Views in brief

Zimmerman was aided and abetted

IN RESPONSE to "American Justice: Racist on all counts": Anyone who seriously believes anti-Black racism didn't play a part in George Zimmerman's profiling of Trayvon Martin and eventual killing of him for nothing is sadly deluded.

Denial of the racism on the part of the Sanford, Fla., police department in its shoddy excuse of an "investigation" that allowed Zimmerman to sleep in his own bed the night he committed murder is equally delusional.

In fact, they have a longstanding and justified reputation for marginalizing Black crime victims in Sanford, and they thought they would be able to do it this time as well. The element of racism was always at the very heart of this case. The decision of both the judge and the prosecution to keep it out opened the door for the defense to play to the racism of the jurors by portraying the teenaged victim as a big, scary Black man, instead of the lean 158 pound, 5-foot-11-inch kid he actually was.

What's equally egregious is that certain elements of the media aided and abetted this smear campaign by acting as if the silly antics of a typical teenager were criminal acts, while turning a blind eye to George Zimmerman's actual criminal acts as an adult in his past. Zimmerman's disregard of the police dispatcher's instructions not to follow this kid, along with his violation of neighborhood watch rules, were the reckless acts that led to this senseless murder. He also didn't identify himself to this scared kid.

Yet Zimmerman's defenders have always taken his self-serving accounts as gospel truth, no doubt because they want something that confirms their negative assumptions about all Black males, or they are gun fanatics who think gun rights trump everything else.

The fact that Zimmerman walked and that other Americans cheered this outcome clearly shows that racism and gun fanaticism are as "American as apple pie" for too many among us.
Anne, Washington, D.C.

Hope for a future without racism

IN RESPONSE to "I only have two minutes": Phillip Agnew, you must have just cried when you couldn't speak, but your message came though loud and clear with this written statement. Thank you so much.

As a 55-year-old woman with two children, aged 20 and 25, I expect and hope that the groundswell turns over the soil, and readies it for the next planting and harvest. I hope I live to see the day when, as Prince (from my hometown) said it best, all Black men are free!
Teresa Lynch, Saint Paul, Minn.

Failing to help the unemployed

IN RESPONSE to "A jobs plan only big business could love": As an advocate for the unemployed for the last five years, it has boggled my mind as to why President Obama won't use the executive order option to maintain living standards for federal workers. I thought maybe during his second term when he won't have to worry about re-election.

I am deeply disappointed in my party for delivering empty speeches with the promise of "jobs" and knowingly ignoring the long-term unemployment crisis. It is far worse than they are willing to admit. The "true" long-term unemployed have been jobless for a soul crushing three to five years, since the start of the recession. Not "six months" as our leaders would have us believe.

What would make Obama and Democrats in Congress think that more tax cuts for millionaires would help the rest of us? What about small businesses, which make up the fabric of our economy? I'm tired of hearing the same old tired routines from both sides.

Great article and thank you for speaking the truth!
Amy, Norton, Mass.

SW is wrong about Syria

IN RESPONSE to "Imperial hypocrisy to justify an assault": Why does this article nowhere challenge the claim that Assad used chemical weapons? There is no proof his regime carried the attack out; only repeated assertions over and over by the media that his regime is responsible.

You must have some memory of the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, when repeated claims of WMD possession was used as a justification? The Obama administration is lying just as the Bush administration did.

Furthermore, you are overstating the Local Coordinating Committees' potential to have any meaningful influence in Syrian events. Without the Islamist fighters (and their backing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, not to mention the CIA), the "rebellion" would have long dissipated.

The socialist position should be unequivocal: No to U.S. intervention in any form, including CIA trainers and supplying of weapons to "rebels."
Nelson Harper, Baltimore, Md.

Class and the united front

IN RESPONSE to "Understanding the united front": This article does a fine job of addressing the basics of the united front. However, in the context of 2013 America, I think it leaves most of the most pressing issues we face unaddressed.

First of all, the issue of class and how class struggle, class collaboration and class consciousness, and how it should affect our choices, is not discussed. And I think it should have been because it's the most important issue we confront on a daily basis as activists in U.S. working-class struggles.

In particular, if I'm not mistaken, Trotsky wrote in the 1930s about the difference between united front and popular front--that is, alliances of working class forces versus alliances of the working class with middle-class and capitalist-class forces. The popular front was the answer given by Stalinist and social-democratic forces to the failure of earlier Stalinist policies based on rejection of any alliance with so-called social-fascists.

In the U.S. today, when almost all organized working-class forces are in groups allied with the capitalist Democratic Party, it would have been far more valuable had the author addressed the value of united fronts and the pitfalls of popular fronts, as well as when popular fronts might be valuable, in limited single-issue coalitions, as opposed to when they are harmful to the working class, as in electoral coalitions like the Communist Party USA forms with the Democratic Party during elections.
Chris, Washington, D.C.