WW News Service Digest #285
1) Vieques Movement: "U.S. Navy out NOW!'"
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2) Executions Start in Federal Prisons
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) LGBT Liberation on Many Fronts
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4) At Last, Truth about Korean War
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 21. kes�kuu 2001 10:13
Subject: [WW] Vieques Movement: "U.S. Navy out NOW!'"
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
NEW PHASE OF STRUGGLE: VIEQUES MOVEMENT
ANSWERS BUSH WITH "U.S. NAVY OUT NOW!"
By Teresa Gutierrez
The standoff between the people of Puerto Rico and the
Pentagon over Navy exercises on the island of Vieques has
forced U.S. imperialism to shift gears.
On June 14 President George W. Bush told reporters in
Europe: "My attitude is that the Navy ought to find
somewhere else to conduct its exercises for a lot of
reasons. One, there has been some harm done to people in the
past. Secondly, these are our friends and neighbors and they
don't want us there. [!] The Navy ought to find somewhere
else to conduct its exercises."
He announced that the U.S. Navy would end its bombing
practices on Vieques by May 2003.
Leaders of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of
Vieques immediately responded.
Nilda Medina said that "Bush's declaration does not
correspond to the historic demands of our people." She
summed up those demands as "the four D's: demilitarization,
decontamination, devolution- return the lands to the people-
and sustainable development in a Vieques free of the Navy."
Ismael Guadalupe, another main leader of the CRDV, said,
"The presidential decision in no way changes our plans in
relation to the current maneuvers. We will continue the
protest, the international denunciation and the civil
disobedience actions in order to defend our people against
the dangers of bombing and other U.S. Navy activities."
BOMBING AND PROTESTS CONTINUE
The U.S. Navy is still in Vieques and the bombing and
protests continue. Puerto Rico is still a colony. And the
deadline of May 2003 for the Navy to end its bombing is
unacceptable to the Puerto Rican people.
Of course, right-wing elements in Congress worry that
pulling the Navy out of Vieques will give others around the
world ideas.
Republican Bob Stump of Arizona, chair of the House Armed
Services Committee, said he would schedule hearings to find
an alternative to leaving Vieques. He was echoed by
Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, who wants Senate
hearings as well.
George Bush's announcement, however, reflects the ruling
class's ability to read the writing on the wall.
The struggle to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques has gone on
for decades. But in the last two years, since the killing of
Vieques resident David Sanes, the struggle has accelerated
to a fever pitch.
The ruling class knows there is more at stake than a mere
Navy site. They have their eyes on a rising tide of
revolutionary struggle in Latin America. They are worried
that the demands of the Puerto Rican people could easily go
much further than getting the Navy out of Vieques.
The Puerto Rican people, meanwhile, are proving that they
will continue the fight to get the U.S. Navy out. There is
unprecedented unity and solidarity around this issue. The
fierce determination and steadfast resistance by the
Viequenses has resulted in the broadest movement seen in
years.
Not only in Puerto Rico, not only among Puerto Ricans living
in the United States, but among Latinos in the U.S. and
throughout Latin America, masses of people are standing with
Vieques.
International solidarity has come from as far away as Korea,
Palestine and Japan. Support from the African American
community has included civil disobedience by prominent
leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jackie Jackson, wife
of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Sharpton and three others remain in jail. On June 14 in
Boston the First Circuit Court of Appeals refused to
overturn their trespassing convictions.
Actor Edward James Olmos, a Chicano activist, has also been
arrested. He marched in New York's Puerto Rican Day Parade
and has testified in Congress to get the Navy out of
Vieques. Olmos represents the sentiment of a vast majority
of Chicanos/Mexicanos in the U.S., a huge population that
identifies with the Puerto Rican struggle.
Others who have been arrested in the Vieques cause include
environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., labor leader Dennis
Rivera, and several Puerto Rican members of Congress,
including Luis Gutierrez from Illinois and Nydia Velasquez
and Jose Serrano from New York.
Earlier this year, singers Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin,
journalist Jose Feliciano, and actor Benicio del Toro
contributed to a $100,000 ad in the New York Times calling
for an end to the bombing.
And most important, the Puerto Rican masses have mobilized.
Several hundred thousand Puerto Ricans marched for Vieques
over the last year and remain firmly united behind the call
to get the Navy out.
Over 1,000 people have been arrested since the bombings
began in Vieques over 50 years ago. Half of those arrests
have taken place in the last two years.
Throughout the world, Vieques has become a rallying cry
against the brutal militarism of the U.S. government. It has
become synonymous with an end to U.S. military occupation.
It is this development that is behind Bush's announcement on
June 14.
That is why the likes of Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton and
Republican Gov. George Pataki of New York have gotten on the
bandwagon. They have stuck their finger in the wind and felt
it blowing strong against the Navy presence.
As the New York Times said on June 16, "the Navy's continued
use of Vieques was politically untenable."
RISING CONSCIOUSNESS WORRIES IMPERIALISTS
Of course, concern for Latino votes was one of the reasons
Bush and Pataki took the position they did. If votes were
decisive, however, George Bush would not be president today.
Rather, at issue is fear of increased revolutionary
consciousness among Puerto Ricans in the United States and
on the island.
When Bill Clinton was president, he struck a deal with Gov.
Pedro Rossello that allowed the Navy use of the island with
dummy ammunition and provided millions of dollars in
development aid.
It also called for a referendum in November of this year
that would allow the people to vote on whether they wanted
the bombing to end in 2003 or to continue with more
financial aid. Immediate cessation of the bombing is not an
option on that referendum.
On June 15, New York Newsday Columnist Juan Gonzalez, a
Puerto Rican, wrote, "The Navy has less chance of winning
that referendum than I do of being the space shuttle's next
passenger."
A leader in Vieques, Robert Rabin, said, "What Bush is doing
is admitting the community won the November referendum
before it even happens."
Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Maria Calderon, who rejected the
Clinton/Rossello agreement, called for a different
referendum on July 29. Some news accounts stated that Bush
made his announcement to undercut that referendum. It asks
the people whether the Navy should stay, leave in 2003 or
leave immediately. But it is not legally binding.
Meanwhile, 72 percent of the Viequenses live below the
poverty line.
The island has no hospitals. It takes one and a half hours
by ferry to get to a hospital.
The odds that a Viequense will develop cancer are 27 percent
higher than for other Puerto Ricans.
In 1998 the Navy fired 273 radioactive depleted-uranium
shells on Vieques, which critics say can cause cancer and
leukemia.
U.S. imperialism cannot hide these conditions. This is what
has forced the people of Vieques and Puerto Rico to say
enough is enough.
- END -
(Copyright 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
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 21. kes�kuu 2001 10:13
Subject: [WW] Executions Start in Federal Prisons
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS OPPOSITION TO DEATH PENALTY RISES: EXECUTIONS
START IN FEDERAL PRISONS
By Monica Moorehead
One year ago on June 22, African American political and
death row activist Shaka Sankofa/Gary Graham was legally
lynched in Texas by "Governor Death"--George W. Bush.
Sankofa was sent to death row at the age of 17 on the
testimony of one eyewitness, with inadequate legal counsel
and without any physical evidence placing him at the scene
of a murder.
His real "crime"--like thousands of others who languish on
U.S. death rows--was being a person of color and poor.
Activists here and worldwide will mark this horrific
occasion by staging various protests calling for the end of
the death penalty. They will also demand freedom for
revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row in Pennsylvania.
One important reason why "President Death" Bush was the
target of such massive, militant protests throughout Europe
in mid-June is that he remains today a mass murderer in the
eyes of millions of activists seeking social justice.
The debate around the racist use of the death penalty has
taken center stage once again.
The June 11 execution of Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing
Oklahoma City bomber, was the first in 38 years carried out
by the federal government. Over 700 people have been
executed by state governments since the death penalty was
reinstated in 1977.
