WW News Service Digest #299
1) Behind the Baltimore Train Disaster
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2) Fortunes Built on Railroad Workers' Blood
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) Genoa: 200,000 Defy Killer Cops
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4) Genoa: Solidarity Will Ensure Victory
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) Court Issues Alarming Ruling Against Mumia
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 26. hein�kuu 2001 11:02
Subject: [WW] Behind the Baltimore Train Disaster
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 2, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
WHAT'S BEHIND BALTIMORE TRAIN DISASTER? COMMUNITY
GROUP CALLS FOR PEOPLE'S INVESTIGATION
By Stephen Millies
Member,
Transportation Communications
International Union, District 1402
Baltimore
The whole world watched as this city was taken hostage by a
burning trainload of poisonous chemicals after a 60-car
freight train derailed in a railroad tunnel underneath
Baltimore's downtown and caught fire on July 18.
Smoke came pouring out of both ends of the 106-year-old
Howard Street railroad tunnel. Police blockaded the city.
For seven hours no one was allowed to enter.
The intense heat of the train fire--
which reached 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit--caused a water main
to burst. The cast-iron pipe may date back to the 1880s.
Sixty million gallons of water soon flooded downtown. The
water level in the Druid Hill reservoir dropped three feet
in four hours.
Much of downtown Baltimore continues to look like a war
zone. Traffic will be snarled for weeks. Even Internet
traffic was affected.
The hometown of blues singer Billie Holiday and its 650,000
people are under siege. People are asking what would have
happened had the train been carrying propane--or nuclear
waste.
Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley wasn't worried about all the
smoke. "So far, knock on wood, there's nothing being emitted
into the air that would pose a threat to public health,"
says the man in City Hall.
That must be why residents were advised to close their
windows and turn off their air conditioners. And why
students and teachers complained their schools stank. Renee
Washington, a state worker and AFSCME member, was forced
from her office at Preston Street with burning eyes and pain
in the chest. State workers in the impacted areas were
placed on liberal leave for several days.
"We need a people's investigation of this disaster," said
Sharon Ceci of Baltimore's All-Peoples Congress. "O'Malley
is covering up for the railroad bosses. Railroad workers and
the community need to come together to find out the truth."
"What happened to O'Malley's 'zero tolerance' policy?" asked
Andre Powell, another leader of the APC. "These code words
for stepping up police brutality against African Americans
who make up 65 percent of Baltimore's population evidently
don't apply to pollution."
The CSX Corporation owns the tunnel and the train. It's a
small part of their wealth.
This Goliath carried 177 millions tons of coal in 1999. One
out of every three automobiles made in the country are
shipped over its rails.
CSX SPENDS BILLIONS ON MERGERS, LITTLE ON SAFETY
None of this work is done by CSX fat-cat executives, who get
to travel in luxurious private railroad cars. It's the labor
of railroad workers that brings wheat to the cities and coal
to the power plants--courageous workers like conductor
Edward Brown and engineer Chad Cadden.
They were the entire crew on the 4,000-foot-long freight
train that derailed. Because of cutbacks called "work rule
changes," many trains don't have a brake person anymore.
Brown and Cadden uncoupled the engines from the derailed
train. They gave the first alert about the fire. Both of
these railroaders could have been killed.
Today almost all the rail lines in the Eastern United States
are operated by CSX or its rival, Norfolk Southern. These
two outfits have just spent $10 billion to gobble up
Conrail.
Spending the company's money on safety is another story.
The Federal Railroad Administration complained in March
about the massive number of defects on tracks owned by CSX.
Track-related accidents on this railroad system have surged
by 60 percent in the last five years.
Tie conditions were listed as "marginal" on the same line
that includes the Howard Street Tunnel. Further up the line
in Darby, Pa., two derailments occurred 11 days apart in
February.
Unlike Martin O'Malley, Darby's mayor protested CSX's
deferred maintenance of its tracks, which helped carry 1.6
million tons of chemicals to Maryland industries in 1999.
Neither the federal government nor railroad companies give a
hoot about safety. The feds actually approved a predecessor
company of CSX ripping out part of the signal system on its
main line, which goes through Silver Spring, Md.
This was one of the key reasons eight people died in the
crash of a MARC commuter train there in February 1996.
