> WW News Service Digest #39
>
> 1) Executioners & Crooks
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) Spring Offensive for Mumia/Feb. 28 CD
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 4) Vieques to U.S. Navy: "None of the Above"
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 5) Mexico City: Cops Raid Campus
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 6) Haider & Austria: Street Fighting Erupts
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 23:18:26 -0500
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>Subject: [WW] Executioners & Crooks
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 17, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>EXECUTIONERS & CROOKS: DEMOCRATS & REPUBLICANS IN
>ELECTION 2000
>
>By Monica Moorehead
>
>Here we go again. Another presidential election campaign
>in full swing. Another unhealthy dose of campaign promises
>being made to the masses of people only to be broken later
>on.
>
>Another batch of straight white males. They either come
>from super-rich families, like Al Gore and George W. Bush
>with their rich connections. Or they're like Bill Bradley,
>candidates who have to depend on so-called liberal types
>within the U.S. ruling class for financial backing.
>
>And as if this were not bad enough, the big-business media
>are having a field day giving front-page coverage to the
>positions of the Democratic and Republican front runners--on
>issues like raising taxes, limiting abortion and balancing
>the federal budget, along with all the mud slinging.
>
>The capitalist politicians are quick to highlight their
>unconditional support on one issue in particular. Republican
>or Democrat, they all want more "law and order."
>
>When Hillary Rodham Clinton on Feb. 6 announced her New
>York senatorial candidacy against her right-wing, pro-cop
>rival, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, she made it crystal
>clear that her platform includes supporting capital
>punishment and putting more cops on the streets.
>
>Law and order is a code name for repression, not of the
>rich and the affluent but of the poor and most oppressed.
>And racist repression is quietly expanding and deepening at
>an alarming rate.
>
>Omitted from the front-page coverage were three recent
>reports issued the same week.
>
>2 MILLION UNDER LOCK AND KEY
>
>A Justice Policy Institute report confirmed that by mid-
>February 2 million people will be incarcerated in U.S. jails
>and prisons. These are staggering numbers.
>
>With only 5 percent of the world's population, the United
>States accounts for 25 percent of the world's prison
>population.
>
>The JPI report is entitled "The Punishing Decade: Prison
>and Jail Estimates of the Millennium." It includes the
>latest numbers and trends from the U.S. Justice Department.
>
>The JPI report illustrates how the U.S. prison population
>accelerated at a faster rate during the 1990s than during
>any other previous decade. During the 1990s the inmate
>population increased by 61 percent.
>
>Consider these numbers: At the beginning of the 1990s,
>there were over 1.1 million people imprisoned. On Dec. 31,
>1999, there were over 1.9 million imprisoned. At this rate,
>at the end of the year 2000, there will be 2.07 million
>people behind bars.
>
>Looking now at subgroups, a federal study done by the
>General Accounting Office reports that there were twice as
>many women incarcerated during the 1990s as before. This
>indicates even faster growth than for the male prison
>population.
>
>Most of these women are serving time for what are called
>nonviolent drug crimes. These women suffer a higher rate of
>HIV infection and mental illness than the imprisoned men.
>
>Eighty-four percent of female federal inmates and 60
>percent of female state inmates are mothers.
>
>Because of systematic racism, Black women are eight times
>more likely to be incarcerated than white women. Latinas
>have a higher rate of incarceration as well, compared to the
>overall population.
>
>And more and more women prisoners are courageously coming
>forward to report that they are victims of sexual abuse and
>rape at the hands of male guards.
>
>`THE COLOR OF JUSTICE'
>
>The third study was called "The Color of Justice." This is
>the first study that has statistically substantiated what
>many already knew. Within the California juvenile system
>youths of color are twice as likely as white youths to be
>tried as adults.
>
>California has one of the biggest prison systems in the
>world. It is bigger than some countries' systems. It is also
>notorious for its law that sentences those convicted three
>times of a felony to an automatic life sentence with no hope
>of parole--the "three-strikes-and-out" law.
>
>Study co-author Dan Macallister wrote: "Discrimination
>against kids of color accumulates at every stage of the
>justice system and skyrockets when juveniles are tried as
>adults. California has a double standard: throw kids of
>color behind bars, but rehabilitate white kids who commit
>comparable crimes."
