Millions of people's lives around the world are virtually destroyed at the hands of overzealous, ignorant capitalists every year. A vast amount of this destruction comes in the form of degraded or lost habitat. Why not expose your readers to the benefits of sustainable development projects that are currently being proposed or are already in existence. For instance, there is the "Shaman's apprentice" program, which focuses on establishing a market base for medicinal plants that are used in the Amazon region by tribal "medicine men." The ideal of the program is to involve the local inhabitants in a project which enables them to earn the money they have been forced to "need" by utilizing the resources of the forests in which they live without destroying them, an amazing feat in this day and age which could serve as a model for the future.
I am truly convinced such an expansion of your paper would be a benefit to all. Keep up the valuable work you do.
Ian Maxwell
Breckenridge, Colorado
Hands off the Teamsters
Your articles pointing out the danger of government
intervention into the Teamsters (or any union) are important to
discuss on the job. What is at stake is the independent
functioning of our unions, union democracy, and the future
transformation of our unions through action and battle into
fighting instruments to defend workers' rights and win social
change.
During the labor struggles of the 1930s and the post World War II labor upsurge, many laws were passed and implemented that allowed the government, their agencies ( FBI, police, courts, etc.) the secretary of labor, so-called mediators, and others to meddle into the affairs of unions. Interventions ranged from keeping tabs on union finances, pressuring union officials into loyalty oaths, overseeing union constitutions and by-laws, etc. Some of these laws like the Kennedy-Landrum- Griffin Law (1959) allowed the government to place police into the unions and urged dissident union members to sue the union in the capitalist courts. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 allowed the government to invoke injunctions against a strike and even to "take possession" of a plant to prevent a strike.
One of the richest experiences is contained in the book Teamster Bureaucracy by Farrell Dobbs (Pathfinder Press). One chapter, "FBI Disruption", documents the origins of government intervention into the Teamsters. Dobbs explains how FBI Director [J. Edgar] Hoover sent agents into the militant Teamsters Local 544 to act as agent-provocateurs and assist the government in carrying out frame-ups of militant workers, violating the Bill of Rights, and handing down secret indictments that were heard by rigged juries and resulted in workers doing jail time. The FBI had the assistance of Teamsters International president Tobin, who with Roosevelt, was trying to housebreak the union in preparation for U.S. entrance into World War II.
I encourage Militant readers to study this rich lesson and demand Hands off the Teamsters.
Mark Friedman
Los Angeles, California
`Antiracist' protests?
The article in the December 15 Militant on the protests
following the racist killing of Oumar Dia in Denver did not
give an accurate picture of the rallies organized in the wake
of this crime - to judge from the coverage I saw on CNN and
articles appearing in the Denver Post.
The CNN coverage, for instance, featured a rally speaker calling on people to "stand up for our police," and focused not on the Dia killing but on the shooting death of a Denver cop, Bruce Vander Jagt, on November 12. This killing is also attributed to skinheads. After that shooting, a dead pig with Vander Jagt's name painted on it was left in front of his precinct house. The Post's and CNN's coverage strings together these killings in an attempt to channel people's outrage into an "anti-hate" - and pro-cop - campaign.
Was the rally a united "rally against racism" as reported in the Militant article? It seems to me it was a bit more complicated than that. Who were the featured speakers at the rally? What views did they express? Weren't there different class responses that should have been reported?
Since when does Mayor Wellington Webb "organize rallies against racism?" Is he among the "activists who organized several other events," as reported in the Militant article? He's actually organizing to make it harder to unite people against police brutality and cop killings - of which there is a rich history in Denver.
The cops, no matter if Vander Jagt WAS killed by a skinhead, will never be the real targets of the rightists and fascists. Witness the revelation of cops "leaking" "confidential police information" to "skinheads."
Floyd Fowler
Atlanta, Georgia
Antidote to capitalist press
Thank you for providing an antidote to the bourgeois press.
I love Harry Ring's "Great Society" column (Marxists really
need doses of humor) and the "Book of the Week" excerpts.
M.S.
Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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