Supporters of the Palestinian struggle on university campuses across the U.S. are learning the truth about hate crime measures. In May of this year, a pro-Israel demonstration on the campus of San Francisco State University ended in a confrontation with young Palestinians in which hostile remarks were exchanged, including racial epithets (according to the San Francisco Chronicle). University president Robert Cornage immediately suspended the Union of Palestinian Students, revoked its funding and shut down its website, while taking no action at all against Hillel, the Zionist student organization. The administration refused to remove the suspension for the rest of the term, even though no charges were ever filed, while it piously declared Fall 2002 the Semester on Constructive Civil Discourse.

With pro-Palestine student organizations from the University of California at Berkeley to the University of Michigan under increasing attack, it is becoming clear that university authorities will use hate crime codes to harass and victimize those who dare speak out against Israel and U.S. policies in the Middle East.

Experience is proving what the Militant has said many times--that hate crime measures are deadly threats to democratic rights. Whether as state statutes or student codes of conduct, they protect no one except the bourgeoisie’s right to restrict freedom of speech as it sees fit. They must be everywhere opposed.

Peter Anestos
San Francisco, California
 
 
‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’
I recently saw the film Rabbit- Proof Fence, which I would like to recommend to all your readers. The film is basically about the "white man’s burden" and the true story of a young Aboriginal woman’s defiance of it. Though set in Australia, the events could have taken place anywhere that European settlers felt they alone had the burden of civilizing the indigenous, darker-skinned population whether they wanted to be civilized or not. And as a U.S. resident it made me think of the pictures I’d recently seen in the American Indian museum of the Indian Schools and their pupils.

The movie states that the practice of removing children from their Aboriginal parents ended in the 1970s, but does not answer the question of what was happening in Australia at the time that forced the change--I do not believe it was a sudden change of heart.

The most refreshing part of the film for me was that it was not a sentimental film, and the main character is not presented as a poor victim of the system, but instead as a courageous, proud, and cunning young woman whose resistance inspires admiration.

Ruth Nebbia
New York, New York
 
 
Identify with Calero fight
As I have talked up the campaign to free Róger Calero among co-workers in the factory in which I work, I have been struck by the extent to which many workers have been touched by the issues posed by his case, and have participated in other defense efforts.

A Colombian woman signed the petition right away, noting that Clinton had admitted smoking dope and was subsequently elected president. She saw the link between the INS actions and Calero’s newspaper’s stand against the Iraq war. Later, she asked that her name be removed from the sheet. She had signed a similar petition in her church to defend a young Bosnian studying in Canada, and had received a phone call from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), Canada’s secret police, challenging her for her support for his case. They falsely claimed to have a video showing the youth throwing rocks outside the U.S. embassy in Bosnia. She asked me if it would be all right to give money to the Calero campaign instead.

Another young man whose family comes from Ecuador read the information sheet and said, "It’s like the sniper in Washington. The Spanish people who didn’t want to talk to the police were deported."

A Filipina told me the story of her friend who was in Japan without papers, was deported, and returned there only once her Japanese boyfriend married her.

Everyone spent some time trying to figure out why the INS would be so arbitrary.

Katy LeRougetel
Toronto, Canada

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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