>
> WW News Service Digest #68
>
> 1) Why anti-China campaign hurts movement
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) 'Hurricane' speaks out for Mumia
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Texas death machine: Lawyers call for moratorium
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) Hollywood protest: Don't televise 'Dr. Laura's' gay bashing
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) On the picket line: 4/6/2000
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Apr. 6, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>WHY ANTI-CHINA CAMPAIGN HURTS MOVEMENT
>
>By Richard Becker
>
>Is China the main problem for the workers of the United
>States and the rest of the world? Or is it U.S.
>imperialism, which has extended it tentacles into most of
>the world's countries?
>
>The answer seems so clear that it should hardly need
>discussion. But it has become the issue around which a
>major struggle has broken out in the important upcoming
>mobilization to Washington.
>
>Thousands of students, workers, environmentalists, church
>and political activists will gather in Washington on April
>16-17 in an attempt to shut down the semi-annual meetings
>of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The IMF
>and World Bank are U.S.-dominated instruments of the giant
>banks and corporations. Together the IMF and World Bank
>have played a major role in making the rich much richer
>while spreading poverty and environmental destruction,
>especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They are an
>integral part of capitalist globalization
>
>The many activists and organizations involved in what is
>being called "A16" hope for a repeat of the successful
>demonstrations in Seattle four months ago, when the meeting
>of the World Trade Organization was severely disrupted,
>leading to a collapse of the talks. The Seattle protests
>gave great impetus to the movement against corporate
>globalization and the April demonstrations promise to be
>the largest ever held in the U.S. against the IMF/World
>Bank.
>
>Now a serious struggle over direction and demands that
>could potentially derail this incipient movement has broken
>out.
>
>AFL-CIO TARGETS CHINA
>
>The leadership of the AFL-CIO labor federation, along with
>some other sectors of the movement mobilizing for A16 and
>the activities leading up to it, have chosen to make the
>People's Republic of China their main target. The AFL-CIO's
>major activity is a "mass lobbying day" on April 12, under
>the banner of "No blank check for China."
>
>Before and after Seattle, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
>announced that stopping China's admission to the WTO and
>blocking the granting of permanent Normal Trade Relations
>to the world's most populous country was a top priority.
>
>NTR is also known as Most Favored Nation status. Having
>NTR or MFN status merely means that a country is not
>subject to any special tariffs or sanctions in its
>commercial relations with the United States. The U.S.
>presently grants MFN status to China on a year-by-year
>basis, a process to which other countries are not
>subjected. Hearings are held in Congress annually to
>determine if the PRC "deserves" another year of MFN. This
>process causes deep anger and resentment in the PRC.
>
>Several groups mobilizing for A16, like the Economic
>Policy Institute, Global Exchange and Public Citizen's
>Global Trade Watch, have joined in the AFL-CIO-led
>campaign.
>
>Mike Dolan of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch was
>quoted in the Dec. 6, 1999, Wall St. Journal as saying,
>"China, we're coming atcha. There is no question about it.
>The next issue is China." A spokesperson for the Economic
>Policy Institute, a liberal group, has opposed China's
>admission to the WTO because it is involved in "market
>distorting government policies, including requirements for
>technology transfer to domestic firms, local content and
>offset requirements."
>
>The AFL-CIO leaders, their mainly Democratic Party allies
>in Congress and the other groups mentioned above oppose MFN
>status and admission to the WTO for China because, they
>claim, China does not have adequate labor standards, uses
>prison and child labor, violates human rights, and does not
>allow workers to organize "independent unions."
>
>Leaving aside for a moment the very dubious accuracy of
>the charges against China, couldn't the same be said about
>the U.S., and even more so about its neocolonies like south
>Korea, Indonesia, Guatemala, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan,
>Panama, and so on? There is no campaign to exclude these
>countries from the WTO.
