I worked at Santana for 13 years and know many of the teachers and staff there. Many of the students at West Hills High have siblings or friends attending Santana.

The mood was sober at WHHS. Both faculty and students continue to feel empathy for our sister school in Santee. Any real solutions will come from the students, parents, and teachers in the Santee community. It is the working class that is the key to solving the problems of society. There needs to be fundamental change of the way society is organized. Barbed wire, bars, and metal detectors are not the answers for the working class. Those measures will only protect the interests of the ruling class.

Young people need the tools to deal with the world around them and the capitalist class is not giving them those tools. To paraphrase from the pages of the Militant: Education demands only one thing of students and that is the same as the bosses "obedience." The best education young people can get is in the pages of the Militant weekly.

Gary Willhite
Santee, California  
 
 
Fight discrimination
The recent U.S. Supreme Court attack on the rights of people with disabilities is no surprise. Along with legislation against age discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states that discrimination against people with disabilities is banned unless it costs too much.

There is nothing in the various civil rights laws that says discrimination against African-Americans, Chicanos, and Latinos, and other minorities is illegal unless it costs an employer (or a state for that matter) too much money. But that is exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court says is permissible with regard to age and disability.

The reason for discrimination is to permit capitalist owners of property to pay some workers less than other workers in comparable jobs and to divide us. That is the lawful operation of capitalism. The only way to end such discrimination is to end capitalism.

There are a number of cases in the pipeline to the Supreme Court that will deal with issues of the cost to states and municipalities of access, such as curb cuts, accessible public transportation, ramps, Braille signs, interpreters for the deaf, etc.

You can be sure that if the Supreme Court finds such elementary access rights to be "too costly" for the states, then surely individual capitalist enterprises could hardly be expected to spend the "scarce resources" of the stockholders for such "frills."

Every worker has a stake in the fight against disability and age discrimination because every worker is likely to suffer an injury, especially on the job, causing partial or total disability, a slow down with age.

The only way we can win battles against discrimination (whether based on race, gender, age, nationality or disability) is to join together in those struggles, led by the workers, to defend our rights.

Robin Maisel
Los Angeles, California

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

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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