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Vol. 80/No. 17 May 2, 2016
Letters
Oregon story should be heard
Thanks to the Militant for interviewing Erin Maupin and letting her tell
the story from Oregon in the April 11 issue. “Maupin used to see people
protesting police brutality in big cities as rioters. ‘But now I wish
that LaVoy [Finicum]’s family and the mothers and wives of people killed
by the cops in New York could communicate and see that they have
something in common.’”
For farmers, ranchers, Black Lives Matter fighters, and the whole
working class, that’s pure gold.
Steve Marshall
Marietta, Georgia
EU referendum in UK
I was in London and went campaigning with the Communist League. Most of
the discussions involved the topic of the referendum on whether Britain
should stay in the European Union. Workers we spoke with took different
sides, yes or no.
What I learned most was the political effect of the referendum was to
build up and reinforce a “Britain first” attitude within the working
class. Both sides of the bourgeois debate have this as their framework.
They aim to deepen the divisions inside the working class, and between
“British” workers and workers elsewhere in Europe and the world.
It has many parallels with the “America first” focus of the Trump and
Sanders campaigns, along with the other candidates.
Greg McCartan
Oslo, Norway
Protests and cop indictments
The truth of the article “Jump in Charges, Firing of Cops in Killings
Result of Street Protests,” in the March 28 issue, is strikingly brought
home by the editorial pages of the New York Times and Wall Street
Journal. Both opined on March 18 on recent elections in Chicago and
Cleveland that resulted in the ouster of prosecutors who refused to
prosecute police for murdering, respectively, Laquan McDonald and Tamar
Rice.
Despite their nuanced differences both editors agree that Black Lives
Matter should now channel its energies into the electoral process. But
the protests, not elections, explain the more than four-fold increase
since 2014 in the number of cops brought to heel — a lesson that all
opponents of police brutality should absorb.
August Nimtz
Twin Cities, Minnesota
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