Vol. 80/No. 17      May 2, 2016

 

Letters

 

Oregon story should be heard

Thanks to the Militant for interviewing Erin Maupin and letting her tell the story from Oregon in the April 11 issue. “Maupin used to see people protesting police brutality in big cities as rioters. ‘But now I wish that LaVoy [Finicum]’s family and the mothers and wives of people killed by the cops in New York could communicate and see that they have something in common.’”

For farmers, ranchers, Black Lives Matter fighters, and the whole working class, that’s pure gold.

Steve Marshall
Marietta, Georgia

EU referendum in UK

I was in London and went campaigning with the Communist League. Most of the discussions involved the topic of the referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union. Workers we spoke with took different sides, yes or no.

What I learned most was the political effect of the referendum was to build up and reinforce a “Britain first” attitude within the working class. Both sides of the bourgeois debate have this as their framework. They aim to deepen the divisions inside the working class, and between “British” workers and workers elsewhere in Europe and the world.

It has many parallels with the “America first” focus of the Trump and Sanders campaigns, along with the other candidates.

Greg McCartan
Oslo, Norway

Protests and cop indictments

The truth of the article “Jump in Charges, Firing of Cops in Killings Result of Street Protests,” in the March 28 issue, is strikingly brought home by the editorial pages of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Both opined on March 18 on recent elections in Chicago and Cleveland that resulted in the ouster of prosecutors who refused to prosecute police for murdering, respectively, Laquan McDonald and Tamar Rice.

Despite their nuanced differences both editors agree that Black Lives Matter should now channel its energies into the electoral process. But the protests, not elections, explain the more than four-fold increase since 2014 in the number of cops brought to heel — a lesson that all opponents of police brutality should absorb.

August Nimtz
Twin Cities, Minnesota  
 
 
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