July 26, 2012 Vol. 54, No. 29 $1
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Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!
FRANCE
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9SYRIA
10AFRICAN UNION SUMMIT
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Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!
By Caleb T. Maupin and Kathy Durkin
Hundreds of striking coal miners marched 285 miles from Asturias on Spain’s north coast to the capi-tal city of Madrid, where thousands of other workers joined them as they entered the city. Hundreds of thousands of others came to show solidarity as the miners’ three-week trek ended with a massive demon-stration on July 11.
Thousands of striking miners also came on buses to join the protests. They felt the support from so many of their fellow workers, who have suffered from gov-ernment-imposed austerity measures of higher taxes, layoffs, wage cuts and reduced crucial services and who face a new round of cutbacks.
The chant of “Yes! Yes! They do represent us!” echoed throughout the huge crowd, as the people embraced the miners. Their banners read, “We are all miners.”
Alejandro Casal, 28, an Airbus factory worker marching with fellow union members, said the min-ers’ protest “isn’t only their struggle. It’s a struggle for the working class. … The people need to be here on the street to say `Enough is enough.’ ” (Huffington Post, July 16)
This monumental protest came as rightist Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy imposed new taxes and spending cuts, shaving $80 billion from the country’s budget. This was the condition the European ruling class imposed for a bailout of Spain’s shaky banks. It means more wage cuts for public sector workers, clos-ings of state-owned industries and more attacks on social programs.
This comes on top of a 25 percent jobless rate in the country, with 50 percent of youth unemployed — dis-astrous rates for the eurozone’s fourth largest member. What sparked the miners to strike was the gov-ernment’s plan to cut coal-mining subsidies by two-thirds, which would undoubtedly result in mass layoffs in the mines. Seeing that the livelihoods, in fact, the very lives, of 30,000 miners were at stake, the miners’ union declared a strike to oppose the subsidy cuts.
Eight thousand miners went on strike on May 31. They have stood up to police batons, tear gas and ar-rests. The miners have militantly set up roadblocks and even stopped trains in their region of Asturias, which borders the Atlantic Ocean north of Madrid.
Bringing Asturias’ militant history to Madrid
Asturias has a long radical history. In 1934, the region was declared a socialist republic for a month while a mass workers’ uprising was taking place. It was also a stronghold of anti-fascist fighting during
PHOTO:AN PHOBLACHT Workers, supporting the striking miners, block a motorway in Asturias in June.
RALLY RESISTS AUSTERITY
Miners find massive solidarity in Madrid
TRAYVON MARTIN
FBI bias
Mumia: ‘He’s all of us’
3DRUG GIANT FINED
2TEXAS
Behind hate crime
5
WELLS FARGO
MUST PAY
But it’s not enough
6
MEXICAN ELECTION
7Continued on page 9
Sign held in mass march during Mexican election shows strength of ‘I am #132 campaign.’
In the U.S.
