WW News Service Digest #305
1) Mumia to be in Court Aug. 17
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2) After Genoa: Behind Debate on Street Tactics
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) LAPD Trained Genoa Cops
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4) Israel Murders Palestinian Leaders
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) Texas Prisoners on Hunger Strike
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
6) UN Conference Against Racism
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: keskiviikko 8. elokuu 2001 19:19
Subject: [WW] Mumia to be in Court Aug. 17
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 16, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ALL OUT TO PHILADELPHIA: MUMIA TO BE IN COURT AUG. 17
By Monica Moorehead
Thousands of people are expected to descend on Philadelphia
Aug. 17 to support the revolutionary death-row prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal as he makes his first court appearance in
five years.
This date has historic significance for other reasons as
well. Aug. 17 is the birthday of Marcus Garvey, the leader
of the Back to Africa mass movement of Black nationalism in
the 1920s. Also, Aug. 17, 1995, was the date of Abu-Jamal's
scheduled execution on his first death warrant signed by
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.
A mobilization of Mumia supporters forced the governor to
rescind that warrant just days before a mass rally on Aug.
12, 1995. The thousands who came to the demonstration
celebrated this victory and pledged to continue the struggle
for Abu-Jamal's freedom.
NEW LEGAL TEAM'S STRATEGY
Now Abu-Jamal is expected to appear before Commons Pleas
Court Judge Pam ela Dembe for a "status hearing." Dembe is a
state judge who will be hearing oral arguments from Abu-
Jamal's new legal team on why their client should be granted
a new post-conviction relief hearing.
Abu-Jamal has been fighting for his freedom since July 3,
1982, when he was sentenced to death, for allegedly killing
police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Attorneys Marlene Kamish, Eliot Grossman and Nick Brown have
filed a 300-page legal brief that outlines what took place
during the last post-conviction hearing in 1996. The brief
includes the fact that his previous attorneys, Leonard
Weinglass and Dan Williams, never filed a claim of innocence
on Abu-Jamal's behalf.
The lawyers will also argue that other signed affidavits to
prove Abu-Jamal's innocence were not introduced as evidence
during the post-conviction hearing. One of the affidavits,
signed by self-described mob hit man Arnold Beverly,
contains his confession to the murder of Faulkner.
No one expects Dembe to make a final ruling on the question
of a new post-conviction hearing on Aug. 17, but that is
secondary to the fact that Abu-Jamal will make an appearance
in court. This has electrified the progressive movement
worldwide.
Groups from around the United States are mobilizing every
form of transportation, including buses, trains, vans and
cars, to stand with Abu-Jamal inside and outside the
courtroom.
The International Action Center is one of the main groups
mobilizing for the Aug. 17 event. Its organizers plan to
distribute at least 40,000 leaflets in Philadelphia, New
York and elsewhere to get out the word about Abu-Jamal being
in court. The IAC leaflet, along with thousands of posters,
will solicit volunteers for massive phone-banking to
individuals and organizations.
Imani Henry, a co-founder of Rainbow Flags for Mumia and a
coordinator of visi bility for the Aug. 17 mobilization,
told Workers World: "The IAC is putting a number of other
important projects on hold to organize for Mumia on Aug. 17.
This may or may not be Mumia's only court appearance, so we
at the IAC want to do every thing possible to maximize the
turnout.
"According to the Philadelphia press, a SWAT team and
sheriffs will accompany Mumia to court. This is another
attempt by the Fraternal Order of Police and other
repressive state agencies to intimidate and discourage
people from showing solidarity with Mumia, especially those
living in Philadelphia," continued Henry.
"That is why the IAC will be organizing Mumia brigades to
travel to Philadelphia and other urban centers to reach out
to the Black community and other working-class communities
and link his case to the struggle against racist repression.
We have to show once again that there is strength in numbers
and that no amount of terror will stop us from standing with
our brother and comrade Mumia in his ongoing quest for
freedom."
