Letters for March 29, 2018

Labor movement lives

The 2018 Cesar Chavez March for the Right to Organize and Protect our Families [10 a.m. Saturday, March 31, Southside Park, 7th and T streets] brings back movement memories of the first organizing committee meeting I attended, with Al Rojas, in 1999, sponsored by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Sacramento Chapter, AFL-CIO.

Rojas, a fellow state worker and past organizer for the United Farm Workers, helped build extensive coalitions for campaigns in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Yolo County. I joined SEIU in 1997-98, and in early 2002, I began interviewing Rojas for the Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library, as part of a larger Latino Leadership series at U.C. Berkeley. As a memoirist in the program, Al recounted his commitment to the farmworkers movement and his active involvement in local and national support committee activities, with a critical eye for the house of labor. We focused on his sharp organizing skills that enabled him to win organizing drives and strikes, and to build extensive coalitions for campaigns he led all across this county and Mexico.

More than a state holiday, the Chavez march is relevant today given the upcoming midterms, “sanctuary” cities, the border wall, mass deportations and a return to exploitation of labor in the form of a modern-day guest worker program.

Alan H. Stein

Sacramento

via email

Scott Jones betrays constituents

Re: “Trump’s inside man” by Raheem F. Hosseini (News, March 22)

So [Sheriff Scott Jones] doesn’t work for us? Looking for a bigger job? Gosh, who knew.

Maxine Milner Krugman

via Facebook

Where was he when Russian bots were immigrating here to steal the presidency?

Muriel Strand

via Facebook

He needs to be booted out of office.

Kevin Mckenna

via Facebook

Too much power

Re “Armed with a cellphone” by Raheem Hosseini (Beats, March 22):

Is there any other country in the world where law enforcement personnel have taken on any more tyrannical power over citizens, any more trigger-happy, allowed to EXECUTE citizens with multiple shots (rather than just enough to stop the citizen/s), using the most deadly ammunition available, given immunity from prosecution and from lawsuits, given FAVORED status in our justice system, allowed to kill citizens that are in NON-attack mode who are only carrying a telephone, and get PAID VACATION for what would be genuine murder if any citizen/s had done the same?

Herman Lenz

Sumner, IA

via U.S. Mail

New defense bill: ugly background

Re “Bloat” by Dennis Myers (Feature, March 8):

It was Democratic president Woodrow Wilson who, in 1918, said that our responsibility and role in the world was to “make the world safe for democracy.” This is the basis for our foreign acts of aggression and wars of choice on ideologies. It has served as a cover for covert and overt operations to protect the financial interests of U.S. and other Western multinational corporations in other nations whose democratic governments put the best interests of their own people above those of foreign corporations. The DOD is infamous for being unable to account for over $12 trillion in spending—estimates vary—and has resisted a congressionally mandated audit for 20 years. You would think that a president whose claim to competence in his business acumen would insist on that audit being completed before throwing more billions down the Pentagon’s maw. By the way, Senate and House Democrats voted overwhelmingly to give the Pentagon even more billions.

Jan Bergeron

Sacramento

via sactoletters@newsreview.com