Glaxo $3 billion fine . . . 2
FBI report another slap against Trayvon Martin. . . 3
Mumia: ’ Trayvon & the war against Us’ . . . 3
Boots Riley backs sit-in . . . 3
Locked-out Con Ed workers fight back . . . 4
Unemployed march demands full benefits. . . 4
On the picket line . . . 4
Forum on struggle led by people with disabilities . . . 5
Justice for Mollie Olgin & Mary Chapa. . . 5
Charlotte Solidarity Center opens. . . 6
Home foreclosure crisis rages on. . . 6
Letters from behind the walls. . . 8
Around the world Miners find massive solidarity in Madrid . . . 1
The Obama administration’s ‘Greater East’. . . 6
Mexico progressives charge fraud in defeat of AMLO . . . 7
Autoworkers protest layoffs, plant closing in France . . . 9
U.S. prepares anti-Syria war psychology. . . 10
African Union summit faces challenges . . . 11
Editorials Why shoot a fishing boat? . . . 10
Noticias En Español Revés para los planes de guerra . . . 12
Pastores por la Paz . . . 12
Workers World 55 West 17 Street New York, N.Y. 10011 Phone: 212.627.2994 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.workers.org Vol. 54, No. 29 • July 26, 2012 Closing date: July 17, 2012 Editor: Deirdre Griswold Technical Editor: Lal Roohk
Managing Editors: John Catalinotto, LeiLani Dowell, Leslie Feinberg, Kris Hamel, Monica Moorehead, Gary Wilson
West Coast Editor: John Parker Contributing Editors: Abayomi Azikiwe,
Greg Butterfield, Jaimeson Champion, G. Dunkel, Fred Goldstein, Teresa Gutierrez, Larry Hales, Berta Joubert-Ceci, Cheryl LaBash,
Milt Neidenberg, Bryan G. Pfeifer, Betsey Piette, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Gloria Rubac
Technical Staff: Sue Davis, Shelley Ettinger, Bob McCubbin, Maggie Vascassenno
Mundo Obrero: Carl Glenn, Teresa Gutierrez,
Berta Joubert-Ceci, Donna Lazarus, Michael Martínez, Carlos Vargas
Supporter Program: Sue Davis, coordinator
Copyright © 2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of articles is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. Workers World (ISSN-1070-4205) is published weekly except the first week of January by WW Publishers, 55 W. 17 St., N.Y., N.Y. 10011. Phone: 212.627.2994. Subscriptions: One year: $30; institutions: $35. Letters to the editor may be condensed and edited. Articles can be freely reprinted, with credit to Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., New York, NY 10011. Back issues and individual articles are available on microfilm and/or photocopy from University Microfilms International, 300 Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48106. A searchable archive is available on the Web at www.workers.org.
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Glaxo $3 billion fine –
Just the cost of doing business
By Betsey Piette
It is being touted as the largest financial penalty of its kind in the U.S. against a pharmaceutical corporation. In July, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to plead guilty to three criminal misdemeanor charges and pay $3 billion in fines to settle claims of inappropriate marketing.
Glaxo admitted encouraging use of the antidepressant drug Paxil for children, even though it was never ap-proved by the FDA for anyone under 18 years of age. The company also withheld information from doctors and pa-tients that Paxil appears to magnify distress and manipu-lated clinical trials to minimize the number of suicides linked to the pill.
The company was also charged with paying doctors to promote Wellbutrin to treat obesity and sexual dysfunc-tion, when it had only been approved for depression. Doctors were showered with gifts, consulting contracts, speaking fees and sports tickets.
In addition, Glaxo withheld information about the cardiovascular risks of Avandia, a diabetes drug shown to cause heart attacks. It promoted Advair, an inhaled lung drug, to patients with mild asthma, even though it was not FDA approved for this use. The $3 billion fine will also cover a Justice Department investigation of Glaxo’s Medicaid pricing practices for nine of its drugs from 1997 to 2004.
A $3 billion fine may seem huge — until one consid-ers that Glaxo had a net profit of $8.2 billion in 2011 on revenues of $42.6 billion. In anticipation of the lawsuits, the company set aside $3.1 billion back in 2009 to cover legal costs.
They had the money. During the years that Paxil and Wellbutrin were on the market, Glaxo made $27.5 billon just on these and one other antidepressant, according to IMS Health.
Not one Glaxo executive has been prosecuted, despite the fact that a number of deaths resulted from their prac-tices. In fact, it is rare for any health care executives to go to prison for their crimes.
One exception was a case brought against medical de-vice producer Synthes Inc. in 2011, which resulted in jail terms for four executives. However, in June 2012 Johnson & Johnson purchased Synthes for $19.7 billion. In 2009, around the same time that Pfizer was settling a $2.3 bil-lion penalty for illegal drug marketing, the company spent $68 billion to acquire Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
Apparently, penalties stemming from these illegal marketing practices are just one of the costs of doing business.
Big payoff on direct-to-consumer ads
The advertising and marketing of prescription drugs on television and radio, made legal by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997, has been a source of tremendous profits for many of the major pharmaceuticals. The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two industrialized coun-tries that permit direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs.
