Views in brief

How they prey on Generation Debt

I WOULD just like to express my personal concerns about the issue of debt ("Generation Debt"). Being a graduate student and Ohio State alumnus with over $50,000 in student loans and more than $10,000 on credit cards, I know firsthand the realness of this situation.

I was a straight A student in high school from a poverty-stricken household. I received little to no help financially from the government or anyone else to go to college.

I did not want money to stop me from getting an education, but in reality, I would have been better off entering the job market right out of high school. Instead, I now have a house's worth of debt to pay for. I am being sued by credit cards companies who gave me credit cards my freshman year of college that I ended up using for food, books and car repairs.

Every year, the number of credit card companies passing out freebies on college campuses increases. It's sickening. We as "Generation Debt" need to find a way to change this cycle before we drown in our endlessly growing deficits.
Jessica Myers, from the Internet

Does the movement scare away vets?

IN HIS article "Is the antiwar movement scaring people away?" Eric Ruder does a great job of explaining why making the antiwar movement "less radical" won't make it more effective.

He makes the important point that it is a mistake to assume that our audience is a great mass of flag-waving right-wingers. This point is especially true of vets who are either following the movement or considering getting involved.

The common wisdom in some sections of the movement is that when it comes to reaching out to soldiers, perhaps the appeal shouldn't even be explicitly antiwar, but instead focused on first befriending and winning the trust of the troops, and then gradually introducing antiwar ideas.

I find that this argument mainly comes from people who don't actually know any vets. For those of us who are of the generation where we watched our classmates, siblings and other family members go off to fight this war, the question isn't "How do we befriend the troops?"--as if they are some alien presence--but rather, how do we welcome them and encourage their participation in the movement?

The way to do this, as Ruder correctly points out, is not by reducing our politics to the lowest common denominator in order to make sure we don't "scare away" vets, but rather to make it clear that we want all troops home right now. For soldiers who are beginning to come to antiwar conclusions, as an estimated 60 percent of them are, this is not a frightening concept, but rather a welcoming one.
Becca Joy Lewis, New Haven, Conn.

The battle in SEIU in context

I AM glad that Socialist Worker covered one of the most important battles for ideas happening right now in the labor movement. Being a socialist from Puerto Rico residing in the U.S., for me, it is important for comrades in the U.S. to understand the dynamics that were taking place during the recent Service Employees International Union (SEIU) convention in Puerto Rico.

There was one very important event that preceded the convention which was not included in Lee Sustar's article ("Where does Andy Stern want to take labor?") or Larry Bradshaw and Brian Cruz's report back ("SEIU conference on 'lockdown'")--namely, the primary political fiasco that both democratic political nominees carried out.

The display of the campaigns of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was both a reminder of the colonial state that Puerto Rico is with regards to the U.S., and a clarification of where two of the major political parties (both the New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party) stand with regards toward U.S. imperialism. The connection between the low turnout to support the Democratic Party primaries and the growing leftward shift in the Puerto Rican working class are interconnected. This has the potential to affect the trajectory of the labor movement in the U.S.

The only coverage that I saw providing both the perspective of what was at stake in the labor movement in Puerto Rico and the U.S. and how it relates back to the political question of Puerto Rican self-determination was on Counterpunch in "San Juan showdown," an article by Steven Early.

I only wish that SW would provide more holistic articles that can explain the dynamics of the Puerto Rican labor movement and how it relates back to how U.S. socialists' position themselves towards the question of Puerto Rican self-determination.
Héctor Tarrido-Picart, Ithaca, N.Y.

Hollow words from Bush on Memorial Day

ON MEMORIAL Day, at the new veterans' memorial, the president said, "Perhaps at this late date we can all agree that we have learned a lesson...That young Americans must never again be sent to fight and die unless we can win."

It was an old refrain shared by the many military-minded who believed that, if only America had spent more billions of dollars on the war effort, the troops would have come home winners.

Memorial Day gatherings are occasions for manipulation by politicians. The military is always preparing to win a war with assurances by war supporters in the White House, Congress and war planners in the Pentagon that victory is coming.

The president's concern for veterans goes back to his first term when he froze funding for readjustment programs. His administration still refused to acknowledge a casual relationship between war and health problems. The memorial is incomplete. There are no names of the many who died after returning from war.

A veteran at the ceremony said it was 20 years since he came home from the war. He has spent almost every day since then trying to understand it.

He didn't want to put the war behind him. He wanted to use the experience to help the country grow up. He wished he would have publicly protested or resisted the military. He thought the war was right at the time but now believes it was not worth the sacrifice. His words weren't written into any of the politician's speeches this Memorial Day.

The president's words sanitized the last cause as another just war and planted the seeds of preparation for the next one.
Tim Connelly, Richfield, Minn.

Why we should fight to impeach Bush

RECENTLY, REP. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced House Resolution 1258,which predictably received almost no coverage at all from the corporate media. This resolution simply gave 35 compelling and well-detailed reasons to justify Bush's impeachment.

I personally think I can speak on behalf of myself and many other antiwar activists when I say that I don't remember the last time a piece of legislation came out that was this exciting.

The reasons to justify Bush's impeachment are long and very obvious, but for the activist community focused on ending the war in Iraq (as well as in Afghanistan), the question remains if this is how to spend our time. The answer I believe is yes, to a big degree.

The Democratic Party has given every dumb reason why they are not interested in pursuing impeachment, but their biggest untold reason is that the pressure would be on to them to the absolute extreme to end the war very quickly once Bush is impeached, considering that the biggest motives for impeachment involve the lies used to justify war and war crimes, such as torture, sanctioned directly by our government.

Also, impeachment is an issue of government accountability and should not be seen as "optional," but as a constitutional responsibility when needed--which is crystal clear in the case of what the Bush Administration has done to Iraq and its own country.
Greg Morse, Providence, R.I.