Letters of May 21

Rulers Allow Racist Murderer to Roam Free
When white racist Frazier Glenn Miller murdered three innocent people in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13 the media generally described him as a “mad, lone-wolf gunman,” but he was anything but. While the ruling class spends millions spying on innocent Muslims, infiltrating Mosques, moving against participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement, setting up police Red Squads to attack communists in PLP and placing tens of thousands on no-fly lists, somehow they missed racist Miller. But with Miller’s history, he would be hard to miss.
According to Kathleen Belew, a history fellow at Northwestern University, writing in the New York Times (4/16), Miller was “a central figure of the white power movement…outspoken about his hatred of Jews, blacks, Communists and immigrants.” That movement “forged…strongholds not only in the South, but also in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania.”
Miller served 20 years in the Army, including as a Green Beret, and in 1979 “took part…in a deadly shooting of Communist protesters in Greensboro, N.C.” The next year “Miller formed a Klan-affiliated organization in North Carolina…known as the White Patriot Party….paraded his neo-Nazis, in uniform and bearing arms, up and down streets….[and] also burned crosses. By 1986, Miller’s group claimed 2,500 members in five southern states.”
Miller “received large sums of money from…a white power group in the Pacific Northwest to buy land and weapons to put his followers through paramilitary training….[and] paid $50,000 for weapons and materials stolen from the armory at Fort Bragg, N.C., including anti-tank rockets, mines and plastic explosives….”
“The leaders have robbed armored cars, engaged in counterfeiting and the large-scale theft of military weapons and carried out or planned killings.” Yet somehow the FBI, Homeland Security, big-city police departments spying on Muslims and anti-war protesters and the State Police never went after Miller and his racist, fascist movement. Of course, now they are forced to prosecute him for his recent open murders in Kansas.
Obviously Miller was no “mad, lone-wolf gunman” but rather a neo-Nazi/Klan/white supremacist organizer of hundreds, if not thousands in his racist movement. Imagine if some Muslims or Black Panthers or communists had been organizing paramilitary training using anti-tank rockets, mines and plastic explosives! The bosses’ state apparatus would have come down on them like a ton of bricks. But somehow Miller “fell through the cracks.”
Is there any doubt that the ruling class will look the other way and allow — if not encourage — neo-Nazis like Miller to roam free to spread their racist filth while going all-out to attack, prosecute and jail opponents of their system?
Old-time Red

Heroin: Bosses’ Medicine for Capitalism’s Misery
On top of the myriad of problems this crisis-ridden capitalist society breeds, there’s now a heroin epidemic, and it’s not confined to distressed cities like Detroit. In fact, it has spread to the coalfields of Western Pennsylvania. On May 2, according to a Johnstown news story, a dozen people overdosed on heroin in 72 hours in the Johnstown area. Considering the relatively small population, that’s a lot of people, and didn’t include the number of people who used heroin but didn’t overdose.
Counselors and doctors were interviewed and gave their views on what was wrong. However, none mentioned the fact that the Johnstown area is severely economically depressed. When the mines closed and the steel mills shut down, this area went into a tailspin and today there are hardly any decent-paying jobs. Actually, there are barely any jobs of any sort and there is a growing number of permanently unemployed.
The existence of a heroin epidemic is certainly no surprise, given that desperation is rampant and people are searching for an escape from all the crap the system is throwing at them on a daily basis. Also, it’s not surprising that the crime rate is rising. People’s backs are against the wall and some respond by robbing a bank (which is infinitely less criminal than the billions the bosses steal from workers in profits made off our labor).
Of course, the capitalist ruling class would rather see people using heroin than developing class consciousness, let alone communist consciousness. Capitalism has nothing meaningful to offer workers, and some, faced with this hopelessness, unfortunately become drug addicts.
Only a communist future can free the workers from this dark night and usher in a society where the workers will rule and there will be decent and meaningful jobs for all. If a worker might fall and for some reason begin to use drugs, every attempt would be made to rehabilitate this person and find a place for him or her in the communist system.
PLP is working to win workers to communism when such afflictions as heroin abuse will become things of the past.
Red Coal

May Day ‘A Joy’ — PL’s Ideas Key to Workers’ Problems
For the last couple of years I have read CHALLENGE and some of the Party’s literature. Even though I agreed with the concept of communism, I was skeptical due to what I had learned from history about communism and its leaders. Since I was angry at society and its misleading ideas, I thought I had to lean towards black nationalism, which I never really agreed with, because I knew it was just another form of racism.
I finally attended my first May Day this year, and I have to say, it was a great experience. The march was great, everybody chanting out of joy and disgust, plus it was great exercise. Mostly joy that it’s May Day and disgust because of the capitalist society that we still have to deal with. I’ve always had my qualms about the government and the injustices that go along with it, long before my friend introduced me to CHALLENGE and the Party. In fact, I was a victim of some of those injustices, so I can definitely identify with the Party’s ideas. I’ve lived in this neighborhood where the march was held my whole life, and I can see the changes due to gentrification and how people are just struggling to live here.
The May Day feast was great, the food was delightful, and the entertainment was very informative. People playing music, reciting poems, acting, speeches, it all had a very positive message to it and was just amazing. I would definitely attend next year. I just like the unity and strength that’s involved. Before that, my friend usually had given me issues of CHALLENGE, and that is a gift in itself. It is filled with great information and vast perspectives, and I will definitely continue reading it. I’m also interested in attending study groups to learn more about the Party’s analysis on world politics. I also want to learn more of how communism can fix the problems of the working class in an egalitarian society.   
Friend of PLP