>
> WW News Service Digest #55
>
> 1) Why Diallo case moves so many
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) Mumia analyzes Diallo verdict
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Battling corporate globalization: 'Women will be best fighters'
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) Elian not first child wrested from Cuba
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) Bhopal survivors fight for compensation
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 6) Editorial: A sucking undertow
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 16, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>WHY DIALLO CASE MOVES SO MANY
>
>By Pam Parker
>Washington
>
>Demonstrations have erupted on campuses, in workplaces and
>in the streets. Young, old, workers, students, those in the
>lesbian/gay/bi/trans community and other oppressed people
>have expressed righteous anger at the brutal murder of
>Amadou Diallo.
>
>This unprecedented show of unity has rocked the U. S.
>criminal "justice" system to its core. The protests against
>Diallo's brutal murder at the hands of New York City police
>grew more frequent and militant in the week after the Feb.
>25 verdict acquitting his killers. Demonstrators have
>answered police threats with outrage at injustice.
>
>Diallo was the 22-year-old West African immigrant
>mercilessly gunned down while he stood in the vestibule of
>his own Bronx apartment building on Feb. 4, 1999. Since the
>police were acquitted, protests have taken place in New
>York, Albany, N.Y., Washington, Atlanta, San Francisco and
>other cities throughout the country.
>
>The protests have consistently tied the murder to police
>abuses throughout the oppressed communities and to the
>racist use of the death penalty.
>
>Just days after the verdict another unarmed African
>American man, Malcolm Ferguson, was gunned down by police
>just blocks from where Diallo had been slain. This young
>man had actually been arrested for protesting the police
>murder of Diallo just days before.
>
>Many in the left and progressive communities have joined
>together to denounce the Diallo verdict and subsequent
>murder of Ferguson. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
>has issued a strong statement expressing outrage at the
>verdict.
>
>Kerry Lobel, the Task Force's director, explained her
>group's stand, saying that "the gay, lesbian, bisexual and
>transgender community in both New York and across the
>country has been affected by police brutality and racism."
>
>In Washington, African American civil rights leaders and
>activists the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton
>led a militant march on the Justice Department March 2 to
>demand an investigation into the matter.
>
>Well-known hip-hop deejay Donnie Simpson launched an angry
>on-air attack against the station management of Washington-
>based WPGC-FM for tying the tragic death of a little
>Michigan schoolgirl to the police murder of Diallo. The
>station had made a general call to "stop the violence and
>increase the peace."
>
>Simpson said that the station staff had had to fight
>management to get them to issue a statement of outrage
>against the Diallo verdict and to support a planned rally
>and civil disobedience at the Justice Department. The
>attempt to tie together the incidents, said Simpson, was an
>insult to the station's employees and listeners, who are
>mostly people of color.
>
>Big business politicians have been forced to make
>statements against the verdict.
>
>What is special about the Diallo case that has inspired
>the movement to unite and organize? This is not the first
>time the police have appointed themselves judge, jury and
>executioner of an innocent oppressed person. This is not
>the first time they have gotten away with murder.
>
>ONE ABUSE TOO MANY
>
>People in the working class and oppressed communities
>don't have to be told the police are not there to "protect
>and serve" but to vilify and repress. It's known throughout
>the oppressed communities that police consistently use
>excessive force and discriminatory patterns of arrest,
>physically and verbally abuse people, and systematically
>deny the First Amendment rights of those they claim to
>protect.
>
>So why now? Maybe because this was one abuse too many. The
>brazen attacks and the flippant attitude of those running
>the police department have simply been too much for the
>community to bear.
>
>Have the police been apologetic or remorseful in the wake
>of the verdict? No, they have become more vicious. Has the
>leadership of the department apologized to the masses of
>people affected by this verdict? No, on the contrary, they
>have moved forward with their collusive tactics.
>
>The Police Benevolent Association met with the Justice
>Department on March 6 to argue against federal civil rights
>charges being filed in the Diallo case.
>
>Steven Worth, general counsel for the PBA, was also the
>defense attorney for Edward McMellon, one of the four
>police officers acquitted in the Diallo case.
>
>Joseph C. Teresi, the judge in the Diallo case, had
>earlier been the defense attorney for four white officers
>who gunned down a mentally disturbed Black man "armed" with
>a fork and knife. It's also been reported that Teresi
>visited the cops' defense attorneys at their bed and
>breakfast after the Diallo case verdict.
>
>People were angered because, in the face of all the
>evidence, officers Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, Richard
>Murphy and Sean Carroll were acquitted of all charges in
>the shooting death of young Diallo.
>
>That Diallo was gunned down in the vestibule of his own
>home galvanized the community. It could have been anybody.
>He reached for his wallet, possibly in an attempt to prove
>who he was and to show that he lived in that building. What
>would you have done? What more could he have done?
