>
>Wickwire also described how the administration tried to
>force an end to the sit-in by turning off heat and air
>conditioning. "But these students were courageous and
>brave," he said.
>
>Sharon Black Ceci, organizer for the All Peoples Congress,
>received cheers when she said: "The administration wants to
>label us--the community participants in the occupation--as
>outsiders. But it is Johns Hopkins that is the outsider.
>They pay no taxes and are a privileged entity.
>
>"Johns Hopkins must be made accountable to the community."
>
>Ralph Hughes from the Center for Poverty Solutions, Unity
>for Action President Bill Goodin, City Councilwoman Bea
>Gaddy and other community representatives addressed the
>rally. All commended the students and pledged support.
>
>Student organizer Julie Eisenhardt said: "This battle is
>not over. Johns Hopkins has not seen the last of us. Our
>fight is not about a few pennies. We want the elimination
>of poverty.
>
>"We do not want the workers to have to beg for health care
>and education. These are their rights."
>
>She concluded, "Johns Hopkins must know that we have just
>begun to build links with the community and [will] continue
>this fight."
>
> - 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: <01be01bf9977$6aa63a60$0a00a8c0@home>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Mumia & Feinberg at Antioch graduation
>Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 07:07:54 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 30, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>MUMIA & FEINBERG AT ANTIOCH GRADUATION:
>"WE HOPE IT DRAWS A BIG CONTROVERSY"
>
>By Greg Butterfield
>
>The graduating class at Ohio's Antioch College has selected
>Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leslie Feinberg as the keynote speakers at
>its April 29 commencement ceremony.
>
>Feinberg will speak in person. An audio-taped speech by Abu-
>Jamal will be played. The former Black Panther and radical
>journalist is imprisoned on Pennsylvania's death row.
>
>Workers World interviewed Teishan Latner, a member of
>Antioch's Commencement Committee, about the students' choice
>of these two revolutionary fighters as commencement speakers.
>
>"Our intention is to raise the level of awareness about
>[Mumia Abu-Jamal's] case among the large graduation audience
>expected and make a contribution to the struggle for his
>freedom," Latner explained.
>
>"There has been widespread student support here for Mumia
>for a long time," Latner reported. "In a way, the decision to
>invite Mumia to this graduation is a natural progression from
>the numerous smaller actions, education, and support campaigns
>that have been organized here over the years."
>
>Antioch students have also made their presence felt at
>national mobilizations for Abu-Jamal in Philadelphia.
>
>Leslie Feinberg, a transgendered lesbian activist, is the
>author of several groundbreaking books on trans liberation and
>a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.
>
>"Leslie Feinberg is well known and influential here on
>campus," Latner said, "but many people outside of the
>lesbian/gay/ bi/ trans community here often know little about
>her. Students are working to change that, and see it as a
>matter of responsibility to make sure transgender issues are
>well-acknowledged before she comes here as our live co-
>speaker.
>
>"One of the strengths of having a dynamic presence like
>Feinberg at our graduation is that she understands and can
>articulate a broad range of issues, from lesbian/gay/bi /trans
>liberation to police brutality to Mumia's case. And that will
>be extremely important for the diverse audience that we are
>expecting there on the 29th of April."
>
>Last year students at Evergreen College in Oregon selected
>Abu-Jamal as their commencement speaker. The choice raised a
>firestorm of controversy. The Fraternal Order of Police, local
>cop groups, and state and national officials tried to quash
>it.
>
>But students, with the aid of teachers, campus workers and
>alumni, pushed back the right-wing attack. The result:
>national publicity for Abu-Jamal's case.
>
>Workers World asked Latner about the Evergreen experience
>and how students and faculty at Antioch would respond to a
>similar harassment campaign.
>
>"I actually think this will be more low-key, though not
>because we want it that way," Latner said. "I suspect the FOP
>and the Congressional elements and everyone else that tried to
>shut down Mumia's tape-recorded presence at Evergreen know
>that their repression backfired, that it helped build support
>for Mumia's case.
>
>"Some is inevitable, though," said Latner.
>
>"The best way to support may be to write letters or emails
>to any media that try to smear this effort. The same if it
>turns out to be the FOP or other entities.
>
>"We actually hope it draws a big controversy," Latner said,
>"because of course it will give Mumia's case more exposure."
>
>Latner said students had received the support of Antioch
>administrators.
