> WW News Service Digest #57
>
> 1) No more legal lynching: Texas prisoner is defiant to the end
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) Mumia on the execution of Kamau Wilkerson
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Kamau Wilkerson: A soldier's death
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) Black Coca-Cola workers fight racism
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) International Women's Day protests demand justice for all
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 6) Women draw inspiration from Cuba to Chiapas
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>NO MORE LEGAL LYNCHING
>
>TEXAS PRISONER IS DEFIANT TO THE END
>
>By Greg Butterfield
>Huntsville, Texas
>
>On March 14, Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson, 28 years old--
>revolutionary, organizer, death-row activist--lay strapped
>to a gurney. Did he have a final statement, the warden
>asked. "This is not a capital case," Wilkerson said.
>
>As a lethal injection was pumped into his veins, the young
>African-Asian whispered, "The secret, as of Wilkerson," and
>spit out a key--the kind of key used to open prison
>handcuffs and shackles. Somehow he had kept it hidden from
>his captors.
>
>It was a final act of rebellion and defiance from a youth
>who lived and died a fighter behind the walls. The Texas
>Death Machine pronounced him dead at 6:24 p.m.
>
>The battle to end the death penalty reached a new level of
>resistance as the State of Texas executed Wilkerson. He was
>the 210th person executed here since the death penalty was
>reinstated, and the 123rd to die on Gov. George W. Bush's
>watch.
>
>As Kamau Wilkerson was being legally lynched in the Walls
>Unit, 35 angry protesters outside chanted, "George Bush,
>serial killer!" and "Moratorium now!"
>
>A banner from the Texas Death Penalty Moratorium Committee
>called on Bush to enact a moratorium on executions. Other
>signs demanded freedom for Wilkerson's companion Njeri
>Shakur, a political prisoner in the Harris County jail.
>
>Members of the National Black United Front from Houston
>performed a Swahili chant in his honor. Wilkerson's
>comrades and friends from the Texas Death Penalty Abolition
>Movement, SHAPE Community Center and a local college spoke
>of their determination to continue the struggle.
>
>When the authorities emerged from the death house,
>signaling that Wilkerson had died, the demonstrators
>shouted "Murderers! Murderers!"
>
>Protesters here were supported by death-penalty opponents
>in cities like New York, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit,
>who took up the Abolition Movement's call for a National
>Day of Action for a Moratorium on Texas Executions. They
>targeted Bush's presidential campaign, Republican offices
>and federal buildings.
>
>March 14 was also the day of Texas' primary elections. The
>Abolition Movement called on registered voters to write in
>Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson for president in the Republican
>primary. Both Bush and his likely Democratic opponent, Al
>Gore, support the death penalty.
>
>Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal added his voice, too.
>In a statement from Pennsylvania's death row, he wrote:
>"While Ponchai now has only hours of life measured to him,
>it is still an appropriate time to speak out against the
>political machine of death in favor of the simple human
>right of life."
>
>Others around the world supported the Abolition Movement's
>call by flooding Bush campaign offices with phone calls,
>faxes and emails demanding a stay of execution for
>Wilkerson and a moratorium.
>
>A hidden and flawed Warrant of Execution--uncovered by
>activist Ward Larkin and investigated by attorneys Dick
>Burr and Mandy Welch--was not enough to stop the courts'
>wheels of injustice.
>
>`RISEN TO REVOLUTION'
>
>"I will not cooperate with your act of murder," Wilkerson
>had told Warden Robert Treon when asked about his last
>meal.
>
>He meant it.
>
>Wilkerson refused to sign papers requesting family,
>friends or a spiritual advisor to view the lethal
>injection. He refused to sign away his remains or cooperate
>in any way with the government executioners' "standard
>procedures."
>
>When the guards came to take him from the Terrell Unit in
>Livingston to the Huntsville death house, Wilkerson refused
>to leave his cell. A SWAT team was called in--standard
>procedure when a prisoner shows defiance. He was gassed and
>hog-tied with chains.
>
>Supporters expected nothing less from the only person to
>ever attempt escape from Texas' death row twice.
>
>On Feb. 21-22, Wilkerson and Howard Guidry--both members
>of the death-row movement Panthers United for Revolutionary
>Education--said "no more."
>
>Entombed in a high-tech Terrell fortress--its builders
>called it "resistance proof"--Wilkerson and Guidry took a
>prison guard hostage for 13 hours to dramatize their
>righteous anger over brutal prison conditions and the
>railroading of youths to death row.
>
>Njeri Shakur of the Abolition Movement, Deloyd Parker of
>SHAPE and Kofi Taharka of NBUF met with the prisoners and
>presented their demands to prison officials. The guard was
>released unharmed.
>
>Their militant act shook the Texas prison system. It
>helped put the moratorium demand on the front burner.