Recent attempts to get Congress to restrict drug ads, or to give special warnings on new medications during their first two years on the market, got watered down to a provision that gave the FDA the right to review ads be-fore they are aired. The oversight agency can make
rec-ommendations for ad changes, but has no authority to require ad agencies to redo commercials.
Congress took this position despite a Congressional Budget Office study released May 26, 2011, that found the average number of prescriptions for new drugs with DTC advertising was nine times greater than prescriptions for new drugs without DTC ads.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2006, phar-maceuticals were the tenth biggest advertiser. Television broadcasters and magazine publishers, as well as “Mad” Avenue, have come to rely on this ad income.
A study by two York University researchers estimated that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on advertisement as they do on research and development. Using data collected directly from the industry and from doctors in 2004, the study concluded that 24.4 cents of each sales dollar went to promotion, compared with 13.4 cents for research and development, based on U.S. domestic sales of $235.4 billion. (PLoS Medicine, January 2008)
In 2007 alone, drug companies spent more than $5.375 billion on DTC drug advertising. Comparative sales for the 25 biggest spenders that year found returns averaging $13.29 per ad dollar. Pfizer, which invested $98.36 mil-lion in ads for its popular anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor, had sales of $5.88 billion or $59.78 per ad dollar spent on the drug.
The “ask-your-doctor” DTC ads are ubiquitous. Turn on your TV at any time and you can’t miss them. The DTC ads push prescription drug use as the primary response to medical conditions that can often be remedied with diet, exercise, stress reduction and other preventative mea-sures that are far cheaper and benefit overall health.
The ads project images of people having fun, engaged in activities, etc., once they take the given drug to cure their ailment. The ads downplay information about po-tential side effects of the drugs. Required warnings, in-cluding dangers of complications such as heart attack, skin rashes, internal bleeding, osteoporosis, depression and even death, are recited quickly and quietly. The focus is on the effectiveness of the advertisement, not on the effectiveness of the drug.
People who see these ads often do ask their doctors to prescribe the drugs, just as the ads suggest. Doctors may not like having their patients ask for these drugs, but they often concede and write the prescription. There is an in-centive. According to the Archives of Internal Medicine, 84 percent of U.S. doctors have a financial relationship with a drug or medical-device company. According to ScienceDaily, in 2004, the pharmaceutical industry spent $61,000 per physician to promote their drugs. (Janu-ary 2008)
Doctors are encouraged through financial incentives from the pharmaceutical companies to oversell the ben-efits of a drug while downplaying well-established disad-vantages. Daniel Carlat, director of the Pew Prescription Project, described receiving $750 per session from a drug company to educate other doctors about the alleged bene-fits of an antidepressant. (Philadelphia Inquirer, June 26) Without direct criminal charges being brought against drug company executives, there is little incentive to curb these practices in an industry clearly based on market profits, not patient needs.
THE CLASSROOM
& THE CELL:
Conversations on
Black Life in America
Mumia Abu-Jamal & Marc Lamont Hill This book delves into the problems of Black life in America and offers real, concrete solutions. Order at: www. freemumia.com/?p=684
MARXISM, REPARATIONS
& the Black Freedom Struggle
An anthology of writings from Workers World newspaper. Edited by Monica Moorehead. Includes:
COVER GRAPHIC: SAHU BARRON
Racism, National Oppression & Self-Determination Larry Holmes Black Labor from Chattel Slavery to Wage Slavery Sam Marcy
Black Youth: Repression & Resistance
LeiLani Dowell
The Struggle for Socialism Is Key Monica Moorehead
Domestic Workers United Demand Passage of a Bill of Rights Imani Henry
Available at Amazon.com & bookstores around the country www.workers.org/reparations
Black & Brown Unity: A Pillar of Struggle for Human Rights and Global Justice! Saladin Muhammad Alabama’s Black Belt: Legacy of Slavery, Sharecropping & Segregation Consuela Lee Harriet Tubman, Woman Warrior Mumia Abu-Jamal Are Conditions Ripe Again Today? Anniversary of the 1965 Watts Rebellion John Parker Racism & Poverty in the Delta Larry Hales Haiti Needs Reparations, Not Sanctions Pat Chin
FBI report:
Another slap
against Trayvon Martin
By Monica Moorehead
The struggle for justice for Trayvon Martin, the mur-dered African-American youth, recently made headlines again. The 17-year-old Martin was unarmed when he was stalked and fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a self-proclaimed neighborhood watch person, in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26.
