>
> WW News Service Digest #50
>
> 1) Who Pulled Strings in Diallo Case?
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 2) Mass Arrests at Supreme Court for Mumia
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3) Meager U.S. Response to Africa Floods
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 4) Suspicious Timing: Phony Cuba Spy Charges
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 5) Diallo Verdict Sparks Marches, Walkouts
> by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:40:43 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Who Pulled Strings in Diallo Case?
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 9, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BEHIND THE JURY, BEHIND THE JUDGE: WHO PULLED THE
>STRINGS IN THE DIALLO CASE?
>
>By Monica Moorehead
>
>Once again, racist white police have gotten away with
>bloody murder in the streets and in the courts. On Feb. 25,
>four of New York's "finest" and members of the elite Street
>Crimes Unit--Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss
>and Richard Murphy--were acquitted in an Albany, N.Y.,
>court of all charges in the murder of Amadou Diallo.
>
>Diallo, a young West African street vendor, was
>slaughtered by the cops on Feb. 4, 1999. The four fired at
>him 41 times, hitting him with 19 bullets as he stood in
>the vestibule of his apartment building in the Bronx.
>Diallo was unarmed and had done nothing threatening.
>
>As the verdicts were read out--not guilty on all charges,
>from second-degree murder to manslaughter to criminally
>negligent homicide to reckless endangerment--people in the
>courtroom reacted with shock and disbelief.
>
>Thousands of enraged and frustrated members of the Black,
>Latino and Asian communities, joined by anti-racist whites,
>took to the streets of Albany, New York, and other cities
>to express their outrage at the senseless verdict. They are
>demanding to know why these cops are not going to spend one
>day in jail for shooting down an unarmed man.
>
>The scenario played out like a recurring nightmare as the
>victim of an atrocity--in this case Amadou Diallo--was
>portrayed in the courts and in the capitalist media as the
>would-be aggressor and the cops as the would-be victims.
>
>Many are blaming the jury, the prosecutor, the judge,
>Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Police Commissioner Howard Safir
>and others for the outcome of this trial. It is certainly
>understandable that they are being held accountable under
>the circumstances.
>
>But where should the finger of blame really be pointed in
>this case and countless more like it? Is not this kind of
>verdict predictable whenever white cops are accused of
>killing a person of color in any U.S. city?
>
>The real answers can be found by establishing who really
>runs New York City and controls all its institutions,
>especially the criminal justice system.
>
>A TALE OF TWO CITIES
>
>New York, the most populous city in the country, is
>comprised of millions of immigrants from Latin America, the
>Caribbean, Asia, and the Middle East, plus a large African
>American population in Harlem. People of color are the
>majority of the population of this city.
>
>But there's another New York City, home to Wall Street,
>the citadel of international monopoly finance capital. It
>is the nerve center of U.S. imperialism. Wall Street is
>where the stocks of the largest corporations are bought and
>sold, where banks make private investments and where multi-
>billion-dollar megamergers are created.
>
>All this wheeling and dealing takes place with the purpose
>of making huge profits for Corporate America at the expense
>of meeting basic human needs.
>
>New York City is also the home of some of the country's
>largest real estate investors, like Donald Trump.
>
>Wall Street is where political decisions are made on how
>to run a city as large and diverse as New York. No decision
>is more important than carrying out repression, or, as it
>is euphemistically called, "law and order."
>
>Wall Street is the biggest financial backer of the New
>York Police Department, the largest in the country. Wall
>Street firms are the biggest investors in private prisons,
>considered by many experts to be the fastest-growing sector
>of the economy. Merrill Lynch and Goldman, Sachs and Co.
>alone handle between $2 billion and $3 billion of the $7
>billion in prison bonds that flow into private prison
>construction annually.
>
>It is Wall Street that dictates the workfare policy of
>forcing people who were once on welfare and public
>assistance into low-wage jobs with no union rights and
>benefits.
>
>With so much economic power and influence concentrated in
>one area, it is not hard to understand that the super-rich
>truly rule New York City--not Mayor Giuliani. They are not
>innocent bystanders in a case such as the killing of Amadou
> Diallo.
>
>The ruling class was instrumental in getting the Diallo
>case moved from the Bronx to Albany, since judges and grand
>juries can easily be bought off.
>
>The ruling class controls what is said in the mainstream
>media about the case and how it is said. How many times did
>the networks show over and over again ad nauseam the cops
>"crying" and feigning remorse for shooting an unarmed man?
>The media are in the hands of huge monopolies.
>
>The ruling class depends on the repression of the police
>not only to keep "order," meaning using terror to keep the
>masses down and in their place, but to protect their
>private property--that is, to maintain their class rule.
>
>And last but not least, the ruling class, through a vast
>stable of corporate lawyers, writes the laws to uphold
>their right to property and to protect those who enforce
>that ownership--the police. The laws have nothing to do
>with meting out justice for all. Instead, the "criminal
>justice system" is designed to railroad the poor and the
>oppressed to prison and even to death row.
>
>So in reality, when Amadou Diallo was shot down in a
>hailstorm of bullets, the verdict was arrived at right then
>and there. The trial was a joke and a sham because
>everything was stacked up against his family receiving any
>semblance of justice.
>
>The U.S. ruling class has taken a stance in support of the
>racist death penalty, and this country is notorious for
>having the highest number of people incarcerated. As a
>result, all around the world the image the U.S. ruling
>class tries to cultivate of being the most exemplary
>bourgeois democracy is taking a beating.
>
>And the Diallo verdict is yet another blemish on this
>phony image.
