The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.33           September 23, 1996 
 
 
Letters  

Assault on welfare
It seems to me that the government's attack on welfare, led by Clinton, is aimed not just at those millions who today are receiving public assistance or might need it in the future.

Pitching several hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people now receiving public assistance into the scramble for jobs, with a certain element of desperation, over a relatively short period of time will put a significant downward pressure on all wages. The attack on welfare thus will not only remove a safety net all working people potentially need. It is an immediate attack on welfare that will directly - and quickly - affect every single worker.

That this attack comes while Clinton is posturing in favor of raising the minimum wage is the height of hypocrisy. What he isn't saying is that he wants the minimum to also be the maximum wage.

Robert Dees

Menlo Park, California

Police brutality in UK
Eighty people occupied Wilmslow Road August 10 to protest the announcement that the cops who beat Amer Rafiq would not be prosecuted. Wilmslow Road is a busy street in a part of Manchester where many Kashmiris live. Amer Rafiq, a student and part-time waiter, was beaten so badly in the back of a police van that doctors could not save his left eye. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has announced that the necessary evidence was not available to prosecute any of the three cops in the back of the van.

Signs at the protest included "Rodney King USA/Amer Rafiq UK/ One struggle one fight" and "If we don't get justice it's an eye for an eye." Another sign said "Brian Douglas murdered by racist police/CPS lets police walk free/Shiji Lapite/murdered by racist police/CPS lets police walk free/Amer Rafiq beaten by racist police/CPS-?"

Brian Douglas was a young Black man killed by a blow to the head with one of the newly issued long batons, here described as "U.S.-style" police batons. Shiji Lapite was a Nigerian who had applied for refugee status in Britain. He was strangled by a police officer who used a neck-hold to arrest him on suspicion of possessing drugs.

"Authority members supervise more than 40 inquiries into deaths in custody every year," said Peter Moorhouse, acting chairman of the official Police Complaints Authority.

Chris Morris

Manchester, United Kingdom

Canada farmers protest
Thousands of farmers have joined rallies and picket lines across Canada's prairies over the past few weeks in opposition to threatened changes to the Canadian Wheat Board system of marketing grain.

More than 1,700 farmers rallied in the hockey arena at this south-central Saskatchewan town August 14. The same day, 900 producers packed a recreation center in Oak Bluff, Manitoba, to protest proposed changes to the board marketing system. More than 1,000 farmers attended another eight pro-board rallies held across small-town central Saskatchewan the same week.

In a number of centers the National Farmers Union, based among small and medium-sized producers, has organized a series of "Wheat Board Wednesday" picket-line actions, some involving 200 farmers or more.

The farm actions come in response to the recent recommendations of a federal-government-appointed Western Grain Marketing Panel. Among other proposals that would weaken the wheat board system, the panel called for ending the board monopoly on exports of feed barley and recommended that farmers be permitted to price 25 percent of their wheat sales outside the board's pooling setup.

Through the workings of the compulsory pool, all farmers large or small receive the same price for each class and grade of grain they deliver. Opportunities for the profit gougers in the private grain trade to set working producers in competition with each other to drive down farm-gate prices are diminished under this setup.

"This rally is to demonstrate to all concerned that there is a vast majority of farmers that support the wheat board," D'Arcy-area producer Mervin Lloyd told the crowd in Rosetown as he opened the meeting. Lloyd spoke for the ad hoc Concerned Farmers Saving the Wheat Board, which organized the rally here.

"Dual marketing is a myth," said Plato farmer Ray Ryland, referring to a popular slogan of board opponents who want the "freedom" to cherry-pick lucrative "niche markets" outside the pooling system.

Farmers speaking from the floor slammed the Grain Marketing Panel for ignoring the pro-board views of a majority of producers expressed at its public hearings.

Outside the Rosetown rally, about two dozen supporters of Farmers for Justice set up a picket line calling for an end to the wheat board marketing monopoly. This right-wing farm outfit has received intense publicity for its Canada-U.S. border point protest actions, in which grain is trucked across the line in deliberate contravention of wheat board pooling regulations.

Howard Brown

Rosetown, Saskatchewan

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of general interest to our readers. Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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