The group International Concerned Family and Friends of
Mumia Abu-Jamal has announced that a rally and march will
take place across from City Hall at the Criminal Justice
Center where Abu-Jamal will be in court. Information tables
with literature about Abu-Jamal's case and political history
will be available throughout the day.
A follow-up demonstration will be held Aug. 18. The ICFFMAJ
can be reached at (215) 476-8812 for more information.
People can contact IAC offices in New York and Philadelphia--
(212) 633-6646 and (215) 724-1618, respectively--for
literature and to volunteer to build the Aug. 17
mobilization. They can receive updates on developments
around Mumia Abu-Jamal's day in court, along with legal
information, on the following websites:
www.iacenter.org, www.mumia2000.org
and www.mumia.org.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: keskiviikko 8. elokuu 2001 19:19
Subject: [WW] After Genoa: Behind Debate on Street Tactics
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 16, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AFTER GENOA: BEHIND THE DEBATE ON STREET TACTICS
By Brian Becker
These days every anti-globalization activist is confronted
in meetings and private conversations with a hotly debated
issue of street tactics. After the highly publicized street
clashes in Genoa, Italy, the capitalist-owned media have
served as the vehicle for a highly coordinated campaign
against "violent protesters" and "anarchists."
Regrettably, some liberals in the anti-globalization
movement have joined in the alarm. They are trying to carve
out for themselves the role of the "good protester" who can
be patted on the head for good behavior by the corporate
media as these media try to prepare public opinion for
repression against the militant "bad protesters."
This campaign of branding the anti-globalization movement as
"violent" has reached a fever pitch since hundreds of
thousands of people marched in Genoa outside the summit
meeting of the so-called G-8, the seven leading imperialist
governments plus Russia.
Police fiercely assaulted the people at the demonstrations
and at their offices. Cops infiltrated the actions with
provocateurs. A police assassin shot one young protester,
Carlo Giuliani, to death at point-blank range.
Thousands of demonstrators tried to defend themselves as
best they could.
Make no mistake about it: The media-driven panic is not a
genuine evaluation of appropriate street tactics. The
progressive anti-capitalist movement, of course, has every
right and needs to regularly and honestly evaluate tactics.
But the capitalist media are attempting to sow confusion and
division based on the falsely presented framework of
"violence versus non-violence."
This is part of a campaign to smash the movement before it
can merge with millions of working and poor people who are
increasingly angered by the growing disparity between rich
and poor.
For instance, early in August, Washington, D.C., Police
Chief Charles Ramsey summoned the television cameras to
dramatically announce that his department was ordering more
than 1,000 fire-retardant uniforms. What are they for? For
police officers to wear during the week of mass protests
between Sept. 29 and Oct. 4.
Ramsey explained that the police are preparing for
demonstrators who, he suggested, might hurl Molotov
cocktails. He also said that the police expect more than
100,000 people to join the protests against the
International Monetary Fund/World Bank and the Bush
administration.
The anti-globalization movement rightly understands Ramsey's
announcement as part of a deliberate public campaign to
demonize the movement as "violent" in order to justify
planned repression and violence--by the police against the
demonstrators.
The police media campaign is also aimed at intimidating
people so they will decide not to participate.
HOW NON-VIOLENT IS CAPITALIST STATE?
The capitalist establishment and the U.S. government are
trying to derail the growing radical movement, but not
because some demonstrators are allegedly violent.
Violence is not the issue. The guardians of this political
and economic system do not abhor violence. On the contrary,
they are the greatest purveyors of violence on the planet.
In the last 50 years, the Pentagon has been responsible for
the deaths of millions of people in wars of aggression.
Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Laos, Cambodia,
Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guate mala,
Panama, Iraq, Angola, Somalia, Congo and Yugoslavia have all
been invaded, bombed or ravaged by U.S.-proxy wars.
Sustained levels of systematic violence were the methods
chosen to discourage or destroy all of those who defied the
plans for U.S. domination.