Thousands of signal maintainer jobs have been abolished
throughout the U.S.
In 1960 nearly a million people worked on the rails. That
number is now down to 200,000 while traffic has increased.
Railroad workers are almost always among the first victims
of any train wreck. But danger to railroaders isn't confined
to the tracks.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, hundreds of CSX
employees suffered brain damage from the chemicals they were
forced to use to clean locomotive parts. The company has
admitted paying $35 million to 466 workers.
What can you expect of an outfit that was too cheap to put
up a fence around a railroad yard that stood next to the
then-existing Fairfield Homes in Baltimore? This
outrageously dangerous condition led to an African American
child having his hand cut off in an accident during the
early 1980s.
Why is a private corporation like CSX allowed to own
absolutely vital transportation arteries?
Like the profit-mad electric and gas utilities, the railroad
barons have proved totally incapable of providing safe,
adequate and affordable service.
In the last 25 years they've ripped up 50,000 miles of
track. Hundreds of thousands of railroaders have lost their
jobs.
It's time for the people and the working class to take them
over.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 26. hein�kuu 2001 11:02
Subject: [WW] Fortunes Built on Railroad Workers' Blood
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 2, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
FORTUNES BUILT ON EXPLOITATION OF RAILROAD WORKERS
Last year Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore received more
than $300 million in research grants from the U.S.
government--more than any other medical center in the
country.
Profits stolen from railroad workers built both the hospital
and its associated university. They're named after one of
the owners of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, who left them
$7 million when he died in 1873.
Johns Hopkins was the son of a slave master. While his
Quaker father freed the slaves on his plantation, none were
given any land.
Hopkins's fortune was a fantastic pile of loot in the
1870's. It was the result of railroaders being paid less
than two dollars a day.
Workers who went on strike against these conditions were
shot down like dogs. Eleven were killed in Baltimore on July
20, 1877. Another 40 were wounded.
John W. Garrett--a banker who became president of the
Baltimore & Ohio--was responsible for this bloodshed. A
county in Western Maryland is named after this criminal. His
daughter Mary jump-started Johns Hopkins Medical School with
some of the family's filthy money.
This accumulated treasure of Johns Hopkins Hospital and
university is now worth billions. The Baltimore & Ohio is
just one of several railroad companies merged to form CSX.
Another was the Chesapeake & Ohio, owned by Collis P.
Huntington--as in Huntington, W.Va., and Huntington Beach,
Calif., both named after this financier.
Along with Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Leland
Stanford, Huntington was a member of the "Big Four." These
crooks started the Central Pacific Railroad with $195,000,
of which only $50,000 was their own money.
The rest of the $25 million required to build a railroad
across the Sierra Nevada mountains was bestowed by a
thoroughly bribed U.S. Congress. This was the "free
enterprise" way of linking up with the Union Pacific and
completing the first transcontinental railroad.
The Central Pacific was a fountainhead of the congealed
labor called capital. With his portion of the loot Charles
Crocker started the Crocker Bank. Stanford University is
named after Leland Stanford's son.
The Central Pacific became part of the Southern Pacific. The
SP's tracks stretched from Portland, Ore., to New Orleans.
The Union Pacific has recently gobbled up the SP. Drew Lewis-
-who as Reagan's transportation secretary busted the PATCO
strike of air traffic controllers in 1981--is the UP chair.
Currently Lewis is trying to crush a Teamsters' organizing
drive at Overnite trucking, also owned by UP.
To construct the Central Pacific thousands of Chinese
workers were paid a dollar per day to blast apart the rock
with black powder. Many were blown to bits.
The building of the Chesapeake & Ohio is immortalized by the
true story of John Henry, the "steel driving man" who was
worked to death. It took the labor of tens of thousands of
African Americans like John Henry to build Southern
railroads.
The Huntington fortune--which includes the Huntington
Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens in San
Marino, Calif.--is fertilized with the blood of Black and
Chinese workers.
--S.M.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 26. hein�kuu 2001 11:02
Subject: [WW] Genoa: 200,000 Defy Killer Cops
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 2, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
200,000 DEFY KILLER COPS: GENOA STREETS RAGE
AGAINST CAPITALISM
Cornered G-8 Talk Like Doves, Act Like Sharks
By Greg Butterfield
You've probably seen the photograph. A youth hefts a fire
extinguisher, preparing to throw it at an armored police
vehicle. From inside, a cop aims his gun at the protester's
head.
