WW News Service Digest #220
4) San Diego Anti-Bush Protest
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) 20,000 March Against Bush in San Francisco
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
6) Behind the Assassination of Kabila
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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SAN DIEGO: ANGRY ANTI-BUSH PROTEST TAKES TO THE
STREETS
By Workers World San Diego bureau
San Diego saw an angry, multinational outpouring of hundreds
of youths on Jan. 20 to protest the inauguration of
President George W. Bush.
Demonstrators occupied the four corners of a major
intersection in the heart of the Black community. They
chanted slogans denouncing Bush and held signs and banners
raising all the issues ignored by the big-business
candidates during last year's presidential election
campaign.
Passing motorists honked their car horns, waved and raised
their fists in solidarity.
Two large International Action Center banners and a huge
canvas portrait of Mumia Abu-Jamal made clear the focus of
this demonstration. The banners read, "Free the Black vote!
End the racist death penalty! Shut down the prison-
industrial complex" and "Stop police terror! Free Mumia Abu-
Jamal! Free all political prisoners!"
After about an hour the protest became a march. Turning onto
the major Euclid Avenue thoroughfare, protesters seized half
of the street and continued in a loud procession to the
Malcolm X Library.
It was standing room only in the library auditorium as
speaker after speaker vowed that the inauguration would not
signal the beginning of a period of more intense reaction,
but rather the birth of a new movement of resistance to
racism and war and for social justice.
Bob McCubbin of Workers World Party read a statement written
by Abu-Jamal for the Jan. 20 protests.
Tim Helsley of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee spoke
on the failure of President Bill Clinton to sign a pardon
for Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Peltier was
convicted of killing to FBI agents in 1975 after a
government-engineered trial.
Craig Mace, a participant in the second Iraq Sanctions
Challenge, spoke on the need to continue fighting for an end
to the sanctions that have killed so many Iraqis.
Janice Jordan of the Peace & Freedom Party spoke about the
prison-industrial complex.
Cherry Mason, whose unarmed daughter was killed by the
Border Patrol a year ago, spoke, and so did Ben Rivera for
the Committee Against Police Brutality.
Following the rally, some youths marched back to the
assembly site to continue outreach to the community.
Earlier in the day forces aligned with the Democratic Party
held a march and rally in Balboa Park. Gloria Verdieu, a
leader of the Mumia Coalition and the International Action
Center, had been promised an opportunity to speak at this
rally. But later rally organizers told her she would only be
permitted to speak if she didn't mention Abu-Jamal. Verdieu
refused this outrageous, racist demand that she censor
herself.
Instead she spoke at and co-chaired the Malcolm X Library
rally. IAC organizers saturated the crowd at the Democratic
Party rally with leaflets explaining the case of Abu-Jamal.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
20,000 MARCH AGAINST BUSH IN SAN FRANCISCO
By Bill Hackwell
San Francisco
"The one good thing about the selection of Bush to be
president by an appointed panel of judges is that it has
brought us all together here today in this spectacular
protest," exclaimed the Rev. Dorsey Blake as he opened the
counter-inaugural rally to an overflowing crowd of
demonstrators at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza on Jan.
20.
Organized by the International Action Center, the march and
rallies here far exceeded expectations. Between 15,000 and
20,000 people converged in this opening salvo against the
new Bush administration and its right-wing agenda.
Most major news outlets reported 15,000 people attended. And
even spokespeople for the San Francisco Police Department,
notorious for under-representing progressive demonstrations,
said 10,000 to 15,000.
A wide range of people came from all over California. An IAC-
organized bus from Los Angeles brought a large contingent of
youths from the Orange County Gay Straight Alliance Youth
Drop-in Center and members of the Project 10 Safe Space for
Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Youth of Cleveland High School in
San Fernando Valley.
Friends of the IAC in San Jose also brought a bus that was
subsidized by union donations. Car-pooling took place in
Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and in Mendocino and
Contra Costa Counties.
The first rally was in Civic Center Plaza, in the shadow of
city hall. There a number of speakers denounced Bush and the
reactionary pro-war cabinet he is assembling.
San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano welcomed the crowd. San
Francisco Central Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Walter
Johnson addressed the rally. So did Willie Ratcliff, editor
of the Bay View Newspaper--an African American newspaper in
the Bay View Hunters Point district of San Francisco. Other
speakers included Joyce Miller from the Come Into the Sun
Coalition and spoken word artist Jime Salcedo.
Cora Lee Simmons from the Round Valley Indians for Justice
told those gathered, "The first people are here to say that
this election is a shame. I'm here to stand with the African
American people of Florida whose votes were not counted. I'm
Native American and we know what it is like to not be
counted. I've been to a place called Cuba where every skin
color is treated the same."
Tahnee Stair, who had just gotten off a plane from the
fourth Iraq Sanctions Challenge of the IAC, told an
approving crowd, "We were in Iraq on the 10th anniversary of
the Gulf War. We saw first hand the effect of sanctions that
have killed 1.5 million Iraqi people, half of them children.
The people of Iraq are living with the legacy of depleted
uranium and 3,000 to 5,000 Iraqi children die a month.
