>
> WW News Service Digest #82
>
> 1) Let Elian Go Home
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) Youth Movement Fights for Most Oppressed
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) Actions for Mumia Reach Critical Mass
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 4) International Demand: New Trial for Mumia
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BACK WITH HIS FATHER, BUT.LET ELIAN GO HOME
>
>By Gloria La Riva and Richard Becker
>
>The smiles on their faces at the long-overdue reunion said
>it all: Elian Gonzalez needed to be with his father, Juan
>Miguel.
>
>The only reason they were separated for five long months
>was U.S. policy against Cuba. That's what permitted Cuba's
>enemies in Miami to shamelessly exploit and abuse the
>little boy after he was rescued at sea last Nov. 25.
>
>Elisabeth Brotons, the boy's mother, died in that
>incident. Ever since, his father and grandparents have been
>seeking the child's return to his home in Cuba.
>
>On April 22, after months of stalling and obstruction by
>the organized right-wing Cuban forces holding Elian, a
>Justice Department SWAT team seized the boy in a 5 a.m.
>raid. The Cuban counter-revolutionaries, who have enjoyed a
>uniquely privileged status in the United States for four
>decades, were deeply shocked that the U.S. government would
>employ the kind of violence against them that it routinely
>uses against oppressed communities across the country.
>
>No class-conscious person is happy to see the repressive
>forces of the U.S. state in action. They represent daily
>terror against working-class communities in the United
>States and abroad, especially against Black, Latino, Native
>and other oppressed people.
>
>However, anyone who watched the drama unfold in recent
>months knew very well that the Cuban fascists in Miami had
>no intention of releasing Elian voluntarily. They were
>becoming more entrenched in their intent to keep the child
>at any price.
>
>The INS operation would never have been necessary if the
>U.S. government had acted immediately to return Elian to
>Cuba, as soon as he was medically stabilized in the days
>after the sea disaster. It's interesting that the
>government finally moved right after Juan Gonzalez called
>on the U.S. people for support, saying that he felt like
>walking right up to the house in Miami with his family and
>friends and demanding his son.
>
>WHY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ACTED
>
>Attorney General Janet Reno and President Bill Clinton
>represent a government that has continued a brutal blockade
>against Cuba for 40 years. The blockade is not just a trade
>embargo, which would be severe and damaging enough. The
>blockade is four decades of organized terror against that
>country--bombings, economic sabotage and political pressure
>designed to isolate Cuba.
>
>But it has failed. Cuba has not been brought to its knees.
>The Cuban people's unity against U.S. pressure was shown
>most dramatically in the mass demonstrations for Elian.
>
>Despite all their phony rhetoric, neither Clinton nor Reno
>felt compelled to act for the boy's sake, nor out of any
>concern for parental or other human rights. It was the
>months of mass protests in Cuba, demonstrations in the
>United States and other countries, and overwhelming U.S.
>public opinion that prompted them to finally take action.
>
>The Elian Gonzalez case had become a problem for the
>Clinton administration's foreign policy. The Miami counter-
>revolutionaries, whose influence even within the Cuban
>community has been fading, were interfering with the U.S.
>imperialist ruling class's conduct of its international
>relations. This Washington would not tolerate for very
>long.
>
>The fact that the extreme-right Cuban American National
>Foundation, Brothers to the Rescue and others are the ones
>calling the shots for the Miami Gonzalez family is without
>question. Neither Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's great-uncle, nor
>his second cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez was employed when
>this episode began. Yet the family was immediately
>represented by a seemingly endless roster of high-priced
>lawyers.
>
>CANF President Jorge Mas, Brothers to the Rescue thug-in-
>chief Jose Basulto, and other right-wing leaders constantly
>surrounded the child. They and the distant relatives
>holding him hostage shamelessly paraded this very young
>boy, who had just suffered a terrible tragedy, before the
>media.
>
>They sought to turn Elian against his father and his
>homeland, to the point of forcing him to appear in a
>videotape in which the boy was obviously coached to say
>that he didn't want to return to Cuba.
>
>The Miami lawyers drew up a complex petition for asylum
>and had the 6-year-old sign it. In an act of supreme
>cynicism and legal malfeasance, a three-judge panel of the
>federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta accepted
>this "petition" on April 20. The Atlanta court then ordered
>that Elian be forced to remain in the United States until
>all legal procedures are exhausted.
>
>These anti-Cuba fanatics who proclaim their deep concern
>and "love" for Elian are the same people who are most
>adamant about maintaining the U.S. blockade, which deprives
>millions of Cuban children of food, medicine and other
>necessities. For them, Elian was just a pawn to revive
>their declining power and influence. But instead of
>achieving this goal, they have been exposed and weakened.
>
>In the hours after the raid, Reno spoke at a news
>conference to explain the government's actions. When asked
>how she would assure that Juan Miguel would stay in the
>United States pending a May 11 hearing in federal appeals
>court, she said, "You can be sure the U.S. marshals will
>see that Juan Miguel and Elian remain in the U.S. pending
>the appeal."
>
>But until Elian is home free in Cuba, the struggle is not
>over. Right-wing forces within Congress and in the
>capitalist media are working nonstop to demand that Elian
>be granted "asylum."
>
>Moreover, the 40-year blockade against Cuba remains in
>place. And so, the struggle continues.
>
>Elian's case is scheduled to be heard by the federal court
>in Atlanta on May 11. On that day there will be
>demonstrations in cities across the U.S. demanding that he
>be allowed to return immediately to his homeland. For more
>information, call the National Committee to Return Elian to
>Cuba at 212-633-6646 or 212-926-5757.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
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>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 22:04:48 -0400
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Youth Movement Fights for Most Oppressed
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>YOUTH MOVEMENT FIGHTS FOR MOST OPPRESSED
>
>By Leslie Feinberg
>
>>From Antioch College to Kent State University, from
>Seattle to Washington, young people are taking direct
>action to demonstrate their solidarity with the most
>exploited and oppressed here in the United States and
>around the world.