>
>The movement is organized and galvanized through
>participation in many diverse struggles. The fight to
>return Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba; the protest
>against the World Trade Organization; the struggle against
>the unjust detainment of Mumia Abu-Jamal; outrage over the
>torture of Abner Louima and the death of Malcolm Ferguson
>have brought many youth into the movement, adding to its
>energy and vitality. They have all added to the momentum of
>this struggle for justice.
>
>Enough is enough. This movement against repression is
>growing and thriving and shows no signs of running out of
>steam.
>
> - 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: <007f01bf8bc2$fb83fa30$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Mumia analyzes Diallo verdict
>Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 20:33:33 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
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>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 16, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>FROM DEATH ROW: MUMIA ANALYZES DIALLO VERDICT
>
>[Following are excerpts from a Feb. 27 article written by
>political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.]
>
>
>The Amadou Diallo trial of four white cops charged in the
>firestorm slaughter of the West African has ended in the
>predictable acquittal of his killers.
>
>When is a killing not a killing? Apparently, this is so
>when the victim is someone slain by the police. When police
>kill, it is an accident, a "mistake," an "oops!"
>
>Let us examine how the police achieved this judicial
>sleight-of-hand.
>
>As soon as the case arose, the legal forces defending the
>state fled the very area that the police claim to be
>"serving."
>
>Why is it okay to enforce the law in a given neighborhood,
>yet automatically wrong to have citizens of that same
>neighborhood try to enforce (as jurors) some of that same
>law when it comes to these particular "public servants?"
>
>In New York City in recent months, Black and Latino men
>have been shot for having keys, candy bars, wallets in
>their hands. This deadly rain of "accidents" is an official
>expression of Negrophobic oppression, and it can only
>escalate after this unholy acquittal of the four killer
>cops from the Bronx.
>
>When the case began, the police immediately opted for a
>bench trial, before a judge, not a jury. When an African
>American jurist was selected, they put in a change of venue
>motion that put them on the first-thing-smoking to Albany,
>in upstate, white-bread New York. So much for the
>"community" that they "serve!"
>
>THE SERVICE THAT THE STATE DELIVERS IS DEATH!
>
>What of the recent case of the Orthodox Jewish man, Gidone
>(n� Gary) Busch, who was cornered by four cops in Boro
>Park, New York City? Busch, a Ba'altshuva (newly Orthodox
>Jew), was shot 12 times outside of his home.
>
>Immediately, New York's Mayor, Rudolf Giuliani, and Police
>Commissioner, Howard Safir, attacked the dead youth, and
>painted him as a "fanatic," whose shooting was "justified."
>Key to their justification theory, was their claim that
>Busch "attacked" an officer with a hammer.
>
>Eyewitnesses uniformly disputed this claim, but
>nonetheless 3 months after the August 1999 shooting, a
>Grand Jury exonerated all four cops, and pronounced the
>killing "justified."
>
>WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME.
>
>The vile and violent attacks on Black and Puerto Rican
>life in the nation's capital of capital cannot long be
>limited to their communities. Consciousness does not obey
>the laws of geography, and repression, like water, seeks
>the lowest level.
>
>A conservative, pro-Giuliani, Orthodox Jewish community,
>is still, essentially, a Jewish community. And the social
>forces that truly run New York regard them as another
>flavor of difference.
>
>Busch's life, like Diallo's life, was expendable in the
>larger interests of the consolidation and projection of
>state police power.
>
>Both men were executed twice, once in the streets near
>home, and next in the court system, where their sacrifice
>was deemed acceptable to the larger political interests of
>the status quo.
>
>According to published reports, one resident of Boro Park
>confided to a black reporter, "Yesterday I believed that
>when the police would shoot down a Black man, they had a
>reason. Now I realize that the police can be animals--and
>they have the power to cover it up at all costs. The next
>time a Black man gets shot, I'm marching with you."
>(Village Voice (2/29/2000), p. 42.)
>
>Let us hope that really happens, so that a vast movement
>can be built.
>
> - 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: <008501bf8bc3$1d856bf0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Battling corporate globalization: 'Women will be best fighters'
>Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 20:34:30 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 16, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BATTLING CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION: "WOMEN WILL BE BEST
>FIGHTERS AGAINST RACIST & CLASS OPPRESSION"
>
>
>[The following is excerpted from a Feb. 25 speech by Monica
>Moorehead at a forum in Buffalo, N.Y., on corporate
>globalization.]
>
>
>For women, globalization of capitalist expansion in the
>post-Soviet era has meant the feminization of poverty.
>
>According to the United Nations, the world's 200 richest
>people more than doubled their wealth in 1998 to more than a
>trillion dollars. The assets of the three top billionaires are
>more than the gross national product of the 48 least developed
>countries with a population of 600 million people.
>
>The other side of this enormous accumulation of wealth is
>mass poverty.
>
>Some 1.3 billion people live on a dollar a day or less. A
>dollar a day is what the World Bank defines as the poverty
>level.
>
>Some 880 million people have no access to any medical
>services. For them, a simple infection can result in
>preventable death.
>
>Women in the developing countries have far fewer job
>opportunities than men. In fact, 70 percent of the world's
>impoverished people are women.