Wars and invasions are dramatic expressions of the violence
committed by the capitalist establishment.
Less dramatic but no less violent in its outcome is U.S.
economic strategy that uses food and medicine as a weapon.
When CBS news reporter Leslie Stahl asked Bill Clinton's
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on "60 Minutes" in
late 1995 whether the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi
children from economic sanctions was "worth the price,"
Albright responded, "That's a tough question, but yes, the
price is worth it."
When it comes to violence, it is hard to match the
deliberate killing of 500,000 children.
The capitalist state's routine employment of violence is not
restricted to foreign wars and interventions, either. The
police forces inside the United States have a license to
kill and beat people in the African American and Latino
communities.
If the people demonstrate or rise up against police terror,
they are confronted by even more force. In almost all cases
the victims of police violence are portrayed as the culprits
in the corporate media.
When Rodney King's police tormentors in Los Angeles were
acquitted in 1992, the Black and Mexican populations rose up
to demand justice. The capitalist cops and National Guard
were given a free hand to commit shocking levels of
violence.
Fifty-five people were shot dead. Several hundred more were
critically wounded. The police swept the communities,
arresting more than 12,000, mostly youths.
The police have carried out similar levels of violence in
city after city.
Every worker who has had to go on strike knows that if you
try to stop the bosses from using scabs and strikebreakers,
you will be met with police violence. The violence of the
police is one-sided. Workers can't call on the police to
demand that they arrest the scabs.
BILLIONAIRES FEAR NEW RADICALIZATION
The corporate and banking establishment fears that the anti-
globalization movement sweeping the world will get bigger,
stronger and more militant unless it is diverted or crushed.
Working-class people are suffering from more layoffs,
poverty and hunger worldwide. The IMF and the bankers
represent a tiny stratum of the population that has enriched
itself while the people who do the work are living in
misery.
Four hundred billionaires now possess wealth equal to that
of the 3 billion poorest people on the planet.
The anti-globalization movement could rapidly evolve into a
revolutionary movement capable of threatening the
stranglehold over the political and economic system the
capitalists now exercise. If the current worldwide
capitalist recession develops into a full-blown depression
in the United States and other major capitalist countries,
tens of millions of angry workers could fill the ranks of a
movement now led primarily by youths and students.
The lords of high finance in the United States have a
supreme level of class consciousness. They are well aware
that the current political stability could give way to
tempestuous revolutionary storms.
To their chagrin, the destruction of the Soviet Union was
not the end of history or the class struggle. The
revolutionary anti-capitalist movement has been reborn.
Now the capitalists are intent on using the police club and
the puppet media to prevent this radical movement from
maturing and moving forward. It is the duty of all
progressive people to defend the young--and old--radicals
whose vigor and self-sacrifice is awakening a spirit of
struggle and resistance.
- END -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: keskiviikko 8. elokuu 2001 19:19
Subject: [WW] LAPD Trained Genoa Cops
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 16, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
LAPD TRAINED GENOA COPS
Members of the Los Angeles Police Department helped train
the elite Italian special forces unit that carried out a
bloody raid against protesters at the Genoa G-8 summit. News
about the training, which first broke in the Italian
Communist Party daily Liberazione, was circulated by Reuters
on Aug. 7.
According to Reuters, "For four months, 70 specially
selected officers were trained by two Los Angeles police
sheriffs. A larger number of police also received a week-
long training course from the Americans."
An unidentified cop who took the short course said, "From
the start, they openly criticized the way in which Italian
police carry out public order." The course was like military
boot camp, he said. "In the end we were doing purely
military training. There seemed no difference between police
officers and soldiers."
The LAPD's brutal response to protests over the police
beating of Rodney King "raises questions" for Europeans,
said Reuters. It pointed out that the unit trained by the
U.S. cops participated in "a midnight assault on a school
which was acting as a headquarters for protest groups during
the July 20-22 summit ... 62 people were injured and 93
arrested. Many were laid out on stretchers with blood-
stained faces.