>
>Los Angeles county produces 40 percent of the juvenile-
>court cases that make it to the adult courts. The study
>showed that of the 24,000 young people arrested there in
>1996, 56 percent were Latino, 25 percent were Black, 12
>percent white and 6 percent Asian.
>
>Of the 561 cases that made it to adult court, 59 percent
>were Latino, 30 percent Black, 6 percent Asian and 5 percent
>white. Compared to whites, Black youths were 18.4 times more
>likely to be convicted, Latino youths were 7.3 times more
>likely, and Asian youths were 4.5 times more likely to be
>jailed.
>
>The study showed that in Texas, home to death-penalty
>candidate George W. Bush, Black and Latino youths make up
>just one-half of the state's youth population but they make
>up 80 percent of imprisoned youths--and 100 percent of
>juveniles housed in adult jails.
>
>These statistics are no accident. They point to the
>growing preponderance of the prison-industrial complex in
>society.
>
>An estimated $39 billion was spent in 1999 to sustain
>prison and jails. That number is expected to jump to $41
>billion by the end of 2000.
>
>The incarceration of youths of color, coupled with police
>murders and brutality and the racist use of the death
>penalty, is nothing short of genocide. This should be one of
>the major political issues during the 2000 elections.
>
>In fact, Bush should not be running for president--rather,
>he should be put on trial before the masses for sanctioning
>state murders in Texas, which are crimes against humanity.
>
>The young people of this country have a right to a decent
>education and job opportunities like what the youths of Cuba
>have won through the socialist revolution. It is way overdue
>to bring this heinous scandal out in the open through
>debates, mass meetings and demonstrations.
>
>[Monica Moorehead is the 2000 Workers World Party
>presidential candidate. Gloria La Riva is her vice-
>presidential running mate.]
>
> - 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)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 23:23:52 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 17, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ILLINOIS MORATORIUM ACCELERATES ANTI-DEATH-PENALTY
>ACTIVITY ACROSS U.S.
>
>By Gloria Rubac
>Houston
>
>After years of struggle by the families, friends and
>supporters of death-row prisoners to abolish the inhuman and
>racist system of executions, huge cracks have appeared in
>what was a ruling-class united front for the death penalty.
>A moratorium on executions issued by Illinois Gov. George
>Ryan on Jan. 31 has given renewed hope to the national
>campaign to end the death penalty.
>
>The governor was forced to take the action after a 13th
>death-row prisoner was exonerated. Twelve people have been
>executed in the state since 1990. Ryan now says he can no
>longer defend the system.
>
>The racism of the cops, courts and the juries, the
>district attorneys' misconduct, the frequent incompetence of
>underpaid court-appointed attorneys, the politicians who cut
>funding for attorneys and pass laws that limit appeals, and
>the fact that the death penalty is reserved for the poor--
>all this has been put on page one by the Illinois
>moratorium.
>
>Since Ryan's shift on Jan. 31, death-penalty abolitionists
>from all corners of the country as well as the establishment
>media have called for a reexamination of the death penalty.
>
>The death-penalty process in Illinois is by no means
>unique. In the 27 years since capital punishment was
>reinstated, court reviews have released 85 people from death
>rows nationwide. This means that for every seven executions,
>one person on death row has been found wrongly convicted or
>sentenced.
>
>There is no way to determine how many innocent people have
>been executed.
>
>In recent years, anti-death-penalty activists have helped
>prove the innocence of many on death row. This plus the
>constant protests and vigils when executions were carried
>out has finally had an impact on the capitalist political
>establishment.
>
>Fully one-third of the 611 U.S. executions have taken
>place in Texas. One single county--Harris County, which
>includes Houston--has executed 61 people. That is more than
>any entire state except Texas and Virginia.
>
>Now a new coalition of Houston activists including
>Houstonians United for Mumia, the Nation of Islam, the Texas
>Death Penalty Abolition Movement, the Pedro Oregon Justice
>Coalition, La Resistencia, and SHAPE Community Center plan a
>Feb. 11 news conference to announce their campaign for a
>moratorium on the death penalty in this state.
