Not with my money!
This is a copy of the letter I sent to my Bank, SunTrust, regarding their policy of financing the Coca-Cola Company. I submit this with the hope that some of your other readers will do the same. SunTrust did respond to my letter, supporting its policy and Coca-Cola.
I regret to inform you that despite my satisfaction with your local branch, I am withdrawing every cent from your bank. I was informed that SunTrust is a major financial backer of the Coca-Cola Corporation. I have learned that Coca-Cola is notorious for using paramilitary groups for murdering 4,000 of its union members in Colombia since 1986. They also fought unionization in their bottling plants in Nicaragua, Peru, and Guatemala. They also have contaminated and depleted the water tables in Kerala, India. Kerala forced them out, thank God!
Being “Coca-Cola’s bank,” your institution, in my opinion, is just as guilty of these human rights violations as Coca-Cola. In good conscience I cannot allow you to use my money for such atrocities. I urge you to secure some other, more humane, corporation for your profit gathering. Moving towards the future, I remain
Respectfully yours,
David Reid
Daytona Beach FL
Whither America
As I consciously sit viewing TV in Anaheim, Calif., 50 miles south of Hollywood, I’m thinking of what seems and maybe is esoteric drama by exotic and ersatz intellectuals and wondering where is America headed — whither America?
The People’s Weekly World, in our opinion, tells it like it is and I say bravo, encore — keep up the good work — journalism of truth, urging people in the U.S. to return to a peace policy with benefit to all and helped by the United Nations.
George T. Gaylord Jr.
Anaheim CA
Walter Reed privatization
Not much of a surprise, but services at Walter Reed were privatized by Halliburton. This just goes to show the failures of capitalism once again. Capitalists like to talk about how socialism doesn’t work … yet in the U.S. only the nonprofit systems seem to be working correctly. Just another failure of capitalist “free market.”
John Bollman
Via email
More on autoworkers
One of the reasons I read the PWW is for its excellent labor news, obtainable nowhere else. However. I haven’t seen anything on the situation in the auto industry. What’s the UAW doing in the situation? Friends in Detroit say unemployment is close to 50 percent. A friend in Dayton says the Delphi plant there is closing. The latest is that Chrysler will be laying off many and Ford continues to lose money. What is the UAW doing and saying? We are moving into uncharted territory. How about some info on this stuff?
Pete Gourfain
Brooklyn NY
Editor’s note: Thank you for your letter. We published “Profits up, but Chrysler cuts” in the Feb. 24-March 2 issue right around the same time we received your letter. Writers in Michigan have promised a substantial story on auto for next week’s issue. We hope your letter will spur more.
Spring into action
April is Martin Luther King Jr. National Health Care Month and not a moment too soon! I am urging you to prepare to join in the activities that will get us to a national single-payer health care system as soon as possible.
All of our members of Congress are going to be home for the first two weeks in April. It is not vacation time for them. It is “working in their home district time.” Sooooo … it is a perfect time for you to organize healt care Truth Hearings. Invite people in your community to come together to talk about this issue, and insist that your Congress member endorse HR 676.
Remember Dr. King and his Riverside Church sermon called for an end to the Vietnam War and for health care for all, one April day in 1967, and his martyrdom for his courage one year later in April of 1968. The example of those movements can be an inspiration to us. We are 30,000 strong. That translates into about 300,000 or 3,000,000 ready to work for what we must have, a national single-payer healthcare system for all.
Call us if we can help: (800) 453-1305 or email: info@healthcare-now.org.
Marilyn Clement
Via email
Marilyn Clement is national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW.
An FBI only Hoover would love
Who would have thought that giving the FBI more power, without the consent of the people, would cause them to break the law and their own rules? J. Edgar Hoover would be proud. The Patriot Act should be repealed.
Chuck Mann
Greensboro NC
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