The Militant - May 28, 2007 -- Letters

Vol. 71/No. 21 May 28, 2007

Letters

Yahweh Ben Yahweh
A friend e-mailed me a copy of the New York Times obituary for Yahweh Ben Yahweh, a right-wing thug who preyed upon Dade County's Black community, especially in the North Miami and Opa-Locka area where I lived when he was active here. The Times suggests that Yahweh was a Black liberation activist, instead of a rip-off artist and an ally of slumlords, the police, and the capitalist class. His group supplied the ruling class with extralegal thug violence against poor African Americans whom Yahweh blamed for their own oppression.

Yahweh was a former NFL safety with the then St. Louis Cardinals and Oakland Raiders who attempted to become a minor capitalist before he hatched the Yahweh racket. The conviction that sent him to jail came after the gang of bourgeois politicians Yahweh was hooked up with got pushed aside by another gang of bourgeois politicians. None of the crimes he and his organization regularly committed against Black workers were ever prosecuted

His movement never took part in any of the struggles of African Americans in Miami Dade County, even though there was always some naive person involved who thought we should reach out to the Yahwehs.

Tony Thomas
Miami, Florida

Union fighter James White
James White, 73, a longtime union fighter, died May 4 in Natchez, Mississippi. He was one of the rank-and-file leaders of the 1998-2001 strike by United Steelworkers Local 303L at the Titan Tire plant in that small city. Militant supporters from many areas got to know him while visiting the picket line during that hard-fought strike.

During the walkout, James became a partisan of the Militant and Socialist Workers Party election campaigns. He was an elector in Mississippi for the SWP candidates in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and was always happy to meet with petitioners and eager to help out.

Susan LaMont
Birmingham, Alabama

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