MEXICAN RADICALS
Enjoyed the articles
I enjoyed reading the latest issue [Vol. 38, No. 6].
Of course, it was very exciting to see Stephen Durham’s report on the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR) meeting in the center pages, with pictures of my comrades [“Revolutionaries meet in Mexico City”].
We all appreciated reading “The Rising of the Women” by Megan Cornish. In fact, my comrade Juanita translated it into Spanish. It was very useful during my visit to the state of Chihuahua, where almost all of the POS supporters are workingclass women.
On another note, the denunciation of how the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and other groups have refused to directly confront the Nazis is well written and quite needed [“Pulling punches in the anti-Nazi fightback”].
I also enjoyed the piece “When workers took power” written by Susan Williams. We all need to revisit Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution from time to time!
Ramón Centeno, Partido Obrero Socialista (POS), Mexico City
Editor’s Note: As we go to press, the POS reports that Mario Martinez, indigenous teachers’ union leader and a member of POS, is facing imprisonment for leading resistance to the Mexican government’s drive to privatize education.
This is occurring in the wake of the recent passage of an Internal Security Act that empowers the president to call on the military to quell labor militancy and silence social protest. Currently, a wave of state repression is sweeping across the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas where Mexican teachers and armed indigenous communities continue to challenge the stranglehold of corrupt politicians and organized crime.
Today, international outrage is growing at the criminalization of activism. Solidarity with Martínez and also with Marco Antonio Suástegui, the recently jailed environmental activist, is critical.
FIGHT FASCISM
No to pacifism
I read with great enthusiasm Luma Nichol’s article “International Socialist Organization: Pulling punches in the anti-Nazi fightback” [Vol. 38, No. 6].
Nichol suggests that the ISO, by trying to appeal to a broad audience, is tending toward reformism, and thus pacifism, in the face of the radical right.
I would like to complement Nichol’s analysis with an issue that is rarely discussed in debates about anti-fascism: the connection between the aforementioned pacifism and the liberal breed of identity politics — namely, the breed that lacks a class analysis.
Proponents of this “politics of outrage,” who are mostly liberal reformists, often argue that directly confronting fascists is an ableist tactic, because it excludes disabled people who may be unable to engage in physical altercations if they occur. They claim that [anarchist] black bloc tactics and other forms of self-defense are “problematic” because only people with legal, financial, and physical “privileges” have the resources to engage in such actions.
These claims are wrongheaded for many reasons, not least because they ignore the long history of working class self-defense in this country and around the world.
Omar H., Los Angeles
FROM BEHIND BARS
Prisoner stories
I am out of solitary, and have sent a new address for my subscription. I encourage people to view my recent article online at: sfbayview.com under “prisoner stories.”
Jason R. Walker, Rosharon, Texas
FRANK LITTLE
Working-class hero
Thank you for the memorial to a great class activist [“Celebrating intrepid Wobbly Frank Little, 1879-1917,” Vol. 38, No. 6]. Soon we will have a time to remember Wesley Everest, lynched in his U.S. army uniform for being an Industrial Workers of the World member.
- Mitchell, via email
Pertinent article
One the best and pertinent articles I’ve read in the Freedom Socialist. I hope the FS will include more articles like this.
Greg Arnold, Nesconset, N.Y.
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