> WW News Service Digest #140
>
> 1) Capitalism, police brutality and the state
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) West Virginia lynching of gay Black man sparks protest
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Okinawa: Resistance to war criminals summit
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) Russia: Young fighters against capitalism jailed
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) On the picket line: 8/3/2000
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Aug. 3, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>CAPITALISM, POLICE BRUTALITY AND THE STATE
>
>[Adapted from a talk by Pat Chin at the July 20 Workers
>World Party meeting in New York.]
>
>Not too long ago another Black man was viciously beaten by
>the police. On July 12, Thomas Jones was attacked by at
>least 12 Philadelphia cops after being shot and subdued
>following a car chase. The actions of the police lynch mob
>were videotaped and broadcast around the world. Days later,
>some cops appeared in public wearing T-shirts with a
>picture of the racist beating and the slogan, "Welcome to
>America."
>
>As if this wasn't enough, only six days later Amtrak
>police in the "City of Brotherly Love"--site of the
>Republican convention--shot and killed a homeless man of
>African descent.
>
>After the Jones beating, the big-business media and their
>puppets were quick to announce that some of the cops were
>Black. This tactic is used--as it was in the case of
>Patrick Dorismond, who was shot by a Latino cop--to divert
>attention from just how deeply entrenched racism is in the
>United States.
>
>It is a fact that it's mostly white cops who attack Black
>people. And Black people are the main targets of police
>terror. But it's fundamentally important to expose the
>broader class context in which the police operate, their
>relationship to and position in the hierarchy of the
>capitalist state.
>
>The beating of Thomas Jones was an outrageous and
>unfortunate occurrence. But it presents us with an
>opportunity to expose class oppression in the United States
>and the divisive role that racism plays.
>
>THE STATE
>
>The state, according to Leninist theory, has four
>fundamental components: the army, the police, the courts,
>and the prisons. What's consistent about them all is that
>they're institutions of repression that exist in class
>society for the purpose of maintaining the power and
>privileges of the ruling class in their insatiable drive
>for limitless profits.
>
>This necessarily means having mechanisms in place to
>dominate and control the majority of the population: the
>workers whose labor creates the wealth that fills the
>coffers of the rich; women, who reproduce the work force;
>the poor, whose hunger might drive them to rebellion; and
>any other groups like, for example, the
>lesbian/gay/bi/trans community, whose members do not
>conform to the hypocritical bourgeois model of acceptable
>behavior, or who are seen as threats to the nuclear family.
>
>Racism, which is rooted in the slave trade and white
>supremacy, is not the only phenomenon the ruling class
>wants to deny. There's a reason we all learn to say the
>Pledge of Allegiance, for example. The words "one nation
>under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all"
>are really meant to fool us into believing that the United
>States is not divided into economic classes. And,
>consequently, that there is no repressive apparatus.
>
>But this is a big lie. Marx and Lenin exposed decades ago
>that while the form of government may change, the
>fundamental function of the state remains the same--to keep
>the workers, the poor and oppressed from rebelling against
>the unjust rule of the rich. The army, the courts, the
>prisons and the police throughout all types of class
>societies have functioned to support the ruling class. This
>was true during the days of feudalism and during the days
>of chattel slavery in the U.S.
>
>Today the repressive apparatus continues under the yoke of
>capitalist wage slavery. Let's look at what happens during
>a job action. There's never been one instance in history
>when striking workers could call the police to stop scabs
>from taking their jobs. It's never happened. But the bosses
>have the legal right, under bourgeois law, to call the
>police against strikers.
>
>The repressive arms of the state often work together. This
>is what has created today's vast pool of super-exploited
>prisoners--the latest source of cheap labor. The courts
>play their part by assigning incompetent public defenders
>to poor people or railroading people to jail for minor drug
>offenses. The police, in turn, engage in frame-ups of
>innocent people, like Shaka Sankofa and Mumia Abu-Jamal.
>
>Cops are mercenary agents
>
>The cops are all mercenary agents of state terrorism. It
>doesn't matter if they're white, Black, Latino or Asian, if
>they're men or women, if they're gay, straight, bi or
>trans. They work to uphold the power of the rich in a
>system where racism is vital to continued exploitation.
