Views in brief
Gaining ground at UPS
REGARDING "STRUGGLING at UPS," I appreciate this article, especially as it's written by a rank-and-file Teamster.
I've only recently gotten involved with organizing my Teamster workforce after years of neglect from the local and apathy from my fellow Teamsters. Repeated concessions have been halted in their tracks as our nascent shop stewards are educating themselves on worker's rights and labor laws, and as our local leadership responds to increasing demands for membership training.
On our own, we have instituted weekly intradepartmental shop steward's meetings, we are in the process of forming the first two Member Action Committees and on-site monthly interdepartmental shop steward's meetings, and we have forced our (now ex-) business representative to give us seven days to read our contract before voting on it--when we used to have between 20 minutes and two days.
It has been seven months of hard work since I've been active, but we've gained lots of ground in mobilizing the membership, understanding the laws that protect us and organizing shop-floor organizing campaigns. It's good to hear from others who are doing the same.
Jason Lucero, Yosemite, Calif.
A tribute to Chris Harman
I WOKE up this morning to the sad news that Chris Harman passed away last night.
Harman was a leading member of the British Socialist Workers Party, a brilliant writer and a respected member of the international left. I first came into contact with his writing five years ago when a member of the antiwar coalition I was part of at San Francisco State University loaned me a copy of The Fire Last Time. I was preparing for a talk I was supposed to give on the antiwar movement in the 1960s.
Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. That book opened my eyes to a history that previously had been unknown to me. From him, I learned for the first time that people fight back against oppression, that through struggle people's ideas change, and that history is made by ordinary people. These ideas lit a fire in me, and inspired me to read and learn all I could about the history of struggle and emboldened me to be a fighter and a revolutionary.
Chris Harman's writings have greatly influence my thinking, and I say with confidence that I became and remain a member of the International Socialist Organization in part because of him.
Chris Harman, you will be greatly missed.
Kristin Anderson, San Francisco
The purpose of the death penalty
WHAT PURPOSE did the execution of John Allen Muhammad serve ("This execution is wrong")? Killing in the name of the people does not reflect the choice of the people.
Neither Frances Newton, Stanley Tookie Williams, Cameron Todd Willingham nor Reginald Blanton had to die. They were killed by a system of government that believes in killing people, rather then seeking out the truth. Killing people by execution serves no purpose other then to say that they are dead--so some elected official or prosecutor can brag about how they carried out the death of a human being.
In the state of Illinois in 2003, Gov. George Ryan cleared all the inmates off death row because he could not be sure as to who was guilty or innocent. Mr. Muhammad allegedly killed 10 people in three weeks. If he committed these acts, yes, it was wrong, but who made elected officials God?
The death penalty in this country is administered disproportionately against the poor and people of color. It is know longer a secret--the death penalty has done more harm than good toward the poor and people of color. No one should be executed--it's only an act of retaliation.
Mark Clements, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Chicago
Wal-Mart never put people first
I USED to live in Kansas City, both Missouri and Kansas, so I'm well aware of the monolithic fixture that is Wal-Mart and its stranglehold within the city and outlying areas ("Wal-Mart abandons poorest customers"). When I attended college at the University of Central Missouri in nearby Warrensburg, Mo., Wal-Mart was the newest and only thing in the town, and people would actually gather there as a hangout because there was little else to do.
With this in mind, some might be baffled as to how I managed to never set foot in any Wal-Mart in the city. I know that with such economic hardships as we are witnessing today, people find it difficult locating a place to afford what they need, whether clothing, food or medication.
Still, I am completely ignorant to the spell that this company has put people under. Yes, they have abandoned their poor customer base, but to be upset by this, one would have to believe that they had a foundation based on doing good, and somehow veered off course along the way.
Wal-Mart has never put people first, no matter what their advertising says. They have warped the American mind beyond belief and have done more harm to their own people than is fathomable by any of us. I see it as a miracle if they leave your neighborhood for another location. Maybe only then will a local company be able to place stock in their neighborhood again without fear of being forced out by "rock-bottom prices," thanks to outsourcing and slave labor.
I know this is of little help to people who have built a relationship within the walls of one of their stores, but use this as a wake-up call that they don't care about you and never have, and take your business elsewhere.
Jake McHale, Los Angeles
A Vietnam happening in India
ARUNDHATI ROY'S article ("Mr. Chidambaram's war") describes an offensive being carried out against Maoist rebels in southeastern India.
In order to keep its better-off citizens absolutely safe from these dangerous people, the government has declared war on them--a war, which it tells us, may take between three and five years to win. Odd, isn't it, that even after the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, the government was prepared to talk with Pakistan? It's prepared to talk to China. But when it comes to waging war against the poor, it's playing hard.
It's not enough that special police with totemic names like Greyhounds, Cobras and Scorpions are scouring the forests with a license to kill. It's not enough that the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF) and the notorious Naga Battalion have already wreaked havoc and committed unconscionable atrocities in remote forest villages. It's not enough that the government supports and arms the Salwa Judum, the "people's militia" that has killed and raped and burned its way through the forests of Dantewada, leaving 300,000 people homeless or on the run.
Now the government is going to deploy the Indo-Tibetan border police and tens of thousands of paramilitary troops. It plans to set up a brigade headquarters in Bilaspur (which will displace nine villages) and an air base in Rajnandgaon (which will displace seven).
Obviously, these decisions were taken a while ago. Surveys have been done, sites chosen. Interesting. War has been in the offing for a while. And now the helicopters of the Indian Air Force have been given the right to fire in "self-defense"--the very right that the government denies its poorest citizens.
Fire at whom? How will the security forces be able to distinguish a Maoist from an ordinary person who is running terrified through the jungle? Will adivasis carrying the bows and arrows they have carried for centuries now count as Maoists, too? Are non-combatant Maoist sympathizers valid targets?
Lloyd Jordan, from the Internet
