Please deliver a story
The strong-legged mail carrier who delivers to our home tells me that things are getting tougher for employees at the U.S. Postal Service. It seems that management has taken to using every trick in the book to forestall regular raises in salary and benefits. Ever longer hours are demanded of mail sorters, handlers and carriers, another postal worker tells me. He says there’s a lot of frustration in the rank and file. My mailman has for years delivered the PWW to our mailbox. He wonders whether an overview of current working conditions at the Postal Service might be published in our paper. He says he appreciates the PWW’s political coverage.
Cord MacGuire
Boulder CO
Status of DREAM Act
I have read with much interest Pepe Lozano’s article “DREAM Act renews hope for immigrant students” (PWW 2/4-10). I am a high school teacher and it breaks my heart to see these A-students leave high school with no hope for attending college. Is there any update on the act? Is there anything I can do?
B. Cadieu
Via e-mail
Pepe Lozano responds: Thank you for your letter. The DREAM Act is a provision in the current Senate immigration bill, S 2611. The debate in Congress on immigration reform will have a huge effect on how these students will have some footing in entering universities and colleges.
The fight to pass immigration reform will depend on all of us urging Congress to pass laws that grant immigrants and their children a path to legalization, hence educational opportunities.
Web site soapbox
Just reporting on a little outburst that we dearly hope will cascade into an affair that will cause some Fat Cats to yell “Ouch!” and inhale their $20 cigars.
The web site, www.STOPBIGOIL.us, is now up and we plan to add some interesting things. The people need some help, if you can spare us some ink.
Abstemious Trout
Woonsocket RI
Expose Bush’s theocracy
Thank you for Al Olson’s book reviews of “American Theocracy” and “With God on Their Side.” We need to be shouting this in the streets! Theocrats are persecuting people all over the world, sometimes for no other reason than being gay or having an abortion. Some Muslim countries give homosexuals the death penalty and there are Christians who agree with them and are running for office here!
D.L. Strong
Via e-mail
Impeachment, I agree
I agree with Rep. Karen Yarbrough (“Illinois lawmakers seek Bush impeachment,” PWW 5/13-19). Why do Americans allow “Bush the weirdo” to tell you what to do? Do you think he is God? Did he serve in any war? This just breaks my heart when I hear of all these young men being killed.
Marge Boudreau
Tonawanda NY
Suggestion for Nuestro Mundo
My friend and I have been distributing the paper for about a year now. I have found that many Mexicans don’t only gladly take the PWW when we pass them out, but come up to me and ask me for some more. This is great. But, I have two concerns:
1. There are not many pages in Spanish; there needs to be more.
2. There is no “Join the Communist Party” (or other information for CP membership) in Spanish or on the Spanish side of the PWW. In other words, there is a missing opportunity to reach potential new members.
Esequiel Armijo Vargas
Port Hueneme CA
Editor’s note: You make excellent suggestions. While presently we don’t have plans to increase the number of Spanish pages, we can increase the number of Spanish stories on our web site: www.pww.org. We can also offer more response forms in Spanish for the Communist Party USA. Thanks!
Free trade fuels immigration
The “free trade laws” in South, and Central America and now Peru are at the basis of the recent huge emigration. What hypocrisy as new laws are proposed to punish immigrants and anyone who helps them after causing them to leave their homes.
In the eight years since the passage of NAFTA, Mexican immigrants have increased by 60 percent (Pew Hispanic Center). This was caused by the agricultural provisions of NAFTA, which created a flood of subsidized corn from the U.S.A. The result, 3 million rural families forced off the land. They moved to the cities for poorly paid wage work. Real wages fell by 20 percent during the first five years of NAFTA. They continually remain lower today than before NAFTA. The maquiladora factory workers earn about 50 percent of what it costs to provide basic necessities for a family.
Loss of land, low wages, and unhealthy conditions have fueled the huge emigration. The “Free Trade Laws” NAFTA, CAFTA and PAFTA, despite warnings of the UN and the bishops of Central America, have caused millions of displaced now poor and hungry people. The options are few as they risk their lives to cross the border into the U.S.
These trade deals fuel emigration by destroying their livelihoods at home. People do not want to leave their homes.
NAFTA privatization of water and other resources and allowing global capitalists to sue the partner nations for not obeying its statutes further impoverishes these nations.
Sadly these laws cause the poverty which drives people to cross the border. A 700-mile wall will only cause more deaths. But none of this means any thing to the global capitalists as they take over the land and resources in our “partner nations.”
Vivian Weinstein
San Antonio TX
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