1882

St. Paul, Minnesota

Tearing apart the lies

Recently I had the opportunity to represent Cuba in a model UN held at my high school here in Evansville. Much fanfare was made there over the concurrent, so-called Bosnia Peace Project, which involved a 20-by-48-foot re-creation of a Norman Rockwell painting by students. Addresses to the assembly were made by Congressman Lee Hamilton and Ivan Misic, Bosnia's ambassador to the UN.

The issues we debated included the embargo of Cuba, nuclear proliferation, the situation in Palestine, and a possible entry of Taiwan into the UN with "observer status." It was enjoyable to tear apart the lies spouted by the representatives of the imperialist powers, and to present the truth, which is what Castro, Guevara, and Alarcón have always done in the United Nations.

I could find no information concerning Cuba's stand on the situation in Yugoslavia, and so I put forth the perspective found in The Truth About Yugoslavia and in the pages of the Militant. I would like to thank the Militant for providing the coverage it does, and presenting a working-class approach to politics. Without it, it would not be possible for myself and others to get our bearings in the class struggle. As is proclaimed on the Pathfinder Mural: "The truth must not only be the truth; it must also be told."

Adam Wolfe

Evansville, Indiana

Socialist campaigning
During a ten-minute spot on a community cable TV network, Sylvie Charbin, the Communist League candidate in the federal by- election in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke North, had full-screen shots taken of the Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Che Guevara, and a copy of the Militant. She said that these publications would help explain what her campaign was all about.

It was an exciting time to have a socialist campaign. Charbin participated with pickets of the province-wide Ontario Public Sector Employees Union fighting to close down government buildings in order to defend union rights. In a heated all-candidates debate, she stood alone in her support to Quebec's right to independence. She spoke at a rally in support of revolutionary Cuba in front of the U.S. Consulate and at a demonstration of a 100 against the racist cop killing of Andrew Bramwell. At a plant-gate distribution, many of Sylvie's co-workers at Ford Electronics stopped their cars to take campaign literature. And a Toronto Young Socialist chapter was formally organized during the campaign.

Joanne Pritchard

Toronto, Ontario

First, vote in Nader
Last March I attended an International Solidarity with Cuba conference. American "militants" were there to protest against the Helms-Burton Act. I found myself wondering about the credentials of the U.S. "militants." They have done nothing to give themselves and us even one of those secular-humanist anti-creationists so despised by Jesse Helms.

While Canada's diminishing numbers of "socialists" can proudly point to three "Social-Democrat" governments in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, despite a hostile, U.S.-inspired Canadian media, you American "militants" do little to change the tradition of Darth-the-Invader-style presidential candidates. Instead of doing like Spartacus, Galileo, Jesus, Robert the Bruce, Luther, or Martí, people with few resources who changed their societies, you come to Montreal to tell us, "Down with Jesse Helms!"

By all means, free Mark Curtis - after you've succeeded in voting in Ralph Nader.

Brian Jewitt

Cantley, Quebec

Irish struggle

I especially appreciate your coverage on Ireland. I don't get it anywhere else.

A.M.

New York, New York  
 
 
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