It was interesting reading about the social conditions and the challenges facing young people and women there. It brought to mind some comparisons and circumstances in the rural parts of Grenada during the years of the revolution there in the early 1980s, including adherence to superstition—or obea, as it’s called in the Eastern Caribbean.

What would the world be like if the Militant weren’t around to inform people about social developments in places like Equatorial Guinea. Keep up the good work.

Baxter Smith
Baltimore, Maryland  
 
Outstanding article
I think the article on the Equatorial Guinea book fair is an outstanding article. Not only because it contains an excellent description of the fair along with a thumbnail sketch of Equatorial Guinea’s history but because it gives you a real sense, through this description, of some of the real conditions and problems facing the workers and peasants of Africa and how African working people are thinking about and grappling with these challenges.

The imperialists’ press, along with most of the “left” in the imperialist world, have a “pity the poor African-African as victim” approach toward covering news in Africa—if they pay any attention to it at all.

This piece stands in marked contrast.

Chris Nisan
St. Paul, Minnesota  
 
Donation for Katrina coverage
Please accept this contribution to the Hurricane Katrina fund appeal. Your coverage was unique and inspiring, a genuinely revolutionary working-class perspective, reflecting the ability to help workers see the future in the present.

Sylvie Charbin
Montreal, Quebec  
 
‘Militant’ gets around
I have been discussing the Teamsters organizing drive at the Port of Miami with a Teamster member who is a UPS driver and delivers at my worksite. He works out of a UPS warehouse in Hialeah, a working-class and largely Cuban-American suburb of Miami.

I mentioned a Militant article about the drive was on the Teamsters website. I suggested he get a Militant subscription and gave him a copy to read.

He liked the coverage and the paper and showed it around the Hialeah warehouse and to a couple of shop stewards. They liked it too and posted the Militant up on the Teamsters union bulletin board in the warehouse. He told me he is going to send in the money for a subscription to the paper.

The Militant gets around.

Theresa Kendrick
Miami, Florida  
 
No fee, no putting out fire
Enclosed is a contribution toward your work covering the social disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I was reminded of the class nature of emergency responses by an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

“Carl Berg failed to pay a $25 annual fee for rural fire protection and, as a result, firefighters let his house burn to the ground last month near International Falls, Minnesota,” the article said. Berg is an unemployed 50-year-old worker who can barely walk due to an accident. He said he survives on food stamps and could not afford the fire protection.

Firefighters arrived on the scene but according to the rules of the county were not allowed to put it out unless the fee was paid. They are only allowed to intervene to prevent the fire from spreading to another property. So they watched while almost everything Berg had went up in smoke.

Berg, along with his daughter and grandson, escaped unharmed.

According to the Star-Tribune, there are hundreds of rural residences in the area without fire protection. This is a small part of the social crisis of capitalism that cries out for a working-class solution.

Thank you for your efforts to provide that.

Bill Scheer
Minneapolis, Minnesota  
 
News in brief
Since the Militant went bilingual in June it has cut back its size. The good thing is that the articles are more focused and to the point. But I imagine it’s more difficult to cover fully some important developments. For example, the reelection of Berisha this summer and other developments in Albania, or the class struggle in China: a recent announcement by China’s minister of Public Security said that last year there were 74,000 workers’ mobilizations and protests in the industrial zones—some 200 a day! Such news, I think, can be included in an In Brief column, which the Militant has had in the past.

Bobbis Misailidis
Athens, Greece  
 
 
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