Dec. 10 USA: Capitalist economic decline criminalizes workers Early in the morning on Dec. 2, the day after thousands of activists around the country had commemorated civil rights hero Rosa Parks by expressing righteous outrage to the war against the Iraqi people and the war being waged against workers and oppressed communities here, Kenneth Boyd was executed in North Carolina. Boyd became the 1,000th person to die since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The majority have been poor, and disproportionately people of color. So far this year there have been 57 executions in the U.S. Since 1999 there have been 501, with 1999 peaking at 98 in a single year. The state of Texas has led the way every year. The death penalty and the booming growth of the prison-industrial complex symbolize how brutal the United States is to poor workers and people of color. This is being especially illuminated as the pressures of the capitalist market keep driving wages down. The growing competition among the imperialist powers shows no end in sight, and this will lead to more wars for profit for which workers will shoulder the brunt more and more. The poor are left with few ways to make a living and must fend for themselves. It is especially poignant to highlight how thousands of poor, mostly Black, citizens of New Orleans were left to bear the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. As these residents commandeered vehicles and goods off store shelves, they were threatened with death and imprisonment by Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, as well as local and national authorities. With just 5 % of the worlds population, the United States has 25 percent of the worlds prison population. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate, with 701 incarcerations per 100,000 people. (World Prison Population List) The majority of those incarcerated are people of color, mostly Black. People of color are far more likely to receive jail time and the death sentence than whites who commit the same crimes. A glance at prison growth in the United States and the economic decline since the late 1970s shows a significant leap in incarcerations. The U.S. prison population jumped from 200,000 in 1970 to 2.1 million in 2002, and continues to grow. This decades-old trend can be seen most notably in what has become known as the Rust Belt, which stretches from Western New York as far west as Kansas. The flight of well-paying jobs, scant social services, and a failing public school system has left inner-city areas, heavily populated by people of color, nearly unbearable for millions. Add to the above the realities of an inadequate health system and the dire circumstances of life in the U.S. for poor workers and people of color becomes incandescent. At last count 45 million Americans were without health insurance, and millions more have poor health insurance coverage. The United Nations released a report earlier this year detailing how the worlds wealthiest nation has a woefully inadequate health care system. Racism and class oppression can glaringly be seen in life expectancy and infant mortality. Of the 215,000 jobs created in the month of November, 144,000 were in the food service industry. Real income continues to fall as the prices of goods outpace what little growth there is in wages. A new bankruptcy law puts Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which wipes away all debt, out of reach for many in a country where 70 % of the people owe upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. Manufacturing jobs that paid decent wages with benefits are disappearing. This decline is partly due to advanced technology, allowing manufacturers to replace live workers with machinery, and to the movement of capital to other countries. Corporations like the auto manufacturers are closing factories and laying off workers here, looking to exploit workers in other countries where labor laws are weak at best and wages are super low. Recently, both GM and Ford, the 1st and 3rd largest automakers in the world, respectively, announced layoffs. GM will eliminate 30,000 jobs and close down 12 factories across the U.S. Ford is planning massive layoffs as well. Nearly 100,000 jobs in the auto industry have been lost this year alone. Auto-parts maker Delphi, in bankruptcy, has demanded its workers take a severe cut in wages, lower cost-of-living increases, and higher insurance premiums. This trend is happening in the airline industry as well, as three major airlines have filed for bankruptcy in order to dump workers pensions and health care benefits. As this crisis continues to deepen, workers, especially those from oppressed nationalities, will be even more criminalized in what amounts to a war in this country as well as abroad. Part of that war against workers and people of color is the use of the death penalty and the criminalization of poverty. A united front must be forged between the anti-imperialist movement and anti-racists to call for an end to imperialist