>
>"They made a choice to do something about injustice,"
>Njeri Shakur said. "They were two brothers who had risen to
>a position of revolution. Now for those of us who have been
>fearful it is a good time to do something."
>
>Shakur received a 30-day jail sentence from Judge Jan
>Krocker, who also set Wilkerson's death date, because she
>stood up and objected to bailiffs beating him in the
>courtroom.
>
>A group of men have been locked down at Terrell since
>Wilkerson's and Guidry's demonstration. Warden Treon
>charged them with "communicating with two Black offenders"
>and "hampering negotiations in a hostage situation."
>
>In a March 6 letter, PURE's Emerson Rudd reported: "We
>prisoners are faced with more repression and retaliation. .
>Sgt. Poole informed me that our [good] behavior meant
>nothing and that when Warden Treon said the lockdown would
>progress, that's when it would."
>
>The lockdown, now in its fourth week, means the prisoners
>are denied the right to hot meals, regular showers,
>recreation and visits from family and friends. The
>Abolition Movement is asking supporters to call and fax
>protests to prison officials.
>
>To help, call the Abolition Movement at (713) 521-0629 or
>visit the website at www.geocities.com/tdpam/.
>
>FURIOUS PACE
>
>A furious pace of activities around the death penalty and
>other working-class issues shows a movement is bursting
>from under the surface.
>
>The Rev. Jesse Jackson came to Houston March 9-10 for a
>rally and mass march to demand equal funding for
>historically Black public colleges like Texas Southern
>University and Prairie View A & M. He'd just come from a
>march of 50,000 for affirmative action against Florida's
>Gov. Jeb Bush.
>
>At the March 9 rally at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church,
>Jackson gave what he called "meat talk":
>
>"In every city I visit I see at least two new buildings,"
>Jackson reported, "a new ballpark and a new jail. We have
>first-class jails and second-class schools.
>
>"As of Feb. 15 there were two million people in jail in
>the United States," said Jackson. "We are 5 percent of the
>world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison
>population. African Americans are 12 percent of the
>population but 55 percent of the jail population. Put Black
>and Brown together and we are 75 percent of the prison-
>industrial complex."
>
>He said Texas under Bush ranks 50th in spending on
>teachers' salaries; first in the percentage of children
>without health insurance; 41st in per-capita spending on
>education, and fifth in percentage of people living in
>poverty.
>
>At the same time, Texas is first in executions--an average
>of one every two weeks since Bush took office.
>
>Urged on by NBUF elder Jean Dember and artist Michael
>Demarris, Jackson declared his support for a moratorium and
>expressed solidarity with Njeri Shakur, who was just hours
>away from being jailed. "We don't just support you,"
>Jackson told Shakur, "we are with you."
>
>About 20 family members, community activists, and young
>supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal accompanied Shakur to the
>Harris County Jail March 10. After marching several blocks
>to the booking station, they entered as a group, holding a
>banner reading, "Stop the execution" and leafleting workers
>inside.
>
>Shakur embraced her daughters and gave a clenched-fist
>salute as she was taken away.
>
>The Abolition Movement then joined the Jackson-led march
>from TSU to the University of Houston, where they
>distributed hundreds of flyers and signed up students on
>petitions. On March 11 the group traveled to the University
>of Texas at Arlington, near Dallas/Ft. Worth, where Gloria
>Rubac spoke on the panel at the opening of Richard
>Kameral's anti-death-penalty art exhibit, "The Waiting
>Room."
>
>"The death penalty is a continuation of slavery," Rubac
>said. "The prison system is set up like a plantation system
>for big landowners. `The farm' is still a free-labor
>system."
>
>The escalation of struggle doesn't surprise Shakur. When
>Workers World spoke to her by phone from her jail cell, she
>said, "Kamau and Howard set things in motion. Things can
>never be the same again."
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <029601bf8f0a$a93263c0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Mumia on the execution of Kamau Wilkerson
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:39:19 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>FROM DEATH ROW/MUMIA ON WILKERSON:
>
>`ABOLISH THE RACIST DEATH MACHINE'
>
>[On March 13, the eve of the state execution of Ponchai
>Kamau Wilkerson in Texas, political prisoner Mumia Abu-
>Jamal wrote the following statement from his own death-row
>cell in Pennsylvania.]
>
>The life of Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson hangs on the altar of
>political ambition.
>
>His trial, which resulted in a contested death sentence,
>has been criticized on several points, among them
>prosecutorial misconduct in voir dire.
>
>Many men and women on America's death rows are there not
>so much because of a bad act, but because of bad lawyering.