"As George Bush Jr. takes office we must not let him and his
pro-war advisors think that they have a mandate to continue
sanctions and to start another war in Iraq."
At 1 p.m. the march stepped off from the Civic Center.
Protesters continued to pour in as the march wound its way
through the Western Addition district towards Jefferson
Square Park. It took the march 40 minutes to pass the point
where collection buckets were set up.
The front of the march was particularly militant and
visually powerful. Many banners raised issues and struggles,
including the racist disenfranchisement of the African
American vote, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, the death
penalty and U.S. intervention in Colombia, Chiapas and Cuba.
The multinational character of the march could be seen in
the wide range of contingents. Over 150 groups and
organizations endorsed the demonstration.
There were many labor unions marching under their banners,
including the Letter Carriers, Teachers, Carpenters,
National Writers Union, Postal Workers, Service Employees,
and the Plumbers, Steamfitters and Boilermakers.
Many women's organizations took part, including the National
Organization for Women.
But youths composed the largest part of the protest. Young
workers, college and high school students were there from
Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Barbara and San Jose. Youth
contingents included one from the Black Student Union of
College Park High School in Pleasant Hill. The young people
expressed their readiness to fight back against Bush.
Many people came with their young children in strollers.
IAC organizer Nancy Mitchell noted, "It was not uncommon in
the week leading up to the demonstration for our office to
get calls from people saying that they were coming and that
this was the first time they had ever demonstrated against
anything."
'FIGHT RACISM AND WAR!'
The main rally at Jefferson Square Park included a wide
range of speakers and performers.
Ted Frazier from the NAACP explained the lawsuit that his
organization and others have filed in Florida against the
racist election there. "We took two busloads of people from
San Francisco to Florida to protest the thousands of African
American and Haitian American votes that were silenced on
Nov. 7."
Frazier added: "There are rallies and marches taking place
today all over the country. There was a coalition in the
sixties that was successful and today is the beginning of a
new coalition. We are going to have to work together and
fight together to make sure that justice and fairness rule
in this nation."
Other speakers included Renee Salcedo, director of Centro
Legal de la Raza; San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell;
Carlos Padilla, Students for Justice in San Jose; Debra
Glenn Rogers, chair of the Reproductive Rights Task Force of
NOW; Nancy Charraga, San Francisco Zapatista Support
Committee; Pierre Laboissiere, Bay Area Haitian Amer ican
Council; Jackie Santos, Vieques Support Committee; and Kim
Yee from the Asian Left Network.
Gloria La Riva, speaking for Workers World Party, said, "I'm
proud to say that my name, along with Monica Moorehead's
name, was on that butterfly ballot in Florida. No one should
think that the 40 million people in this country who didn't
vote would've gone for Bush or Gore. That is why we began
organizing this demonstration back in September--because we
knew that it didn't matter who was elected. The struggle
would be the same and the main priority would still be the
struggle to free Mumia and to end the racist death penalty."
Elias Rashmawi of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee said, "We are here to be with you to build the
bridge of social justice with all people. As Palestinians we
know only too well what it means to have democracy stolen
and to be exiled, like Leonard Peltier and Mumia are, in our
own homeland."
Alicia Jrapko of the IAC's U.S. Out of Colombia Committee
talked about Plan Colombia and the $1.3 billion the U.S.
recently gave the Colombian government to escalate the war
against liberation forces there. "The danger of a full scale
U.S. war in Colombia is imminent," she stressed.
"I have a 17-year-old son and I'm sure that many of you have
children that age too. We have to tell Bush we will not
allow our youths to go off to fight another Vietnam War in
Latin America to defend imperialist interests. The people of
Colombia are not our enemies," she said.
Performers at the rally included the Freedom Song Network
and spoken word artists Company of Prophets. Indigenous
musicians from Latin America performed with Native American
actor/singer and activist Floyd Westerman.
Westerman told the crowd, "As American Indians we have
always said that America has been bankrupt for leaders. That
the American leadership has the collective mental age of a
13-year-old and Bush Jr. is a perfect example. Because they
don't know how to treat the environment. If the leadership
had followed Indian ways we would not have this
environmental situation we are in now."
Westerman said Clinton could have done the right thing by
pardoning Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier but he
didn't have the strength to do it.
Co-chairs of the rallies were John Parker of the Los Angeles
IAC, the Rev. Dorsey Blake of the Church of Fellowship of
All Peoples, Chicano activist and KPFA radio personality
Miguel "Gavilan" Molina and Richard Becker, West Coast
coordinator of the IAC.
Becker summed up the activities: "We are here today to just
say no--right from the start. Gov. Death has gone to
Washington and along with him comes a cabinet filled with
lovers of the Confederacy, a team that wants to roll back
workers' rights, voting rights, women's rights, lesbian and
gay rights, disabled rights, immigrants' rights. In other
words, the rights of the people.
"But we say: We won't go back, send Bush back!"
