[PEN-L:7736] Re: Your Analysis (Assistance) Needed by the Working Class

[michael <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood and I received this note.  I thought that some of you might be
better able to answer him that I am.

You might do best to answer him directly.

JAIMANI@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Mr Henwood, Mr  Perelman,
>
> I am an independant communist and a member of the Black Radical Congress as
> well as, I must say, a dissenting, dues paying member of the Labor Party.
> Two members of the BRC-Los Angeles Organizing Committee as well as  a member
> of the Committees of Correspondence, are exploring the possibility,  of a
> forum on "The American Police State:  Race and Class".  To that end we are
> seeking information (articles) that you may have done, or know of,  which can
> be of use in an analysis that seeks to connect to the de-industrialization of
> this country any or all of the following: the increase in police abuse
> (terror); the rising rates of incarceration; the  manufacturing of crisis as
> rationale for continued military forays and expenditures; the presentation of
> military service as career 'opportunity' to working class youth; the attacks
> upon welfare and the minimum wage subverting 'Jobfare' programs; the material
> benefits (to the owners) of prison labor; the statistics of the change of the
> percentages of (union and/or non-union) employees who are in the service as
> opposed to the industrial sector, the rise of homelessness and their
> maltreatment;etc.
>
> Our thinking is that with the massive transfer of value-adding jobs  across
> the national border (de-industrialization of this country) there has arisen
> the need for a deepened oppression of working people.  A need to be, at
> least, partially justified by the demonization of sectors of our class, esp
> minorities.  A situation akin to (No we are not paranoid) the latter days of
> Weimar.  With some 2 million imprisoned and more on the way, with hundreds of
> thousands (millions?) uncertain of food and shelter, with the allegations of
> government complicity in the creation, maintenance and expansion of a
> nefarious black (ahh!  You white folks) economy (the crack cocaine epidemic),
> the rise of racist, homophobic and (I must create a word) anAnglophobic
> attitudes and violence attests to the urgency of analysis.
>
>   As a former suscriber to the Left Business Journal (Sorry, I can't afford
> it anymore but I miss it!)  I have witnessed  Mr Henwoods abilty to graph
> social trends with economic ones.  One chart is indeed worth a thousand
> words.  I ask you to search your files, your memories and your thoughts and
> to equip us with such.
>
> Best,
>
> S John Daniels aka John A Imani



--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx