------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 21, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
A FOSSIL OF THE WORST KIND: BUSH NOMINATES BIGOT TO THE BENCH By Monica Moorehead Civil rights advocates and pro-choice activists have formed a growing alliance to oppose George W. Bush's controversial nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Charles W. Pickering. The Senate Judiciary Committee that confirms this powerful federal seat is questioning Pickering, a white Mississippi District Court judge. In an undemocratic process, federal judges are selected for life. The Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, represents the states of Mississippi, Louisi ana and Texas. This circuit has the highest percentage of African Americans and the most poor people of all the circuits in the United States. These illuminating statistics and Pickering's sordid political background have fueled the growing campaign to oppose his nomination. Pickering attended the University of Mississippi in the late 1950s when Jim Crow segregation kept the Black masses in extreme conditions of semi-slavery, politically and economically. As a law student, Pickering composed a law review article outlining how Mississippi's laws, which criminalized interracial marriages, could be made even more strongly enforceable. The Mississippi legislature adopted Pickering's proposed changes to the law. Until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned these "miscegenation" laws in the 1960s, interracial couples faced imprisonment, as well as a threat to life and limb, for daring to love and marry each other in the Deep South. Pickering was a vocal critic of the bourgeois democratic principle of "one person, one vote" and attempted to sabotage certain remedies outlined in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As a member of the Mississippi Senate, Pickering voted in support of providing state funds for the notorious Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a racist state agency established in 1956 that openly fought desegregation. This same commission also had a history of opposing union organizing and workers' strikes. In 1994, as a district judge, Pickering presided over a trial of three racists who burned a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple. Pickering advocated reducing the sentence of one of the accused, characterizing this despicable act as just a "drunken prank." Pro-choice activists are justifiably outraged by Pickering's views on abortion and other reproductive rights. As a state senator, he promoted a constitutional amendment to ban abortions and another amendment that limited a woman's right to safe, legal abortion. He also voted against a bill to fund family-planning programs. So it is no surprise that he also opposed the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment. A Feb. 6 editorial in the Los Angeles Times stated that Pickering is also against lesbian and gay rights. Many prisoners' rights activists are also concerned about Pickering's strong support of the racist death penalty. The vast majority of prisoners on death row in the Fifth Circuit are African American and poor. Charles W. Pickering is another clone of Confederate-loving, misogynist, anti-gay U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. It is very clear that with the Pickering nomination, the Bush administration wants to wipe away, as quickly as possible, all the progressive gains made by the mass struggle for civil rights. But working and oppressed people, united in a powerful mass movement, can insure that this will not happen. - 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