"Reporters who entered the school soon afterwards saw blood
stains on the walls and broken teeth scattered on the floor.
At least one protester has since undergone brain surgery."
There have been large demonstrations all over Europe since
word of the extreme police brutality in Genoa was brought
home by returning activists.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: keskiviikko 8. elokuu 2001 19:19
Subject: [WW] Israel Murders Palestinian Leaders
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 16, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
U.S.-BACKED TERROR HITS NEW LEVEL: ISRAEL MURDERS
PALESTINIAN LEADERS
By Richard Becker
Josef Goebbels had nothing on the present-day propagandists
for the U.S. government and capitalist media.
Goebbels, Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, developed
the Big Lie technique. His credo was make the lie big enough
and repeat it often enough and it will be believed.
Goebbels specialized in turning reality upside down,
portraying the victim as aggressor and vice-versa--all in
the service of Hitler's Nazi war machine. Goebbels created a
fantasy of "Polish aggression" to justify Germany's 1939
invasion of that country, which started World War II in
Europe.
Today, top U.S. government officials and their bought media
portray the Israeli occupiers of Palestine as beleaguered
victims and the oppressed Palestinian people as fanatical
aggressors, thereby "justifying" the most ferocious
repression by the U.S.-armed Israeli military.
Take, for example, the intensifying Israeli campaign of
assassination against Palestinian political and military
leaders in the West Bank and Gaza. In the first four days of
August, at least 10 Palestinians were murdered--most torn to
pieces by helicopter-fired missiles, courtesy of the
Pentagon.
In Nablus, eight people were killed inside a building
housing a research center. The most prominent among the dead
was Jamil Mansour, the head of the center and a political
leader of the Hamas organization.
Two young boys were also killed in the missile attack. Other
victims lived in the West Bank city of Tulkarem and in Gaza.
Marwan Barghouti, the leader of Fatah, the biggest
Palestinian party, narrowly escaped death in an attack on
the military convoy in which he was traveling. Barghouti is
a symbol of resistance and a widely popular figure across
the Palestinian political spectrum.
The latest assassinations and attempted killings resulted in
a sharp upsurge in armed resistance throughout the West Bank
and Gaza. Heavy fighting broke out in many areas.
In the most dramatic response, Ali Joulani, a Jerusalem
housepainter who reportedly was not previously involved
politically, attacked the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel
Aviv. He wounded 10 Israeli soldiers before being shot and
killed.
The Israeli military has reacted by further tightening the
blockades of Palestinian cities and villages, creating a
severe crisis.
The rights group B'Tselem reported on Aug. 6 that 218
Palestinian towns and villages with a population of more
than 200,000 lack adequate water supplies in the hottest
time of the year as a result of the blockades.
U.S. CAPITALIST MEDIA SUPPORT ASSASSINATIONS
At least 50 Palestinian organizers have been killed in the
assassination campaign since the new Intifada, or uprising,
began on Sept. 28 last year.
Can anyone imagine the big-business media's panic campaign
if the situation were reversed? What if the Palestinians
were carrying out an assassination campaign against Israeli
political figures?
But instead of outrage, the U.S. reaction--official and
otherwise--has ranged from the gentlest criticism to
outright support for Israel's state policy of murder.
Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the Israel
assassination campaign "overly aggressive," and called for a
return to negotiations.
But in an interview with Fox News on Aug. 2, Vice President
Richard Cheney expressed his sympathy with the Israeli
tactic. He said, "I think there is some justification in
their [the Israelis] trying to protect themselves by pre-
empting."
On the Sunday network talk shows Aug. 5, most of the pundits
expressed support for the assassinations. Several criticized
Powell's extremely mild diplomatic reproach.
George Will and Cokie Roberts, hosting ABC's This Week
morning show Aug. 5, agreed that, after all, it was "Israel
that is under attack."
