LETTERS

Hate patrols in Arizona
All the racist skinheads and wacko white supremacists with time on their hands and hate in their heart have fallen over themselves to answer the call of the Minuteman Project to “hunt migrants” along this state’s border with Mexico during the month of April.

“Globalization,” and the U.S. policy of protecting the interests of corporations profiting from the mass migration of desperate workers, has funneled hundreds of people to die in the deserts of Arizona year after year.

Even though the 10 million undocumented currently living in the U.S. are contributing billions of dollars in net growth to the U.S. economy annually, migrants are portrayed as dangerous, drug-toting criminals or as “terrorists.”

The Minutemen’s new recruits from across the nation are encouraged to join the usual hate groups who have been operating with virtual impunity in border communities, carrying guns on their “patrols,” bragging that they work in concert with the Border Patrol and facing little resistance from the authorities even though detaining or abusing migrants is against the law.

“I am a missionary for racism and I see fertile recruiting ground!” is a statement put out by one of the recruiters for the Minuteman Project. These bastards need to be stopped in their tracks. –Cheryl Thornton, Tucson AZ

A Bush diversion
I didn’t want to get involved with this latest pro-life/pro-choice controversy but it sickens me when I see the Bush brothers and their supporters using a human tragedy to further their political agenda!

The life/death struggle taking place in Florida is being used by Bush and company to cover up the human tragedy taking place in the Middle East. Think about it for a moment.

Every time they are in trouble, whether in the Middle East or here at home with Social Security, unemployment, health care etc., they latch on to an emotional issue to divert the attention of the American people, and the media, led by FOX News, fall in line.

I empathize with Terri’s family and her husband Michael and that is just about all I can do to alleviate their emotional pain.

What I can do and I must do, is expose the political leaders in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee, Fla., for what they are. Like leeches, they will feed off the emotions of the families involved until it’s all over. They will then forget about Terri and her family and move on to another vote-getting issue. Tom Tully, Via e-mail

Correction to migration story
In Martin Frazier’s story about African American migrations (PWW, 3/19-25), I am quoted saying Phil Graves led the African Blood Brotherhood. In fact, it was Cyril Briggs who led that organization. Thanks for letting me clarify that. –Gerald Horne, Via e-mail

Not just a matter of $
To the New York Times: Your March 24th report clamoring over the dire fiscal straits in comparing Medicare and Social Security falls into the trap, in which you are not alone, of putting a price tag on Medicare, Medicaid and all other health care programs. That very practice belittles the problem and relegates it to one of money and available facilities.

We are talking about our health, an entity that should and has to be given number one priority before we should even tackle the machinery needed for its implementation. Until we accept that our health cannot be compromised one iota, we will be allowing the debate to filter down to cost effectiveness.

The fact remains that it is cost-destructive to have ill health. We must then go about constructing the means of giving every existing American resident access to such care, never even mentioning a price tag. Maybe we just have to pretend it is instead building new B-1 bombers or long-range missiles and then we will move forward.

That change in priority must come about before there can be a proper approach to our needed and deserved coverage. Health care is a right, not a privilege, along with free speech, religion, press and freedom from want and fear. –Don Sloan, M.D., New York NY

Support AWOL troops
Do we support our troops being sent over to fight in a senseless war? Do we support them when they’re only following orders? Orders to commit war crimes, to commit atrocities, to commit torture? Do we support them then?

Isn’t the U.S. just being in Iraq a war crime in itself? Or, alternately, do we support those heroes, those naysayers to criminal acts, those resisters. Those who have gone AWOL (over 5,500 so far). Those who come home on leave and quietly disappear, and those who give them sanctuary.

Those who desert. Those who refuse to obey unlawful orders. Those who refuse to commit torture and murder of civilians. Those who blow the whistle on torture and murder, at great risk to themselves.

Those who send home show-all photographs and videos to their friends, families, and the media, who write their stories and give interviews, and face reprisals.

These are the troops we should indeed be supporting and we should let them know it! There are more of them out there than anyone realizes and many more potentially. They must hear us. Hearing this support may allow a soldier who is contemplating suicide to explore a better, more morally satisfying alternative. –Barbara Tomlinson, Seattle WA

Nuclear threat
The threat of the use of nuclear bombs still hangs over the whole world. Only by an agreement by all countries to stop their manufacture and to destroy what they have can we sleep a little better at night. –Jerry Atinsky, Via fax

All together now
The Vietnam War was ended when the American people grew weary of the tremendous cost in money and lives, when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out clearly and forcefully against that attempt to impose a government of our choice on a people that had been fighting French colonialism and Japanese imperialism for countless years. Dr. King called upon our nation’s peoples of color and all their allies to resist taking part in this oppression of another people of color.

Now we have a president calling for “endless war.” He knows it is an unwinnable war, but attempts to prolong the decline of imperialism by seizing control of Middle East oil and imposing permanent U.S. bases.

A coalition of millions of African Americans, veterans, and trade unionists is the recipe for ending this immoral war. Don’t let a day pass without serious effort to save Iraqi and American lives. –Jesse Kern, Via e-mail