>
>Black cops are expected to be even more brutal than white
>cops, especially against their own people. Fortunately for
>the liberation struggle, not everyone is complicit with the
>white racist power structure like Philadelphia Mayor Wilson
>Goode was. In 1985 Goode allowed Philadelphia cops--duly
>advised by the Pentagon--to bomb the house occupied by MOVE
>members, causing death and destruction in a Black
>neighborhood.
>
>And let's not talk about Gen. Colin Powell, who directed
>the invasion of Panama in 1989, killing thousands of poor
>people of color. This mass murderer is now being held up as
>a hero for Black children to emulate.
>
>So you see, it's not enough to look at just race in
>analyzing a situation like the police beating of Thomas
>Jones or the killing of Patrick Dorismond. One has to look
>beyond the surface--at how the victimizer identifies--with
>what class, and who gets to rent his or her services.
>
>The ruling class is driven to keep super-exploiting the
>masses. But they now have a big dilemma. For example, how
>to keep hiding the hideous crimes of racist police
>brutality and murders, as well as having the world's
>biggest prison population, a disproportionate number of
>whom are Black people and poor. It's becoming increasingly
>difficult to cover up these gaping wounds in the fabric of
>the so-called "American" success story--especially with the
>Internet and a video camera in almost every hand.
>
>While it's very important to understand all the
>complexities of our society as they relate to the
>interaction of race and class, it's also crucial to
>comprehend how capitalism distorts reality and how the
>psychological effects of what amounts to brainwashing can
>paralyze the struggle.
>
>We are led to believe, for example, that without the
>bosses we would be nothing. But it's the other way around.
>Without the workers the bosses would be nothing, there
>would be no such thing as profits--which is wealth that's
>created by and stolen from the working class.
>
>HISTORY TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
>
>Under capitalism, history gets turned upside down. Cause
>becomes effect, effect becomes cause, and affirmative
>action gets turned into "reverse racism." Victims are
>demonized and victimizers get recast as the victims.
>
>The lawyer for the four white cops who slaughtered Amadou
>Diallo, for example, had the gall to say that the trial of
>the four killer cops had to be moved to white upstate New
>York to avoid a "lynching"! As if Amadou wasn't the one who
>got lynched! The same tactic was tried in the case of
>Justin Volpe, the white cop who tortured Abner Louima.
>
>Black people also get called "racist" when our rage
>finally boils over at being treated as less than human.
>This was true of Colin Fergueson, who shot and killed
>several white people on the Long Island Railroad some years
>ago. It was a tragic and unfortunate incident involving
>someone who in fact had an extreme reaction to living with
>racism. Reacting to racism, which is tied to white
>supremacy, is not the same as being a racist. The
>consequence of a phenomenon is not the same as its cause.
>
>The profit system has a lot invested--literally--in
>fostering widespread denial about slavery and racism, their
>relationship to each other and to economic exploitation.
>This keeps hidden the bourgeoisie's most powerful weapon
>against working class unity, even though that's beginning
>to change.
>
>When racism is discussed it's often watered down. Racist
>profiling is called racial profiling. Instead of talking
>about racism, a recent series in the New York Times spun
>the problem as "How the Races Live." And Bruce Springsteen
>composed a song about the murder of Amadou Diallo in which
>he talks about how easy it is to get killed in your
>"American" skin, rather than telling it like it really is:
>how easy it is to get killed in your Black skin.
>
>Another thing is all this talk about Black people taking
>responsibility. What about the exploiters, when are they
>going to take responsibility? And, anyway, taking
>responsibility doesn't mean aspiring to Black capitalism,
>which the big bourgeoisie wouldn't allow anyway on a large
>scale.
>
>For us revolutionaries, taking responsibility means using
>any means necessary to overturn the unjust system of the
>capitalist class that breeds, racism, poverty and war.
>
>We need to keep organizing. But not just passing events.
>We need activities that will evolve into real political
>struggles with the repressive state that, for example, is
>trying to lynch Mumia Abu-Jamal and that executed Shaka
>Sankofa.
>
>Capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder have
>brought death, disease and misery to billions of people for
>hundreds of years. A system that is predatory, that breeds
>inequality by its very nature can't be reformed. It has to
>be uprooted by a social revolution.
>
>This is what we live and prepare for as revolutionaries:
>to do everything possible to prosecute the class struggle.
>Our victory will set in motion the forces needed to end
>bigotry, racism and war.
