Equal rights
Pope Benedict XVI has called for greater respect for women. If he really wanted women to be treated better, then he would allow women to become priests, cardinals and popes. He should support the “Golden Rule” and publicly state that women should have the same legal, political and religious rights of men.
According to the Bible, Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least among men, you also do to me.”
Religions, governments and individuals should support equal rights for all.
Chuck Mann
Greensboro NC
PWW promotion via e-mail
Just would like to tell you that I sent Sam Webb’s article, “Obama, reform and role of the left,” to my personal e-mail list and several people picked it up and sent it on to their lists.
One second-hand recipient wrote to a leader of the Peace and Freedom Party, asking where could he get the paper, and that leader cc’d his answer to me, informing his correspondent that I was the local PWW contact.
So of course I e-mailed the guy with the information on how to subscribe or access the paper online.
We should send this article out further. I bet some newspapers would pick it up as an op-ed.
Gail Ryall
Sacramento CA
Recent comments on pww.org
Re “Obama, reform and role of left”:
I basically agree with this, save for a few nuances.
The left has a role as an active and militant minority, even as a large minority, on some issues. Getting out of Afghanistan is one. It has an educational role in helping minorities around a just cause become solid majorities.
I also have a problem with “anti-corporate.” I prefer to segment the business world along the “high road, low road” lines that are gaining wider use. One reason is that the “more advanced” structural reforms you mention can and will likely include high-road allies that are incorporated, even major ones. Low-road financial capital is the heart of the immediate problem.
But you’re right to target the far right and their unreconstructed neoliberal allies, while keeping clarity on our current alliance with Obama and other center-left forces to isolate and defeat the right.
Carl Davidson
Re “Hartmarx workers prepared to sit in if Wells Fargo closes their factory”:
Great on-the-spot reporting and photos! Thanks, PWW; your coverage of the labor movement and workers’ issues is unmatched. I’m e-mailing this article far and wide.
Elena Mora
Cost of deceptive nationwide media campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act … $200 million dollars.
Continued ability to control employees by intimidation and coercion … PRICELESS.
Given all of the money spent by corporations to supposedly protect our rights, I suggest that everyone actually read the text of the National Labor Relations Act and the text of the Employee Free Choice Act. If you oppose EFCA and have not read it, it may be possible that you are one who does not look into what you hear before repeating it. Or you are one of those who purposely deceives the public in order to insure that the corporate and financial elite maintain their control over their employees as well as the voting public at large.
Once you read it, you will wonder, why would they lie? The Employee Free Choice Act does not take away an employee’s right to a secret ballot vote!
$200 million will be spent by the CEOs and the financial elite to convince you that it does.
The Employee Free Choice Act does take away the absolute power the employers have over the employees during an election because the employers can no longer demand an election (which they have complete control over). The employees (only 30 percent needed) can still demand an election at any time!
Remember, if they can continue to control us as employees they can continue to control us as citizens. It is about power, greed and control. They are going to spend $200 million to defeat EFCA to help their employees? You don’t really believe that do you?
Business also says that they are worried about unions pressuring employees into signing union authorization cards? Really? They are lying again! In the first 70 years of the National Labor Relations Act, there were only 42 cases of fraud or coercion by unions in the submittal of authorization cards. By contrast, there were 29,000 documented cases of intimidation or coercion by employers in 2007 alone!
The only right the employers who oppose EFCA are worried about is the right to intimidate and coerce their employees.
Joe Pijanowski
Re “Burned out on Mother’s Day (PWW editorial):
I could agree with you on this, the economy has really put a lot on working mothers. But on this Mother’s Day I am not sure whether I would make some time for my kids or not! I know my kids do have some plans on hand.
Emma
Violence inheritance
Since the carnage at Virginia Tech and Columbine, there have been 50 more such attacks and over 200 deaths in the U.S. We are paying the price of copying an administration that shot bullets and bombed first and never got around to talking. President Obama has much to overcome. He inherited at least two wars, and we started both of them.
Don Sloan
New York NY
Drug busts in Venezuela
Big media should stop saying Venezuela doesn‘t fight drug trafficking. Here is the news from Venezuela:
“Seized over 300 kilos of cocaine of high purity” (National News)
“PM confiscated huge arsenal of war captured in Caracas” (National News)
“2 guns and a ton of cocaine seized in Miranda State” (National News)
“Three people were arrested, one Colombian and two Venezuelan / Stopped a vessel named Phoenix which was intended to transport the drug / In another operation, the National Guard was able to seize 830 kilos of marijuana / So far this year 18,488 kilos of drugs seized” (VTV)
The director of Venezuela’s anti-drug agency (ONA), Nestor Reverol, said, “It should be noted that to date 18,488 kilograms of drugs were seized with 2,050 people charged and made available to the public prosecutor.”
Jose Flores
Via e-mail
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