Zimmerman used the “Stand Your Ground” law to jus-tify the killing by saying that Martin attacked him first, and therefore he had the right to self-defense. The San-ford police accepted Zimmerman’s version of the events when he was brought in for questioning and decided not to arrest him.
This injustice sparked major outrage, initiated by social media throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world. Led by Black youth — like in Miami where Martin attended high school — national protests, large and small, grew on a daily basis and forced the Semi-nole County District Attorney’s office to arrest and jail Zimmerman on second-degree murder charges on April 20. Less than a week later, Zimmerman was released on $15,000 bond.
In early July, the same judge who set the original $150,000 bail revoked the bond, claiming that Zimmer-man and his spouse had lied about their income, failing to reveal large donations made by right-wingers through Zimmerman’s website. Bail was then set at $1 million. Zimmerman was freed on $100,000 bond on July 6 after spending one night in jail. No trial date has yet been set.
On July 13, the Federal Bureau of Investigation re-leased photos of the hoodie worn by Martin the night he was shot, which depicted the gunshot wound. In its report, the FBI claims Zimmerman was not motivated by racism to kill Martin, but by fear of the hoodie he was wearing. The report was based on interviews with those who knew Zimmerman.
‘Your hoodie made me do it!’
Investigator Chris Serinone told the FBI that he “be-lieved that Zimmerman’s actions were not based on
Martin’s skin color, rather based on his attire, the total circumstances of the encounter and the previous bur-glary suspects in the community.” (cnn.com, July 13)
The FBI is part of a larger federal investigation that the U.S. Department of Justice is carrying out at the request of Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin. His parents and their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, adamantly maintain that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin.
While hoodies are a popular form of dress for youth of various nationalities and social strata, there is a nega-tive stigma connected to Black and Latino/a people who wear them. In the minds of many in U.S. society, which is riddled with white supremacist attitudes, hoodies worn by youth of color are synonymous with gang member-ship.
In essence, the FBI report is an attempt to evoke pub-lic sympathy for Zimmerman, by saying he was justified in shooting Martin because he felt threatened by the youth’s clothing. The report helps to lay the basis for Zimmerman’s acquittal even before the trial begins.
The tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin is not an iso-lated incident. It is part and parcel of the broader issue of racial profiling of youth of color, who are branded as being a threat to society. In reality, these youth are hor-ribly disenfranchised, especially if they lack jobs and education.
This raises the question of who is the victim and who is the aggressor. Nine times out of 10, youth of color are seen as the aggressors, and therefore, it is more or less accepted to “get them before they get you” — whether by police brutality, incarceration or vigilantism as in Zim-merman’s case.
The courts, the police and the laws under capitalism cannot be relied upon to bring justice for youth like Tray-von Martin, which would mean a guilty conviction for Zimmerman. The progressive movement must not only continue to support the Black community’s demand for justice for Martin, but take it a step further by joining in building and sustaining a movement to demand jobs, not jails and police terror for all working-class youth.
Political prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal on
’ Trayvon & the
war against Us’
Taken from a June 17 audio column at prisonradio.org.
For a brief moment in time, the name and fate of Trayvon Martin broke through the daily media fog and touched the lives of tens of thousands of people, moti-vating them, mobilizing them and moving them to take direct action against the gross inaction of the state.
Youth across Florida walked out of high schools and took to the streets. People in dozens of cities marched, seemingly spontaneously, against the non-action of the state.
Why?
Because for many of these teenagers, they sensed the unsaid truth: It could’ve been them.
It could’ve been them.
