>
> WW News Service Digest #58
>
> 1) Phladelphia police brutality protesters surround DA's car
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) San Francisco mass arrests as youth protest racist Prop 21
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Green & lavender St. Patrick's parade
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) Big money behind attack on same-sex marriage
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 5) Yugoslavia: Media expose last year's lies, repeat this year's
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 6) Interview in Kosovo: 'Every day KLA terrorists kill a Serb'
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 7) Title IX funding: A concession to strength of women
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 8) Progressive Haitians warn of 'coup by election'
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 9) French unions keep up militancy
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>PHILLY D.A. GETS REALITY CHECK
>
>POLICE BRUTALITY PROTESTERS SURROUND CAR
>
>By Joe Piette
>Philadelphia
>
>Shouting "Shame, shame" and "Murderer, murderer," about
>100 protesters surged around Philadelphia District Attorney
>Lynn Abraham on Feb. 29 as she left her office. Cops
>quickly got her into her chauffeur-driven black limousine,
>but the militant, chanting crowd pounded on the car windows
>and hood until more cops pushed and dragged people away.
>
>The notorious district attorney eventually escaped. No one
>was arrested. What has made Abraham so hated? Since Abraham
>was appointed district attorney in 1991 by Mayor Ed
>Rendell, Philadelphia has put more people on death row than
>any other city in the U.S.
>
>The confrontation came at the end of a long, loud rush-
>hour march through Center City streets to protest police
>brutality--including the Amadou Diallo murder by police in
>New York.
>
>Called by the anti-death penalty group The Defenestrator,
>the protest used firecrackers and dozens of home-made drums
>to add oomph to chants of "Police course 101 - It's a
>wallet, not a gun."
>
>Police were unable to control the route of the march.
>Whenever police cruisers finally maneuvered to the front of
>the crowd, the marchers changed directions, leaving the
>cars heading in the wrong direction.
>
>Marchers blocked traffic on Broad, Market and other streets
>while leaflets were handed out to drivers and pedestrians. The
>protest paused at 13th & Locust, where Black journalist Mumia
>Abu-Jamal had been arrested in 1981, and ended after the face-
>to-face encounter with the deadliest district attorney in the
>U.S., Lynn Abraham.
>
>Abraham's policy of routinely demanding the death penalty
>whenever possible has resulted in over half of
>Pennsylvania's death row inmates being from this city,
>which is notorious for its police brutality and corruption.
>Over 80 percent of these prisoners are Black.
>
>KNOWN AS `QUEEN OF DEATH'
>
>Abraham began her rise to become "Queen of Death" as a
>homicide prosecutor in the district attorney's office. She
>worked alongside Rendell--once a homicide prosecutor, later
>the district attorney from 1977 to 1985, then mayor and now
>also head of the National Democratic Party.
>
>Another cohort was District Attorney Ron Castille. He
>oversaw court proceedings that cleared all officials of
>guilt for the 1985 police bombing of the MOVE organization;
>signed the documents in support of Abu-Jamal's death
>sentence in the 1980s, and is now a Pennsylvania Supreme
>Court justice. Last year, Castille refused to recuse
>himself from the case when Abu-Jamal appealed to that court
>for a new trial.
>
>Abraham became a judge in 1975. She joined Judge Albert
>Sabo--who presided over Abu-Jamal's trial and hearings--in
>the Court of Common Pleas in 1983. Judge Abraham signed the
>arrest warrants in 1977 that led to a police assault
>against a MOVE house in Philadelphia's Powelton Village
>section. Nine MOVE members were sentenced to terms up to
>life for the death of an officer who was most likely killed
>by a stray police bullet in that raid. She again signed
>arrest warrants in 1985 against MOVE members at an Osage
>Avenue home. Thirteen men, women and children in that house
>were killed by a massive land and air attack by police.
>
>In 1981, it was Judge Abraham who went to Jefferson
>Hospital, where Mumia Abu-Jamal was being treated while
>under arrest, to arraign him for the murder of Officer
>Daniel Faulkner.