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BUSH,CLINTON IN THE WEB: BEHIND THE ASSASSINATION OF
KABILA
By Deirdre Griswold and
Johnnie Stevens
The failure of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to
express even the most perfunctory regret over the
assassination of Congo President Laurent Désiré Kabila
betrays how implicated Washington is in this latest outrage
against the most important country in central Africa.
Washington's silence is even more glaring considering that
its foreign policy experts are well aware that the African
people view the secret intelligence agencies of the U.S.
government, which work closely with corporations seeking
vast fortunes in the region, as the probable authors of this
crime.
George Bush Sr., father of the president, even had an
intimate connection with one of these plundering
corporations.
But this is not mentioned in the commercial media, which, as
usual, go even further than indifference to insult the
fallen head of state, while speculating on the breakup of
the Congo.
What they carefully omit in their reporting is the deadly
record of U.S. interventions in the Congo, beginning with
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's order at a meeting of the
National Security Council on Aug. 18, 1960, to assassinate
Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was the young and inspiring
independence leader who was briefly the Congo's first
president. The 40th anniversary of his assassination, Jan.
17 of this year, was the day after Kabila was shot.
The U.S. media are today blaming Kabila for failing to bring
peace to the Congo. This is a monstrous charge, since
Washington is largely responsible for the war that has
crushed the Congolese people's hopes for a better life since
the overthrow of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The Congo
government has been trying to expel Rwandan and Ugandan
troops that invaded eastern Congo in August 1998. The U.S.
has secretly supported them and their occupation of this
area of fabulous mineral wealth.
The Congo's allies in this war are Zimbabwe, Angola and
Namibia--all countries that had to fight racist colonial
regimes to win their independence.
The invaders, on the other hand, have been supplied with
high-tech weaponry and communications and transportation
equipment by their imperialist backers. There is evidence of
military training and coordination from the Pentagon and the
involvement of mercenary companies, including MPRI of the
U.S., Executive Outcome of South Africa, and Sandline of
Britain.
KABILA RESISTED 'GLOBALIZATION'
What U.S. corporations wanted from Kabila, and what he
refused to give, was outright control over an area that
contains some of the world's most important deposits of
gold, diamonds, cobalt, manganese, uranium, copper, zinc,
germanium, silver, lead, iron and tungsten.
It has been Washington's theme song for the last decade that
oppressed countries must join the "global economy"--meaning
sell off state-owned enterprises to imperialist investors,
open their domestic markets and devalue their currencies,
thus further lowering the standard of living.
Even Mobutu tried to resist this and hold on to state
control over the mines--one of the reasons the U.S. decided
to dump him after having propped him up for almost 35 years.
Washington helped a coalition force headed by Kabila but
based on Rwandan and Ugandan military forces to topple
Mobutu in 1997.
But once Kabila became president, he surprised his former
allies by refusing to be a puppet and trying to rally the
Congolese people to unite and defend their country's
sovereignty.
Kabila also retracted a number of mining contracts signed
with U.S. and European corporations during the period of the
alliance with Rwanda and Uganda. And he refused to pay back
the huge debt to the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank incurred by the Mobutu regime. For this, it seemed,
they never forgave him.
A most interesting essay on "The geopolitical stakes of the
international mining companies in the Democratic Republic of
Congo" by mining civil engineer Pierre Baracyetse can be
found
on the Web at www.africa2000.com/
UGANDA/mineralseng.html. It explains in detail the high
stakes involved for foreign capital.
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT STAKE
American Mineral Fields (AMFI), a consortium based
originally in Hope, Ark.--yes, Bill Clinton's hometown--is a
big player in exploiting Congo's mineral wealth. In 1997,
just a month before Mobutu fell, it signed contracts with
the Kabila-Rwanda-Uganda alliance forces for almost a
billion dollars investment in copper, cobalt and zinc mines
and processing plants in Kolwezi and Kipushi.
The industrial enterprises that set up AMFI, according to
Baracyetse, "are interested in the contract for the
construction of the orbital platform around the world that
is destined to replace the Russian station MIR."
This project is part of the $60-billion so-called National
Missile Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Vice President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously.
Building the space station will require many of the rare
metals found in eastern Congo.
Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold
Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second-
largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.
This company was able in 1996 to get the Mobutu regime's
Gold Office of Kilomoto, a government monopoly, to transfer
mining rights over almost all its 82,000 square kilometers
of land to Barrick. The land is estimated to have 100 tons
of gold in reserve.
George Bush Sr. sat on the board of directors of Barrick,
according to Baracyetse.
The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, signed into law by
President Clinton last May 18, brought the full power of the
U.S. government behind expanding corporate domination in
Africa. The biggest companies, including Texaco, Mobil,
Amoco, Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, General Electric,
Enron and Caterpillar spent some $200 million lobbying for
this legislation.
Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Susan Rice described
Africa as "a huge market insufficiently exploited of 700
million people" in calling for passage of the act. The
vision being pushed by both Democrats and Republicans is
that only U.S. intervention can bring development and
prosperity to Africa.
But politically conscious Africans are calling it the
"Recolonization of Africa" act, and warn that it will only
increase the plunder of this rich continent by corporate
pirates.
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