The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.8           February 24, 1997 
 
 
Letters  
 Mexico I
Reading your article on the Mexican "bailout" fostering the economic crisis which covered the southern states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. The Militant has covered extensively the economic pressures put on Mexico, but I would like more coverage of the militarization of these states and the rest of the country being done with U.S. support. On my last visit to Mexico I was impressed by the increased presence of military, police, and immigration officials in all the states that I visited. The military now controls three major airports. An incident that caught my attention when taking the bus from one state to another, I had to go through metal detectors and officers checking my luggage, something that wasn't seen before. The government claims that these measures are taken to reduce crime and drug trafficking.

Alex Jiménez

Tucson, Arizona

Mexico II
If possible, would you add 5 copies of Militant issue #6 to Tucson's regular bundle this week. Issue #6 has the important article on the bailout of Mexico and the editorial on canceling Mexico's foreign debt. We have sold all we have.

Tucson will join 31 other cities in a national protest February 14 against U.S. aid to the militarization of Mexico. We would like to have this issue of the Militant for that event, as no one else is picking up on the connection of the pressures to continue to pay interest to the foreign debt and the militarization.

Betsy McDonald

Tucson, Arizona

Ebonics debate
The "deplorable conditions" the article describes in Oakland schools I would formulate as being caused by "the intensified national oppression of Blacks as a result of the deepening capitalist crisis." The article's formulation devoid of the term oppressed national minority, beclouds the article's relevant points and inadequately portrays the dynamics of Black struggle (or lack of it and reason for same), for starters. Yes, Ebonics' usefulness in addressing the deplorable conditions in Oakland or anywhere else pales drastically in comparison to the slashed, already inadequate funding for urban Black working class schools creating the "deplorable conditions" - although Black children are negatively stereotyped by the thousands every day for their use of Black English. You say, "we must oppose any discrimination against Black youth...." It's time!

Ebonics, which most linguists agree is a dialect of English, coined in the early 1970's, originated out of the 1960's Black power movement, by educators, intellectuals and their adherents influenced Black nationalism. Ebonics, Africentrism, cries for more Black businesses, for buy Black campaigns, for more Black elected politicians, and for more Black private independent schools get their play in all Black classes under intensified Black national oppression. The presence of powerless Black elected and administrative officialdom in charge in Oakland, demonstrates the dead-end strategy of buying into dependent electoral capitalist politics as a means to challenge Black national oppression put forth by the three petty-bourgeois political trends in the Black community represented by Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and the NAACP. Rather than organize mass based local and national independent political movements to put forth demands for adequate resources and community control, affirmative action, jobs for all and the like, they join in the debate. They have done their jobs by helping to elect Clinton and the local elected Black Oakland officials.

True, "revolutionary leaders who have risen from the ranks of the oppressed have never talked down to their fellow fighters or adapted their speech to sound like jargon or slang." However, all of them valued their fellow fighters, many who were illiterate or talked slang, to fight for free education among other things - ask the revolutionary fighters who helped kick the U.S. out of Cuba and the valiant comrades who helped to bring down apartheid. The revolution that will be made in the U.S. will have a few too!

Ken Morgan

Baltimore, Maryland

The facts about Ford
In the January-February 1997 issue of the Mosaic, the glossy company magazine distributed to all the employees at Ford Electronics where I work, plant manager Ronald Frisbee tries to allay the well-founded fear of many coworkers about the possible loss of jobs with the introduction of Ford's new "lean and flexible" worldwide production system (FPS).

Frisbee says "we should not look at these productivity improvements as eliminating jobs. Exactly the opposite will happen." Frisbee goes on to quote from Henry Ford's 1926 book Today and Tomorrow. Ford wrote: "We know that these improvements will lessen costs and therefore widen markets and make more jobs at higher wages." Frisbee concludes, "...we need to continue to adopt this philosophy from 1926. Our future depends on it!"

Six years after Ford wrote these words, according to the February 10, 1997, Militant, over 3,000 laid off Ford workers in Detroit demonstrated for jobs in March 1932 during the Great Depression. Four were killed by cops and Ford security guards. The same issue of the Militant reports that on January 23, 1997 hundreds of Ford workers marched on company offices in London, England to protest the threatened layoffs of 1,300 workers at a Ford factory near Liverpool.

This shows you can't get the facts we need from brain- numbing company propaganda. But we can get them from the Militant.

John Steele

Toronto, Ontario

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.  
 
 
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