Those kids pushed the state to act, if only to pre-vent the movement from growing more and more and spreading like kudzu in the Southern sun.
And these protests against anti-Black violence take place amidst the greatest institutional violence against Blacks since the height of the civil rights movement. By that, I mean the silent assault of mass incarceration, or what law professor, Michelle Alexander, terms “the New Jim Crow” (Last year, she authored a book by that title).
And it matters not that Trayvon’s killer wasn’t a cop (as is usually the case). He was an informal auxiliary to a system that polices Black life and holds their every act under suspicion.
The South, for centuries, was an armed white army, where every white male was empowered by law and custom to control Black life, by any means necessary.
Trayvon was judged guilty of walking while Black, as are many, many Black and Latino/a youth every day.
No matter what the result of the Trayvon Martin case (I happen to think acquittal is down the line), the New Jim Crow pecks at Black, Brown and poor lives daily, destroying any future they may’ve once dreamed of having.
But what we learn from Trayvon’s case is that protest works, for without these protests, there would’ve been no case.
That lesson must translate to the vast social injustice of the prison industrial complex.
When more Black men are in chains today than at the dawn of the Civil War, when slavery was legal; or when the South African system of apartheid was in full swing, protests, mass protests, are a necessity.
Boots Riley backs sit-in
Supporters of the Lakeview Elementary School sit-in gathered for a “Celebration and Convergence for Public Education” on July 15. Police had evicted sit-in participants on July 3. The event was held across the street from the school at Splash Pad Park, where the Peo-ples’ School has contin-ued to conduct classes. Speakers discussed how to fight the attacks on public education.
Po-litical activist/performers, including Boots Riley and Jabari Shaw, headlined the event.
The Oakland Unified School District plans to move administrative offices into the school during the week
WW PHOTO: MONICA MOOREHEAD
March 21, Union Square, New York City.
of July 16. Lakeview sit-in activists have requested that the Alameda Labor Council sanction a picket line at the school to prevent the move.
As New York sizzles
Locked-out Con Ed
workers fight back
By Deirdre Griswold New York
The heat is on in this city of 8 million swel-tering people. As temperatures soar into the 90s and above, utility workers are continuing to walk the picket lines on baking sidewalks, demanding that the giant Consolidated Edison company abandon its lockout of 8,500 members of Utility Workers Local 1-2 and negotiate with their union.
They are being joined by other union mem-bers who feel the heat of the war on labor. Teachers, hotel and service workers, plus jobless youth from Occupy Wall Street, are all helping to swell the daily demonstrations in front of Con Ed’s main offices.
This is a classic case of attempted union bust-ing by a multibillion-dollar company that has a monopoly on delivering electricity and gas to millions of people in New York City and adja-cent Westchester County.
Con Ed, which paid its top executives $17 mil-lion last year, had unilaterally announced it was steeply cutting its contributions to the workers’ health plan, as well as retirement benefits for new hires. This more than wiped out any pay increases offered, which amounted to just pen-nies anyway. UWUA Local 1-2 said this was un-acceptable.
The company abruptly ended negotiations the minute the old contract expired at midnight on June 30. It then locked its doors to keep out
the 8,500 Local 1-2 members. It has kept going since then with 5,000 “replacement workers” — scabs — mainly from management. Already, as the fourth heat wave of the summer hits the city, raising peak demand for electricity, the compa-ny’s refusal to deploy its experienced and skilled work force is causing rolling brownouts in some of the boroughs.
As a public utility, Con Ed is supposed to be regulated by the government and is required to deliver energy to the public. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (yes, the Bloomberg business media mogul) have allowed the company to lock out its union workers, thus risking power outages during a dangerous heat wave. These capitalist politicians claim they have no power to intervene, although Bloom-berg was quick to flex his muscles last winter and order police to break up the OWS encamp-ment after it organized marches on Wall Street.
As capitalism continues its slide toward great-er crisis and unemployment, all caused by an ir-rational system whose built-in greed for profits is leading the bosses to grind down workers’ wages at a time of soaring productivity, the need for classwide worker solidarity is greater than ever. As reported in the last issue of WW, Egyp-tian workers feel this, too, and have sent mes-sages of support to the Con Ed workers.