Seconds after this picture was snapped, 24-year-old Carlo
Giuliani lay dead on the pavement with two bullet holes in
his head. The killer backed his vehicle over Giuliani's body
and sped away.
That was the scene in the Plaza Alimonda on July 20, the
first full day of the Group of 8 summit meeting in Genoa,
Italy.
Scarcely a mile away, in the Ducal Palace, George W. Bush,
Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and the other heads of the
seven most powerful imperialist countries, along with
Russia's Vladimir Putin, feasted on a sumptuous lunch and
blamed one another for the unfolding capitalist economic
crisis. But in Genoa's winding streets, tens of thousands of
youths, workers and activists protested global inequality,
and some fought pitched battles with police.
Italy had erected a 13-foot-high steel mesh fence and
brought in 20,000 riot police and Carabinieri--paramilitary
police--to separate the G-8 from the protesters. The
battleship U.S.S. Enterprise sat in Genoa's harbor, while
outside the city, the Italian military conducted "war
games." The airport, rail stations and all major highways
into the city were shut down.
The city itself was carved into militarized zones. No one
could enter the "red zone" around Ducal Palace without
authorization. Further out extended a "yellow zone" where
demonstrations were also banned.
But protesters got right up to the red zone wall. One group
even breached the wall and got within 300 yards of the
palace before being arrested, according to Reuters news
service.
Later, when the demonstrations were winding down, the
Italian government carried out reprisals. Police raided the
headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum, the coalition that
organized the mass protests, late at night on July 21. They
beat and maimed dozens of activists who'd gone there to
sleep. Forty were hospitalized and dozens arrested.
Police also ransacked the office of the Independent Media
Center, confiscating video and photographic evidence of
their brutality in the streets.
Hundreds were arrested during the summit, some after being
taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Many have not
been released. Arrests continued on July 23, when at least
30 more protesters were rounded up, including activists from
Italy, Germany, Austria, Canada and Lithuania. (Associated
Press) At least 400 people were reported missing.
Another protester, a French woman, died July 20 while trying
to cross the border into Italy. There are unconfirmed
reports of other fatalities.
In response, anti-globalization groups called for
demonstrations to honor Carlo Giuliani and the other fallen
comrades, and to demand the release of those languishing in
jail. Demonstrations have been held daily at Italian
embassies and other targets throughout Europe, North and
South America, and the Middle East.
TURNING POINT
The sight of a young protester mowed down by police at the
behest of big business interests isn't new. It's common in
the oppressed countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and
the Middle East that are dominated by these seven
"democratic" imperialist powers: the U.S., Britain, Japan,
Germany, France, Italy and Canada.
Three Papua New Guinea students were recently killed by
police while protesting an International Monetary Fund
austerity plan in their homeland. In Colombia U.S.-backed
death squads kill union activists every week. Just two years
ago the NATO powers bombed Yugoslavia mercilessly for
resisting globalization.
But Carlo Giuliani was the first Western anti-globalization
activist to die in battle, and the first Italian to be
killed at a protest since 1968. Thus his death marks a
turning point for the youthful movement against capitalism
in Europe and North America that began in Seattle in 1999.
Protesters who came to Genoa had heard the rumors.
Authorities had ordered 200 body bags, the media said, and
were readying mass graves outside town. Berlusconi's
government refused the protest organizers' demand to ban
police from carrying live ammunition.
But the youths weren't deterred. They came in the tens of
thousands, defying border restrictions and government
harassment. Knowing a police assault was inevitable, many
came with makeshift shields, hardhats, kneepads and other
defensive gear that the corporate media labeled "weapons."
They were joined in the streets by contingents from the
Italian labor movement and from large communist parties in
Italy, Greece, Portugal and other countries.
When the police attack came, many-like Carlo Giuliani-fought
back heroically with whatever was at hand.
A popular chant on July 21, the day after the shooting, was,
"You can't kill us all."