>
>BIG-BUSINESS MEDIA QUESTION DEATH PENALTY
>
>As the establishment media have finally focused on the
>issue because of the Illinois moratorium, some of the more
>blatant injustices and racism in this country's capitalist
>legal system have been brought to light.
>
>A Feb. 1 New York Times editorial read: "Illinois is not
>the only state with a capital justice system so flawed that
>it cannot ensure that innocent people are spared. _ It is
>time that other pro-death-penalty governors--including Gov.
>George W. Bush of Texas--acknowledge the flaws and stop what
>Justice Harry Blackmun once called the `machinery of
>death.'"
>
>The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialized that
>Pennsylvania Gov. Ridge and his fellow chief executives in
>the 37 states with a death penalty, "including Gov. George
>Bush in Texas, would do well to follow Gov. Ryan's
>courageous example."
>
>"Actual Innocence," a new book by activist lawyers Barry
>Scheck and Peter Neufeld who run the Innocence Project, and
>New York Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer, is due out Feb. 15.
>It tells the stories of 10 men exonerated after years of
>imprisonment and recounts how investigators and prosecutors
>who accuse the wrong person can win convictions.
>
>Then there are judges who focus largely on procedural
>problems. The authors draw from an outrageous statement by
>Chief Justice William Rehnquist--"A claim of actual
>innocence is not itself a constitutional claim"--for the
>title of their book.
>
>Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin has asked President
>Bill Clinton to suspend federal executions. According to
>Feingold, sponsor of a bill to abolish the federal death
>penalty, "federal courts have sentenced 21 people to die and
>75 percent are minorities."
>
>On Feb. 11, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking member
>of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will hold a Capitol Hill
>news conference to introduce a package of reforms to address
>the growing national crisis in the administration of capital
>punishment. Joining him will be a former state supreme court
>justice, a person freed from death row as a result of DNA
>testing, and a DNA scientist.
>
>Last year Nebraska lawmakers passed a moratorium on the
>death penalty, but Gov. Mike Johanns vetoed it. At least
>five states are considering a moratorium on capital
>punishment this year.
>
>A recent editorial in the San Francisco Examiner mentioned
>that in California, Gov. Grey Davis has already been asked
>by San Francisco Supervisor Sue Bierman and others for a
>suspension of all executions, as in Illinois. "As society's
>executioner," said the paper, "the state shouldn't be
>allowed to make a single mistake. If anyone doubts that, let
>them be the first to wait as an innocent person on death
>row."
>
>The Christian Science Monitor editorialized: "If such
>errors are surfacing too often in Illinois, how free of them
>are the other 37 states with the death penalty? _ Can the
>justice system ever be 100 percent right? Not likely. Then
>how can it administer punishment that's 100 percent
>irreversible?"
>
>Lawyer Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center
>for Human Rights in Atlanta, was quoted in the July 1999
>issue of the Champion, magazine of the National Association
>of Criminal Defense Lawyers: "Someone condemned to die in
>Texas can face a process that has the integrity of a
>professional wrestling match.
>
>"An accused may stand virtually defenseless, facing the
>death penalty, as his lawyer sleeps through trial; be
>condemned to die without any adversarial process to
>determine guilt and punishment; and be denied any post-
>conviction appeal because a lawyer misses a deadline or
>fails to raise any issues. So much for Texas law. Texas
>isn't alone--just by many measures the worst example of
>death-penalty craziness in the extreme."
>
>Not all capitalist politicians are moving away from the
>death penalty, however. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush seems
>anxious to compete with his brother George in Texas.
>Legislation was just passed to speed up that state's
>execution process. It reduces the length of time between
>sentencing and execution to five years, even though most
>successful appeals have taken longer than that.
>
>Florida leads the nation in the number of inmates--20--who
>have been released from death row. It ranks behind only
>Texas and Virginia among states that have carried out the
>most executions.
>
>Hillary Rodham Clinton, running for the Senate in New
>York, has announced her support for the death penalty.
>
>ACTIVISTS GEARING UP
>
>As in Texas, many activists and organizations are gearing
>up to demand a moratorium.
>
>In 1997 the American Bar Association called for a
>moratorium due to the unfairness of the application of
>capital punishment.
>
>Recent movies such as "The Green Mile" and "The
>Hurricane," both depicting innocent prisoners, have garnered
>national attention.