Never mind that more than four times as many Palestinians as
Israelis have died, and 15 times as many Palestinians have
been seriously wounded in the Intifida. Never mind that tens
of thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed or
made uninhabitable.
Never mind that the Palestinian standard of living, in the
broken-up 5 percent of historic Palestine that they hold
today, is less than one-tenth that of the Israelis.
And, of course, never mind that Israel--thanks to the U.S.
government's generous support--today has the fourth most
powerful military in the world, while the Palestinians have
no planes, helicopters, tanks or ships.
Never mind all that. Israel is depicted as the victim, while
the Palestinians are the aggressors. Josef Goebbels would
have been proud.
SPLIT IN THE ADMINISTRATION?
The different positions expressed by Powell and Cheney have
raised speculation in the world media about a division over
Middle East policy in the Bush administration.
But, as an unnamed pro-Israel analyst interviewed by the
Chicago Tribune put it, any administration criticism of
Israel is for "diplomatic consumption," meant to "reassure
moderate Arab allies like Jordan and Egypt."
Powell's statement reflects no sympathy for the
Palestinians, but rather the deep worry in Washington that
the intensifying and ruthless Israeli repression against the
Palestinians could produce an explosion in the Middle East.
Anger toward Washington, seen as Israel's protector and
benefactor, is strong and growing throughout the entire
strategic region. This is reflected even in the mainstream
media.
Rajeh Khoury, a columnist for the An Naher newspaper in
Lebanon, expressed a widely held response to Cheney's
comments: "It is difficult for many people to believe that
this kind of remark is made by the vice president of the
world's biggest state--a state that never ceases to bombard
others with slogans of freedom, democracy and human rights."
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: keskiviikko 8. elokuu 2001 19:19
Subject: [WW] Texas Prisoners on Hunger Strike
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 16, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
"CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT": TEXAS PRISONERS ON
HUNGER STRIKE
PROTEST ISOLATION AND TOMB-LIKE CONDITIONS
By Heather Cottin
It was to have begun Sept. 13, the 30th anniversary of the
uprising at New York's infamous Attica prison. But Texas
prisoner Gerald Williams, whose hepatitis B and C condition
was left untreated, began his death fast early.
He couldn't wait. Bleeding, sick and sweltering in his cell,
where the temperatures often reach 110 degrees, Willams
decided he had been through enough.
Inspired by the Attica uprising, inmates in the Texas state
prisons have begun a hunger strike. Sid "Hawk" Bird, a
prisoner in the High Security and Segregation Unit in
Lovelady, Texas, who also began the hunger strike early,
writes, "I am going hungry because I do not wish to live
like we are being forced to live. Starvation and death is an
acceptable outcome vs. the mental madness and total
isolation we face daily. The environments are intentionally
designed to mentally harass and torture."
Inmates say they must undergo a strip search and body cavity
search in order to take a shower. Lights are kept burning 24
hours a day. They lack materials to keep clean. Some 75
percent don't have even a high school equivalence diploma,
but no education is available to them. There is no
television. Breakfast may be shoved into the cell at
midnight or 3 a.m.
"They are left in isolation without even psychological
counseling or compassionate human contact," writes Bird.
It would have cost Lovelady prison in rural Texas
approximately $2,000 per month to treat Williams's
hepatitis. "When they don't spend money allotted to
prisoners' care, it is funneled into employee pay," says
Barbara Fortier of the Ironhouse Support Network, an
organization set up originally to support Native people
inside the Texas prison system. It is now supporting the
hunger strike.
"I do not know the specific races of the men who will be
protesting the horrid conditions of segregation, isolation,
and high security units in this strike," said Fortier.
"We know this is not only a Native issue," Fortier
continued. "One way of helping Native prisoners is through
solidarity with other prisoners who are suffering the same
inhumane treatment nationwide, worldwide."