70,000 MARCH FOR MIGRANT WORKERS
Hundreds of groups-building on the momentum of powerful
demonstrations this summer in Gothenburg, Barcelona,
Salzburg and Bonn-mobilized in Genoa to challenge the G-8
imperialists. It was the anti-globalization movement's
biggest turnout yet.
The action kicked off on July 19 with a Migrants' March
demanding full rights for immigrant workers and refugees in
Europe. Up to 70,000 people marched. Contingents represented
workers from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
"The situation of migrants in Italy [is] the same as the
people of Genoa during the G-8," one protester told a
British Broadcasting Corp. reporter. The Italian government
prodded many of Genoa's 900,000 residents to leave the city
for the summit's duration. Those who chose to stay, or could
not afford to leave, lived under martial law.
On July 20 a mass labor march was planned, and the Genoa
Social Forum called for civil disobedience and direct action
near the red zone. In all an estimated 100,000 people were
in the streets.
Protesters formed many different contingents, marches and
affinity groups. They adopted a wide array of tactics. The
many smaller "blocks," usually identified by color, were
divided into three broad groups according to their tactics.
The Pink Block included pacifists, street theater artists,
non-governmental organizations, church groups and some labor
unions, who tried to avoid confrontation with the capitalist
state.
Making up the White Block were the Italian "white overalls"
movement known as Ya Basta and other direct action groups,
many communist, socialist and anarchist militants, Basque
and Kurdish nationalists, and others prepared to defy the
police and defend themselves against attack.
Finally, members of the anarchist Black Block concealed
their identities and sought out banks and other symbols of
imperialist property to wreck.
'IT'S A WAR AGAINST THE STATE'
The more some pacifist and liberal groups tried to distance
themselves from the militants, the more they learned that
the police didn't care. Everyone in the street was a target.
Riot cops charged the fronts of marches. They lobbed tear
gas into peaceful crowds, sometimes shooting the canisters
at people's heads. They sought to bust up fast-moving mobile
demonstrations by driving armored vehicles into their midst.
But at every step, the cops met fierce resistance.
Brian S., an activist who posted reports on the Independent
Media Center Web site, described some of the action he saw:
"Groups gathered in the east and headed west to try to break
through the red zone, some going south, others heading
straight on or to the north. Early reports came of the
socialist blocks under heavy watercannon fire somewhere
within the tightened south zone. By noon, large shipping
containers (for boats and trains) had been moved to
completely block off many streets in the yellow area. ...
"Eventually we ran into several thousand anarchists having a
pitched battle with the cops ... During the battle, a police
van went nuts and started charging in to break past the
dumpster barricades. At first people ran but then the van
was surrounded and was being beaten back by rocks and other
projectiles. ...
"Tear gas is everywhere ... when one gathering of several
thousand is scattered or one decides to leave, you can find
10,000 more just a few streets over, gaining space on the
police. ... It's a war against the state and soldiers here."
Several activists told of Genoese, including those who had
fought in the Partisan movement against Mussolini's fascism,
coming out of their homes to aid injured or disoriented
protesters.
There were reports that gangs of police provocateurs,
disguised as Black Block members, trashed small shops,
overturned civilian autos and tried to infiltrate other
contingents to give the police and corporate media a pretext
for the attacks.
200,000 DEFY G-8 AFTER KILLING
As images of the martyred protester flashed around the
world, the G-8 scrambled to justify the killing. A statement
issued by the conference expressed "sorrow and regret" but
went on to blame protesters for the violence.
Italian Interior Minister Claudio Scajola claimed the cop,
who has not been named, shot Giuliani "in self defense." He
tried to smear the dead protester, a squatter, as being
"homeless and having a criminal record."
Eyewitnesses told a different story. The paramilitary police
were driving their van aggressively through the plaza, they
said, threatening protesters' lives. Several demonstrators,
including Carlo Giuliani, grabbed rocks, cobblestones and
fire extinguishers and tried to beat back the armored
vehicle.
Officials tried to strong-arm organizers to call off
Saturday's mass demonstration to "Drop the Debt" of poor
nations to imperialist banks. Some frightened NGOs and
moderate groups pulled out, joined the ruling-class chorus
and denounced "violent protesters." But most refused to be
cowed. Instead they called on the G-8 to cancel the
remainder of its summit.
On July 21, between 150,000 and 200,000 people filled
Genoa's streets, many of them Genoese and other Italian
workers enraged by the activist's death. Labor union banners
and the red flags of the Italian Refoundation Communist
Party flew everywhere. Many activists bore scars and
bandages from the previous day's battle.
Street battles continued throughout the day. Ninety-three
people were reported wounded Saturday and police arrested 36
on the march. (CNN.com, July 21)
P
While differing on whether to approve the Kyoto accord on
global warming-at the behest of Big Oil, Bush is determined
to torpedo it-the imperialist leaders all agreed on the fine
art of the Big Lie: if you tell an outrageous lie enough
times, people will believe you.
Hence, the G-8 promote such lies as: globalization helps the
poor; the Carabinieri fired their weapons, injuring scores
of unarmed people, "in self defense"; and protesters "hurt
poor nations."
Tanzania Trade Minister Idi Simba, speaking at a meeting of
leaders of the world's 49 poorest countries in Zanzibar the
same weekend, disagreed. "The system as it is now is not
fair to us and those fellows in the streets are telling that
story." (BBC Online, July 22)
Despite the continual denunciations leveled at the protests
by G-8 leaders, the course of their summit showed the
enormous influence the anti-globalization movement has.
For the first time, Bush, Blair & Co. were forced to open
their G-8 club to representatives of several poor countries
and listen to their demands for debt relief and development.
As one protester, an electrical utility worker named Marina,
told the New York Times: "I don't think they would have done
so had it not been for the pressure from the street."
Before the summit Bush had even floated the idea of
converting half of all future loans to developing countries
into grants that would not have to be repaid. But no action
was taken. And in fact everyone knows these countries cannot
pay anything more to the loan sharks, anyway. Their
economies have been totally bankrupted by the imperialist
banks and corporations.
A $1.2 billion fund to fight AIDS and other diseases in
Africa-heralded as the summit's main achievement for the
poor-had already been announced months earlier.
"It is not enough," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told
them, explaining that $7 billion to $10 billion per year is
needed to fight AIDS in Africa.
No, the G-8 summit will not be remembered for aiding the
poor. It will be remembered as a declaration of war by the
capitalist class against the anti-globalization movement.
How will the movement respond? Can the diverse militant
groups unite around a common strategy of attack and defense?
Can they build on the solidarity shown by the European
working-class movement and avoid being isolated as the
capitalist state moves to repress them?
These are some of the challenges facing the anti-capitalist
movement after Genoa.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 26. hein�kuu 2001 11:02
Subject: [WW] Genoa: Solidarity Will Ensure Victory
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 2, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
WORKERS WORLD PARTY ON GENOA: SOLIDARITY WILL
ENSURE VICTORY
The Italian government can order an army of sanitation
workers to clean up the debris after the battles in Genoa,
and the leaders of the major imperialist countries of the
world can order their spin doctors to employ all the tricks
of media psychology to counteract the brutal images of
thousands of their club- and gun-wielding police attacking
demonstrators. But none of this can erase the impact of the
Battle of Genoa.
World capitalism is in a crisis, and Genoa showed that this
crisis has moved from imperialism's outer reaches, the super-
oppressed countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, to
the very core of the empire of global finance.
A heroic militant, Carlo Giuliani, was shot and killed by
police in this demonstration. His death is a milestone. It
demolishes the self-serving image of Western capitalism as
democratic and tolerant of dissent. It says loud and clear
that these imperialist governments, which for over a century
have employed the bloodiest means of repression in order to
impose their racist colonial and neocolonial rule over the
rest of the world, are not pacifists at home either.
When the small class of billionaires who run modern society
exercise "restraint" in the class struggle, it is only
because they recognize that they are enormously outnumbered
and must employ guile, deception and a fine-tuned program of
concessions, hand in hand with repression, for their system
of exploitation to survive.
Genoa was a splendid example of international solidarity and
coordination. Demonstrators from countries all over the
globe came to confront financial institutions that, with
their promotion of "free trade" dominated by powerful
imperialist monopolies, have turned the dream of development
into a nightmare of ruined farmers, unemployed and super-
exploited workers, bankrupt governments and small
businesses, and plundered, polluted lands. Many in the
Migrants' March had left their homelands to escape these
intolerable conditions.