plunder, no more prisons and abolition of the death penalty. (source: Workers' World) ******************** Judicial execution: the way to a better world? The most gruesome photograph of people that I have ever seen in a newspaper is that of convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg just before their execution in the electric chair on June 19, 1953. My father held up a copy of the now long-defunct tabloid, the Los Angeles Mirror. Virtually the entire front page was devoted to a shot of the Rosenbergs. The camera angle from below exaggerated the size of their facial features. Their heads had been shaved to facilitate the flow of electricity through their bodies. Dad shook the paper in front of my face, saying, "See what happens to people who betray their country?" To an 8-year-old, the photo was terrifying enough. Then dad added, "And they are leaving two little boys behind." Those words stuck with me: "leaving behind." It only increased the horror of the experience; and I remember thinking how cruel it was to kill the parents of 2 little boys, whatever their crime. The next time I became conscious of capital punishment was in the late 1950s. A man named Carol Chessman had been sentenced to death for robbery and kidnapping in 1948. While on death row he wrote four books, one of which became a best seller, and trained himself in law. Kidnapping carried a mandatory death sentence at the time, and after a 12-year-long battle for his life, Chessman, age 38, was executed in the gas chamber in California on May 2, 1960. His sentence had been opposed by a host of distinguished people, including Albert Schweitzer, Aldous Huxley and Pablo Casals. Chessman maintained his innocence until the very end. Ritualized revenge Whether the crime be treason, kidnapping, drug trafficking or murder, what justification does the state have in killing a person? Is ritualized revenge -- and that is essentially what the death penalty is, whatever its proponents say -- a proper motive for the dispensing of justice? On Dec. 2, Nguyen Tuong Van, a 25-year-old Australian, was hanged in Singapore for the possession of heroin. There was an outcry over his fate in Australia, where the death penalty was abolished in 1973. Yet in Singapore, this execution created barely a ripple of dissent. Warren Fernandez, writing in The Straits Times after the event, said that critics of Singapore "would be better off directing their anger at the real villains in this saga -- the drug traffickers and barons who seek profit from this heinous trade at the expense of thousands of innocent lives." One more case. Stanley Tookie Williams is scheduled to be executed in California two days from now. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger alone has the power to commute this sentence. Williams, a confessed murderer, has transformed himself into an articulate advocate of nonviolence, urging young people to turn away from their gangs and abide by the law. If his life can be useful in preventing murders in the future, isn't that better than taking it in the name of retribution? What good would his death do the world? Have the executions of the Rosenbergs or Chessman stopped people from betraying their country or kidnapping people? Do spies or kidnappers think of them today when they are planning their crimes? Will taking Nguyen's life hinder the drug traffickers? Of course it will not. Taking away the lure of drug use will save countless more lives than shooting the messengers, who are often so desperate that they are barely rational. The case for capital punishment as a deterrent to crime has been refuted by countless studies. If it were a genuine deterrent, crimes of extreme violence would be committed less frequently in the United States -- where the 1,000th person was recently executed since the Supreme Court reconfirmed the legality of the penalty in 1976 -- than, say, in the countries of the European Union, where capital punishment is illegal. In fact, the opposite is true. Faithful Christians The majority of Americans consider themselves faithful Christians, and many of those oppose abortion under the banner of "pro-life." Yet those very Christians, whose faith tells them to forgive rather than seek revenge (with the current president their most powerful and ardent defender), overwhelmingly support the practice of state execution. President Bush's home state of Texas has put more than 240 people to death in the past 30 years, 3 times more than the next most frequently executing state, Virginia. Humanity's sense of justice has progressed over the centuries. There was a time in Europe when no confession was considered valid unless the alleged criminal was tortured. The logic was that anybody would confess if they weren't tortured, so how could you believe them? The zigzag scrawl of confessors' signatures attests to the physical abuse that they endured in what was then the legal practice of justice. The execution of criminals in our day is no more than an extension of that logic. I am