>
>Her office has also been tainted by the 38th Police
>District scandal, in which hundreds of cases have been
>overturned and dozens of people released from prison
>because of police frame-ups and faked evidence introduced
>by police and prosecutors.
>
>As district attorney, Abraham's office has failed to convict
>any cops for the murders of Jamel Nichols, Kenneth Griffin,
>Donta Dawson, Phillip McCall, Moises DeJesus, Jahlil Thomas or
>any other victims of police brutality in Philadelphia. The
>district attorney's office is currently investigating whether
>to bring charges against a cop from the wealthy suburb of
>Lower Merion who killed young Erin Forbes on Jan. 10, 2000, on
>City Line Ave., bordering Philadelphia.
>
>Two months later, her office has still not released any
>information, much less made any charges, on why an unarmed
>Black man surrounded by at least five cops was shot through
>the heart.
>
>Lynn Abraham's sordid history of doing the dirty work for
>this city's rich ruling class made her a fitting target on
>Feb. 29.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <006401bf9139$3f4bf850$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] San Francisco mass arrests as youth protest racist Prop 21
>Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 19:22:44 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
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>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>SAN FRANCISCO
>
>MASS ARRESTS AS YOUTH PROTEST RACIST PROP 21
>
>By Rachel Aoanan
>and Nancy Mitchell
>
>Proposition 21, the racist "Juvenile Crime and Violence
>Prevention Act," passed in the California elections on
>March 7, ushering in a new attack on poor and working class
>youth--particularly youth of color.
>
>The night after the vote, 650 angry protesters marched to
>the downtown Hilton Hotel, whose parent company funded
>Proposition 21. One hundred and fifty youth, including over
>a dozen minors, were arrested in a civil disobedience
>there.
>
>The protest was the culmination of a youth movement that
>has sprung up to fight this reactionary initiative.
>
>The proposition's title is misleading. Sponsored by right-
>wing former Gov. Pete Wilson, prevention programs are not
>part of the initiative. While prevention programs are
>estimated to be twice as effective and significantly
>cheaper, the bill is based completely on youth
>incarceration, not on rehabilitation.
>
>Proposition 21 puts youth into the adult system, trying
>minors as young as 14 as adults and making them eligible
>for the death penalty. It creates longer sentences for
>minor offenses, eliminating probation for many youth
>offenders.
>
>Proposition 21 expands the definition of "gang" crimes and
>vastly expands gang punishment. The loose definition of
>"criminal street gang" is a permission slip for police to
>target and harass youth of color.
>
>The initiative is also a major threat to privacy and civil
>liberties. It allows a judge to permit wiretapping to
>investigate felony activity, and it allows the disclosure
>of information on juveniles who have committed a crime to
>schools and potential employers.
>
>Proposition 21 punishes youth with adult sentences, yet
>they have no rights to vote on the initiative that
>specifically affects them.
>
>Proposition 21 passed in a state with a booming prison
>population. California alone has more prisoners than Japan,
>France, Britain, and Germany combined. California already
>has the highest youth incarceration rate in the U.S., more
>than twice the national average, and it spends more to
>incarcerate a youth than it does to educate: $32,200 per
>year to imprison versus $5,327 to educate.
>
>Supporters of the initiative claimed "juvenile crime" is
>on the rise, but from 1991 to 1996 "juvenile crime"
>actually went down over 5 percent.
>
>California ranks number one in the country in prison
>spending and number 41 in education. The state has built 24
>new prisons and only one university within the past 15
>years.
>
>In the Bay Area, where the No-on-Prop-21 campaign was
>successful in getting out these statistics to the public,
>the proposition was voted down. Many in the movement also
>linked the struggle with that against Proposition 22, the
>anti-gay marriage initiative.
>
>The vast expansion of prisons in the U.S. is part of the
>ruling class's solution to an economic system that doesn't
>provide a future for masses of young workers, particularly
>those in the African American, Latino and other oppressed
>communities.