This anti-globalization movement is young, militant, self-
sacrificing and spreading like wildfire. Its success has
been so astounding, in this dreary period after the collapse
of the socialist camp when capitalist greed was being
endlessly trumpeted as eternal and unassailable, that it has
earned the intense hatred of the guardians of empire. Since
Seattle, it has grown at every step of the way. It has
become so powerful that the imperialist leaders are having
doubts about the effectiveness of their meetings.
They have made no secret of the lengths to which they will
go to keep protesters away from the meetings of the IMF,
World Bank, WTO and G-8. Hundreds of millions of dollars
have been spent in just a year and a half trying to wall off
the rulers from the protesters.
In response, some in the movement have come up with daring
and imaginative ways to breach these walls and let the
oppressors feel their hot breath. At the same time, the
movement has broadened its social base. In Genoa, over
200,000 marchers representing many grassroots groups and
unions made it to the protests despite harassment and
intimidation.
Not only were the militants brutally attacked by the police--
and there were many serious injuries in addition to the
assassination of Carlo Giuliani--but bloody police sweeps
were carried out against the groups responsible for mass
organizing, especially the Genoa Social Forum and the
Independent Media Center.
Now comes phase two of the capitalist state's efforts to
turn this movement back. They are trying to divide it over
tactics and blame the militants for the bloody repression by
the police. This is nothing new. Any survey of the history
of working-class struggle shows similar skullduggery.
In the U.S., when the union movement first began to make
headway, a police provocation at a rally for the eight-hour
day in Chicago's Haymarket Square became the excuse for a
massive crackdown and the hanging of four leaders of the
working class movement.
The conviction and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti in the 1920s was another attempt to break the
workers' movement by framing up these anarchist workers for
an armed robbery.
These two cases became notorious in U.S. labor history as
examples of police frame-ups and provocations aimed at
diverting and dividing the movement.
And now, at a time when the specter of capitalist ruin and
mass unemployment is once again haunting the world, comes a
magnificent demonstration in Genoa that is being politically
attacked by every organ of the establishment.
Those who take seriously the struggle for freedom of speech
and against exploitation, racism, sexism, gender oppression,
police brutality and the despoiling of the environment
should respond in two ways.
First, let us congratulate this new movement for its heroic
and highly successful efforts to expose this brutal system.
And second, let us defend the militants who have been
willing to put their bodies on the line, while pointing the
finger at the real purveyors of violence: the armed, trained
and politically motivated organs of the capitalist state.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 26. hein�kuu 2001 11:02
Subject: [WW] Court Issues Alarming Ruling Against Mumia
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 2, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BEVERLY CONFESSION REJECTED: COURT ISSUES
ALARMING RULING AGAINST MUMIA
By Monica Moorehead
On July 19, Federal District Judge William Yohn issued a 13-
page ruling in which he turned down a petition filed by the
new legal counsel representing African American political
prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. In essence, Yohn
refused to accept the confession of Arnold Beverly as an
addition to a writ of habeas corpus filed originally in this
particular court on Oct. 15, 1999.
The federal district court is the only high court that could
automatically grant Abu-Jamal the right to an evidentiary
hearing. He has requested such a hearing, at which he could
present new evidence in his case, based on 29 violations of
the U.S. Constitution carried out during his original sham
trial. These 29 violations were outlined in the original
writ of habeas corpus.
An evidentiary hearing would allow all suppressed evidence
to finally be heard. But this negative ruling by Yohn makes
it less likely that the evidentiary hearing will ever
happen.
Arnold Beverly signed an affidavit stating that he was a hit
man who had been hired and paid by the mob to kill a white
policeman, Daniel Faulkner, on Dec. 9, 1981, in
Philadelphia. Abu-Jamal was accused and subsequently
convicted of that killing. He has been languishing on death
row since July 3, 1982, and could face execution once his
federal appeals have been exhausted. Two death warrants have
been signed by the Pennsylvania governor and then withdrawn
under mass pressure during Abu-Jamal's state appeals.
The worldwide political movement to "Free Mumia" has stated
since its very existence that the real reason Abu-Jamal
faces a legal lynching stems from his revolutionary
opposition to all forms of racist and class oppression. Many
within the growing anti-globalization movement have embraced
Abu-Jamal as the most recognizable symbol of resistance to
the racist use of the death penalty inside the U.S.