sure that the torturing of confessors gave some upstanding practitioners in the legal profession of the time a deep sense of satisfaction that true justice was being done for all. We who execute criminals -- and bear in mind that some of those who are killed by the state are innocent -- will surely be judged by people in the future as torturers every bit as revengeful and inhumane as the upright citizens who once turned the knobs and wheels on the rack and the screw. When Ethel Rosenberg was being killed, the first jolt of electricity, lasting 57 seconds, was insufficient. Still alive and smoking all over, she was restrapped to the chair for a further 2 jolts. A world without Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Carol Chessman, Nguyen Tuong Van and Stanley Tookie Williams is not a better world. We are far worse off for killing them in the name of what will someday be seen as a sophisticated version of medieval vengeance. That is the fate -- of being self-righteous torturers -- we are condemning ourselves to when we support the death penalty. (source: Column, Roger Pulvers, The Japan Times) ********************* Death penalty must be used with care The Issue: As the 1,000th death-row prisoner is executed in the United States, questions are raised about the possible inno-cence of a Texas inmate executed in 1993. Our Opinion: The death penalty is an irreversible punishment that should demand a high degree of certainty that a person actually is guilty of a capital. 2 recent events have revitalized the debate over the death penalty. The first occurred when North Carolina earlier this month carried out the 1,000th execution in the United States since 1976 when the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of the death penalty. The high court suspended use of the death penalty in 1972, ruling that the way in which it was being meted out amounted to a violation of the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. Among the reasons for the ruling, the court listed racial discrimination, the poor quality of legal representation of defendants and arbitrary decisions on the part of judges, all of which raised the risk of an innocent person being executed. The states were required to revamp their capital-punishment procedures to conform with standards set by the high court before they could resume using the death penalty. 38 states eventually restated capital-punishment statutes. The 2nd event that has brought the death-penalty question back to the forefront is an investigation into whether a man executed in Texas in 1993 was innocent. Ruben M. Cantu was put to death after being convicted of a fatal shooting committed during an attempted robbery in San Antonio. Until his death by lethal injection, Cantu insisted he had been framed. No physical evidence linking Cantu to the shooting was presented during his trial, and the only eyewitness to take the stand and identify him as the shooter was Juan Moreno, an undocumented worker who was wounded in the incident. David Garza, also was arrested in the murder-robbery, pleaded guilty to robbery and made a deal with police, telling investigators Cantu, a childhood friend, had been the shooter. Last month, both men said they had lied. Moreno said he had been pressured by police into fingering Cantu. Garza, in prison for an unrelated offense, said he lied to hide the identity of the real shooter, whose name he has since given to police. Both claimed they had nothing to gain from recanting their statements. Susan Reed, the district attorney for Bexar County, where the shooting took place, has launched an investigation into the case, in which she has a vested interest. According to court records, as a state district judge in 1988, Reed rejected an appeal by Cantu. Although she said she doesnt recall the details, Reed said she often rejected appeals without a hearing if they had been rejected by other courts. In 1993, Reed was the judge who scheduled Cantus execution date. Whatever the outcome, the Cantu case reveals the underlying danger of capital punishment: The person being executed might be innocent. Since the advent of DNA testing, more than 100 people on death row have been exonerated of the crimes for which they had been convicted. Poor legal representation also can lead to miscarriages of justice. U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day OConnor have made public statements critical of the quality of lawyers representing defendants in capital cases. We are not opposed to the death penalty. Sometimes it is entirely justified. But continuing to mete out a punishment that is irreversible despite growing evidence that there may be something inherently wrong in the way it is being administered is irresponsible. (source: Editorial, The Reading (Penn.) Eagle) NEW JERSEY: Abolish execution Re: "Double murderer executed in N.C." (C-P, Dec. 3). I couldn't decide whether I was more angry or embarrassed knowing that the 1,000th person was just legally put to death in this country since the national