Juan Raul Garza, a Mexican-American man, was executed on
June 19--the second person put to death by the federal
government in less than two weeks. Garza was convicted of a
number of drug-related murders over a decade ago. Bush, when
he was governor in 1993, declined clemency for Garza, and
has twice refused a stay of execution since becoming
president.
Of the almost 4,000 prisoners on death row, the overwhelming
majority are people of color. Of the 157 federal defendants
charged with multiple drug-related murders from 1995 until
2000, 83 percent were people of color. Federal prosecutors
recommended the death penalty in 57 percent of those cases.
Yet arch-racist and reactionary Attorney General John
Ashcroft recently concluded, after "reviewing" 950 cases,
that race was not a determining factor in how the federal
death penalty is administered.
Despite much evidence of CIA, Pentagon and police
involvement in drug crimes, none of these agents of the
state have faced the death penalty for their crimes.
Various states have passed bills outlawing the execution of
mentally disabled people. But, carrying forth the terrible
legacy of George W. Bush, his predecessor, Texas Gov. Rick
Perry, has just vetoed such a bill.
Recent polls indicate that public support for the death
penalty is waning after some in the media have shown that
innocent people have been railroaded to death row and that
neither the threat nor the implementation of the death
penalty is a deterrent to anti-social behavior.
The capitalist media are incapable of telling the whole
story, however. That is that the death penalty should be
abolished because it is a tool of political and economic
repression at the disposal of the super-rich ruling class,
which is used most of all against those communities that are
most oppressed and therefore most likely to rebel.
- END -
(Copyright 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:
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 21. kes�kuu 2001 11:16
Subject: [WW] LGBT Liberation on Many Fronts
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
GAY PRIDE: LGBT LIBERATION ON MANY FRONTS
[Here are excerpts from a message by Leslie Feinberg to the
2001 Pride rally in New York City. Feinberg is a managing
editor of Workers World newspaper, a national organizer for
the International Action Center and a co-founder of Rainbow
Flags for Mumia.]
The Stonewall Rebellion was not the first time in history
that lesbian, gay, bi and trans people fought back. In
England, 300 years earlier, police routinely raided "molly
houses"--clubs frequented by feminine, cross-dressing males
who were presumed to be gay. I found an account of a London
raid in 1725 in which the crowd, many of them in drag,
fought pitched battles with police.
The first international upsurge of gay and trans liberation
arose around the turn of the 20th century, beginning in
Germany.
Stonewall signaled the birth of the second mass wave for
lesbian, gay, bi and trans liberation. In the early years of
its ascendancy, the left wing of this young movement could
be found at every demonstration in support of the Black
Panther Party and Young Lords Party, both under murderous
siege by state repression. We were a dynamic component of
the anti-Vietnam War movement and union organizing--
including lending our efforts to the boycott organizing of
the United Farm Workers.
In turn, our multinational movement won strong support,
particularly from the most oppressed. Shortly after the four-
night-long Stone wall uprising, Black Panther Party leader
Huey Newton issued a revolutionary statement in support of
gay liberation. The Young Lords Party initiated an internal
Gay Caucus--one of whose first members was Stonewall
combatant Sylvia Rivera. Workers World Party's many
lesbian/gay/bi/trans members formed a vibrant caucus.
The United Farm Workers has stood tall with our movement.
And with strong backing from the left wing of the anti-war
movement, even the more conservative currents in the peace
movement eventually acknowledged lesbian and gay activist
participation.
Over the years, our role in these and other struggles on so
many fronts--from women's liberation to defense of political
prisoners--helped reshape consciousness about sexual and
gender oppression. And it helped build the support that many
sectors of society now feel for the lesbian/ gay/bi/trans
movement.
Today, our movement has so much to be proud of. It refused
to be marginalized or pushed back into the closet by the
rise in right-wing bashings and the Klan-style lynching of
Matthew Shepard. On the contrary. I was one of those
arrested at the political funeral for Matthew here in New
York--one of countless protests to express rage and
resistance in towns and campuses all across the United
States. And heterosexual loved ones, fellow students, co-
workers and neighbors joined us.
