------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 1, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
HOUSTON JUNETEENTH PARADE: "STOP TORTURING PRISONERS IN TAXAS AND IRAQ!"
By Gloria Rubac Houston
Anti-death penalty and anti-war activists participated in Houston's 31st Annual Juneteenth Freedom Parade on June 19. They carried banners and placards demanding the end of torture of prisoners both in Texas and in Iraq and calling for U.S. troops to be brought home now.
Juneteenth--June 19--marks the day in 1865 when enslaved African laborers in Galveston, Texas, finally learned of the Emancipation Proclamation, two years after it became law.
This year, speakers for the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement and ANSWER drew wild support as they addressed the crowd along the parade route. They demanded that the war be "brought home"--that it should be a war against the racist criminal justice system, and a war for jobs, schools and health care.
The Abolition Movement carried signs and passed out hundreds of flyers about death row prisoner Tony Ford, whose birthday is also June 19.
Supporters stress that Ford has maintained his innocence and has a strong case to prove it. These supporters--from Texas, to Ford's home town of Detroit, to Italy--are taking his case to the people.
Flyers were also distributed for a commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the execution of Shaka Sankofa, "legally lynched" by the state of Texas on June 22, 2000.
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