>
>According to the UN, average employment rates for women
>are only half those for men. In South Asia, the rate is
>only 29 percent and in the Arab states only 16 percent. In
>the more developed capitalist countries, the rate of women
>employed compared to men is: 61 percent in Japan, 58
>percent in Switzerland, 45 percent in the Netherlands and
>41 percent in Ireland.
>
>One-third of all families worldwide are headed by women.
>The highest proportion of female-led households can be
>found in Africa.
>
>In the United States, close to 50 percent of all poor
>families are headed by single mothers whose average incomes
>are only 77 percent of the official poverty threshold. On
>average, women workers make 60 percent of what male workers
>make.
>
>According to the UN, in the developing countries on the
>whole, women produce half the food--in Africa as much as
>three-fourths. Women account for more than 90 percent of
>all time spent processing and preparing food. Yet, with all
>this production, poverty has increased by 47 percent among
>rural women compared to 30 percent for rural men.
>
>If the unpaid household labor women perform were counted
>as income, the world's gross national product would
>increase by 20 to 30 percent. All these hours of unpaid
>labor represent an annual $11 trillion contribution to
>society.
>
>Corporate globalization has deepened racist and class
>oppression inside the United States, especially with the
>gargantuan prison-industrial complex. Wall Street investors
>have poured billions of dollars into repression.
>
>By the end of 2000, $41 billion will be invested in the
>construction of more high-tech private prisons.
>
>The number of those incarcerated in jails and prisons in the
>United States just passed the 2 million mark--more than any
>other country in the world. More homegrown prison labor means
>the corporations can look for slave labor in the next state
>rather than sweatshops in other countries.
>
>Women prisoners, especially African Americans and Latinas,
>constitute the fastest-rising group in prison--due to both
>Clinton's signing away of welfare and an increase in non-violent
>drug-related convictions. This is the feminization of poverty
>with a heavy dose of racism and national oppression. Women
>prisoners are also viewed as captive sexual objects for male
>guards.
>
>CORPORATIONS VS. WORKERS IN FORMER SOCIALIST COUNTRIES
>
>What has corporate globalization done to the former
>socialist countries? Where socialism once guaranteed jobs,
>health care, vacations, pensions, nutrition and basic
>political rights of the working class, there is now mass
>unemployment, homelessness, prostitution, and all the ills
>of capitalism that quickly developed after the counter-
>revolution.
>
>The devastation of the changeover from socialism to
>capitalism was so great that such a rapid decline in
>economic existence had not been seen since modern records
>have been kept.
>
>In Eastern Europe there is a new slave trade in women. It is
>estimated that 500,000 Eastern European women and girls are
>brought to Western Europe for sexual exploitation every year.
>The business is estimated at $7 billion annually.
>
>In Russia, domestic violence is now the number-one killer
>of women.
>
>Globalization under capitalism means global conquest and
>plunder by modern means. At the end of the last century, U.S.
>imperialism came into being by blood and iron with the
>Spanish-American War, resulting in the United States
>colonizing Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. It had
>already accumulated great wealth by enslaving African peoples
>and stealing more and more land through the wholesale
>slaughter of the Indigenous population.
>
>IMF ORGANIZES NEOCOLONIALISM
>
>After World War II, a new form of colonization evolved. It
>is organized by the banks through the instrument of the
>International Monetary Fund, which has forced over 100
>countries to sign so-called structural adjustment
>agreements.
>
>These agreements force governments to sell off state
>resources to the corporate monopolies, cut back on spending
>for social welfare, devalue their currency, and open up
>trade to imperialist penetration. All this leads to the
>destruction of local and national economies.
>
>Where the bourgeoisie sees the wonder of globalized
>capitalist production, complete with low wages and no unions,
>we see the Indonesian, south Korean, Mexican, Colombian,
>Haitian, Puerto Rican and millions of other workers organizing
>on the job under unbelievably repressive conditions.
>
>Between 1980 and 1994 in the developing countries, the
>industrial working class grew from 285 million to 400
>million people--and the subsequent years saw even greater
>industrialization. Almost half of these new workers were
>women.
>
>And what of the capitalist boom at home? Although many
>workers have jobs, the true prosperity is still for the
>rich and their upper layers of society. Despite the
>endlessly rising stock market, this system is sitting on a
>time bomb of an inevitable economic downturn leading to a
>collapse.
>
>Imperialism has extended its upswing in production by
>reconquering one-sixth of the earth's surface and adding
>300 million people to its sphere of exploitation. It is now
>targeting the 600 million people on the African continent
>as new "consumers" to buy the imperialists' products. The
>United States gained a free hand to greatly intensify its
>plunder in the oppressed world, which had been partially
>protected by the existence of the USSR.
>
>Where the ruling class sees the great significance of the
>20th century as the defeat of the USSR, the historic
>significance of the 20th century will be that the Russian
>revolution took place. A downtrodden working class in a
>peasant country, with 85 percent illiteracy, was able to
>seize and hold the power and build up a country that
>
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