We are building a global fight-back to the intransigence of
the U.S. government and pharmaceutical giants over the AIDS
crisis, which is continuing to threaten the lives of
millions around the world and here in this country.
Rainbow Flags for Mumia is a vital component of the battle
to save the life of death-row political prisoner and former
Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu-Jamal. Anti-racist
lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth braved arrest at protests
against the police killing of Amadou Diallo.
We are part of the rising struggle against the racist death
penalty and the use of slave labor in the prison-industrial
complex. And we are fighting for reproductive rights and
domestic partner benefits.
Pride At Work--the AFL-CIO constituency group--recently
passed a resolution demanding the U.S. end its genocidal
economic sanctions against Iraq. Progressive and
revolutionary Jewish activists are standing with the
embattled Palestinian people for self-determination. We are
already part of the building struggle against U.S. efforts
to crush the liberation aspirations of the Colombian people.
And queer-identified youth are on the front lines of the
anti-capitalist movement that emerged from the clouds of
tear gas in Seattle.
The 1969 Stonewall Rebellion--led by Black, Latina and white
drag queens and transsexual youth--was an example that
people who face different oppressions can make history when
we unite to fight back against a common enemy. Today,
uniting together in pride, our struggles for social and
economic justice on behalf of all who are downtrodden and
disenfranchised in this dog-eat-dog economy are making the
spirit of Stonewall burn even brighter.
Stonewall means fight back!
Long live the spirit of Marsha P. Johnson and Amanda Milan!
- END -
(Copyright 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:
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 21. kes�kuu 2001 11:16
Subject: [WW] At Last, Truth about Korean War
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 28, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
TRIBUNAL TO WEIGH U.S CRIMES: AT LAST, TRUTH ABOUT
KOREAN WAR
By Brian Becker
and Rev. Kiyul Chung
Those who have tried to tell the truth about the Holocaust
suffered by the Korean people--before and especially during
the Korean War--have been punished severely for their
efforts.
Thousands of people have been imprisoned in South Korea over
the past half-century for the crime of telling the truth
about the 1950-53 war.
Under the terms of what is now called the National Security
Law, people have been jailed for daring to come forward and
reveal the crimes committed by U.S. government forces and
its partner or proxy forces in the South Korean military and
national intelligence police.
When the hated Syngman Rhee dictatorship was overthrown by
an uprising of the people on April 19, 1960, a brief
flowering of democracy blossomed throughout the southern
half of Korea.
Then the stories of atrocities against civilians by U.S.
soldiers began to be told from one end of the country to the
other. So widespread were the accounts of survivors, their
families and neighbors that an unmistakable picture began to
emerge of a strategy of terror employed during the war--in
both North and South Korea.
The crimes committed in South Korea also included the mass
executions of many thousands of political prisoners, of
nationalist patriots, of socialists and communists, and of
peasants seeking land reform.
PARK COUP BURIED THE TRUTH
However, the flood of "truth telling" that swept South Korea
came to a sudden, shocking conclusion 13 months after it
began when the United States covertly backed a military coup
by Gen. Park Chung-Hee on May 16, 1961.
Those who had come forward to report on war crimes and
crimes against humanity were sent to prison. Many remained
locked up for decades, suffering torture and serving as a
chilling threat for others who wanted to speak out. Some of
these people stayed in prison for 20, 30 and even 40 years.
As a consequence, thousands of families had to quietly
conceal their hurt and anger. Koreans use the word "han" to
describe this suppressed grief and rage.
Now that this story is finally being revealed, it is
becoming clear that the gruesome features of U.S. strategy
in South Korea before and during the 1950-53 war have stark
parallels with those pursued a decade later in South
Vietnam.
KOREA LIKE VIETNAM
In South Vietnam, the Pentagon/Central Intelligence Agency
strategy included the massive bombing of North Vietnam from
the air and the systematic slaughter of opponents in South
Vietnam. The U.S. herded Vietnamese peasants into "strategic
hamlets," created outside the hamlets free-fire zones where
its troops were authorized to kill any living thing, and
then launched Operation Phoenix, in which its commandos and
assassins executed more than 70,000 people in South Vietnam
considered friendly to the North.