>
> - 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: <01c401bf9977$7759e040$0a00a8c0@home>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] In memory of Kamau
>Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 07:08:15 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 30, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>1971-2000: IN MEMORY OF KAMAU
>
>By Gloria Rubac
>Houston
>
>Ponchai "Kamau" Wilkerson--revolutionary fighter, leader,
>educator and poet--was murdered by Gov. George Bush on
>March 14 in the capital of capital punishment: Huntsville,
>Texas.
>
>The Houston comrades of Workers World Party are proud to
>have worked with Kamau during the last six years of his
>short life, as he developed and grew into a respected and
>beloved leader of activists on Texas death row.
>
>Kamau was a fighter up until the very last breath he took.
>As he lay strapped to a gurney in the death house in
>Huntsville--extra leather belts holding him down, the
>poisons already flowing through his veins--he gave the
>Texas prison system his last insult. He spit out their
>handcuff key.
>
>Kamau was an African and Asian man who arrived as a youth
>on death row in 1991 at age 19. He rebelled against the
>racist prison system from day one.
>
>He refused to conform to their racist policies that refuse
>African American prisoners the right to wear their hair in
>any traditional manner such as cornrows, braids or
>dreadlocks. This forced him into constant confrontations
>with prison guards.
>
>They thought they could break him with their continuous
>disciplinary charges. They only made him stronger.
>
>Over the years on death row, Brother Kamau studied the
>revolutionary politics of Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton and
>George Jackson. He read Franz Fanon, W.E.B. DuBois, Nat
>Turner and Che Guevara. He studied Marx and Lenin and read
>the writings of Sam Marcy, founder of Workers World Party.
>
>He drew strength from the courageous women revolutionaries
>in Nicaragua who were members of the Sandinista Front for
>National Liberation. He learned from history and from
>revolutionary fighters of all nationalities.
>
>When death-row activists were organizing in the mid-1990s,
>Kamau was instrumental in forming PURE--Panthers United for
>Revolutionary Education, a group of African American
>prisoners committed to change. One of the founders of PURE,
>Harvey "Tee" Earvin, once said, "Kamau is the heart of
>PURE."
>
>One of Kamau's most prized projects in PURE was a
>community library that he organized on 17-Wing. Using his
>own personal library and gathering books from other men, he
>built a library of hundreds and hundreds of books that were
>available to all on his wing. Through this library,
>prisoners could learn the basics of Marxism, Swahili or the
>history of Cuba.
>
>Kamau set an example of courage through his two escape
>attempts, his hunger strikes, his recent taking of a guard
>hostage to denounce the death penalty and his complete
>refusal to participate in any stage of his execution. He
>proved that no matter where you are, there is a way to
>resist.
>
>His demands have rung out loud and clear: Humane
>conditions on death row, not sensory-deprivation chambers
>and total lack of human contact as there is now. A
>moratorium on executions. And Kamau called on his
>community, the African American community, to become more
>involved in the leadership of the movement to abolish the
>death penalty.
>
>Kamau combined his zeal for revolutionary thought with his
>love for his family and his people. Dear to his soul were
>African American people who had struggled against and
>survived the holocaust of slavery. He also loved Asian
>people and their struggles for self-determination, which he
>saw embodied in his mother's life here in the United
>States.
>
>His heart and soul belonged with the oppressed youth in
>this country. He saw promise and hope in the progressive
>music and poetry and culture of the youth. He knew
>firsthand the racism that lashes oppressed youth every day
>in the schools, on the streets, and in the prisons and
>jails.
>
>But he also knew that repression breeds resistance and
>that one day the generation of youth now being criminalized
>by this rich-on-top, poor-on-the-bottom capitalist system
>will rise up and turn it upside down.
>
>Kamau's politics filled the hundreds of poems that he
>wrote for himself, for his family, for his comrades and for
>the struggle. Through his beautiful and angry words he
>dissected the evils of a system that cares nothing for poor
>and working people and only values the almighty dollar.
>
>His writings are filled with the pain inflicted upon him
>by the system. But shining through is his optimism that
>through struggle the oppression will be ended once and for
>all.
>
>Kamau was our comrade and our friend. Along with his
>brothers on death row and his mother, sister and brothers,
>and particularly his daughter Kiera and his companion
>Njeri, we will miss him.
>
>We will miss the twinkle in his eye that lit up his face
>when he had a new idea for struggle. His quick smile for
>all his friends and comrades. His total and utter contempt
>for the criminal injustice system.