>
>PROTECTIONISM DOESN'T PROTECT WORKERS
>
>The key issue, the real issue, for the AFL-CIO leaders is
>protectionism. Because Chinese workers are paid lower wages
>than U.S. workers, they argue, normalizing trade between
>the two countries will undercut U.S. workers, especially in
>manufacturing.
>
>The threat of job loss is far from hypothetical. Tens of
>millions of manufacturing and other jobs have been lost
>over the past three decades due to plants closing in the
>U.S. and relocating in lower-wage areas, primarily in Asia
>and Latin America. Countries with right-wing military
>dictatorships installed and supported by the U.S.
>government have been particular favorites for relocation.
>This is a process that will continue, trade agreements or
>not, as long as capitalism exists.
>
>The protectionist stance of the AFL-CIO leaders will not
>stop capital flight.
>
>But protectionism does accomplish something: It pits
>workers in the advanced capitalist countries against their
>sisters and brothers in the oppressed, trying-to-develop
>countries. The anti-China campaign misleads workers here to
>believe that another country and its people is the main
>enemy, rather than our "own" capitalist ruling class. By
>doing so, it undercuts and diverts the struggle into "safe"
>channels--safe for the ruling class. The capitalist owners,
>the ones who shut down and relocate the factories, are let
>off the hook.
>
>In addition, the anti-China campaign is overlaid with
>overt anti-communism and covert racism. The latest issue of
>the Teamsters union magazine features a back cover
>attacking "Communist China." And it is impossible to forget
>that anti-Chinese racism has a long and inglorious history
>in the U.S. with which any anti-China campaign inevitably
>connects.
>
>More than a century ago, the U.S. Congress and many
>Western state governments, including California, passed
>racist anti-Chinese legislation, barring property-owning,
>immigration, voting rights and more for Chinese people. In
>1882, the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion
>Act, outlawing Chinese immigration to the U.S.
>
>It cannot be forgotten that the labor movement of that
>era, including many unions and the Workingmen's Party, then
>a major power in California, spearheaded the anti-Chinese
>hysteria, which frequently took the form of lynch mobs in
>the streets of San Francisco and other cities and towns.
>
>This history is not unknown to those who are joining in
>the "China Exclusion Campaign" of 2000. Global Exchange has
>written: "We hesitate to become involved in the AFL-CIO
>campaign to keep China out of the WTO because we fear that
>it may promote protectionism, racism and anti-Communism."
>But then it goes on to support the campaign, arguing that
>"we should oppose granting China permanent NTR because
>permanent NTR will harm Chinese workers' interests."
>
>The argument that China should be kept out of the WTO and
>denied NTR to "protect the interests of China's workers and
>peasants" has become suddenly fashionable among the left-
>liberal supporters of the China exclusion campaign. It has
>the advantage of providing a left-sounding cover for a
>reactionary campaign.
>
>It also disregards the PRC's right to self-determination,
>and treats the Chinese government as lacking in legitimacy.
>This view is shared, of course, by large sections of the
>U.S. ruling class.
>
>U.S. IMPERIALISM'S AIMS TOWARD CHINA
>
>A half-century ago the Chinese Revolution broke
>imperialism's grip, united the country and shocked the
>imperialist ruling class here. "Who lost China"--they
>really did think it was theirs--was the question posed by
>the corporate media and politicians, and this set off a new
>wave of anti-communist repression in the U.S.
>
>Since then, the U.S. has employed different tactics at
>different times in its campaign to regain China: nuclear
>encirclement, war, sanctions, economic, political, military
>and diplomatic isolation or engagement, and so on.
>
>But there is no real division over the aims. These are to
>contain the PRC, limit its development and power, destroy
>its socialist industrial core, oust the Communist Party
>from power and ultimately reduce the country to its former
>status as a colony, open without restriction to U.S.
>capitalist exploitation of its labor, resources and market.