>
>All this, coupled with the activity in the aftermath of
>the Illinois decision, underscores how the winds have
>shifted to allow a broader struggle against the death
>penalty.
>
>Marxists and working-class activists fight the death
>penalty not in the abstract, but because it is a repressive
>tool in the hands of the capitalist state.
>
>The death penalty must be fought not only because it is
>cruel and unjust, but because it is inherently biased
>against the poor and in the United States is inevitably
>racist, as the new books and new revelations confirm.
>
>This opening for the struggle should be used by activists
>to build a mass movement that will put capital punishment in
>the United States in the dustbin of history where it
>belongs.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 23:27:03 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Spring Offensive for Mumia/Feb. 28 CD
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 17, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>FEBRUARY 28 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: SPRING OFFENSIVE
>FOR MUMIA READY TO LAUNCH
>
>By Greg Butterfield
>
>Across the United States, supporters of political prisoner
>Mumia Abu-Jamal are making final preparations to gather in
>New York for a Feb. 19 emergency strategy conference. But
>plans for a spring offensive to win a new trial for the
>African American journalist are already underway.
>
>On Feb. 28, the U.S. Supreme Court building and the
>streets of Washington will echo with chants of "Brick by
>brick, wall by wall, we're gonna free Mumia Abu-Jamal!"
>
>Hundreds are expected to join a mass civil disobedience
>action on the court's steps. A legal rally will be held to
>support those who risk arrest.
>
>Actions are also planned that day in San Francisco and
>Eugene, Ore.
>
>Like the successful July 3, 1999, civil disobedience at
>Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, the Supreme Court protest may
>force reluctant corporate-owned media to pay attention to
>this struggle.
>
>The protest, organized by the New York Free Mumia
>Coalition and others, will turn up the heat on the high
>court as the justices consider the constitutionality of the
>1996 Effective Death Penalty Act.
>
>The EDPA sharply restricts the right of death-row
>prisoners--including Abu-Jamal--to independent federal
>reviews of their cases.
>
>Critics say the law undermines this constitutional right,
>known as habeas corpus.
>
>The court's decision, pro or con, will have a big impact
>on the legal course of Abu-Jamal's appeal.
>
>Federal appeals court Judge William Yohn is simultaneously
>reviewing the former Black Panther's petition for a new
>trial.
>
>Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981
>killing of a white Philadelphia cop. He has always maintained
>his innocence. Supporters say he's the victim of a police
>frame-up, and have helped to unearth new evidence of his
>innocence.
>
>"If they permit the law to stand, Judge Yohn's hands may
>be tied," says a Feb. 4 appeal by Kai Lumumba Barrow and
>Toby Emmer of the New York Coalition's Civil Disobedience
>Sub-Committee. "After this stage, the appeals process is
>rapid and could result in a new execution date before the
>end of this year.
>
>"Our intention here is not to scare you or present
>ourselves as alarmists. But history reflects that courts are
>greatly affected by the voices and actions of the people.
>
>"Witness: the Montgomery bus boycott forced the courts to
>rule against segregation. Witness: the power of the people
>forced the court to overturn the conviction of Black Panther
>leader Huey P. Newton."
>
>REPRESSION OF YOUTH
>
>Another activity already in the works is the International
>Youth & Student Day for Mumia Abu-Jamal Feb. 23. This annual
>day of solidarity includes student walkouts, sit-ins,
>demonstrations and video showings at high schools and colleges
>worldwide.
>
>During 1999, state repression increased against young people
>speaking out for Abu-Jamal. Since November there have been
>several documented cases of police harassment and arrests,
>from south Minneapolis, Minn., to Norfolk, Va., and Weymouth,
>Mass.
>
>In Weymouth, Refuse & Resist! activist Nick Gianonne faces
>prosecution under a state anti-"tagging" law after he was
>arrested, along with two high school students, for posting
>flyers for a pro-Abu-Jamal school walkout last September.
>(Boston Phoenix, Feb. 3-10)
>
>Pam Africa, coordinator of International Concerned Family
>& Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, remarked on the increasing
>repression in a Jan. 14 interview with Workers World. She
>said Philadelphia Mayor John Street has begun hiring
>
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