Views in brief

An opportunity with Sawant

IN RESPONSE to "A socialist on the Seattle City Council?": The International Socialist Organization has taken exactly the right position on Kshama Sawant's campaign for the Seattle City Council. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for others on the left in general, and the revolutionary socialist left in particular, to get it wrong.

First, there is the ultra-left position that elections in capitalist America are just another trick used to fool the American working class. Yes, there is truth in this assertion--sometimes the phony electoral process serves exactly that function. Witness the Wisconsin campaign to recall Scott Walker.

Right at the point when the mass mobilizations in opposition to Walker's policies were growing and spreading to new layers of people, the Democratic Party did everything in its power to pull the movement back into the safety of the voting booth. We were told, "Turn in our picket signs and pick up our clipboards."

But to extrapolate from this that abstaining from all elections, under all circumstances, is the right thing to do is a mistake. Elections and the right to vote are essential democratic rights, fought for and paid for by generations of working people. Revolutionaries must fight for these rights at all times.

Next, there is the naïve belief that we can make fundamental, systemic change through the ballot box. Long before such a transformation occurs, the forces of repression would put a stop to it. Remember, this is a ruling class that had no hesitation in sending drones halfway around the world to kill a 16-year-old boy. When its interests were threatened, the body counts in Central America and Southeast Asia ran into the millions. No, we know that this is not how a socialist America will come about.

Finally, there are the sectarians, who would use differences with Socialist Alternative as an excuse for abstention. Organizations like this delight in picking through the minutia of programs, statements and history, only to find where i's aren't dotted and t's aren't crossed.

While these groupings pride themselves in purity, the real, messy class struggle unfolds around them. When the opportunity of expanding socialist politics comes knocking, they would barricade the door. The Sawant campaign opens such a door, we need to walk through it.
Guy Miller, Chicago

Still waiting for relief

IN RESPONSE to "The truth about mortgage relief": Thanks for your information on the truth about mortgage relief. You are right on the money. I had been working with my bank when I finally had to go to a lawyer and the courts, and file a Chapter 13 that my husband and I did not want to do--but it was the only way the bank would even work with us.

We are almost two years into this process and were lucky enough to get the bank to give us a three-month trial period. We are now ready to make our fifth payment in this three-month trial period.

When we went to court on October 28, the bank had not given us the final information on the loan modification--though they were suppose to have that information for us after the three-month trial period, and my lawyer was trying to get the information. The bank's lawyer had told my lawyer on October 26 that he would have the information by the end of day. Well, my husband and I were in court with our lawyer, and the bank was not there.

Our lawyer told the bank that we have not gotten the modification information, so we cannot go forward. So we now have another court date on November 16--yet another day I will have to take off from work. Bank of America e-mailed the modification paperwork to my lawyer the day after court. Along with them e-mailing it to my lawyer a day late, they also dated the letter October 10--as if they had this ready for two weeks before court.

Needless to say, the modification is only a Band-Aid--because when we get done with late fees, back payments, their lawyer fees and anything else, we will be back where we started after three years' time. It is just a joke, to know that I have paid my mortgage for over a year and did a trial plan, and Bank of America has now collected more money from us, and we will not be able to do the modification.

If I had known then what would happen in the end! (After hiring my first lawyer and having to fire him when he missed two court dates on us, and paying him and not getting any money back--and then having to pay for another lawyer.)

The lawyer I have now is very good. She has said we have a very good case against the bank because of the under-handed stuff they have done with our mortgage (between both Bank of America and Countrywide). But as she says, the banks have more lawyers--and they have the courts on their side no matter what.

I am proof that you can go all the way to the end to do everything you can and it does not matter. The banks will not lower your principal or anything. I thank you for listening. I thought the article described everything that has happened to us, and then some.

My one question is: Do you know of any specialist that deals with reading mortgage documents, so I can work with bank about all the things wrong with my mortgage? My lawyer has been trying to get a hold of one and has not been able to get anyone. She says there are not many around, because nobody really fights the banks. (She has said ours is one of the worst mortgages she has seen with Countrywide and Bank of America.

Thanks again for listening. You were right on with everything.
Joan Doyle, Hopewell Junction, N.Y.

A "nightmare" caused by courts?

IN RESPONSE to "Capitalist monsters under the bed": I have one quibble with John McDonald's excellent article on horror movies.