Eddie Brewer wrote Workers World from a segregation unit in
Rosha ron, Texas: "Please get the word out about this
strike. Many of us here in the Texas prison system are
working very hard to pull things together for this cause. We
are coming together to make this happen, and that's
something you don't see much of in Texas prison system. We
need to stand up and say this is not right!"
PRISONS ARE 'CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT'
Segregation units in the U.S. generally house prisoners
behind steel doors in cells the size of tombs. In Texas,
conditions are even worse. Federal Judge William Wayne
Justiceheld in 1999 that abuses in these facilities
constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." (Ruis vs. Estelle
Eastern District Federal Court, March 1, 1999)
Texas officials want to avoid media attention and have
promised to provide Williams with medical care in September
for his hepatitis, but the prisoners say the hunger strike
cannot be bought off by empty promises. Fortier, of
Ironhouse, notes, "The ones who feel they have nothing to
lose will not be dissuaded by this feeble attempt of the
prison officials to lull the prisoners into thinking that
they are on their side."
Bird tells of a friend who committed suicide after several
psychotic episodes were ridiculed and ignored by prison
officials. He tells of prisoner self-mutilations,
depression, and the experience of being locked into a
"tomb." Says Bird, "Those who have committed suicide have
done so to escape the literal hell they have turned this
place into."
The prisoners are demanding family contact visits, phone
privileges, educational programs, television, tables in
their cells, cleaning supplies, reasonable and expected meal
times, and an end to body searches. "I do not see how any of
the aforementioned could possibly be a security risk," wrote
Bird.
Prisons are big business. Prison labor is the new slave
labor, and prisoners are paid far below minimum wage by
corporations that exploit prison labor. UNITE, the garment
and textile workers' union, accuses clothing manufacturer
Eddie Bauer of employing prison labor to make garments at
around $1.50 per hour.
PRISONS GROW AS JOBS CONTRACT
Prisons provide jobs for mostly rural people, whose
livelihoods have been destroyed in the past 20 years by the
agricultural depression. A front-page article in the Aug. 1
New York Times reported that an average of 25 new rural
prisons opened each year in the 1990s, up from 16 in the
1980s and four in the 1970s.
"Prisons have been helping to revive large stretches" of the
U.S. countryside, the Times wrote cheerfully. Jobs in
prisons turn rural people into cogs in a horrible machine of
repression and punishment. Local businesses lobby for prison
construction in their little towns.
"In my mind there's no more recession-proof form of economic
development," said an Oklahoma city manager, who persuaded
the Corrections Corporation of America to build in Sayre,
population 4,114.
A harvest of misery, a new crop for the landless farmers--
prisons in the United States have become part of the global
contraction of capitalism.
Fortier reminded the Ironhouse Support Network of the
political prisoners' hunger strike in Turkey, a protest that
has thus far claimed 60 lives: "The F-Type prisons
constructed in Turkey are based on the solitary confinement
model found in the Segregation and High Security Units in
U.S. prisons."
Fortier sent out an "Urgent appeal from the Revolutionary
People's Liberation Front in Turkey" to Ironhouse
supporters. "F-type prisons are part of the plan which is
being used by the U.S. government and Europe to destroy the
resistance and the revolutionaries against imperialism in
all countries, and to make reality their plan of
globalization and the New World Order," said the appeal.
For the death fast inmates in solitary confinement in Texas
prisons, this is suddenly very relevant. Capitalism put them
in prison and capitalism profits from their misery. Their
struggle, like the struggle of the hunger strikers in
Turkey, will "support and enlarge all kinds of resistance
against tyranny," as the Revolutionary People's Liberation
Front of Turkey proclaims.
To support the hunger strike/death fast, log on
www.ironhousesupport.f2s.com.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: keskiviikko 8. elokuu 2001 19:19
Subject: [WW] UN Conference Against Racism
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 16, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
UN CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM: U.S TRIES TO MUZZLE
DURBAN CONCLAVE
By Pam Parker
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights is under heavy
pressure from the U.S. government to exclude discussions on
Zionism and reparations from its upcoming World Conference
Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerances. This UN-sponsored conference will meet
from Aug. 31 through Sept. 7 in Durban, South Africa.
