Malcolm X library
Pathfinder representatives participated in the grand
opening January 5-6 of the new Malcolm X Library and
Performing Arts Center in San Diego, California, in the
heart of the city's Black community. Some 1,000 people
attended, including Malcolm X's widow Betty Shabazz and San
Diego's mayor. Pathfinder, as the publisher of the majority
of Malcolm's speeches, was invited to participate. We were
part of the program and set up a large display of a variety
of Pathfinder titles. Several teachers were interested in
classroom adoptions, especially Malcolm X Talks to Young
People.
Mark Friedman
Los Angeles, California
Cuban revolution
Congratulations for your excellent series on the Cuban
revolution. My family and I left Santiago, Chile, after the
fascist military take-over in 1973. If only our overthrown
president Salvador Allende had listened to Fidel Castro's
warnings (Castro visited Chile in the early 1970s), Chileans
may have been able to protect the gains of that socialist
government and avoid the military regime's 17-year legacy of
terror.
I especially liked Mary-Alice Waters's reply to the editor of the New York Times (December 1995). However, it is not only the BIG newspapers that continu-ously try to smear Cuba's image.
In 1984 I remember an astonishing photograph appearing in the Gazette, a Montreal newspaper. An article on Cuba was accompanied by a photo showing Fidel Castro standing next to Chilean dictator and traitor Augusto Pinochet, a well-known murderer. The photo, probably 13 years old, was taken when Fidel visited Chile and Pinochet was still an ordinary general, functioning on that day as part of Allende's "welcoming committee" at the airport. The Gazette, however, left it to the reader to assume that Fidel was best friends with this butcher. Very astute - for a small newspaper!
Juan C. Chirgwin
Montreal, Quebec
New York strike
Along with a fellow member of the United Auto Workers, I
went to the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan January
24 to show solidarity with striking maintenance workers of
the Service Employees International Union. As is often true
on union picket lines today, the mood of the 30 or so
picketers was subdued but stubborn and determined. A Polish-
born worker stressed that their resistance to the employers'
two-tier demand was a fight for all workers.
He was explaining his view of the NATO occupation of Bosnia (he thought the official reason for the occupation - "peacekeeping" - was not the real one) when a shout went up "The people from the World Financial Center are marching on City Hall!" About 30 sign-carrying workers chanting "No contract! No peace!" came by. They waved and shouted for the Trade Center pickets to join them and many did, including us.
The marchers wound through the downtown streets, pulling picketers from one giant building after another. Although some picket groups left one behind and a few were reluctant to come along, most came running to join, waving their picket signs and shouting enthusiastically, "No contract, no work!" I began to get a very different feeling for the scope of this strike than one gets greeting a few pickets at one or another building.
By the time we got to the Wall Street area, the cops - who had insisted we stay on the sidewalk - were now allowing the marchers to take the streets. As we wound through the narrow streets past double-parked rows of limousines waiting for late-night stock traders and bond dealers. I looked behind me and saw that the march now stretched at least three blocks behind me and one block in front. Traffic was beginning to jam up on all sides. A television report later estimated the spontaneous march at 1,200, which sounded right to me.
The march continued for well over an hour. It concluded, I was told, with a rally addressed by union officials.
While it's true that frustration builds up among strikers during a grinding, uphill struggle against employers who are using scab labor to try to bust a union, I didn't experience this march as an expression of frustration. It showed the creativity, enthusiasm, and confidence of fighting workers who gain an added sense of their power and ability to win broad solidarity when they take their strike to the streets while maintaining determined picket lines.
We weren't venting frustration (and I've been on some union marches where frustration was the dominant mood). We were fighting and enjoying it too.
The wave of labor and student battles in France has no counterpart here yet. But the same combative spirit, solidarity, imagination, and confidence in the power of our class that we see in Paris and Marseilles are growing in the United States, even as the attacks of the capitalists and their government grow more savage.
Fred Feldman
Brooklyn, New York`
Fish kill protest
Boaters, fishermen and environmentalists from around
North Carolina formed a motorcade with their boats, pick-up
trucks and cars on the Raleigh beltline on December 9 to
protest massive fish kills in North Carolina's rivers. They
proceeded to the State fairgrounds for a rally. George
Beckwith, a fisherman from New Bern and organizer of the
event, said, "We want clean water now and we can have it,
but we've got to demand it. A sleeping giant is about to
wake up, the people of North Carolina."
Several million fish died in the state's coastal waters this year. Speakers explained that hog waste, wastewater treatment plants and fertilizer combine with airborne pollution to choke the rivers and creeks. Excessive nitrogen and phosphorus are triggering algae blooms that use up the water's oxygen and kill fish. About 364,000 acres of water have been permanently closed to shellfishing due to high bacteria levels. Toxic substances have caused fish and shellfish diseases, fish kills and health advisories. Some anglers have reported sores on their bodies resembling those on the fish.
Part of the problem is the increase in hog waste flowing into the rivers. Since 1990, as large slaughterhouses fled Virginia's harsher environmental laws for friendlier ground, there has been an explosion of hog farming and processing in North Carolina. Hog farmers store the waste in lagoons, then spread the waste onto their fields. Until recently, most hog operations here had never been inspected.
After big rain storms last summer, millions of gallons of hog manure from broken farm lagoons flowed into the rivers. The Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) is proposing to build a slaughterhouse on the banks of the Tar River in Edgecombe County, which has also been the focus of protests. Rick Dove, the Neuse River Keeper, said that the state's hog industry, second largest in the country after Iowa, puts more fecal waste into the environment than the entire human population of North Carolina.
State government officials now say they are studying the problem, but rally speakers said it's past time to do more than launch another study, of which there have been many. They called for a moratorium on new hog farms, an end to spraying of fields with hog waste, regulations on wastewater treatment plants, and restrictions on land use. The fishermen and others at the rally explained that this has to be the beginning, that the demonstrations need to get bigger, and that the people of North Carolina need to take back the waters so they will be safe for their children and grandchildren.
Pat Leamon
Raleigh, North Carolina
The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of general interest to our readers. Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.