The spirit of Tahrir Square needs to be felt across the U.S. labor movement. That would turn the heat on the Con Ed bosses, where it belongs.
Unemployed march
demands full benefits
NYC unions show solidarity on the picket line.
ON THE PICKET LINE
by Sue Davis
Locked-out sugar beet workers
vote‘no contract’
Even after a 10-month lockout, 63 percent of the sugar beet workers represented by Bakery and Confectionery union (BCTWGM) Local 167G voted no on June 23 to a “final offer” contract that would double their out-of-pocket health care costs and end seniority rights. The workers rejected the same offer from the country’s largest beet sugar producer, American Crystal Sugar, by 96 percent on July 31, 2011, and by 90 percent on Nov. 1, 2011. Even though the lockout has imposed huge sac-rifices on the 1,300 workers and their families at three plants in Minne-sota and two mills in North Dakota, Local 167G head John Riskey says the workers are determined “to get a fair contract.” With Crystal Sugar hiring temporary replacement workers (scabs), its production costs shot up to $137 million during the first half of 2012. (Star Tribune, June 24) WW salutes the sisters and brothers in Local 167G for their heroic stance against Crystal Sugar’s union-busting attack. May you hold out “one day longer” to preserve your union jobs.
Black workers demand jobs
at African-American museum
The DC Jobs or Else coalition of Black workers, community groups, faith leaders and “mad-as-hell” District of Columbia residents marched on the site of the future Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on July 11 to protest discrimination against Black workers by contractor Clark Construction. “We don’t understand how they are going to build a building about us and not allow us to work on that building,” said coalition leader the Rev. George C. Gilbert Jr. He noted that more than 120 Black District of Columbia residents have been turned away, ignored or misled when they ap-plied for jobs. The D.C. Office of Human Rights is investigating a hiring complaint against Clark. (Union City, online newsletter of the Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO, July 13)
Protesting T-Mobile 3,300-job cuts
T-Mobile, the U.S. affiliate of Deutsche Telekom in Germany, recently closed seven call centers. It laid off 3,300 workers represented by the Communication Workers union and moved the jobs overseas. That’s why the AFL-CIO and Jobs with Justice activists called actions outside T-Mobile stores the week of July 9. Noting that T-Mobile received more than $14 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies in four of the seven com-munities, CWA is fighting for the workers to receive Trade Adjustment Assistance, which T-Mobile opposes. The federal program provides extended unemployment and job training when jobs are offshored. Meanwhile, leaders of ver.di, the German union representing more than 2 million DT workers, are touring the U.S. to support T-Mobile USA workers as they fight for their rights. (cwa-union.org, July 12)
By Terri Kay Oakland, Calif.
Unemployed workers gathered July 11 in Oak-land to protest cuts in unemployment benefits, demanding their reinstatement and demand-ing “Jobs or income now!” and “Bail out the people, not Goldman Sachs!” They were part of two newly formed organizations: the Union of Unemployed Workers and the Oakland Assem-bly of the Unemployed. The workers marched from Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland to the unemployment office, federal building, state building, President Barack Obama’s local cam-paign headquarters, and finally to a park on 19th and Telegraph, where free food was provided to the unemployed.
The march was instigated by the cut of ex-tended unemployment benefits to over 94,000 Californians at the end of May. California has the third highest unemployment rate in the country, averaging 10.8 percent in the last 3 months. However, because of a formulation which determines the number of weeks’ benefits supplemented by the federal government based on changes in unemployment from the previous year, California and seven other states had fed-eral extensions cut. In other words, because
un-employment was officially just as high last year, and not increasing, the federal extensions were reduced!
Gary Hall, an African-American unemployed worker from Concord, and one of the UUW organizers, proclaimed, “If you can’t provide, step aside!” Karen Hancock, unemployed and an OAU organizer, told the rally: “We are de-manding an end to the cuts to unemployment immediately. We demand that our government support the people during this economic crisis as generously as they have the banks, the corpo-rations and themselves!”
