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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

WSWS readers comment on the Democratic National Convention

30 July 2004

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Below we publish a selection of letters from readers on WSWS coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Re: “Democratic National Convention: Boston gripped by ‘anti-terror’ security operation” by Kate Randall

Dear Kate Randall,

Thank you for your article re: Boston, the cradle of U.S. democracy, now a bed of repression.Your endeavors to keep the truth alive encourage and embolden those of us who look to a final victory over the tyranny that has taken hold of this country and the world. Never doubt the importance of your work. It is measureless.

Sincerely,

JW

P.S. I just finished a partial search of your articles and am thoroughly impressed with the magnitude of your work. The issues you address are those of a floundering democracy, struggling to overcome her rapists. Thank you, thank you...

Dear editor,

The “free speech zones” being established in Boston, surrounded by razor wire and concrete barriers, recall those other famous free speech zones recently established elsewhere in the world, courtesy of the US military; namely Guantanamo Bay, Baghraim Air Base and Abu Ghraib.

Regards

EG

27 July 2004

Re: “The Democratic convention and Kerry’s left apologists” by Bill Van Auken

Boooo, foul!

First of all, the Boston Social Forum was a three-day happening.

Second, the presence of speakers that wished to push the Democrats to the left does not mean that the purpose of the BSF had anything to do with the DNC—although we’ve been clear that we didn’t mind the possibility of pulling progressive Dems at the DNC further to the left, or of putting “inside strategy” people together with “outside strategy” people together in one place and letting them debate and discuss overall left strategy and politics. The BSF had everything to do with growing the US left to the point where we can contest the Dems control over politics and get them out of the way of the working class; so we can fight the right wing head to head, and liberate the country and the planet.

Feel free to read our web site for more info, www.bostonsocialforum.org. And there’s plenty of background available on the web about the background, successes and contradictions of the World Social Forum for those who care to look.

I mean, puuuleeze, the BSF was organized by communists, socialists, anarchists and greens...

Cheers,

Jason Pramas

Coordinator, BSF

Dear Editor:

Your article entitled “The Democratic convention and Kerry’s left apologists” is a most accurate analysis of the current regiment of left-leaning politicians appearing in support of the totally corrupt Democratic party.

While former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich declares that his supporters and former supporters must work to change the Democratic Party “from within,” the very fact that antiwar language was stricken from the nonbinding Democratic platform exposes the ridiculousness and futility of this assertion: not even this concession was allowed the left wing of the Democratic Party.

And while antiwar banners are confiscated at the Democratic convention, and antiwar activists are arrested, and protesters are instructed to assemble in a razor wire fenced-in area, while all this is insisted upon as being permissible, left-wing Democrats instruct us that supporting a third party is radicalism.

I urge your readers who are also supporters of these careerist left-wing Democrats to distribute this article, denounce the politics of false hope and disloyalty to the working class, and support Bill Van Auken for President.

CG

Richmond, Kentucky

28 July 2004

Dear Bill,

Re: James Zogby’s condemnation of anyone who refused to back Kerry because of his pledge to continue the war in Iraq as an “elitist” who “has the luxury to be pure.” I have been arguing until I’m blue in the face (or, more accurately, blue in my typing fingers) against not only this exact mindset, but the exact words. A few months ago I had an extensive e-mail exchange with Professor Ernest Partridge of the web site CrisisPapers on this subject, and his response to every argument I presented wound up with his tossing those words at me, as though they were some magic mantra that both justified his adamant defense of voting for the Democrats, and expressed his contempt for anyone who voted otherwise. In other words, after he had ignored the substance of my arguments, this was the best he could come up with.

CZ

San Francisco

July 28 2004

Re: “Populism and patriotism: behind the posturing at the Democratic National Convention” by Patrick Martin

Dear WSWS:

Thank you for the article “Populism and patriotism: behind the posturing at the Democratic National Convention.” I think it’s one of the best I’ve ever read on the WSWS web site and I know I’ve read a good many.

I’ll bet I start my day with the WSWS about 90 percent of the time I log on for my e-mail. So...I guess it’s about time I started supporting this web site. Check is in the mail.

Thanks.

BR

St Louis, Missouri

29 July 2004

A few points I would add to Patrick Martin’s incisive article.

While “Slick Willy” Clinton’s speaking style and rhetorical skills have been well honed over the years (as opposed to his saxophone skills, I’m afraid), the level of hypocrisy displayed in his speech takes one’s breath away.

In almost all cases the worst depredations of the Bushistas were anticipated by policies and legislations shepherded during the Clinton Years.

The “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996” with its draconian approach to Habeas Corpus and extension of the death penalty (what the heck is an “effective” death penalty anyway??) presages in many ways the Patriot Act(s).

This bill was passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the first World Trade Center bombing in 1991, both of which upon close examination have fingerprints of the US intelligence milieu all over them. And in this light both can be seen as “rehearsals” for the horrific Terrorist Blitzkreig of September 11, 2001.

The “Telecommunications Act of 1996” is a major piece of telecommunications legislation and grants further monopoly rights to media monoliths by elimination of barriers between the industry’s segments, e.g., local and long distance services, broadcast and cable television, etc.

Welfare “Reform,” which puts further pressure upon the most vulnerable segments of the working class, plus those falling through the cracks of the capitalist wage system, burdening most severely women and children.

In bringing “structural reform” and neo-liberal economics home to a domestic audience, the Clinton administration pushed along the ownership classes’ war upon the masses in the US. Which continues today taking ever more virulent forms. Similar policies had been imposed throughout the Third World by the IMF and similar institutions and, when needed, by brutal imperial military interventions, overt and covert, exercised during the Clinton years. Multiple bombings of Iraq, one episode of which was justified by Clinton himself as a sort of revenge for Sadaam’s highly implausible plotting to assassinate George Bush Sr.(!)

Not to mention the hideous sanctions regimen, a clear crime against humanity, which continued unabated throughout the Clinton years and brought death to thousands of Iraqi children. Incidentally, all these legislations and policies were enthusiastically supported by the current Democratic presidential designate, Senator John F. Kerry.

As for Clinton’s statement—the Republicans “need a divided America, but we don’t.” In my view he is wrong.

“We”—that is the majority of Wage Slavers—as distinct from the elite insiders of the Democratic Party—need to make a clear and decisive divide between the interests of the New World Order(tm) International Plutocracy and the interests of the overwhelming number of human and non-human inhabitants on earth, and base our politics upon advancing ingenious methods of sane and sustainable economics and true democratic structures to facilitate them.

Without these changes I am afraid the future prospects for our species—and even the biosphere itself—will be bleak.

SZ

Albuquerque, New Mexico