This most recent petition filed by Abu-Jamal's new legal
counsel--Marlene Kamish, Eliot Grossman and Nick Brown--
explained that Beverly's confession about killing Faulkner
was first made in a deposition on June 8, 1999. The main
motivation Beverly gave for the murder was that "Faulkner
was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he
interfered with the graft and payoffs made to all illegal
activity including prostitution, gambling and drugs with
prosecution in the center city area."
EFFECTIVE DEATH PENALTY ACT RESTRICTS PRISONERS'
RIGHTS
Yohn cited the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act of 1996 as the main reason for not accepting the Beverly
confession. The AEDPA was signed into law during the Clinton
administration after the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal
building by racist right-wingers that claimed the lives of
over 160 people. April 24, the day the act was passed by
Congress, is ironically the same date as Abu-Jamal's
birthday.
The AEDPA makes it virtually impossible for death row
inmates to get federal courts to overturn state convictions
in capital punishment cases, even when new evidence is
presented to prove their innocence. The law states that
unless death- row inmates submitted a writ of habeas corpus
to the federal courts on or before April 23, 1997--the date
the law actually went into effect--federal judges are not
obligated to review the state rulings based on suppression
of vital evidence or even constitutional rights violations.
The impact of this law is not only to gut the writ of habeas
corpus but to speed up the rate of state-sanctioned
executions that target the poor and people of color,
including activists like Abu-Jamal who challenge the very
existence of this oppressive capitalist system.
How did Yohn specifically apply the AEDPA to this recent
Mumia petition? According to the Yohn ruling, "because the
statute of limitations for asserting the Beverly claim had
expired, petitioner is also precluded from requesting
discovery (or new evidence) regarding the claim. Moreover,
the Commonwealth argues that because petitioner cannot
satisfy the requirements for an evidentiary hearing as set
forth in the AEDPA ... he is likewise not entitled to
discovery concerning the Beverly claim."
Yohn admits that the AEDPA exists to limit the access to
federal habeas corpus for the petitioner or defendant. This
"limitation" means factual evidence not raised during the
original state trial will not be taken into consideration.
Yohn also dismisses Abu-Jamal's claim that the prosecutor
during his state trial purposely suppressed evidence that
would have cleared him of all charges. Key prosecution
witnesses Veronica Jones and Robert Chobert retracted their
earlier testimony during post-conviction relief hearings in
1995 and 1996. These witnesses and others said they had been
coerced by the Fraternal Order of Police into falsely
accusing Abu-Jamal of shooting Officer Faulkner.
Yohn's "reasoning" is that even if Beverly's confession were
credible, the confession could not be tied to any of the
suppressed evidence and does not prove that the government
consciously or unconsciously suppressed or possessed any
evidence in order to conspire against Mumia.
Yohn also states that based on the AEDPA, the timeline for
submitting the Beverly claim to the federal district court
began on Oct. 15, 1999, and ended on June 8, 2000. He goes
on further to say that "before a district court can consider
the merits of a state prisoner's habeas corpus petition, he
must have exhausted all available state remedies."
In fact, Abu-Jamal's new attorneys have filed a legal brief
of over 300 pages with the state court claiming "ineffective
counsel" in reference to Leonard Weinglass and Dan Williams,
who were Abu-Jamal's attorneys during the period that
Beverly made his confession.
The state court has set a tentative date of Aug. 17 to hear
oral arguments based on this brief. Whether Abu-Jamal will
be present during this hearing has not been verified.
This legal ruling by Yohn has deeper political ramifications
for the progressive movement. It shows once again that the
capitalist courts cannot be relied upon to mete out real
justice for the masses. The AEDPA was supposedly enacted to
fight "domestic terrorism," but the real terrorists are the
courts and the U.S. government, which will use legal and
technical jargon as a cover to send the poor and most
oppressed to be legally lynched at an unprecedented pace.
While it is helpful and important to make sense of what is
legally going on with Mumia Abu-Jamal's case, what will
ultimately be decisive is the mobilization of the masses in
the streets to demand the freedom for this heroic
revolutionary.
