Views in brief

Why more rail disasters will happen

IN RESPONSE to "What caused the oil train disaster": As a former switchperson and engineer, I looked at the coverage of the Lac Megantic disaster--the inevitable "human-error" blame game--and then I looked for some clue about what really happened.

The website for Railway Workers United describes the situation of railroad workers who are being compelled to work one-person crews, carrying all manner of materials, including the oil tankers on this train.

The drive for increased productivity in rail means more freight travels by rail than ever before, with fewer workers. John Paul Wright has collected a number of articles explaining the connections, like this one, in the (quite bourgeois) Toronto Star.

I point you to the article, which describes in detail the sequence of events leading up to the runaway train catastrophe. While the source is notoriously unreliable, it is the only place I found a chronology describing the "accident": A one-man crew gets relieved and the train is parked, because there's no rested relief crew; local firefighters shut down the locomotive, eliminating the locomotive's brakes; they get an "okay" from the track department, who aren't responsible for engines or cars.

I looked in vain for elementary safety measures, such as a derail device like the one I had to remove any time I moved trains onto the main line in suburban Chicago, which would have stopped the cars before they got to moving at 70 miles an hour.

Roger Annis is right. The future has in store more disasters, dangerous for the communities the trains run through--and for the railroaders working on the trains themselves.
Tina Beacock, Chicago

"Redneck" doesn't help

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA Taylor's article "The verdict on American racism" was a refreshing crash course in detailing the depths of a racist system that creates and defends "George Zimmermans" on a daily basis.

Semantics aside in an otherwise brilliant article, I would like to see SocialistWorker.org not use the word "redneck" when describing racist state officials. It's a term that doesn't accurately describe the managers of either Old or New Jim Crow racism, nor the systemic weapons used to defend it. Let cable news talking heads and reality show producers beat that drum, not the socialist press.

That being said, let's fill the streets for justice for Trayvon Martin, Marissa Alexander and all the oppressed.
Shane J.., Columbia, Mo.

The incentive to use steroids

IN RESPONSE to "Time to decriminalize baseball": I want to thank Dave Zirin for this article and taking the side of the players. Allow my position to be clear: I love baseball and will continue watching, even though I've strongly suspected for a very long time that most of the players have taken or are taking steroids--likely even Derek Jeter.

That's the part of the story Major League Baseball doesn't want to come out--that it has create a culture in which nearly all of the players take (or have taken) some sort of "banned substance" in order to compete at a high level.

Indeed, the larger story is how between 5-12 percent of all high school males have taken steroids by the time that they're seniors. If one ponders that probably only about two-thirds of all high school males actually engage in competitive sports, this means the percentage of those high school males who use steroids to compete is likely one out of every three or four such athletes.

I strongly suspect the numbers then get much higher for college sports. If we're taking about one out of every three or four male athletes at the high school level, then we're probably taking about two out of three at the college level--and an even higher percentage the more money is involved in a sport--i.e., football, baseball and basketball.

For one anecdote, I was attempting to walk onto the Syracuse University football team back when I was attending college in the early 1990s. I was quite an avid weightlifter, working out several hours a day. Despite this, one of the walk-ons discouraged me from trying out, saying, "They'll crush you. And I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. They're all on steroids--and I mean all of them, even the punters. They're crazy and won't hesitate to try breaking your legs [if they thought you were vying for their position]."

I realized that this wasn't so much sport as it was a fight for survival. These college athletes weren't in college to study--they were there to make the school a profit and enter into the equivalent of a lottery as to who gets to play for the big bucks at the professional level. Many of these athletes come from poor and working-class backgrounds, and so the chance to make millions (versus going back home and bagging groceries for a living) is worth cheating--especially if everyone else is doing it too.

Again, anecdotally, I was personally present when a professor at Syracuse pulled aside some of the football players (he mistakenly thought I was one) after class and explained, "Don't worry about your grades, I know you have your priorities [meaning football]. You'll all get Bs."

I like the solutions to the issue that Zirin proposed--and offer that they should be expanded to the college and high-school level. But ultimately, this is a problem of the larger capitalist system. So long as we have a system where only a few are allowed to compete for a chance to make millions, while the rest of the 99 percent struggle to make ends meet, there will always be cheating.

The solution isn't to blame the athletes, but to put the blame exactly where it should be--on the capitalist system that encourages this behavior.
David Bliven, Bronx, N.Y.

UPS workers deserve more

IN RESPONSE to "UPS Teamsters should say no": I don't work for UPS, but I see the working conditions you guys have when you are out on the road, delivering in trucks with no air conditioning and dealing with snow and rain.

I work for FedEx, and I wish it had stayed union when it first opened up--but I do agree with you guys on the pay for part-timers being low at UPS. At FedEx, they start off all full-time and part-time drivers at the same $16.50 an hour. Good luck!
Danny Calderon, Brooklyn, N.Y.