Daniel Desbois
Gascons, Quebec
 

Cheam fishing rights
We wanted to thank you for the article [“Cheam in Canada defend fishing rights,” August 11 Militant, no. 27] and for the interest in our issues. In a sea of racism, biased reporting, and redneck thinking, it was quite refreshing to meet the Militant reporters and see our side of the story in print.

Jim Stocco
Paspébiac, Quebec
 

AMFA vote at United
In “How AMFA won vote at United,” Ernest Mailhot presents developments in my workplace. The article is accurate overall, including when he refers to AMFA officials as “company-minded.” The big-business press refers to AMFA as “militant,” as he said, but that perception is also widespread among my co-workers, and was fueled by IAM officials, company-minded themselves. IAM officials have declared that saving United Airlines is their first priority.

AMFA only began to make serious inroads among United mechanics after 1994, when IAM officials negotiated the Employee Stock Ownership Plan. That contract swapped deep and long-term concessions for company stock, now worthless. While the contract passed nationwide, it was soundly defeated in the San Francisco area, by a membership composed of mechanics in its vast majority.

Over the years, these workers have resisted one concession proposal after another. Recently, when the Presidential Emergency Board proposed United workers forego retroactive pay increases, mechanics rejected that. In December, IAM officials pushed deep concessions to save the airline from bankruptcy. When mechanics rejected those, IAM officials scolded that workers had “listened to organizers for AMFA.”

AMFA’s slogan at the time was “Full pay ’til the last day.” That may have been demagogy, but IAM officials dismissed those who found it attractive as “ignorant.” A recent IAM District 141-M headline read: “AMFA Threatens UAL’s Future.”

Over the years, it has been the IAM’s response whenever co-workers resisted that explains the surge toward AMFA, more than anything attractive in a backward craft orientation.

Kathleen Denny
Oakland, California
 
 
Affirmative action
Confirmation of the U.S. Supreme Court June ruling on the centrality of affirmative action is apparent in surveys showing the integration of Blacks in the U.S. news media.

Late in July a report by the Radio-Television News Directors Association & Foundation showed that while the percentage of minorities at broadcast/cable television and radio stations slipped somewhat last year, it remains essentially stable, with Blacks and other minorities employed at all levels in this country’s opinion-making industry.

The report follows the April annual survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that found a slight increase in the number of minority managers at daily newspapers. Nearly two-thirds of minority journalists work at newspapers with a circulation exceeding 100,000.

In addition, the Jayson Blair affair at the New York Times earlier this year brought to light that, until recently, a Black man was managing editor at the Times.

Baxter Smith
Baltimore, Maryland

Women’s oppression
Much appreciated the exchange between Lobello and Trowe in previous issues on the origins of women’s oppression and the nature of pre-class society.

Further to this: Women’s Evolution by Evelyn Reed (Pathfinder Press ISBN 0-87348-422-3), a thick book, is fun to dip into. Try the bit describing societies where women were physically stronger than men (1993 printing, p. 123/2003 printing, p. 157) or the one that explains societies where courting couples could have sex but would be outcast if they shared a meal together before marriage (1993 printing, p. 314/2003 printing, p. 375). Full of lively detail that gives you pause for thought. Also: neither Reed nor Engels (in Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State) spell it out exactly in this way, but the following is true, I think?

Men gained power once domesticated cattle became a source of surplus value, and therefore gave their owners leverage. The division of labor between men and women had not been oppressive, when everyone was just surviving. But once the men’s domain became a source of wealth, power relations shifted. Now nature—in the form of cattle and then cultivated grains—and human labor became sources of surplus value. So women’s role as producers of children, sources of further wealth, became paramount. Men came to control women and their offspring in the same way they owned and controlled the herds.

The rise of the first class societies in which human labor was systematically exploited, slave societies, was therefore simultaneous with the consolidation of women’s oppression. This is why women’s liberation is inextricably tied to the liberation of human labor from exploitation, the fight for socialism.

Katy LeRougetel,
Toronto, Ontario

On Liberia
Militant readers can find an important supplement to your excellent coverage of events in Liberia in the collection of essays gathered together by George Novack in his Pathfinder book America’s Revolutionary Heritage.

The essay by Derrick Morrison gives the lie to the oft-repeated bourgeois media story that Liberia was purchased by freed slaves in the U.S. who wanted to go back to Africa: by 1860 some 50,000 had been shipped to Liberia. The truth is that Liberia was created by what became known as the American Colonization Society, which was put together by the federal government and the slave owners. They wanted to get rid of the freed slaves because of their prominent involvement in the insurgent struggle for the abolition of slavery, to end racism, and for full civil rights for all. Conferences and campaigns were organized and led by important leaders, notably Martin Delaney and Frederick Douglass, both in the U.S. and Canada, to which country the underground railway was in full swing.

These efforts included plans to seek a new homeland for Blacks in Africa, a venture that was generally supported by both freed and enslaved Blacks who had no confidence that the U.S. rulers would ever allow equal rights for all.

However, these fighters were totally opposed to the aforementioned American Colonization Society and insisted on independent action by Blacks and their white supporters to win their goals. Struggles such as these led to the Civil War in 1861, which ended in the abolition of slavery.

I think it would be great if the Militant could include in a future issue all or part of the relevant essay from America’s Revolutionary Heritage. [See page 8—Editor.]

Joyce Meissenheimer
Winlaw, British Columbia
 
 
Subs for prisoners
Please initiate a six-month subscription for the Militant to three inmates.

One is a self-motivated activist diligently working to reform himself and fellow inmates through education, who is presently being held in a segregated housing unit in the Atlantic County Jail where he is not allowed visits. The second is a Muslim activist from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, who stands in need of an attorney. The third is a veteran activist with an impressive portfolio who has been transferred throughout the Virginia Department of Corrections strictly for his effort to organize and establish Islam.

The Militant can play a key role in advancing their struggle by generating mass support, and increasing their chances of obtaining an attorney. In addition, it will heighten awareness by keeping them up to date on news, issues, and events from a Socialist perspective. Plus an opportunity to purchase some of Pathfinder’s spiritual life--giving and political consciousness-raising books by Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Jack Barnes, and others.

Shakir Muhammad
Alexandria, Virginia

The Prisoners Fund makes it possible to send workers behind bars reduced rate subscriptions. A prisoner can buy a six-month Militant subscription for $6 and a one-year subscription for $12.

The Spanish-language monthly magazine Perspectiva Mundial offers a six-month subscription for $3 and a one-year subscription for $6. Please send a check or money order, earmarked “Prisoners Fund,” to the Militant, 152 W. 36th St., #401, New York, NY 10018.

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people. Please keep your letters brief and indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name. Where necessary letters will be abridged.  
 
 
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