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READERS' VIEWS ON THE BARABARISM OF TERRORISM AND OF WARThe Lead article that begins on page 1 of this issue of N&L is a deepening and development of the Statement which the National Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees issued on Sept. 17 and circulated widely. We print here a few of the hundreds of responses we received on the terrorist attack and to our statement. Arguments, such as "we had this coming," surely cannot be referring to the American people-who, as the radicals who make such arguments had always been the first to point out, do not have a government that represents their true interests. These arguments do not differentiate between the people in power and those oppressed by them at home. There are true struggles around the world that deserve our support and that recognize the "two worlds" that inhabit every country-one the world that exploits, the other the world that is reaching for a new human society in which barbarism does not exist. Revolutionary youth Memphis If the attack of Sept. 11 was not a VIABLE protest against the atrocities the U.S. perpetrates around the world, what, in your view, are viable protests and responses to the U.S. and its atrocities? B.S. Internet We all need to organize a response to the events of Sept. 11 and the racist reactions that are sure to come. I am also concerned that the anti-global
exploitation movement and the movement for a new immigrant amnesty will be derailed because of the shift in the political atmosphere in the past few
days. The Sept. 25 amnesty rally in Washington, D.C. was canceled. The forces of global capitalism will not back down because of this tragedy. If Jerry Mead You could see just what your Statement is arguing against, at a meeting I attended here the week after the attack, when one of the leftists present got up and focused all her criticism against the actions of the U.S. But she evidently could not bring herself to criticize the action of flying a plane into a building and killing thousands of innocent people. She immediately lost all credibility with the audience, which was composed of working people. If you could send me some more copies of your Statement, I can put them to good use. Activist I am impressed with the Statement. It might be good to point out that the problem of religious fundamentalism is not confined to Islam, but that
there are comparable tendencies within Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and
Shintoism. You might also want to point out that the U.S.'s military might did not protect it against this attack, nor would a nuclear missile R. Bunting I have read your Statement with ambivalence. Your point about how this tragedy has empowered the far Right is well taken, as witness the homophobic remarks made by Rev. Jerry Falwell. And yes, it is true that we need to oppose permanent military adventurism overseas. Yet it is also true that the American people want justice to be done and if we don't end terrorism right now, not just Taliban style, but in all its forms including American (remember the Oklahoma City bombing), the horrible episodes of Sept. 11 will occur repeatedly globally. We truly need to bring these criminals to justice. There is no simple editorial or military solution for this very complicated world situation. Eric S. I have emailed your statement to all of my friends. When we wrote to each other after the attacks, we tended to respond to it in a very familiar, lefty fashion. I hope other people will be moved to reconsider their well-meant but wrong-headed positions as I have done. I have never been more proud to be a supporter of N&L than after receiving your Statement.\ Student Following the emergence of the U.S. as a superpower, the lack of sensitivities to the complexities and volatility of the Middle East region needs to be questioned. I consider Tony Blair's actions reckless to the extreme. As Britain moves to a one-party state, we should challenge all further militarisation. The media are trying to tell us that war is what we want when it's not. We need to call a boycott of all advertisers who support the war-promoting media. Let them know that we want peace and the point of view which is in support of peace to be given equal time across all media. Patrick Duffy Dan Rather was my favorite evening newscaster for many years because I felt he had some principled positions about national and international developments and gave us relatively objective reporting. It was thus shocking to hear him join in the patriotic breast-beating when he was interviewed on Dave Letterman's show after the Sept. 11 attacks and proudly declared that George Bush was his leader and he was ready to serve him. For me, Rather destroyed the credibility and respect he had been able to claim, and cast a shadow of suspicion on all his future reporting. News watcher Sept. 11, 2001 was a day to be observed in Haiti for what occurred 13 years ago, Sept. 11, 1988-the Saint Jean Bosca Church massacre, where at least 10 were killed and 80 wounded by those trained and armed by members of Uncle Sam's CIA and military forces. Now more than 6,000 have lost their lives because someone the U.S. trained and armed is no longer under their control. I will finish with a poem: Uncle Sam, How Many Monsters Did You Make Today? You made Emmanuel "Tito" Constant for Haiti, who now lives in New York City today! You made Augusto Pinochet Ugarte for Chile, have you no shame today? You made Osama bin Laden for your Brother Russia, who was in Afghanistan, Now he wants to come home to his maker to show what he has learned to do to others. George Wilfrid Smith Jr. We're poised on the cusp of a futile, counterproductive war and must do everything in our power to stop it. Organizing has begun throughout the world, and Israel's Women in Black held a demonstration today opposite the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, organized by the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace. While condemning the terrorism, the Coalition also calls upon the U.S. and Israeli governments to halt "the campaign of racist slander that turns reality into a mythic struggle between Good and Evil, between a "superior" western culture and an "inferior" Muslim