moratorium on the death penalty was lifted back in 1976. I'm angry that so many Americans continue to support such barbarism knowing it affects the poor and minorities disproportionally, that the mentally retarded have been executed and that, in all likelihood, there were some who were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. And I'm embarrassed that, once again, other Western countries regard our commitment to human rights as no better than Iran's or China's. As it appears the battle to abolish the death penalty will have to be fought state by state. I hope we in New Jersey seriously consider legislation that will abolish this outright. Sure, there's an economic argument for doing so: Despite no executions in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982, the system has cost New Jersey taxpayers more than $250 million. But I'd rather see it abolished simply because it's the right thing to do. Only then will we be able to call ourselves civilized. DENNIS DALY -- Voorhees (source: Letter to the Editor, Courier Post (New Jersey) GEORGIA: The place where lives get saved----We might be the animals the Georgia Aquarium helps most Martina Correia is divorced and raising her son alone. Sometimes she takes him to visit his uncle on death row at the state penitentiary in Jackson. "The guys on death row always tell the kids who are visiting, 'Stay in your books! Stay in your books! If you get an education you will not end up here,'" she says. There is an urgency in her voice that's at odds with the fatigue in her eyes. Correia, who is executive director for Amnesty International's anti-death-penalty campaign, is articulate and poised, but the conversation about how lack of education contributes to crime is taking its toll when her face suddenly brightens a little and she says, "My son and I can't wait for the aquarium to open." It's not an unrelated tangent. She explains that on the plane from Savannah to Atlanta, where Amnestys regional conference was held earlier this month, she read an article about Bernie Marcus' $200 million contribution to the construction of the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest, and she was impressed and relieved. "Children need things like this," she says. "The so-called 'monsters' - the murderers or the people who commit heinous crimes - we create them, they aren't born that way. Children need to see and experience things that show them a world beyond their own, a world of opportunity that's positive. If all they know is whats bad and violent, then that is what they will grow up to be." Exposure to inspiring experiences, Correia says, is the difference between going to college or going to prison. She points to the 2,225 young offenders serving life without parole in the United States in federal and state prisons. Of these, 16 % were between the ages of 13 and 15 at the time of the crime that resulted in their incarceration. She's not saying that an aquarium can solve the problem of juvenile crime completely, but if given the choice between implementing more policies like Georgias notorious "zero tolerance" policy or building more learning venues like the Georgia Aquarium, the state, she says, would do more to combat crime by building the venues. The aquarium, which opens Nov. 21, will be a new opportunity for educational enrichment in a country where such opportunities are increasingly rare and priced out of the reach of most working class families. Those same working parents used to be able to rely on public schools to take their kids to museums and zoos when they could not, but since No Child Left Behind placed more emphasis on test scores, many schools have hacked field trips out of the budget in favor of more time spent in the classroom focused on preparing for exams. In 2003, the National Education Association reported that 75 % of school districts cut back on school trips or asked parents to pay for them. More recently, high fuel costs have also discouraged some systems in Georgia from taking field trips, according to Dana Tofig, public information officer for the Georgia Department of Education. (Courtesy Georgia Aquarium) "Changing a life doesn't happen unless that child is exposed to something new." -- Brian Davis, director of education for the Georgia Aquarium. And even if the schools - or parents - do manage to wrangle the time and money for a trip, their destinations have been dwindling as well. Atlanta's own SciTrek closed last year and, as Correia points out, the science museum in her hometown closed years ago. "The Savannah Science Museum closed," she says. "There are other museums and admission is free on Sundays, but the people who work there act as if they're afraid the kids will touch something. This one, I understand, will not be like that." On a recent Saturday morning at the aquarium, the male beluga whales, Gasper and Nico, are lazily twirling and looping in their tank, occasionally erupting from clouds of bubbles theyve pushed from their blow holes, when Nico bellies up to the glass, rolls