At the federal building, Dave Welsh, a retired letter carrier, said: “In the 1930s, there were un-employed councils. … When people got kicked out of their apartments, the unemployed councils would move their possessions back in.” Lauren Smith, another OAU organizer, said at Obama’s campaign headquarters: “We have never been able to count on a president to have our interests at heart. We need to stop waiting for some super-man president or political party to rescue us and start taking care of each other now.”
The two groups organizing the march have a working relationship despite having somewhat different approaches in their plans going for-ward. The UUW is signing people up to join a
union to press demands on the government and corporations to create jobs and provide a living in-come to the millions of unemployed.
From the Assembly Points of Unity program: “In our future we aim to create mass mobilizations of the unemployed; taking over utilities to provide free services; garden cooperatives; free housing, food, clothing, transportation, childcare and education; newspapers by and for the people; free community health care; and neighborhood assemblies.” WW PHOTO: G. DUNKEL
WW PHOTO: AL WYNN Unemployed workers mobilize in SF Bay Area.
Forum on struggle led by people with disabilities
By Edward Yudelovich New York
In his 1875 “Critique of the Gotha Pro-gram,” Karl Marx wrote: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the en-slaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physi-cal labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its ban-ners: ‘From each according to their abili-ties, to each according to their needs.’ ”
A Workers World Party forum will raise this slogan again on Saturday, July 28, at 3 p.m. at the Solidarity Center, 55 W. 17 St., 5th floor, New York City, to commem-orate the 22nd anniversary of the Ameri-cans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA. Like the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, which was achieved only after centuries of strug-gle against slavery, racism, Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, the ADA came about only after fierce battles by people with disabilities to gain some legal protections against discrimination in areas including employment, public accommodations and transportation. “Reasonable accommoda-tion” has now become a tool to force the authorities to make facilities accessible.
The ADA defines a covered disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.” The panel will include talks by a coura-geous veteran leader of the disabled civil rights movement; an Autistic Self-Advo-cacy Network leader will speak on
Marx-ism and disability oppression; and a lead-er of a city worklead-ers union’s committee for people with disabilities and member of the learning, intellectual, psychiatric, mental and emotionally disabled commu-nity will address the problem of overcom-ing discrimination, includovercom-ing in the pris-ons and military. Also on the agenda will be Parents to Improve School Transpor-tation founders and advocates for better school bus routes for children with and without disabilities; and an eyewitness reporter on progress and challenges for the disabled in socialist Cuba.
A Workers World Party subcommit-tee of predominantly members who have identified as people with disabilities is or-ganizing this forum and striving to broad-en both consciousness and the struggle around the disabled question. All people with disabilities should have the uncondi-tional right, authority and opportunity to be a spokesperson for their own individual condition and disability. As some disabili-ties are not visible, a person has the right
to both identify their disability and to con-ceal it.
In October 1981, this reporter first identified as a person with a disability and participated with Workers World Party member and Disabled in Action secretary, Betsy Gimbel, in the disabled workshop at the All-Peoples Congress in Detroit. Gimbel, who died in 2004, led the fight for access to mass transit for the disabled, including wheelchair lifts for New York City buses. This struggle included the disabled blocking buses with their wheelchairs demanding that these public vehicles be made accessible
— a demand which was won.
Using capitalism’s economic crisis as an excuse, the government is now slash-ing or threatenslash-ing to eliminate Access-A-Ride for those who cannot use mass transit, Social Security disability, compre-hensive bus and postal service, and equal minimum wage rights for the disabled.
As Gimbel used to say, the important thing about people with disabilities is “our abilities.”
These abilities include the determina-tion to not tolerate these attacks on the disabled and to build a movement to defend the rights of all workers and op-pressed people and a socialist society whose compass will be Marx’s universal slogan for all humankind: “From each ac-cording to their abilities, to each accord-ing to their needs.”
