Views in brief
Teaching Simcox a lesson
THIS IS so exciting ("DePaul confronts a vigilante").
When Chris Simcox was invited to speak in the spring of 2007 in Austin, Texas, we coordinated about 100 people to march into the auditorium with banners and chants, to make him and the student conservatives know that they would be challenged for bringing such racist bile onto campus.
The campus police, joined by the Austin Police Department, protected Simcox and ended up arresting and physically assaulting several absolutely peaceful demonstrators.
Despite these heavy-handed tactics, we stayed our ground and disrupted the entirety of his speech, calling him out as he made this or that specious claim about immigrants. Simcox and his lackeys ultimately looked ridiculous, and Austin’s immigrant rights left carried the day. We even brought a caravan of demonstrators to the police precinct, with pizza and sodas for when our friends got released.
Participating in an active grassroots response like this produces an extraordinary confidence that can help ordinary people, when linked arm in arm, voice layered upon voice, fight for how we want immigrants treated in our communities--and how we want racists out of them.
Spectacular work, DePaul University! I look forward to meeting you at the Socialism 2008 conference in Chicago in June.
Conor Reed, New York City
Time for a new health care system
I APPRECIATED reading your article regarding the practices of United Health Care and their inhuman policies ("The struggle for a child's health"). Health care is ready-made for a socialist alternative, and it is very helpful to have people and organizations on the left speaking out on the issue with real-life situations.
I recently spoke as part of a Healthcare-Now educational conference in Boston, and noticed you have a link to them and to the California Nurses Association, which I also work with, on your site.
Twenty years ago, Massachusetts outlawed individual medical underwriting, which contributes to most of the premature deaths from lack of access to a health plan in the U.S. Most states continue to allow the health insurance companies to control the regulatory process that leads to so many needless deaths, let alone having to endure rate increases and benefit cutbacks.
Your article spoke to those of us in the trenches who understand the nature of the health insurance companies we fight.
Robert Gaw, Waltham, Mass.
Bush rejected aid for New Orleans
EVERY TIME I hear an accusation against Myanmar officials from our administration for not allowing foreign aid into their country, I am reminded of when Cuba readied teams of well-trained doctors and offered them to help in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ("Washington's 'humanitarian' hypocrisy").
They offered to bring their own equipment, and even their own food--and they were turned down by the Bush administration. Does the administration believe we have forgotten this? The New Orleans crisis turned into the Katrina tragedy due to this kind of hubris and lack of humility--plus complete ineptness, to use Laura Bush's word.
Marius, from the Internet