>
>The struggle will be a long one. It will be a hard one.
>But united, focused and clear, victory is certain.
>
>
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
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>
>
>Message-ID: <020d01bff9bb$d888ae60$0a00a8c0@home>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] West Virginia lynching of gay Black man sparks protest
>Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 20:19:37 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="Windows-1252"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Aug. 3, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>WEST VIRGINIA: LYNCHING OF GAY BLACK MAN SPARKS PROTEST
>
>By Elijah Crane
>
>Arthur "J.R." Warren was murdered in Grant Town, W.Va., in
>the early hours of July 4. Civil-rights groups and lesbian,
>gay, bisexual and transgender activists are likening his
>death to the lynchings of James Byrd Jr. in Texas and
>Matthew Shepard in Wyoming.
>
>Warren, a 26-year-old African American gay man who lived
>with disabilities, was brutally beaten and kicked to death
>by white youths. The killers threw Warren's body into the
>trunk of a car and drove about a mile outside of town. They
>dropped his body in the middle of the road and repeatedly
>drove over him to make the lynching look like a hit-and-run
>accident.
>
>Officials bought the idea of a hit-and-run until 15-year-
>old Jason Shoemaker came forward. He told authorities that
>he witnessed the killing and helped clean up the blood and
>mess in the vacant house where the murder took place.
>
>Shoemaker named David Parker and Jared Wilson as the
>killers. The two 17 year olds later confessed. They were
>each charged with one count of first-degree murder. The 15
>year old has not yet been charged, though prosecutor
>Richard Bunner says he will be soon.
>
>On July 11, nearly 1,000 people from local and national
>civil-rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
>organizations joined with members of Warren's community in
>a vigil outside the Marion County courthouse.
>
>Warren was a loved and respected member of his small rural
>community. Despite the fact that he struggled with learning
>disabilities and was also physically challenged, friends
>said he made regular visits to the elderly and helped out
>neighbors in any way he could.
>
>On July 20 Brenda Warren and Arthur Warren Sr. took their
>son's case to Washington with the help of many national
>groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil
>Rights, the Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum and the
>National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Together, they held a
>press conference where they asserted that the murder was
>racially motivated.
>
>Warren's parents met with representatives of Attorney
>General Janet Reno's office. They asked the Justice
>Department to launch a federal civil-rights investigation
>of the murder.
>
>While the corporate media and the courts would like to
>keep the debate focused on whether or not the murder was a
>"hate crime" based on sexual orientation, the fact remains
>that this was a racist, anti-gay lynching.
>
>RACIST DOUBLE STANDARD
>
>Marion County prosecutors have yet to decide whether or
>not Parker and Wilson will be tried as juveniles or adults.
>That decision is expected on Aug. 3.
>
>Shaka Sankofa/Gary Graham, a Black man and revolutionary
>activist, was also 17 years old at the time he was accused
>of murder. Not for one minute did the state question
>whether or not to try him as an adult. In his case, it was
>a matter of course. After almost two decades on death row,
>Sankofa was legally lynched on June 22 by the Texas death
>machine under the direction of Gov. George W. Bush.
>
>The racist application of the law is clearly illustrated
>in the case of J.R. Warren. The state of West Virginia is
>allowing four weeks just to consider whether or not Parker
>and Wilson, both white, should be tried as adults. Each has
>confessed to this racist murder.
>
>In stark contrast, the state of Texas took only two days
>to try and convict 17-year-old Sankofa of murder and
>sentence him to death. Sankofa always professed his
>innocence, which was supported by overwhelming evidence
>that was suppressed during the trial. No court would hear
>the evidence.
>
>Juveniles are not adults and should not be tried as such.
>That's why juvenile law exists. But prosecutors have found
>a way to get around it by charging some youths as adults.
>Such laws are an added racist weapon in the hands of
>prosecutors.
>
>The state of Texas, as well as many other states, are
>currently working to pass laws allowing children as young
>as 11 to be tried as adults in murder cases. But the
>unwritten postscript to these laws is that they apply
>almost exclusively to Black, Latin and other children of
>color, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly disproportionate
>number of youths of color (and adults convicted as youths)
>in prison and on death row in the U.S. today.
>
>As tens of thousands of people descend on Philadelphia to
>protest at the Republican National Convention, let the
>
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