one. I spent the last week of August in Yugoslavia at an international Women in Black conference attended by 250 women from many countries. It was amazing to see how one small vigil in Jerusalem grew spontaneously into an international movement. Gila Svirsky According to a posting on a discussion group I participate in "a debate is raging" in a newsgroup of Scottish Socialist Party members. One of our subscribers posted an N&L Statement and outraged "anti-imperialists" are demanding that he defend it. The discussion has spilled over onto a 400-member UK Left discussion group with people asking who N&L is and others answering by posting the web site URL and saying that Hobgoblin will be at the anarchist bookfair next month. British Marxist-Humanist Where terrorism is concerned, we were always at war. We were just very lucky until 8:46 AM on Sept. 11, 2001. The greatest heroes were the people on that flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. Had they not taken matters into their own hands, and had that plane reached the White House, or worse, the Capitol Building, while Congress was in session, we would now be a dictatorship, with Bush at the helm. A very, very scary thought. Prisoner I'm not a revolutionary but it's terrifying what could happen under the guise of "national unity" to our Bill of Rights, our civil rights and all our liberties. There's a great danger of a new McCarthyism arising out of the present situation. M.G. Historically, all principled revolutionary organizations have opposed terrorism, as was true of both Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, because they realized that such attacks gave the ruling state power an excuse to impose repressive measures against the population. The truth of that position can be seen not only in the declaration of Bush's "permanent war" which will certainly result in the deaths of many thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but also in the sweeping package of repressive legislation proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft to curtail the civil rights of all Americans-but especially those who oppose Bush's drive to war. To Bush's horrifying "permanent war" must be posed Marx's humanist concept of "revolution in permanence." Old Radical Marx wrote about how the dialectic of revolution and counter-revolution "created circumstances and relations that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part." Now terrorists have rewritten the script to cast George W. Bush, one of today's greatest mediocrities, as a "hero." Bush is not one to deviate from his script, even if the end calls for him to ride off into a nuclear sunset. Franklin Dmitryev FRANTZ FANON I am 50 and have often wanted to read Frantz Fanon's books to completion but never did. Then I read John Alan's review in your July issue of Fanon's 516 page biography by David Macey and found it as informative and exciting as Fanon's books themselves. It was such a great article it made me want to get the biography myself. Reader THE ANTI-RACISM WORLD CONFERENCE The U.S. government finally showed its hand. The UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance
has finished but the questions still remain. Is the U.S. government still afraid of a Black Messiah? Secretary of State Colin Powell doesn't count,
for he is a trained soldier for the U.S., not for those of us of African descent or those from the mother-continent of Africa. That also goes for
the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who advised Bush not to let Powell go to Durban, South Africa. What did the U.S. government have to
lose from going to the World Conference? What would happen if the masses knew all of the injustices the U.S. did to those of African descent? Did
the U.S. blink in the face of the truth against it coming completely to the Black commentator At a recent meeting held here on the UN Conference on Racism held in Durban, South Africa, Detroit Congressman John Conyers blasted Secretary of State Colin Powell as irresponsible for walking out of the conference. He said that while many have been critical of the conference, he thought the final declaration was important because it stated that all slavery had been, and is, a crime against humanity. He also stated that no country wanted to consider the question of reparations for slavery because most of the nations were guilty, including those in Africa, and none of them wanted to set off a national study that would expose their own historical culpability. Most surprising to me was the fact that only about 75 attended the meeting, and most of them were old and white, despite the fact that both Conyers' office and the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights were sponsors of the meeting. Observer RACISM AND SEXISM ALIVE AND WELL I volunteer at a free health clinic that provides care to people who would not have any other access to a doctor. Most of them are American Indian, Hispanic and Black. Many do not speak English. White people talk about how wonderful the retired white male doctors are to work in this clinic one night a week. Two days after the horrific attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., a young white male at the clinic pulled out a knife and started yelling racist remarks at the people packed into the waiting room. The doctors grabbed him, got the knife away, and pushed him to the floor, where he continued to yell horrible racist remarks, including sickening comments about what he would like to do to the women in the room. When several volunteers pleaded with the doctors to take the man outside to wait for the police, one of them replied, "If the people in this room have a hard time with what this young man is saying, they should be the ones to leave," and then added, "most of them can't understand what he is saying, anyway." Almost everyone still waiting for medical care did leave, one woman saying, "I may not understand English well, but I know hate when I hear it. And there is a lot of it here." Volunteer FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL We were given a chilling warning of what is in store for all of us when Bush not only created a whole new cabinet office for what he is calling "Homeland Security" (which sounds to me like what they