The conference involves over 100 countries. It is scheduled
to address five major themes: the sources of racism, the
victims of racism, the prevention of racism, remedies to
racism, and methods of achieving equality.
At issue is draft language that, first, equates Zionism--the
movement behind the creation of Israel, which justifies the
displacement of Palestinians from their homeland--with
racism, and, second, suggests that unspecified compensation
be paid to African Americans for the U.S. slave trade.
The draft, which is sponsored by many African and Arab
countries, goes on to describe these practices as "crimes
against humanity" and calls the establishment of Israel
"ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historic
Palestine."
Zionism was first equated with racism in a resolution passed
by the UN General Assembly in 1975. That resolution was
repealed 10 years ago, after the downfall of the Soviet
Union. Many Arab nations and organizations proposed similar
language for this conference's draft declaration in the face
of current Israeli aggression against the Palestinian
people.
In addition, many African nations believe there should be
compensation for the slave trade and the residual effects of
slavery on the African American community.
The Bush administration has used strong language in
attacking the proposals. White House spokesperson Ari
Fleischer told reporters recently that "we will not stand by
if the world tries to describe Zionism as racism." Fleischer
went on to accuse oppressed nations of attempting to
"hijack" the conference and of "anti-Semitism."
He said President George W. Bush especially objects to the
anti-Zionist "rhetoric," but threatened that the U.S.
government would also boycott the conference if the draft
calls for an apology and reparations for slavery.
There are strong precedents for Washington's position on
this conference. The United States government boycotted the
previous two conferences on racism in 1978 and 1983; and it
has always opposed reparations, including under Bush's
predecessor, Bill Clinton.
In a meeting last month with UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights Mary Robinson, Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell
said that "serious work" had to be done to remove these two
issues from the discussion or the conference would be "in
danger of becoming mired in past events." The United States
and other industrialized capitalist nations with colonial
histories argue that the conference should address problems
that exist today.
RACISM ALL TOO ALIVE TODAY
Of course, these problems do exist today.
The Israeli state brazenly slaughters Palestinians with the
collusion and financial support of the U.S. government even
as most of the world condemns it for these actions.
The effects of slavery, which created an oppressed nation
within the United States, are certainly still present.
Racism is nurtured by the state and private capital.
There is a broad income gap between Black and white. There
is still a two-tiered educational system.
There is police violence against the African American,
Latino and other communities of color. There is housing
discrimination.
African Americans are consistently disenfranchised, as last
year's presidential election showed once again.
There is also the imprisonment and abuse of non-violent drug
users, the slave labor that creates virtual plantations in
the prisons of this country, and the overrepresentation of
people of color among those sentenced to death.
Robinson and other conference advocates at the UN meekly
reply to Washington that the two issues in question are only
items for discussion and that no formal resolution on these
issues has been proposed. Reiterating that Robinson and UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan have both previously opposed an
explicit condemnation of Israel at the conference, the
event's leadership has moved toward dropping these demands
from key documents.
Many human- and civil-rights organizations that have ties to
imperialist governments and corporations have implored the
Bush administration to send a high-level delegation to the
conference. Many in the progressive community, however, are
outraged by the arrogance of these nations to assume that
they can dictate the agenda on a discussion of racism and
xenophobia. Ironically, these nations' actions are a perfect
example of the obstacles that oppressed people around the
world have to overcome to defeat racism.
Johnnie Stevens, who will attend the racism conference as a
representative of the International Action Center, says the
conflict over these issues is the perfect opportunity to
consolidate the movement here in the United States. He said
that if "the anti-globalization groups embrace the call for
reparations for slavery and the demand for an end of the
occupation of Palestine, the bourgeoisie would be turned on
its head."