>
>We will treasure the poems and the letters he sent, the
>beautiful gifts of jewelry he hand-made for us, and his
>love for the people that he shared with us.
>
>The state of Texas has taken Kamau from us but his
>beautiful revolutionary spirit will never die. It will live
>on in each of us who continues his courageous fight, not
>only against the death penalty, but against all forms of
>racism and capitalist oppression.
>
>Kamau Wilkerson, presente!
>
> - 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: <01ca01bf9977$8cca7660$0a00a8c0@home>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Behind the IMF & World Bank
>Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 07:08:51 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 30, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BEHIND THE IMF AND WORLD BANK:
>THE ROLE OF THE U.S. GOLIATH & ITS MILITARY MACHINE
>
>By Richard Becker
>
>["For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act
>like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of
>the market will never work without a hidden fist.
>McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the
>designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the
>world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the
>United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." --
>Thomas Friedman, New York Times, March 28, 1999]
>
>
>
>It is impossible, without mutilating reality and doing
>great disservice to the people's movement, to separate the
>struggle against the International Monetary Fund, World
>Bank and the World Trade Organization from the struggle
>against U.S. imperialism, its military aggression abroad
>and repression at home.
>
>Big demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank on
>April 16-17 in Washington are now in the final planning
>stages. Many organizations have poured time, energy and
>resources into these actions, which are aimed at shutting
>down the semi-annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank.
>
>The opposition to these two predatory institutions--which
>have wreaked such great suffering on the oppressed
>countries and peoples of the world for more than a half-
>century--comes from a wide range of organizations including
>progressive religious groups, unions, anarchists, and
>solidarity and political groups.
>
>Some organizers have billed the DC protests as "Seattle
>East"-- a follow-up to the mass actions that disrupted the
>World Trade Organization in Seattle in late November/early
>December of last year. The events on April 16-17 promise to
>be the biggest manifestation of opposition to the IMF and
>World Bank yet seen inside the United States.
>
>As generally progressive and important as this
>mobilization is, there is a glaring omission in much of the
>organizing literature for A16, as it is being called. There
>is almost no mention of the relationship between
>globalization and U.S. militarism and repression. This is
>not a secondary or side issue.
>
>U.S. imperialist domination is the number-one problem, the
>main obstacle to real development and progress for the
>people of the world. And military superiority above all is
>what makes the United States the leading imperial power.
>
>>From Washington's point of view, the aim of globalization-
>- breaking down all barriers to capital's worldwide
>exploitation--is not just "corporate domination" in the
>general sense, but U.S. corporate domination. To achieve
>this domination, the ruling establishment often uses
>economic, political, diplomatic and military means in an
>integrated strategy, as they have against Iraq and
>Yugoslavia.
>
>Maximizing profit is, of course, what drives the system.
>But maintaining its dominant position in the world economic
>and political order is the guiding principle of U. S.
>strategic doctrine. Globalization yes, but globalization
>with U.S. capital in the driver's seat.
>
>In its drive to maintain global hegemony, the IMF, World
>Bank and WTO are instruments of U.S. policy. The enforcing
>arm is the Pentagon.
>
>IMF & WORLD BANK SET UP BY THE U.S.
>
>>From their very beginnings in 1944 at Bretton Woods, N.
>H., Washington saw the International Monetary Fund and
>World Bank--originally called the International Bank for
>Reconstruction and Development--as a means to facilitate
>U.S. world economic domination.
>
>World War II was coming to an end. The Bretton Woods
>agreement creating the IMF made the U.S. dollar the
>standard to which all other countries' currencies were
>pegged. The IMF and World Bank headquarters were
>established in Washington, where they have remained until
>today.
>
>The IBRD/World Bank's original priority was to extend
>reconstruction loans to countries that would become
>importers of U.S. goods. The idea was to help rebuild war-
>shattered, non-profit-making infrastructure like roads and
>ports with government-backed loans, so that later they
>could serve as the means for private-sector trade and
>profit.
>
>The aim, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau said
>at that time, was "a world in which international trade and
>international investment can be carried on by businessmen
>on business principles." Morgenthau and other government
>officials made it clear that they were referring first and
>foremost to U.S. "businessmen." (Kolko, The Politics of
>War, 1990, Pantheon Books, p. 257, footnote)
>
>Establishing the IMF and World Bank was part of the re-
>ordering of the world economic system by the United States
>in the aftermath of World War II. They were designed to
>assure U.S. global domination. This new order also involved
>the United States becoming the dominant power in the
>declining empires of its wartime allies--Britain, France,
>Netherlands, etc.--as well as of its enemies Italy, Germany
>and Japan.
