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Dear editor, A national call has been put out by solidarity groups such as CISPES for demonstrations on or around Sept. 15. This is the date of Congress' vote on the contra aid.

Although the main thrust of the call appears to be around the lobbying of Congress to not vote for any more aid, different cities receiving the call have been left to develop their own strategies; strategies that could include mass actions.

In the Twin Cities, for example, a family member of Ben Linder will be holding a demonstration and publicizing his speech in the mainstream media. Linder was killed last July by the U.S.-backed contras while working on a brigade in Nicaragua.

Linda Kellam, Minneapolis Trotsky Dear editor, On Jan. 9, 1937, Leon Trotsky and his companion, Natalia Sedova, arrived in Mexico after many years of persecution in Europe.

To commemorate this arrival, a conference titled "Leon Trotsky and the Cárdenas Years" was organized by the Political Science Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on May 18-22, exile to Trotsky at the request of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

From all accounts I've received, the conference was a tremendous success. The major university auditorium was packed the entire five days, and the coverage in the local press was extensive.

Adolfo Gilly, a leader of the Mexican PRT, opened the conference with a presentation on the political situation in Mexico at the time of Trotsky's arrival. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the former president, spoke about Trotsky's impact on Mexico.

Other conference speakers included Esteban Volkov (Sieva), Trotsky's grandson; Vlady, Victor Serge's son; George Novack, who welcomed Trotsky as he got off the boat in Veracruz; Pierre Broué, director of the Leon Trotsky Institute; Olivia Gall, professor of political science and the conference organizer; Manuel Aguilar Mora, a leader of the PRT; Barry Carr, an Australian historian; Charlie Curtiss, who was one of Trotsky's guards; and Evelyne Laroche, an old friend of Trotsky's and of painter André Breton.

Dave Weiss, a longtime member of the U.S. Trotskyist movement, showed excerpts from his yet-to-be-completed documentary film on Trotsky.

Unfortunately, I have seen no coverage of this very important conference in the U.S. press.

Bill Wilner, Los Angeles Repent!

On Aug. 15, Planned Parenthood of San Francisco, where I volunteer as a guard, had a most unwelcome visitor. A man named Bob drove up in a van decorated with religious signs and crosses, partly painted to demonstrate the flames of hell.

While holding up his sign, he shouted his slogans: "Repent, Repent, Repent! How can you kill babies? Who is going to stand up for babies? Jerry Falwell is the only one who stands up for them!"

"Members of N.O.W. are modern-day witches," he shouted. "Oh, for the good old days in Salem, when witches were burned at the stake!"

When the police were called, he wanted them to arrest Planned Parenthood for murder. When that didn't work, he left saying that he had to get away from that "awful place" before he threw up all over his "Christian van."

I call his "Christian van" the "Hate-mobile." It is aimed at destroying the right of women to make choices over their bodies.

These right-wing nuts have been encouraged by the U.S. government. When one of them was arrested after bombing a clinic, Reagan said that he understood how this terrorist felt!

Christine Vaughn, San Francisco Correction In our August 1987 issue, we did not properly credit the front-page photograph of a boy crying over the coffin of an FSLN fighter. The credit should have read: "Larry Boyd/Impact Visuals. - The editors