The recently revealed war crimes committed by former U.S.
Senator Bob Kerrey exemplify this U.S. strategy in Vietnam.
Kerrey commanded a U.S. Navy Special Forces SEAL unit that
was sent on a nighttime raid to assassinate a South
Vietnamese peasant leader near the village of Tranh Phong, a
small hamlet in the Mekong Delta. As they left the next day
the SEAL unit gathered between 13 and 20 villagers, mostly
children and their mothers, and shot them execution style or
slit their throats, according to the corroborated evidence.
The soldiers murdered these civilians because they feared
they would give away the presence of the unit.
"Standard operating procedure was to dispose of the people
we made contact with," Kerrey has stated in self-
justification. It was a policy and strategy of the high
command, not simply errant behavior by troops in the field.
The crimes committed by the U.S. in Vietnam are widely
recognized because they became the target of a worldwide
movement of opposition. During the Korean War, however, anti-
war voices were muted in the U.S. The political context for
Korea was the onset of the Cold War. McCarthyism and an anti-
Communist witch-hunt inside the United States stifled the
potential of a mass anti-war movement.
Thus, the tragic legacy is that the Korean War has become
labeled the "Forgotten War." This is also convenient for
U.S. policy makers who desire to discreetly maintain their
continued troop occupation of South Korea and their
devastating economic sanctions on North Korea outside the
purview of internal political debate in the U.S.
NO GUN RI TIP OF ICEBERG
Many people in the United States were undoubtedly shocked
when a team of Associated Press reporters broke the story in
September 1999 of the No Gun Ri massacre. This painstakingly
researched story exposed that U.S. troops had repeatedly
fired on hundreds of people they knew to be civilians at No
Gun Ri in 1950.
While surprising to people in the United States who suffer
from a deliberate effort by the U.S. government to conceal
the truth over the last 50 years, the No Gun Ri massacre was
not so shocking to the vast number of Korean people who
directly experienced and suffered from similar atrocities.
KOREA TRUTH COMMISSION
The Korea Truth Commission is the initiative of Korean
people in South and North Korea and among the overseas
diaspora of Koreans in the United States, Japan, Canada,
Europe and elsewhere.
The KTC has attracted the active support of anti-war and
human rights activists in more than 20 countries. Ramsey
Clark, a former U.S. attorney general and a specialist on
international law, has joined with legal experts in South
and North Korea in the final drafting of a 19-count
indictment that charges U.S. officials with crimes against
peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The KTC is the sponsor of the Korea International War Crimes
Tribunal that is being held on June 23, 2001, at the
Interchurch Center in New York City. The tribunal will hear
the testimony of survivors and their families, will present
expert testimony, and will explore documents, reports,
articles and archival video footage and photographs.
The June 23rd KTC tribunal is an attempt to pull together
the loose threads of the truth-telling crusade that was
temporarily snuffed out by the May 16, 1961, military coup
in South Korea. It is an attempt to help revive, or more
accurately to help sustain a movement by injured people to
win justice--not only for the direct victims, but for all
Korean people whose nation has been deeply affected by
colonialism, division and war.
The KTC is part of a greater historical process of the
Korean people to cast off foreign occupation.
Joining this struggle must be the obligation of all those
who care about justice. People in the United States have a
special duty in this regard. A government that speaks in
their name continues to criminally occupy one half of Korea,
while it blockades food and medicine for Koreans of the
other half.
This investigation is not simply looking backward--exposing
and evaluating criminal behavior in the past. It is directed
at current U.S. policy, which is the central obstacle
encountered by the Korean people in their struggle to
reunify their divided nation, and to exercise their long-
denied right to enjoy full and genuine self-determination.
[The Rev. Kiyul Chung is secretary
general of the Korea Truth Commission. Brian Becker is a co-
director of the International Action Center.]
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
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changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 21. kes�kuu 2001 11:16
Subject: [WW] DPRK Leader's Views on Socialist Construction
