Are the self-identified campus “reactionaries” simply a collection of ignorant people? Or are they purposely using ad hominem arguments and knowingly coating their malice with euphemism?

Can Mr. Henderson and Mr. Kantor really be so obtuse as to think that Palestinian and African American resistance are ab initio causes of the world’s problems? Or that the Communist Party of Stalinist, state capitalist Russia is tantamount to international socialism and workers’ democracy?

In a society where more blacks will go to jail than graduate college this year, with a black population on death row of over 40% (blacks do not commit 40% of murders) and police brutality still plaguing our cities (Timothy Thomas, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, et. al.), how can you not expect blacks to rebel in a myriad of ways? Injustice always breeds resistance-and the scale of state repression defines the breadth and rationality of the reaction.

Moving on. The issue of the Palestinian Intifada is often corrupted in order to confuse. In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians were removed, or otherwise coerced, from their land. Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department in Israel, stated in 1940: “There is no room for both peoples together in this country . . . [We must] transfer all of them (Arabs); not one village, not one tribe shall be left.”

Since then, the most the Palestinians have EVER been offered back has been a mere 23% of historic Palestine (Camp David through Oslo). Over three million Palestinians now live in the squalor of refugee camps-and have rightly rejected these awful concessions, demanding the constitution of one, secular, democratic state for Jews and Arabs in all of historic Palestine. It was only after this rational and just idea was repeatedly rejected by Israel that the Palestinian resistance turned desperate.

Finally (excuse the lack of segue), on organized labor and so-called ‘anti-American’ protests: Mr. Henderson, you are either delusional or deceitful because I was at the anti-IMF protest you mentioned, and all I remember was getting thumbs-up from the construction workers and hotel cleaners as we marched by.

And as for the anti-war movement-some of the unions that have passed anti-war resolutions, or endorsed anti-war events, include: the Albany Central Federation of Labor, the Washington State Labor Council, the California Federation of Teachers, the United Electrical workers, 1199/SEIU Health and Human Services Union, AFSCME Local 215, NY Taxi Workers Alliance, Teamsters Local 705, AFT Local 2334 and even AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has waxed critical of Bush’s war drive.

Unlike local reactionaries and the campus parties that harbor them, socialists have nothing to hide. We are for a truly democratic world where the vast majority of people who create society’s wealth collectively control the distribution of that wealth-a world thereby devoid of racism, nationalism and sexism. As a purveyor of those ideas that benefit the wealthy at the expense of regular people, Henderson is the logical consummation of the nature of capitalist society. In a word, we unabashedly stand diametrically opposed to everything that he stands for.