>
>Since the revolution, China has made enormous strides
>forward in economic development, to the point that some
>imperialist strategists believe it could become the major
>rival of the U.S. within several decades. At the same time,
>China is still a developing country, struggling to
>modernize and acquire technology of all kinds. And it is
>still encircled militarily by the U.S., which maintains
>large, nuclear-equipped forces based in Japan, south Korea,
>Taiwan, the Philippines and on a huge off-shore fleet.
>China is targeted by more than 6,000 U.S. nuclear missiles.
>
>China's interest in joining the WTO is based on
>development and acquiring technology. The U.S. ruling class
>wants to bring China in with the hope of subjugating it.
>This is a continuation of the same struggle that has been
>going on for 50 years.
>
>China is not above criticism from the left. Many
>supporters of China have been deeply concerned about the
>direction of the country's development strategy. The
>current strategy began with the defeat of the Maoist left
>wing by the Deng Xiaoping faction in 1976. Under Mao,
>development was also the priority, but the left in the
>Chinese Communist Party wanted to avoid bourgeois methods
>and imperialist penetration.
>
>China has not had a revolutionary foreign policy for many
>years. One example of this was China's vote, under U.S.
>pressure, for the original sanctions against Iraq in the UN
>Security Council in 1990.
>
>Nevertheless, the PRC today retains a socialist industrial
>core and the Chinese Communist Party still holds state
>power. It is not a capitalist, much less an imperialist,
>state.
>
>The WTO, the IMF and World Bank are all imperialist-
>dominated institutions, as is the United Nations and its
>myriad agencies. But as long as they exist, all countries
>in the world should have the right to join as well as to
>quit them. For activists inside the imperialist U.S. to
>demand the exclusion of certain developing countries from
>international bodies reveals to what degree the
>consciousness of the movement has been infected with the
>arrogance of its "own" ruling class.
>
>The struggle over China's trade status is not just, or
>even primarily, a foreign policy issue. Opposing permanent
>NTR for China is a back-handed way of expressing confidence
>in the U.S. ruling class. Tying the annual renewal of
>normal trade relations to China's "human-rights
>performance" implies that the U.S. ruling class and
>government are "democratic" and have the right to judge and
>discipline other countries, to pressure them to become
>similarly "democratic." But the U.S. system is really a
>dictatorship of the capitalist class, with a democratic
>facade
>
>The U.S. ruling class, with its highly militarized and
>repressive state apparatus, is the number one enemy of the
>working class and oppressed peoples here and around the
>world. To make China--rather than U.S. imperialism--the
>main target is to lead the movement down a dead-end street.
>
>The IMF, World Bank and WTO have served the interests of
>capital to the detriment of the world's working people. But
>if they all disappeared tomorrow, the fundamental problem
>of capitalism--a system that inevitably enriches the few at
>the expense of the many--would remain.
>
>Our most basic problem is the existence of the profit
>system based upon the private ownership of the world's
>wealth, wealth created by the workers of the globe. This
>system cannot be reformed or made more fair and just. "Fair
>trade" will only be possible when the rule of profit is
>overthrown and replaced by a system based on meeting
>people's needs. That is socialism.
>
>Building the revolutionary movement to achieve that goal
>must start with the understanding that our main enemy is at
>home.
>
> - 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: <016d01bf9c49$93412910$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] 'Hurricane' speaks out for Mumia
>Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 21:17:20 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Apr. 6, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>"HURRICANE" SPEAKS OUT FOR MUMIA
>
>By Monica Moorehead
>
>The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia
>Abu-Jamal held a press conference on March 25 in
>Pittsburgh. A featured speaker was Rubin "Hurricane"
>Carter, the former middleweight boxer who spent 20 years in
>prison for a crime he did not commit.
>
>Carter has been on a whirlwind tour of the U.S. for months
>to help promote his new book, "Rush to Judgment," and also
>to help promote the moving film depicting his struggle to
>win his freedom called "The Hurricane," featuring a
>powerful performance by Denzel Washington.
