Views in brief

December 12, 2013

Why is my brother Robert dead?

IN RESPONSE to "Seeking justice for a father killed by police": I would like to offer my support. I'm sorry to hear about Rigoberto Arceo. He didn't deserve to die. I lost my little brother to police in Tulare, Calif., on March 3, 2010. His name was Robert Olivo Jr. He was 33 years old.

What happened to our families is wrong. Every time I think about how he died, it brings me to my knees, then I beg God to help me deal with the pain. Some days are better than others. I find it really hard to smile nowadays, but I always try to make the best of things, no matter what.

The coroner said it was methamphetamines that caused Robert's death--I guess the 100,000 volts that Robert received from two Tasers being used on him at the same time wasn't his cause of death.

Robert called police asking for help twice, and was seen and heard banging on doors asking for help. Robert would have helped anyone at any time.
Ernest Wheeler, Tulare, Calif.

A gift from the USPS to Amazon

Readers’ Views

SocialistWorker.org welcomes our readers' contributions to discussion and debate about articles we've published and questions facing the left. Opinions expressed in these contributions don't necessarily reflect those of SW.

THERE IS a lot of hype about the anti-worker Internet goliath Amazon "saving" the dying dinosaur U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Last year, Amazon's shipping losses alone amounted to nearly $3 billion, and since its founding, Amazon has yet to make a profit. USPS made a $600 million operational profit in FY2013 alone--after the Treasury stole between $50-100 billion in pension monies for decades. So who's saving who, exactly?

This Sunday delivery deal (for a secret sum)--with a sweatshop corporation like other USPS "partners" FedEx and JB Hunt--is just the private sector sucking blood from a public service for private gain. While the USPS goes to court to refuse delivery to poor residents in San Francisco, slashes services in rural areas, sells off our real estate and artwork to CBRE real estate cronies, sweats our family-wage union jobs to management-connected subcontractors, and delays our mail by shuttering 50 percent of our plants, it prostitutes our service by dealing exclusive access to select urban Amazon subscribers.

And the USPS workers making these deliveries are exclusively the newly imposed 35,000 City Carrier Assistants, who just got a 27 percent pay cut--and thousands of whom have been doing the most dangerous federal job for seven years, with no accessible benefits and substantially fewer guarantees.

I wonder how long this deal has been in the works, and if it was behind USPS's contract demand for a massive cheap "flexible" perma-temp workforce. This is an outrage. I think we need to start planning to unionize Amazon and demand all "assistants" and "support" workers immediately convert to career full-time jobs at the full pre-2013 pay.

If this needs tax money, then so be it. Communication is a right. And it'll be that many less drones killing our sisters and brothers abroad.

Let's expand our services to include banking, check cashing, wire transfer, Internet and wireless access--or whatever we need, or want, our modern Post Office to be.
Frank Couget, letter carrier, National Association of Letter Carries Branch 36, American Postal Workers Union Local 10

Left out by Obamacare

IN RESPONSE to "What caused the Obamacare fiasco?": I read in the New York Times that, in some cases, there would be no subsidies to help those below a certain income level--a real problem in states which have refused to expand Medicaid, which are the states with large minority and migrant worker populations.

While I don't think anyone should be fined for not buying insurance, especially when they can't afford it, it is interesting that the fines for not getting insurance are very low, almost as if it had been anticipated that the poorest would be left out in the cold.

Meanwhile, federal subsidies to hospitals are being cut, under the assumption that states would expand Medicaid. For the states that did not expand Medicaid, this means that their hospitals will face a large poor population with no funds to pay for their care. These patients end up begging for attention only at the last moment, in final stages of cancer, for example, when, as one doctor put it in a Times article, "they fail the wallet biopsy."

Thank you for keeping us informed.
Crystal Anne Chemris, Ashland, N.C.

SW is wrong about Mother Agnes

IN RESPONSE to "Protesting an Assad apologist": I strongly disagree with the statement posted. It is untruthful, biased and lacks any evidence for what the anonymous author says about Mother Agnes.

Mother Agnes was the organizer and leader, along with Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, of the Peace Mission to Beirut and Damascus, in which I participated in May 2013.

I am deeply disappointed with SocialistWorker.org, whose materials I use regularly on the Peace Journalism website I edit, Transcend Media Service-TMS. I shall reconsider reading/using your pieces. And I shall spread the word about your anti-socialist, anti-humanist, myopic stance.

Does it ever occur to you that there could, perhaps, be a third position, neither for nor against the government of Assad? FOR PEACE BY PEACEFUL MEANS? That being against the invasion by jihadist terrorists from dozens of countries around the world, including Europe, the U.S. and Asia does not mean being FOR the regime? Mother Agnes and myself espouse this third view. But the authors and signers of the statement are FOR the terrorists.

As Mother Agnes mentioned to Russia Today, there exists no longer an Assad regime in Syria by any stretch of imagination. It is gone, it fell through. You guys, by being against this third position, are in fact facilitating for Syria to become another Somalia, another Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan. The blood is/will be on your hands.

With deep disappointment with a proven lack of vision and political sophistication by an otherwise fine publication.
Antonio C. S. Rosa, Porto, Portugal