Website kudos, climate change and other letters to the editor

Website kudos

I would just like to say thank you for the positive intensity in converting one of my most reliable news sources. I am a college student studying architecture, and I read the People’s World every day. I have been reading the People’s Weekly World since I was 13, and I have really noticed the recent changes.

I love the paper’s honesty, thoughtfulness, and expanded accessibility. My one humble suggestion is that the paper’s slogan be changed to “We have a world to win.” I think it better reflects our stance as Marxists in a nation that is spiraling towards the possibility of real change. Thank you so much for all of your hard work!

Michael Kowalchuk

Via e-mail

Nice re-do on the site. Several tech-savvy friends of mine think the remake is quite classy. While “not commies” they spent quite a bit of time reading on the site. (I heard “I didn’t know that” quite a bit.)

I received my first copy of the print PW yesterday. (USPS likes reading my magazines before I do. Go figure.) Nice pro-labor focus. Well written too. Better than the local paper, and Buffalo’s supposedly a “union town.”

Keep up the good work. I’m hoping to be able to continue supporting the site and paper.

Donald Tpak

Via e-mail

Climate change action

Good to see your cover story, “Climate change: Are you scared now?” (PW 10/10-16) However, you’re missing the grassroots activism. 350.org is organizing an international day of climate action for Oct 24 to lobby for real action in Copenhagen. Greenpeace has jumped on board, too. One thousand-plus events worldwide.

There’s also new science confirming the urgency of drastic action. The window of opportunity is closing FAST.

Check out James Hansen on carbon dioxide and 350 parts per million. Check out the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revising the target from 450 to 350 ppm recently. See “Climate Roulette” by Mark Hertsgaard in the Oct. 26 Nation. Check ’em out.

Miriam Senviro

Via e-mail

Unity building

Can we hope that Juan Lopez’s terrific article “Obama’s peace prize: a wise and timely decision” will jog us all – new left, old left, non left – to move us ahead in our work to build a coalition strong enough to force Congress and the national administration to support Obama’s Nobel Prize vision?

Lopez’s article makes crystal clear the fact that criticism for delays and in-fighting must not concentrate on Obama, who cannot simply wave a wand to bring about peace, health care and education reform. Only a strong, more organized and more focused movement can convince Congress and the administration that these are the demands of a whole people.

Had the left been more involved within the pre-2008 electoral struggles, we all would now be in a stronger position to fight for a real, broad program.

But we do have a broad call for such a program, not yet strongly organized and focused. The talk is there, but not yet enough organization and experience. Our essential efforts must concentrate on becoming one of the catalysts for such organization, for inter communication and development of a common program among the varied and isolated pro-Obama formations.

Fortunately, within this broad call for change, the labor movement has functioned as a center which has led the fight to build an organized coalition including the Democratic Party and its allies. Yet sectors within the left have not been a force within this coalition because of tendencies to boycott anything with a Democratic Party tinge. Now we must enter into this coalition whole-heartedly to save us from the acute dangers of a right-wing take-over. This path offers us the avenue which will restore hope and generate activity to move us on the path.

I would argue that we readers of the PW, and their contacts, can begin the job of seeking inter-communication between groups on how to develop tactics which encourage unity and common action.

The labor movement has consistently sought to move the Democratic Party and its allies to more progressive positions. Can we talk about how to develop an active conscious alliance of pro-Obama groups with labor? Through our history, the left has accepted the necessity of working directly with groups not yet ready for socialism, generating the action and the experience which bring the demand for substantive change into being.

Billie Wachter

San Jose CA

Mercedes Sosa

I was reading my new PW and saw we have lost a wonderful singer and activist. Mercedes Sosa was an unbelievably talented artist that I was privileged to hear many times in the late 1960s and 1970s. I still have several of her albums and even have some of my favorite songs on my computer. I have not heard a word about her death or even about her life on main stream media. Thank you PW for giving her life meaning by remembering her incredible voice as well as her years of struggle for quality for so many. I will miss this woman with the beautiful black hair and the voice of freedom.

Sheila Malone

Waterville ME