into smiley-faced profile and looks curiously at the reporter whose reflected face has curled into a smile to match his own. Without the use of photos, explaining what these 2 animals are like is as difficult as describing the ocean's enormity, smell, motion or sound - concepts that are crucial to understanding much of our literature, history and science courses (and performing on the tests that come with them) - to some metro-area students. "Many of them have never even been to the beach," says Brian Davis, director of education at the aquarium. "They do not recognize Georgia as a coastal state." Davis was a science teacher at Marietta's J.J. Daniell Middle School and Cobb County's Kennesaw Mountain High School before coming to work for the aquarium. He earned his bachelor's degree in environmental science at Rutgers University, his masters in secondary science education at Georgia State University, and is currently working on his doctorate at GSU. A native of New Jersey, he spent much of his childhood at the shore, where brushes with dolphins and other marine life inspired him to pursue a career in studying and protecting the ocean. "But children have to know about these occupations in order to pursue them," he says. "If you don't even know about an occupation, how can you pursue it?" Davis' 1st job out of college was at the New York Aquarium, and it was there that he first saw the effect of marine encounters on kids. He remembers their reactions to the beluga whales in particular. "It was amazing for kids to see a whale for the first time," he says. "They would start asking questions like 'What does he eat?' 'Are they happy?' 'Will they have babies?' Seeing the glow in their eyes as their interest was triggered - that is what we live for." Not only will the aquarium offer reduced or free visits for underprivileged schools beginning in fall 2006, the visits promise to be splashy departures from stay-in-line-and-don't-touch-anything field trips. The Learning Loop program features 4 tracks for students: Deepo Detectives for pre-k through 5th grade, Aquatic Adventures for kindergarten through 8th grade, Eco-Explorers for 3rd grade through eighth grade, and Sea S.I. for 9th grade through 12th. Depending on which track their teachers choose, students will get to solve an aquatic "mystery," explore freshwater and saltwater environments, learn about marine research and about how the aquarium itself operates, with sessions devoted to animal husbandry, nutrition, filtration and conservation. The Learning Loop incorporates core curricula, as well. Kids will get to use math and reading skills while visiting the aquarium. Davis offers an example by posing a word problem intended for second and third graders: "If the aquarium has 5 penguins and each penguin needs to eat three fish each day to survive, how many fish will I need to make sure the penguins get enough to eat in one week?" Every track gives kids a chance to meet some of the aquarium's residents, like bamboo sharks, an octopus, horseshoe crabs, clownfish and seahorses, up-close in "touch tanks." The impact that seeing these animals has on kids is priceless, says Davis, but is probably most noticeable in those kids whose parents are too poor or perhaps too uninvolved to make sure they have positive learning experiences outside of school. Terri McFadden, a pediatrician at Hughes Spalding Hospital, says that in getting to know her patients, many of whom come from poor families, she has learned that they often do not have the outings that middle class families take for granted. "We assume that families are taking their kids to symphonies and museums," she says. "But not all families have the means to do that, and that's why field trips are particularly invaluable." Research, she says, has shown that kids learn more quickly and easily from seeing new things and participating in activities. She also emphasizes that much of the information that standardized tests require children to know is gleaned from exposure that they cant get in a classroom. "Not only are they learning more, but these kids are inspired," says McFadden. "Who knows how many marine biologists will be born out of trips to the Georgia Aquarium?" (source: The (Savannah) Sunday Paper, Nov. 13) MISSISSIPPI: Daily Journal reporter to witness murderer's lethal injection When or if John B. Nixon is executed by lethal injection in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman on Wednesday, the Daily Journal's law enforcement reporter Danza Johnson will be one of just a handful of witnesses. It's been nearly 20 years since John B. Nixon was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1985 murder-for-hire of a Brandon woman. At 77 years old, Nixon will be the oldest man executed in the United States since the 1940s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. When he found out he would be one of eight state reporters to witness Nixon's execution, Johnson said he was surprised and excited, but as the execution date - scheduled for