>
> WW News Service Digest #85
>
> 1) Broad condemnation of police repression of anti-IMF/World Bank/PIC
>protesters
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) Blood of Korean massacre on Pentagon hands
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) On the picket line: 5/4/2000
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) 10,000 Haitians march against NYC police brutality
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) Hearing on German role in NATO's aggression on Yugoslavia
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>AFTER MASS ARREST IN D.C.:
>BROAD CONDEMNATION OF POLICE REPRESSION
>
>By Sarah Sloan
>
>[Sloan is a leading youth organizer of the International
>Action Center and was one of those arrested on April 15.]
>
>Five days after mass arrests of protesters began in
>Washington, over 150 people were still in jail. "Demand
>their release" was the call that went out as activists
>returned to their homes across the country after a
>successful week of struggle against the International
>Monetary Fund and World Bank.
>
>Phone calls, faxes and emails hit the Washington police
>department and courts. The blitz called for everyone's
>release and the dropping of the illegal charges,
>reiterating that the real criminals are the IMF and World
>Bank.
>
>By April 21, almost everyone was out. Over 100 activists
>were still outside the jails in a support demonstration as
>the last people were being released.
>
>The mass arrests had begun a day earlier than planned--on
>April 15.
>
>Over 1,000 people marched that day at the Justice
>Department against the prison-industrial complex and to
>free Mumia Abu-Jamal, in a demonstration called by the
>International Action Center. Police block ed off both ends
>of the street as the protest was dispersing, refused to
>allow anyone to leave. The cops arrested 678 people,
>including many who were in Washington to protest the IMF
>and World Bank, as well as passersby, some members of the
>press, and even one or two World Bank delegates.
>
>The next day, Washington Mayor Anthony Williams described
>these arrests as "proactive, precautionary and preventive."
>This means that the arrests--as well as the raid on the
>Convergence Center headquarters for the April 16-17 actions
>and other earlier arrests--amounted to an unconstitutional
>"preventive detention" policy. Opponents of the U.S.
>government were arrested not for what they'd done but for
>who they were.
>
>WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING
>
>In the demonstrations and street actions around the IMF
>that followed on April 16 and 17, the number of those
>arrested grew to 1,300 people.
>
>The resistance on these two days was great. But what
>differentiated April 17 was the level of police repression.
>The big-business media would like people to believe that
>April 16 was a failure and that April 17 was an even
>greater failure.
>
>But that's not what really happened. And it shows the need
>for an independent, working-class press to report on these
>struggles.
>
>The Washington police spent months fine-tuning their
>public-relations appara
>
>
>tus. This "velvet glove" covered the iron-fist repression
>against the demonstrators.
>
>In the days leading up to the demonstrations the media ran
>human-interest stories. But meanwhile police were pulling
>over vans with out-of-state plates, arresting the drivers,
>raiding homes, and raiding and eventually shutting down the
>Convergence Center.
>
>WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD WASN'T WATCHING
>
>Over the course of the week after the demonstrations, as
>the arrested flowed out of the jails, reports began
>surfacing--on the Internet, in alternative media and even
>in some big-business media --about police violence against
>the protesters in the streets and jails.
>
>Volunteer medics reported that dozens of demonstrators had
>been sprayed, beaten and abused in unprovoked police
>attacks in the streets.
>
>Some protesters passed out after being released from jail.
>One woman rushed out, extremely dehydrated, and fainted.
>She hadn't been allowed water or food for an entire day, as
>was the case for most people. They were also denied access
>to bathrooms, medical attention and contact with lawyers.
>
>One report told of a police interrogator posing as a
>member of the Midnight Special Legal Collective--volunteer
>lawyers who represent the activists.
>
>One protester reported having three ribs broken while
>being arrested. Another was beaten in the face and then
>loaded into a patrol wagon, leaving a pool of blood in the
>street.
>
>Those arrested reported numbness from extremely tight
>handcuffs. They were shackled hand to foot, slammed into
>walls and thrown to the ground, and threatened with rape,
>torture and long jail sentences.
>
>NEXT STOP: DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONS
>
>The historic April 15-17 protests in Washington forced the
>bankers and finance ministers to go on the defensive.
>Instead of promoting the policies of their destructive
>institutions, they had to answer charges that they are
>ravaging and impoverishing the world as instruments of
>capitalist globalization. They had to sneak into their
>meeting like the criminals they are.
>
>The police suppression of the demonstrations revealed the
>repressive apparatus of the capitalist state--the cops, the
>courts and the laws that they enforce. The state is not an
>impartial arbiter maintaining public order and safety in
>society, but a tool of ruling-class violence and coercion.
>
>Thousands of young people who came from around the country
>to protest in solidarity with those oppressed by global
>capitalism began to protest in solidarity with the
>oppressed inside the U.S. They got to see a glimpse of the
>repressive apparatus of the cops and the prison system that
>is used every day in a virtual war against African American
>and Latino communities. This war has left one out of every
>four Black men in some phase of the prison system and has
>stolen the future from many working-class youth.
