I would like you to know that I was so offended by your editorial in the November 1995 issue that I canceled my subscription. I will not support financially or in any way be associated with a publication ran by such blatantly Europhobic minority racists. You obviously get your history from a Rainbow Coalition fantasy book.

You commit the liberal propagandist ploy of judging past eras in history using today's liberal humanist mores. Your "socially, spiritually, ethically" blah blah blah, Natives were animalistic, cannibalistic savages who hadn't even invented the wheel or a written language and were in a constant state of warfare with each other and even, heaven forbid, practiced slavery! They were a backward people who got what they deserved given the Darwinistic exigencies of the time.

Your article was a slap in the face to any European brothers who are doing their time honorably and don't feel the need to truckle to the minority races. I take it from the wailing and gnashing of teeth and masochistic tone of your article that you are such a one. If you're under 21 and not a liberal you don't have a heart. If you are over 30 and still a liberal you don't have a brain. [Editor's Note: And if you must plagiarize quotes from the likes of Winston Churchill, you don't have much originality.]

Even I rooted for William Kunstler - in 1968. The brainwashed, deluded masses of young people in the 60's, myself included, brought us to the morally corrupt, politically correct, financially bankrupt, spineless society we inhabit in 1995, and were manipulated by forces that you, despite your braying about being politically conscious, remain totally unaware of.

I was fed up with the leftist, minority slant of your paper anyway. You might do well to consider that there are Europeans who have a viewpoint and grievances as well. I myself am 5 years past my first out-date on a 10-40. This is typical of whites in the Michigan prison system, who are routinely maxed-out or flopped ad infinitum solely to maintain a semblance of racial balance while Negroes continue to use the revolving door. Blacks are championed all the way to the supreme court by the snivel rights organizations while Europeans fighting the exact issues can't even get their mail answered.

I was shot while unarmed at point blank range, beaten in the county jail, all by black officers. When the media picked up the story, need I tell you whose side they were on.

I'll do my own legal research from now on, thank you. I won't pay to be insulted by the likes of you. I know I'm wasting my breath. Go down the rock [another prison?] and commiserate with kill-a-Honkey-Bey [a prisoner?]. I won't go there. But I'm gone.

--L.C., Michigan


Editor's Response: PLN has always taken a stand against injustice. We don't play the racism game. We are not an advocate for Black prisoners, Native American prisoners, Latino(a) prisoners or European' prisoners. We advocate prisoners' rights in the struggle for justice. Period.

I get some of my history from A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. It was in his book that I learned how rich colonial land owners (the ones who owned most of the slaves) lived in mortal fear that somehow the poorer whites would band together with oppressed Blacks and overthrow the system of economic oppression that enriched them so well. It was these wealthy white landowners who developed the institution of racial hatred as one that would be of great benefit to their economic interests.

By demonizing and dehumanizing Blacks (and Native Americans) the wealthy colonialists channeled the anger and frustration of poor whites not against those who exploited their labor, but against peoples of different skin color who were also brutalized and exploited by the same system of economic injustice. Thus racism was born and purposefully nurtured.

In correspondence between wealthy plantation owners, quoted in Mr. Zinn's history, they speak of their fear. They formulated a plan of using racial hatred and fear to forbid poor white laborers from associating with Black slaves. Why? Because they knew that if these oppressed peoples got together and recognized their common enemy, the American Revolution might have been one of poor working people struggling for economic justice, rather than what it really was: colonial capitalists fighting for their right to be the exploiters of this continent without having to share the proceeds with the English Crown.

The same strategy has been modified and used again and again by the ruling elite to channel the anger of economic injustice into racial hatred, whether it be against members of racial minorities in the U.S. or against illegal aliens, immigrants, or foreign enemies. The politics of racism, nationalism and xenophobia all serve the same purpose. As long as you continue to look at the world through "racial colored lenses" you will fail to see that the boot on your neck has nothing whatsoever to do with race, and everything to do with profit.

As far as Paul or I being members of "the minority races," we have never publicized the color of our skin or our ethnic heritage and I will not do so now, for the simple reason that it's totally irrelevant! I can assure you, however, that neither of us is a member of the only minority in this country that means anything: the wealthiest 2% who own over 90% of the stocks, bonds, real estate, and all other assets. You won't find many of those minorities in prison.

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