>
>Carter met with Mumia on the same day as the press
>conference to show his solidarity with the death-row inmate
>and let the press know his strong feelings on Mumia's
>innocence. The press conference also took up some important
>developments in Mumia's legal case that shed light on the
>intentional effort by the state to obstruct justice and
>send Mumia Abu-Jamal to his death by hiding what his
>lawyers call "exculpatory facts."
>
>These developments focus on testimony given by the
>prosecution's "star" witness, Cynthia White, back on March
>29, 1982. Lawyers who have reviewed her testimony say it
>clearly shows there was a passenger in Mumia's car on the
>night of Dec. 9, 1981, when Philadelphia police officer
>Daniel Faulkner was fatally shot and Mumia was shot in the
>stomach. Mumia was convicted in a sham of a trial for the
>murder of Faulkner.
>
>The then prosecutor, District Attorney Joseph McGill, when
>questioning White, repeated her claim that there was indeed
>a passenger in Mumia's car. Yet the prosecution tried to
>prove that only three people were there on Locust Street
>when the incident took place. The state wound up
>disregarding this crucial piece of evidence about who she
>saw on the night in question.
>
>A number of eyewitnesses, including White, stated under
>oath that Mumia did not shoot Faulkner. But much of this
>testimony was either dismissed or covered up by the
>prosecutor, hanging Judge Albert Sabo, the Philadelphia
>Fraternal Order of Police and the criminal justice system.
>
>These repressive forces had been conspiring for years to
>silence Mumia for joining the Black Panther Party during
>his teenage years and for writing biting exposÇs of Police
>Commissioner Frank Rizzo's reign of racist terror during
>the 1970s. McGill put Mumia's revolutionary political
>beliefs on trial--a clear violation of Mumia's
>constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial,
>although not the only one.
>
>COURT APPEARANCE COMING UP
>
>For the past 17 years, Mumia and his attorneys have been
>turned down at every level of state appeals, including
>twice by the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court. The legal
>case has now entered the federal appeals process, which is
>crucial.
>
>The Effective Death Penalty Act signed by President Bill
>Clinton in 1996 has made it very difficult for federal
>judges to throw out state court rulings, no matter how
>biased or unconstitutional. Mumia has only one good chance
>to be granted an evidentiary hearing in the federal
>district courts. During such an evidentiary hearing,
>Mumia's lawyers would be able to present important evidence
>that was suppressed by the Pennsylvania courts in years
>past.
>
>Oral arguments will be heard in April or early May by
>Judge William Yohn, who will then make a decision on
>whether an evidentiary hearing will be granted.
>
>Supporters of Mumia around the country are making
>emergency plans to come to Philadelphia the day of these
>arguments. Mumia will be there in person to hear them.
>Supporters will be organized inside and outside the
>courtroom to continue to put mass pressure on the courts to
>grant the simple demand for an evidentiary hearing and to
>show Mumia that he does not stand alone. Tickets are being
>organized for buses, trains and planes. There will only be
>a week to 10 days between the announcement and the court
>date in which to organize.
>
>MADISON SQUARE GARDEN RALLY
>
>In the meantime, plans to rally at the Theater at Madison
>Square Garden on May 7 are going full steam ahead. This
>rally will not only demand a new trial for Mumia but will
>also have a strong anti-death penalty and anti-police-
>brutality theme.
>
>Larry Holmes, an organizer of the May 7 Mobilization, told
>Workers World, "A rally like this could not have come at a
>better time and place considering the terrorist, racist
>atmosphere created by the cop-mayor Giuliani, his police
>chief Howard Safir, and the entire NYPD. In the past year
>alone, four unarmed Black men have been executed by NYPD's
>`finest' starting with Amadou Diallo and now Patrick
>Dorismond. People of color in this city are angry and
>frustrated and asking a justified question of `Who will be
>
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