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Constitution Dear editor, A friend of mine had occasion to visit San Francisco in July, where she met Kwame M.A. Somburu, who writes for your publication. She brought back several copies of Socialist Action for me to read.

I find the articles very informative, timely, and accurate. I would appreciate your placing me on your subscription list.

Please inform Mr. Somburu that his article in your July issue, "Pro-slavery document: No reason for Blacks to celebrate Constitution," was excellent. While I may not be Black, I am a first-generation American of German and Irish extraction and I can empathize with his views about how the poor and minorities were disenfranchised right from the beginning.

I myself was born in New York and I have seen how one group was played off against another to enhance the goals of profit and property owners. And while this was being done, there were some property holders that beat their chests in mock humility while calling out for admiration and respect from the masses to remember a document solely created to ensure proprietorial rights over others.

Joe Koenigsman, Bismarck, N.D. Dear editor, This is to thank you for the fact-filled article by Kwame M.A. Somburu, "No reason fo: Blacks to celebrate Constitution," and to ask for more full-page or multi-page articles by this writer.

While the text of the article was a valuable correction to the hypocritical nonsense today surrounding the anniversary of the Constitution of 1789, its headline was not quite right. Socialists and working people of all nationalities have just as much reason to celebrate the historic step forward formalized by the Constitution as to be aware of its racist, sexist, and slave nature.

The Constitution recognized in writing the political sovereignty of "the people" as opposed to a royal breed of parasites, and it set up a broaderbased political structure than the monarchy.

In this way, it laid the basis for the slaves to win freedom to sell their labor and for women to win suffrage. In. the same way, while the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 failed to win full rights for the "freed" men and women, it ratified a major advance toward equality.

In breaking from monarchy, the Constitution also limited the power of the executive and gave Congress the power, for example, to declare war. The Reply White House, with help from Congress, has worked tirelessly to undermine this constitutional safeguard.

While the Constitution doesn't stop crooks in Congress from voting weapons to the contras, it slows their war down. This central feature of the Constitution is to be celebrated and defended.

David Kerr, Needham Hts., Mass.

Fifty-five privileged white men deliberated in secret for over three months to draft the U.S. Constitution. The document was designed to serve their own narrow sector of society.

Nevertheless, I agree with David Kerr that sections of the Constitution have been "a historic step forward." Some of the amendments, in particular, were significant concessions to Blacks and other oppressed people.

Of course, these sections were not enforced through most of American history. Nor are they completely enforced at this time.

Nor are these concessions cause to join in the anniversary celebrations. Rather, we should acknowledge them as crumbs wrested through bloody struggle from the bourgeois loaf.

Kwame M.A. Somburu

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