John says, regarding A Nightmare on Elm Street, that "it is not entirely clear whether Krueger is responsible for the original murders for which he was burned alive" and that this "goes a long way to moving the political core of the film squarely to the left." John bases this reading on the fact that Krueger was not convicted, but was released on procedural grounds.

Unfortunately, I think that this is exactly backwards. Nancy's mother, explaining how Krueger died, tells her that after his arrest "the lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but somebody forgot to sign a search warrant in the right place, and Krueger was free, just like that." I would argue that this, far from inciting sympathy towards a possibly innocent Krueger, is in fact a classic right-wing trope: "The Courts Are Soft On Crime."

The best-known example of this in film is perhaps the cop movie Dirty Harry (1971). Produced a decade earlier in the aftermath of the Black urban rebellions, it was described by Hal Draper: "[T]he audience is set up to root for Dirty Harry as he denounces the Supreme Court decisions as soft on crime, and indicts the civilian bleeding-hearts who release an insane murderer to kill more people just because they're civil-libertarian do-gooders."

The movie simultaneously plays off and incites racist white fears of urban violence with the argument that the system--the police and the courts--that kept them safe thus far has been weakened from within and has failed, meaning that only violence without regard to civil rights remains as an option. The movie's villain is caught red-handed with a sniper rifle, but is released because Dirty Harry did not have a search warrant.

Krueger's case fits the pattern well. Just like in Dirty Harry, the detail of the improperly filled-out search warrant is to tell the audience that while Krueger was obviously guilty, he was released for procedural reasons. In other words, the state failed to protect (white) parents and children, and so they were forced to take matters into their own hands.

I emphasize "white" because re-watching A Nightmare On Elm Street, I noticed only one scene that had any actors of color in focus--a classroom scene. No actors of color have any spoken lines.

I don't raise this to dispute John's judgment that A Nightmare On Elm Street is a classic of the horror genre, but merely to point out that when vigilante violence is raised in American films, it is almost always portrayed as a necessary corrective to pesky civil rights that stand in the way of justice.
Aongus Ó Murchadha, Brussels, Belgium

Racism hits all of America

IN RESPONSE to "The most racist city in the U.S.?": I think it's unfair to label Madison, Wis., or any one particular city as the "most racist" in America. For all of Madison's liberal good intentions, you could say this about almost any place in America where there's a large university/professional class, and that includes Boston, Chicago, New York, Berkeley, Calif., Evanston, Ill., or Urbana, Ill., to name a few.

The problem, as the article points out, is that the jobs offered by universities generally require advanced degrees and many years of specialized training to which few people can avail themselves, and that even includes working-class whites. The clerical, administrative and industrial jobs--what's left of those--are fought over in fierce competition.

While I'm not trying to downplay the role of racism, I think the economy and overspecialization have a lot to do with the problem in Madison and elsewhere. It really boils down to the system that we're under, and under which many of us suffer daily.
M.B.H., Chicago

The racism of Captain Phillips

IN RESPONSE to "The real Captain Phillips": I would like to report that Captain Phillips is just plain racist and full of jingoism. Unfortunately, I did waste my time seeing it.

The film provides no context at all as to why the thuggishly stereotyped Somalis had actually hijacked the ship. The simple portrayal was of these so called "pirates" as the typical caricature of Arabs and Africans--as nomads, despots and America-haters who simply went out on the water to try to give the noble Americans a hard time.

There was no real portrayal of the unimaginable poverty that Somalis have been subjected to--just a simple depiction that Somalis live like savages.

In comparison to the Maersk Alabama which was led by Captain Phillips, the Somali ship looked like a lifeboat--but the crazed Somali despots kept firing cannons and rockets at Captain Phillips' cruise ship-like vessel and eventually took all the poor and desperate Americans hostage while Captain Phillips planned to save the day.

While sitting in the theater, I tried hard to not focus on the screen and the loud noises but simply on fidgeting with my phone for over two hours. When the movie ended, a woman complained to me that I had been playing with my phone and I replied, "Good."

With so many good movies coming out, one should instead seek out a film like Gravity or 12 Years a Slave, instead of the typical racist multimillion-dollar narrative portrayed in Captain Phillips.
Greg Morse, Providence, R.I.