might have called it in Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa) but put in charge the very man who holds Mumia Abu-Jamal's life in his hands, Pennsylvania Governor Ridge. A shudder went through me when I heard Bush announce his name! Mumia supporter When it comes to the death penalty, "closure" is a psycho-babble term, like rehabilitation, cognitive thinking therapy, etc. In all honesty it is a simple matter to find the term for enacting the death penalty in this country and for treating prisoners so poorly with no attempt or help for self-redemption. The term is simply "revenge." The "closure" myth will be dispelled only when people stop kidding themselves. Prisoner CONTINUING THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM In the Action Alert issued by NOW, announcing that the Women's Equality Summit scheduled for Sept. 24-25 in Washington, D.C. had to be postponed until Spring, they stressed that NOW is especially concerned about the increasingly vicious attacks on women's rights advocates. I'm with them 1000% when they say, "We are determined to defend and promote the rights, health and safety of women and girls around the world, whether the threat comes from the brutal and repressive policies of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban or from repressive policies here at home that undermine our hard-won gains." They were also right when they pointed out on their web site that when the Armed Forces said that in this time of need gay and lesbian citizens wishing to join the armed forces would be welcomed, it was only for the war effort. Afterwards their civil rights will once again be denied. We are told that the world changed on Sept. 11-but not in everything. Women's liberationist The murder of Matthew Shepard four years ago woke up many Americans to the reality of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered violence and hate. Over the past year the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network has made many Chicagoans aware of police violence against the LGBT community. Amnesty International issued an unprecedented three reports this year documenting gay-bashing by Chicago police. We also need to make the world aware that institutions like the Boy Scouts, Salvation Army and other religious groups encourage violence by promoting anti-gay discrimination. We need as big a turnout as possible from all Chicagoans to the Oct. 6 March Against Anti-Gay Hate. Human rights supporter As the authorities move to gut civil liberties and human rights and justify racial profiling, the Oct. 22nd Coalition feels it is more important than
ever that people from different races and backgrounds take to the streets in cities across the U.S. on Oct. 22, 2001, the sixth annual National Day
of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of Activist WOMEN FOR FREEDOM We need to take seriously what the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA) is saying. They're opposed to the terrorists, fundamentalists and U.S. imperialism and war. They also opposed the Russian invasion. I think the issue is very deep and is not just about how state, individual or group terrorism/militarism affects women, but the philosophical questions about what kind of a world we want to live in and how to fight for that. During the horrors going on in Bosnia, it was feminists who consistently opposed the genocide and rape camps, calling the rapes genocidal. Their multiethnic struggle should have been a pole of attraction the Left stood with. But instead they just wanted to stand against the U.S. and ignored the fight for a multicultural society and for women's freedom. That's what's happening now-women's struggle and vision of a new way of life is being ignored. Women's liberationist U.S.-CORPORATE LABOR CAMP? The California state legislature recently introduced a bill allowing for stricter penalties against employers in the agricultural industry who fail to pay minimum wage to their workers. That's great, but is that the level of organized opposition required to even begin to address the incidence of workplace abuse and exploitation occurring routinely in today's "new economy"? That so much effort and momentum is required to take such a little step makes me wonder if any of our legislators are aware of the extent to which employers rule with impunity over their workers, and how indifferent they are to what few labor laws we have. The workplace is becoming increasingly militant and authoritarian as workers have become increasingly dispensable. It's ironic that even as Americans are working longer and harder than they ever have in recent history, so that CEOs and stock owners can sit back and watch their fortunes grow, it's "the welfare state" and "lazy freeloading liberals" that are depicted as the main drain on the country's resources and productivity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some might still think that the U.S. is a country. In my opinion it's a corporate labor camp, well on its way to becoming a banana republic, for those who are lucky enough to still be employed. Greg Loper I've been in prison since November 2000. I have an addiction to news, especially on racial and women issues. I am so into reading newspapers and sharing various articles with others that I volunteered to pick up the yard trash on weekends just so I can take back the newspapers. That's how I found your issue of January 2001 and I wanted you to know I was able to use a lot of the information, especially on the abuse and exploitation of women, which we used in our Domestic Violence class. You also printed information on what happened in prisons with the lack of health care and women dying because of it. But, unlike other papers, you were straight to the point and didn't sugar-coat anything or make excuses for the staff. We all appreciated that! I am writing because I haven't been able to find another issue, but I am indigent and can't subscribe. Could you send me one or two issues from time to time until I get out in another year? Woman prisoner Readers: Can you contribute the cost of a subscription to our special Donor's Fund to help us continue our practice of sending N&L to those who cannot subscribe on their own? |
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