>
>The imperialist allies/rivals were cut in on the new post-
>war arrangement as distinctly junior partners of the United
>States. Today they make up the G-7 group: United States,
>Germany, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
>
>At the same time, the United States and its class allies
>were fighting to stop the revolutions rising across Asia,
>Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
>
>Seeking to roll back the revolutionary tide and secure its
>new status and possessions, the United States never
>demobilized its military after World War II. On the
>contrary, it embarked on a vast military build-up of all
>types of high-tech and conventional weaponry including
>nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
>
>Since 1940, Washington has spent the unimaginable sum of
>$20 trillion ($20,000,000,000,000!) on the military--enough
>money to have provided for adequate nutrition, clean water,
>electrification, housing, literacy, and basic health care
>for the world's entire population.
>
>In the next four years alone an additional $1.2 trillion
>will go down the military rathole.
>
>Today the U.S. military budget is bigger than that of the
>rest of the United Nations Security Council members
>combined. This bloated military establishment exists to
>protect and serve U.S. capital--not only to extend and
>maintain its domination in what used to be called the Third
>World, the oppressed countries, but also vis-a-vis its
>imperialist allies and rivals.
>
>THE IMF AND THE PENTAGON
>
>U.S. strategy employs economic, financial, diplomatic,
>political and military means to achieve its ends. As Thomas
>Friedman, a leading mouthpiece for U.S. imperialism, put it
>in his New York Times column, the military is the
>indispensable "hidden fist" making imperialist
>globalization work. Friedman wrote this column four days
>after the start of the 1999 bombing war against Yugoslavia.
>
>In the early 1980s, Yugoslavia was one of the first
>countries to have a Structural Adjustment Program imposed
>on it by the IMF. The country had taken major development
>loans beginning in the 1950s. The worldwide economic
>recession of 1979 hit Yugoslavia hard and it needed to re-
>finance its loans.
>
>The economic austerity that the IMF demanded as a
>condition for refinancing the country's loans played a
>major role in heightening the tensions between the
>different republics and provinces of Yugoslavia and
>exacerbating widely varying levels of living standards
>within the federal state. This development had the effect
>of strengthening nationalist and secessionist elements from
>Slovenia to Kosovo.
>
>The threat of trade sanctions, a credit cut-off and other
>penalties by the United States and the European Community
>was used to support the secessionist movements in
>Yugoslavia in 1991 and 1992 when civil war broke out. In
>1992, the United States forced economic sanctions, a total
>blockade of the country, through the UN Security Council,
>and threw Yugoslavia out of the UN and all other
>international bodies.
>
>The sanctions blockade was enforced by military means, as
>all blockades--including the current one against Iraq--must
>be if they are to be effective. The U.S. Navy, along with
>its NATO allies, began patrolling the Adriatic Sea and
>Danube River, stopping all vessels that might be bound for
>Yugoslavia.
>
>NATO jets prevented any air traffic to and from
>Yugoslavia, and in the summer of 1995 launched a major
>bombing campaign in Bosnia. In late 1995, Yugoslavia signed
>the Dayton Accords.
>
>Even after Dayton, Washington maintained an "outer wall of
>sanctions" against Yugoslavia--i.e. blocking credit and
>loans. This meant preventing Yugoslavia from receiving new
>loans from international institutions and banks, which the
>country badly needed.
>
>But the United States, while securing control of much of
>the former Yugoslavia, had still not fully achieved its
>objective of subjugating the entire region. So in 1999 came
>the 78-day U.S./NATO bombing war, the occupation of Kosovo
>province, followed by new sanctions and an oil embargo
>against Yugoslavia.
>
>The 10-year war against that country continues, using, as
>it has since the beginning, the IMF, World Bank, UN and
>Pentagon as elements of an integrated strategy.
>
>To be effective, the movement resisting imperialist
>domination must fight against U.S. wars and intervention
>everywhere, at the same time that it struggles against the
>IMF, World Bank and WTO.
>
>It also must resist any attempt to line the movement up
>with one faction or another in the U.S. ruling class in its
>struggle against the People's Republic of China. This
>emerging movement would be disoriented and eventually
>demobilized if it supported the call to exclude China from
>the WTO or deny it normal trade status.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
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