>
>With the industrial manufacturing base in the U.S. moving
>abroad to exploit extremely low-wage labor markets, U.S.
>workers--particularly those in the urban centers--face
>lower-paying, lower-skilled service jobs, unemployment and
>more police repression.
>
>Capitalism tries to house these "excess" members of the
>working class in prisons, where their labor is super-
>exploited.
>
>Prisons in the U.S. have always been concentration camps
>for the poor, but they are also the repressive apparatus
>used to contain the growing resistance in the most
>oppressed communities. Over 70 percent of prisoners are
>people of color.
>
>As the capitalist system continues to cut back social
>programs and increase its attacks on working and oppressed
>communities, the prison system will continue to expand in
>anticipation of rebellions that inevitably will explode.
>
>Although this is a set back for the movement against
>police repression and the prison-industrial complex, the
>militant demon stration on March 8 showed there is a new
>generation of activists who will continue the struggle.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <006a01bf9139$59219640$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Green & lavender St. Patrick's parade
>Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 19:23:27 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>GREEN & LAVENDER:
>
>A DIVERSE ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARADE FOR A CHANGE
>
>By Shelley Ettinger
>Queens, N.Y.
>
>Green and lavender were the colors at New York's first St.
>Patrick's Day parade on March 5. The colors--on balloons,
>banners, stickers, buttons and clothing--symbolized the
>parade organizers' commitment to unity and solidarity.
>Unlike the annual St. PatrickDay parade in Manhattan, which
>refuses to allow the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization to
>march, the event in the borough of Queens was open to all.
>
>And all came. In marked contrast to the annual Manhattan
>parade, which is dominated by police and military groups
>and is virtually all white, the March 5 parade was
>strikingly multinational--thanks to organizers' successful
>efforts to reach out to the diverse Queens community.
>
>Before marchers stepped off, Chief Dark Cloud of the
>Choctaw Nation opened the day with a prayer and blessing.
>Along with Irish groups and individuals, the parade also
>featured a Chilean dance troupe, young drummers from both
>Korea and Central America, and other representatives of the
>many nations represented in Queens, whose population is
>mostly immigrants.
>
>There were labor contingents, from Laborers Local 79 and
>the Letter Carriers Flushing local. There were marchers
>demanding freedom for Irish political prisoners, and for
>U.S. political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-
>Jamal.
>
>And there, marching proudly for the first time in a New
>York Irish parade, were groups from the lesbian, gay, bi
>and trans communities. They included ILGO and the Lavender
>and Green Alliance, a gay leather bagpipe band, Senior
>Action in a Gay Environment of Queens, the gay Catholic
>group Dignity-New York, the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple
>Chorus, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and
>others.
>
> - 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)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <007001bf9139$6d2b4960$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Big money behind attack on same-sex marriage
>Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 19:24:01 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 23, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>RIGHT-WING BALLOT MEASURE
>
>BIG MONEY BEHIND ATTACK ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
>
>By Preston Wood
>Los Angeles
>
>Once again, in the regressive and reactionary tradition of
>big money and right-wing mobilizations in California, two
>state ballot measures passed on March 7. One intensifies
>repression against young people, primarily Black and Latino
>youth, and the other upholds discrimination against the
>rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
>
>Proposition 21 lowers the age that a youth can be tried as
>an adult from 16 to 14 years of age. Proposition 22--known
>also as the Defense of Marriage Act or the Knight
>Initiative--reinforces an already existing ban on same-sex
>marriages in the state.
>
>These measures follow right in line with previously
>divisive and racist campaigns like Proposition 187 that
>denied basic rights to immigrants in California,
>Proposition 209 that struck a blow against affirmative
>action, and Proposition 227 that targeted bilingual
>education.
>
>While the repressive components of Proposition 21 are
>hidden in a huge volume of words, Proposition 22 uses only
>17 words to take a direct shot at the fundamental rights of
>lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to equal
>treatment under the law.
>
>The measure designates this whole group of people as unfit
>for the rights accorded to heterosexuals. It is alarming
>
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