Wednesday - nears, his attitude has changed. "I'm still very excited about having the opportunity to witness and cover a biggest news events," Johnson said. "But the thought of sitting there with my pen and pad watching a man to die weighs on my conscience." Attorneys seek clemency With Nixon's execution date set for less than a week away, his lawyers, David W. Clark of Jackson and Brian F. Toohey of Cleveland, Ohio, delivered a clemency request to Gov. Haley Barbour. If he's granted clemency, his sentence will be commuted to life in prison without parole. Clark said he feels confident about his client's chance of being granted clemency, but they will just have to wait and see. Davis Elliot, communication director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said clemency is only granted once or twice a year. It already has been granted twice this month - in Nevada and Texas. Even though the thought of witnessing the execution has disrupted his sleep, Johnson said he will do his job next week. "I will cover the Nixon's execution because I have to," Johnson said. "Not for myself, but for the millions of other people who have wondered the same questions that have interrupted my sleep for the past few night - for those who may never get the chance to witness such an event and for those who never want to witness such an event. "I don't know how I will feel when it happens; I'll just go in expecting the worst." (source: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal) ************************ Condemned man writes Barbour Small group rallies in support of clemency for John B. Nixon, scheduled to die Wednesday With only 4 days left before John B. Nixon Sr. is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi, a handwritten letter from Nixon arrived at the governor's office Friday afternoon. In the letter to Gov. Haley Barbour, Nixon wrote that he regrets the crimes he committed and has reformed himself. "Back when this crime was done, I was a broke down sorry alcoholic," the letter stated. "I accept that wrong was done to an innocent woman and her family and that I played a part in it. I regret it and wish I could undo it, but I can't." Nixon is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday. At age 77, he would be the oldest person in the United States put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. On Thursday, his attorneys submitted a clemency request to the governor. About 20 people stood in protest of the death penalty inside the state Capitol in Jackson on Friday. During the gathering, Nixon's attorney, David W. Clark, lambasted the state attorney general's office. Clark said the sentencing portion of Nixon's 1986 trial was unfair because the prosecution presented the jury with improper evidence in arguing for the death penalty. After the defense appealed, the state attorney general successfully argued to the state Supreme Court that the evidence could be presented, he said. But in January, nearly 20 years after the trial, the state attorney general's office admitted it was wrong, that the evidence should not have been presented, Clark said. But the admittance came too late for the defense to seek a new sentence. "If the state had admitted this earlier - if the state had said, 'We used the wrong aggravated circumstance and were not allowed to' - the sentence would be vacated by the Mississippi Supreme Court and a new sentence would appear in order," Clark said. "That's all we've been asking for. It's what Mississippi law allows and requires." Special Assistant Attorney General Jacob Ray said Clark's statements did not make sense. "I don't know what he's talking about, but the fact of the matter is this man (Nixon) was paid to kill somebody; he's a hired hit man," Ray said Friday when asked about Clark's statements. "The jury has spoken, and his execution is imminent." Clark said his argument was laid out in the clemency request hand-delivered to Barbour. He said he had not heard from the governor's office about the status of the request. Pete Smith, the governor's spokesman, said Barbour "was carefully reviewing the request along with his counsel." Smith could not say when Barbour would give an answer. A jury convicted Nixon of the 1985 murder-for-hire death of Rankin County resident Virginia Tucker and the shooting of Thomas Tucker, her husband. Tucker survived and later identified Nixon as his shooter. The protest on Friday was short, though about half of the college students and local religious leaders who gathered spoke. The protest did not draw any counter-protests supporting the death penalty. "My heart goes out to the families of the victims because they certainly have suffered through this whole process," said the Rev. Elvin Sunds of the Catholic Diocese in Jackson. "To give them the impression that killing another individual will bring peace is a false hope. "The Gospels show us that the only way we can find some peace and healing is by eventually bringing ourselves to forgiveness," he said. (source: Jackson Clarion-Ledger)