>
>Their bold acts of vision and courage have given rise to a
>movement that is determined to battle corporate-backed
>injustice and inequality, police brutality, racism and the
>death penalty.
>
>Across the United States and around the world supporters
>of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal are applauding the
>guts and grit of Antioch College and Kent State students.
>
>This year's Antioch graduating senior class invited Abu-
>Jamal as one of their commencement speakers on April 29. As
>a result, Antioch Commencement Committee member Teishan
>Latner told Workers World, "We've endured a most vicious
>and well-orchestrated assault of hate mail and phone calls
>from the Fraternal Order of Police, agents of racist
>terror, and many other organizations and individuals."
>
>But the students have stood tall in the face of this Klan-
>style fear campaign.
>
>"We believe Mumia Abu-Jamal must be heard," Latner said,
>"and we are honored by his tape-recorded presence at our
>graduation, an event that will mark for many of us the
>beginning of our engagement as activists in the years to
>come."
>
>The Kent State students invited Abu-Jamal to address their
>May 4 event on the 30th anniversary of the massacres by
>National Guard troops of youths at Kent State and Jackson
>State University. The 1970 killings at Kent and Jackson,
>during protests against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, were
>an attempt to silence the anti-war movement that was at its
>peak.
>
>"The obvious connection is that Mumia's execution is an
>attempt to silence dissent," explained Justin Hons of Kent
>Anti-Racist Action, "just as May 4 [1970] was an attempt to
>silence dissent."
>
>In addition, he told WW, during the 1970s Abu-Jamal was a
>Black Panther Party member. That organization was in the
>crosshairs of a government counter-intelligence assault. So
>Abu-Jamal "was part of the same movement for liberation and
>revolution that the students were part of," Hons concluded.
>
>In fact, wherever the emerging movement takes its place at
>the front lines of struggle, the demand for a new trial and
>freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal is heard loud and clear.
>
>Even hazy clouds of tear gas and pepper spray couldn't
>obscure the sight of placards, banners, buttons and
>stickers supporting Abu-Jamal that activists carried or
>wore at virtually every skirmish in the Battle of Seattle
>last winter.
>
>And the same was true in Washington during the recent
>weekend of struggles to shut down the meetings of the
>International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In fact, on
>April 15, more than 1,000 activists picketed the Department
>of "In-Justice" to protest the powerful prison-industrial
>complex and demand freedom for Abu-Jamal.
>
>The action was organized by the International Action
>Center. IAC youth leader Sarah Sloan told WW: "When
>activists later took their protest to the sidewalks of
>Washington--for which no permit is required--police carried
>out a mass arrest of 678 of the marchers in an illegal act
>of `preventive detention.'
>
>"Those arrested endured purposely difficult conditions--
>even brutally painful treatment--during the night in jail.
>Yet most of us who were swept up were back in the streets
>the next morning on April 16," Sloan said.
>
>WORKERS AND OPPRESSED OF THE WORLD UNITE
>
>The tumultuous street battles in Seattle and Washington
>were fought to shut down some of the most hated instruments
>of U.S. finance capital's world domination--the World Trade
>Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
>
>The tenacious, bodacious movement to shut 'em down is
>rooted in earlier militant campus occupations and student-
>bolstered street actions to boycott clothing and toys
>produced in the cruel conditions of sweatshops.
>
>These students, joined by union activists, discovered who
>raked in the mega-profits off the blood and tears of
>sweatshop workers. And that path of profits led right back
>to the Gap, Disney and other giant U.S. corporations.
>
>So it was no accident that a movement of students and
>workers against corporate globalization arose to challenge
>the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last
>winter.
>
>That act of shutting down the WTO was objectively an act
>of solidarity with the most exploited and oppressed of the
>world's people.
>
>The technologically underdeveloped countries--purposely
>kept underdeveloped by the imperialist powers--are hostages
>within the WTO. The wealthy and powerful rulers of the
>imperialist countries have the cops, courts, prisons and
>laws to enforce the right of their banks and transnational
>corporations to open up sweatshops, employ child labor,
>crush unions and destroy the environment.
>
>The WTO's main goal is not just corporate globalization
>but imperialist globalization. That means bulldozing any
>barriers to the penetration and domination of finance
>capital--particularly U.S. capital.
>
>And those countries that dare to resist this untrammeled
>drive for profits off their labor and resources face the
>high-tech might of the Pentagon war machine and other NATO
>armies.
>
>The bankers and finance ministers who traveled to
>Washington for the April 16-17 meetings were also
>confronted by tens of thousands of demonstrators who
>contested their right to meet. "More world, less bank!"
>protesters demanded.
>
>The creative and courageous acts of resistance exposed the
>predatory role of the International Monetary Fund and the
>World Bank. Protests charged these two imperialist
>institutions with impoverishing people all over the planet
>through the weapon of usurious debt, destroying the
>environment, bankrolling the global sweatshop industry,
>super-exploiting Third World countries, creating massive
>unemployment around the world and feeding the rapacious
>appetite of capitalist globalization.
>
>The movement here in the belly of the beast--from Seattle
>to Washington, Antioch College to Kent State--has given new
>hope to those in countries that have been fighting the
>onslaught of U.S. banks and corporations.
>
>And now the movement is turning its attention and
>preparing its forces to target the Republican and
>Democratic conventions this summer. All these issues and
>
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