>
>The Texas Supreme Court has even given its judicial seal
>of approval to the twisted Texas practice of calling
>sleeping lawyers "adequate counsel." There are many people
>like Ponchai who may be guilty of something, but not
>Capital Murder. Ponchai Wilkersoncase, like so many others,
>is often the result of prosecutorial ambition, counsels'
>laziness and a defendant's poverty.
>
>While Ponchai now has only hours of life measured to him,
>it is still an appropriate time to speak out against the
>political machine of death in favor of the simple human
>right of life.
>
>It is easy for so-called abolitionists to pick and choose
>cases which may seem popular, but it is cases like Ponchai
>that are also classic cases of the innocent flaws in the
>death machine. Let us fight for all on death row and stop
>"the tinkering with the machinery of death." Let us abolish
>the racist death penalty in America.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <029701bf8f0a$a9387e40$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Kamau Wilkerson: A soldier's death
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:39:53 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>EDITORIAL: A SOLDIER'S DEATH
>
>He may have been strapped to a gurney, but Ponchai Kamau
>Wilkerson was standing tall when he died. He fought his
>jailers to the last breath, making every minute of his life
>count.
>
>Wilkerson died a soldier's death. Had he been an
>acknowledged soldier of an acknowledged army representing
>an acknowledged nation, he would be accorded all the honors
>of a hero. Deep within enemy territory, locked inside a
>modern high-tech dungeon, knowing that his captors had the
>absolute power of life or death over him, he resisted to
>the last. He was allowed no banner, no flag to hold high,
>but his conduct and his demeanor became his banner. He
>would not bow his head or cast down his eyes in token of a
>false respect, though they tried to beat it out of him.
>
>What gives a person the strength to stand up--not just to
>physical threats but, even more difficult, to the
>overwhelming social intimidation wielded by a state that
>boasts every day of its monstrous power? It had to have
>been the knowledge that his actions would have great
>meaning to others, long after his own life was taken away.
>
>Wilkerson was not alone, as many people murdered by the
>state before him have been. His unbroken spirit blended
>with that of many people he knew, inside and outside the
>prison injustice system. When he refused to walk peacefully
>to his death, refused to sign away his life, refused a last
>meal, when he said, "I will not cooperate with your act of
>murder," he knew he was not just casting his pearls before
>swine.
>
>He knew that the movement against the death penalty,
>growing ever stronger and bolder, would hear his words,
>feel the pulse in his veins, thrill with his great courage
>and honesty. He knew that millions around the world
>acknowledge his resistance to be just and right, and the
>actions of his tormentors to be the vilest arrogance of
>power. He knew that his defiance would make the movement
>itself braver and more resolute.
>
>Most of the world knows that the death penalty has been
>resurrected in the United States because of racism, pure
>and simple. And racism itself is but a disgusting and
>tattered excuse for the super-exploitation of a huge
>section of the working class. Could a system that has
>produced the grossest social inequality of all time
>continue without the poison of racism?
>
>The one person who could have saved Kamau Wilkerson's life
>at the last minute was Texas Gov. George W. Bush. This heir
>to the "old boy" club of wealth and power aspires to be the
>next president of the United States. Wilkerson's struggle,
>therefore, was invested with worldwide significance, for
>the U.S. capitalist ruling class is hell-bent on dominating
>the entire world, and Bush wants to be the one to do it for
>them. Wherever U.S. multinational corporations are
>plundering the people and the environment, there will be
>sympathy and respect for Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson.
>
>This execution, the 123rd under Bush's reign, will long be
>remembered as marking a turning point in the struggle. It
>is not only the prison guards who must now fear the rising
>resistance against these killing machines. It is the entire
>system, from the Supreme Court to the governors to the
>wardens to the bailiffs. They may be able to physically
>terrorize their captives, but they have lost control over
>their minds. Prisons full of people determined to think
>freely are breeding grounds for revolution.
>
>Just before they killed him, Wilkerson spat out a key to
>his handcuffs. Was he telling the world, "We ourselves hold
>the key to our liberation"?
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <029801bf8f0a$a944b340$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Black Coca-Cola workers fight racism
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:40:30 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ATLANTA
>
>BLACK COCA-COLA WORKERS FIGHT RACISM
>
>By Dianne Mathiowetz
>Atlanta
>
>More than 500 current and former African American
>employees of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. rallied at an
>Atlanta area church March 4 to protest racist
>discrimination at the giant soft-drink firm.
>
>Coke has announced massive layoffs as part of a
>restructuring move to "regain stock investor confidence."
>Some 6,000 jobs around the world are due to be cut--
>including 2,500, or 42 percent of the total, in Atlanta
>where the company has its world headquarters.
>
>The issue that brought long-standing grievances out in the
>open was Coke's decision to require laid-off employees to
>sign a waiver that they would not participate in any legal
>action against Coke, including a discrimination suit
>
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