>
>On Feb. 27, hundreds of people marched to the United
>Nations to drive home the point that the acquittal of these
>racist cops should be protested not just in New York City
>and around the country, but around the world. In fact,
>there has been a growing international reaction to this
>verdict in Africa and elsewhere.
>
>Al Gore made a wishy-washy statement on Feb. 25 in which
>he called for "calm." Gore said that the Civil Rights
>Division of the Justice Department is in the process of
>opening up an "investigation" to see if federal action is
>warranted. Gore along with Bill Bradley, George W. Bush and
>John McCain support the death penalty and more cops on the
>streets.
>
>A recent poll taken in New York City showed that 60
>percent of people asked about the verdict opposed the not-
>guilty decision. The people who came out into the streets
>chanting "No Justice? No Peace!" in the days that followed
>were not only demanding justice for Amadou Diallo but for
>themselves. They know that if four white cops can be
>exonerated for gunning down an unarmed African, then it is
>open season for all people of color.
>
>A statement from the International Action Center summed it
>up best: "The verdict in Albany reaffirms the truth that we
>cannot achieve justice by relying on the courts, which are
>just another corrupt arm of a corrupt and racist system.
>Only the struggle of the people can win justice for Amadou
>Diallo."
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft 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)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:42:22 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Mass Arrests at Supreme Court for Mumia
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 9, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>185 ARRESTED IN D.C. PROTEST: THOUSANDS TELL SUPREME
>COURT: "FREE MUMIA, NO DEATH PENALTY!"
>
>By Susanne Kelly
>Washington
>
>Thousands of protesters took to the streets here Feb. 28
>and shut down the U.S. Supreme Court to tourists. Two major
>streets in the world capital of capitalism were closed
>down.
>
>The rowdy and determined crowd was protesting the racist
>trial and death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal. They made it
>clear that they demand a new trial for Mumia--and an end to
>the racist death penalty.
>
>Well before the 9 a.m. start of the demonstration, people
>had arrived from all over the country. People of color and
>white, youth and elderly, students, trade unionists, lesbian,
>gay, bi, trans and straight, disabled and able, women and men
>were there with banners, signs, leaflets, shouts and chants.
>The entire block-long sidewalk in front of the highest court
>in the nation was full with 2,000 of Mumia's supporters. Many
>more demonstrators were across the street.
>
>Foolishly thinking they could stop the action, officials
>closed off the Supreme Court steps and stopped all tours. But
>the demonstrators were prepared for this. Just after 10 a.m.,
>hundreds took to the street and lay down. Traffic was halted
>in all directions on two major Capitol Hill streets.
>
>As the arrests of those occupying the street began, a group
>of demonstrators from the Simon Nkoli Queer Crusaders for
>Mumia ran around the police barricades blocking the Supreme
>Court steps, pushed past the cops, ran onto the steps of the
>Supreme Court, and unfurled a banner that read "Queers say:
>Stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal." The group is named for
>Simon Nkoli, an openly gay leader of the African National
>Congress in South Africa who died from AIDS in 1998.
>
>They were joined by other demonstrators who stood chanting
>on the steps until they were arrested. Twenty-four people were
>arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court and 161 more in the
>street. As the arrests took place, a permitted rally across
>the street described the action as it was taking place.
>Speakers, including Pam Africa from International Concerned
>Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, described Mumia's
>racist frame-up to onlookers.
>
>The Capitol cops had to bring in buses to haul away the
>185 people who had refused to get out of the street and off
>the steps, and were arrested. Handcuffed behind their
>backs, they were herded onto the buses and taken to the
>lockup. "Brick by brick! Wall by wall! We're gonna free
>Mumia Abu-Jamal!" The chants continued and at times the
>buses were rocking.
>
>Pam Africa then led the crowd, which still numbered in the
>hundreds, to the jail where the demonstrators were being
>held.
>
>This mass civil disobedience was the second largest ever
>to take place at the Supreme Court.
>
>TEENS AND GRANNIES ROCK THE JAIL
>
>Those arrested were held all day without food. One in the
>group was 94 years old. As the hours passed and she was
>refused food, the group loudly asked that she be released
>right away. The guards refused. The arrested also included
>a group of high school students.
>
>Spirits were high throughout the long day in custody. Those
>in the lockup stayed strong with chants, songs, poems and
>stories of other struggles. Many were reminded that Mumia's
>daily life--spending 23 hours a day in a small, solitary cell
>where his communication with everyone is monitored and
>restricted--is incredibly more oppressive than a day in the
>D.C. lockup.
>
>After 7 p.m. people began to be released in a long and tedious
>process that lasted hours. But a noisy and supportive crowd
>waited outside and welcomed each person as they were released.
>Those arrested are due back in D.C. court on March 15, many
>facing a misdemeanor charge of "impeding traffic."
>
>"We'll do this again, and as many times as we have to, to
>win Mumia a new trial!" shouted one of those arrested.
>
>The spring offensive to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal
>has begun. Activists plan further civil disobedience,
>marches and rallies. And on May 7 in New York City, there
>will be a massive mobilization at Madison Square Garden to
>demand a new trial.
>
>For more information, and to get involved with the May 7
>Mumia Mobilization and other activities, contact organizers
>in New York at (212) 633-6646; in San Francisco at (415)
>821-6545; in Philadelphia at (215) 476-8812; or email
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] On the Web visit www.mumia2000.org.
>
>[Susanne Kelly was one of those arrested on Feb. 28.]
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft 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)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 00:16:44 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Meager U.S. Response to Africa Floods
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 9, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>
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