>
>These are bound to become primary factors in this emerging
>movement which, to attain its goals, must engage the
>workers and the oppressed in the struggle to overturn the
>entire capitalist profit system.
>
>But even before this new movement reaches full
>consciousness of this goal, the capitalist government wants
>it to fail. The protests in Washington showed that the
>police force and entire repressive apparatus of the
>capitalist state, along with the monopolized media, will be
>used to attempt to smash the movement as it is getting off
>the ground.
>
>This movement, which is orienting away from the trap of
>the two big-business parties, may be seen next protesting
>to shut down the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles and
>the Republican Convention in Philadelphia. At these
>conventions, the demand to free Mumia Abu-Jamal will be on
>the top of the protesters' agenda.
>
> - 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: <001301bfb253$2b85ec50$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Blood of Korean massacre on Pentagon hands
>Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 23:21:27 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BLOOD OF KOREAN MASSACRE ON PENTAGON HANDS
>
>Washington claims to be a champion of truth, human rights
>and freedom. But that really means freedom for capitalism's
>supporters in other countries. Human rights for those who
>agree with its policies. And truth 50 years after the
>event.
>
>That's the lesson of the latest news out of south Korea.
>Pentagon documents and witnesses testify to the fact that
>in mid-1950 the U.S. puppet south Korean army executed more
>than 2,000 political prisoners without trial. It was during
>the early weeks of the Korean War, which broke out on June
>25, 1950.
>
>The previously "top-secret" documents showed that the U.S.
>supreme commander there, right-wing Gen. Douglas MacArthur,
>knew of at least one of the mass shootings. Most likely
>MacArthur knew of all the shootings and was consulted about
>them. MacArthur commanded the south Korean military at that
>time.
>
>MacArthur saw reports, recently reviewed by Associated
>Press researchers, that 1,800 political prisoners were
>executed over three days at Taejon, 93 miles south of
>Seoul. A U.S. Army major took photographs of the killings.
>Both report and photos were sent to the U.S. Army
>Intelligence staff in Washington.
>
>One U.S. intelligence report put it bluntly: "The South
>Korean police have been quite busy in the Yunchon, Sangju,
>Hamchang vicinity disposing of South Korean communists."
>Korean researcher Lee Do-young said, "The Americans cannot
>escape the charge that they condoned, if not supported, the
>massacres. After all, those soldiers killed these people
>with rifles and bullets the Americans gave them, while
>American officers stood behind their backs taking
>pictures."
>
>Without trial the regime killed revolutionaries, union
>organizers, progressive teachers, local government leaders
>and civic activists, and even some children. Some were
>taken offshore, killed and dumped into the sea. Others were
>taken to the hills and executed by military police.
>
>The truth--which Washington still refuses to admit
>outright--is that there was a popular civil war raging
>against the southern puppet government. This regime was
>afraid the army from the north would liberate tens of
>thousands of political prisoners and that together they
>would liberate Korea. So with U.S. blessings the puppet
>Syngman Rhee regime killed thousands.
>
>This was the kind of "freedom" Washington bombed the Korea
>peninsula for during the next three years, killing millions
>of Koreans and over 50,000 GIs. Yet they failed to destroy
>the socialist north. --John Catalinotto
>
> - 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: <001901bfb253$4b876f60$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] On the picket line: 5/4/2000
>Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 23:22:20 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ON THE PICKET LINE
>
>LOCKHEED STRIKE IN TEXAS
>
>On April 10, some 2,300 workers walked out on strike at
>the Fort Worth, Texas, plant of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
>Co. The members of Machinists Local 776 had voted to reject
>the company's contract offer the day before. According to
>District Lodge 776 President Pat Lane, the issues are job
>security and what the union calls a "substandard cost-of-
>living formula" offered by the company. The Forth Worth
>workers manufacture F-16 fighter planes. So in effect they
>are on strike against the Pentagon. Despite the combined
>weight of the other side, strikers say they won't be
>bullied. Picket lines were strong, and the strike was
>holding solid, even after a tentative agreement was
>announced April 24. Local 776 spokespeople did not release
>details of the tentative pact, and picket lines stayed up,
>pending an April 26 ratification vote.
>
>THUGS ATTACK LOCKED-OUT TEAMSTERS
>
>In the middle of the night April 13--at 3:30 a.m., a time
>when pickets are sparse--thugs attacked two picketers
>outside an Associated Wholesale Grocers warehouse in Kansas
>City, Kan. The attackers were scabs leaving their work
>shift. The picketers, members of Teamsters Local 955, were
>slightly injured.
>
>Associated locked out more than 600 Teamsters in Kansas
>City and another 700 at its Springfield, Mo., distribution
>center in early April. According to the union, the
>supermarket chain dumped its unionized work force and
>contracted with CS Integrated LLC to replace them with non-
>union labor. The locked-out workers immediately set up
>picket lines. And the attacks began. According to Local 955
>official Al Hoover, the April 13 scab attack was not the
>first.
>
>SHAME ON YOU, NYU
>
>Close to 15,000 construction workers marched from
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