My co-worker, who informed me he is Sikh and immigrated to California from Punjab, India, 20 years ago, explained, there are nearly 50,000 Indians - many who are Sikhs from Punjab - in the state. The largest concentrations reside, primarily, in three Central Valley cities - Fresno, Merced, and Yuba City - the heartland of California agriculture.
The similarities of climate and agriculture production the Central Valley offers a convenient transition for their immigration. Punjab is the rich agricultural region in northwestern India, and Sikhs are traditionally farmers.
Sikhs immigrated to California during World War I. Initially employed as farm laborers, they have established a significant social base through four generations of émigrés. They published several newspapers in the Punjabi language. They are farmers and shopkeepers. A large percentage of them, as was evident at Foster Farms, are, and have been, industrial workers. (My co-worker has worked in the Bay Area for more than 10 years.)
Osborne G. Hart
San Francisco, California
Great alternative
It's so great to have an alternative paper that represents
the interests of the working class!
T.H. and D.V.
Lafayette, Colorado
Promise Keepers
The October 20 Militant article on the protest at the
Promise Keepers gathering quotes from an op-ed piece by
historian and writer Stephanie Coontz in which she states "for
many women, benevolent paternalism may be the highest quality
of life they can aspire to." Unfortunately, this back-handed
support for Promise Keepers has been echoed by a number of
other formerly pro-feminist writers and journalists. The gist
of their position is that with so many women being raped and
beaten, and so many men fathering children for whom they take
no responsibility, Promise Keepers, despite their sexist and
homophobic platform, will at least make life a little better
for women.
As if women had no other choice than to either be raped or be submissive wives! Coontz and others with her viewpoint have either forgotten or never contemplated the possibility of a third alternative, that of women fighting for equality and social justice.
In fact, groups like Promise Keepers - whose platform promotes and seeks to deepen the attacks on women and gays by the ruling class - will result in more, not less, abuse of women. Rape, wife beating, and other forms of violence against women are not solely a matter of individual men being wretched (although such behavior is indeed wretched conduct). Abuse and violence towards women are fundamentally a result of the unequal, second-class status of women in society, an inequality which Promise Keepers seeks to perpetuate and which women like Coontz are apparently now ready to accept.
Carol Sholin
Oakland, California
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