Anyone needing special accommoda-tions and arrangements for the July 28 meeting, including childcare, should call 212-627-2994 Monday through Friday between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Behind the shootings in Portland, Texas
Justice for Mollie Olgin & Mary Chapa
Vets stop pay cuts for
lowest-paid VA workers
A June 13 protest by hundreds of Veterans Administration workers, many of whom are vets themselves, against proposed downgrading of wages for Veterans Health Administration’s lowest-paid employees (mostly women, people of color and vets) was victorious. The VA announced in early July that it was not instituting the pay cuts. The American Federation of Government Employees opposed the “unfounded and arbitrary downgrades,” which it called “a complete disservice to our public servants and our nation’s veterans. The bullying of the lowest wage earners under a pretense of saving a few dollars must end.” (aflcio. org, July 9)
Verizon praises workers,
but won’t budge
on contract
After Verizon workers put in 12-plus-hour days in 100-plus-degree heat to re-store service destroyed by violent thun-derstorms in the District of Columbia area July 1, the superprofitable company lavished praise on the members of the Communication Workers and Electrical Workers (IBEW) unions. But that ap-preciation did not extend to the bargain-ing table. Verizon continues to demand cuts in compensation of at least $10,000 per worker per year and refuses to offer raises. That’s yet another example of Veri-Greedy! (cwa-union.org, July 12)
On the picket line
By Kris Hamel
The winds of racism, sexism, bigotry, oppression and right-wing animus blow strong across the United States. Decades of struggles for justice, equality and libera-tion have occurred, some gains have been won, and consciousness on many social is-sues has changed for the better among the broad masses of working-class people.
Yet Black youth and other youth of color, such as Trayvon Martin, are still gunned down by racists and racist cops; immigrants are increasingly persecuted by vigilantes and police authorities at all levels; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people remain targets of bias and hate; women are still victims of vio-lence and murder at high rates.
“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class,” wrote Karl Marx and Freder-ick Engels in the “Communist Manifesto” some 164 years ago. In the U.S. in 2012, those words still ring true.
The ruling class — or 1%, as the Oc-cupy Wall Street movement aptly calls it — uses the “ideas” of racism and white su-premacy, bigotry against LGBTQ people, male supremacy, sexism and misogyny, anti-immigrant bias and other hatreds in nonstop, countless ways in order to sow division and disunity among the 99%. They hope this keeps us at each other’s throats instead of uniting against the 1% to demand jobs, housing, education, health care, equality and respect for all.
So it was sad and shocking, but not totally shocking, to learn of the horrific, murderous attack that occurred in Port-land, Texas, a suburb of Corpus Christi, on June 22. Mollie Judith Olgin, 19, and Mary Kristene Chapa, 18, were discov-ered early in the morning of June 23 on the ground in knee-high grass at a busy neighborhood park. Each had been shot in the head, execution-style, about nine hours earlier.
Olgin and Chapa were lesbians, teen-age lovers and Latinas. Olgin was dead at the scene and Chapa was rushed to a hos-pital. Although she was in critical condi-tion with serious injuries, Chapa is recov-ering. According to Chapa, their assailant was a white male in his twenties.
LGBTQ activist Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out, immediately traveled
there. He wrote: “While in town I visited the Portland Police Department, where I was handed a generic state-ment that read, ‘There con-tinues to be no evidence that
the attack was moti-vated by the victims’ sexual orientation.’ “Of course, we all know
this is absurd. Any time a gay couple [is] murdered without explanation, their sexual orientation has to be considered a top-tier motive. Even as the daily lives of LGBT people improve, the world is still filled with human ticking time bombs primed by preachers and politicians to hate.” (advocate.com, July 5)
Vigils fueled by grief & outrage
Calls for justice on social media, fueled by grief and outrage, resulted in at least 20 vigils coast to coast in Olgin’s honor and for Chapa’s recovery, including in Port-land, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, Texas; San Francisco; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. “Remember Mollie! Remember Mary! We want justice!” was one of the chants that erupted in New York’s Union Square on July 1. (edgedallas.com, July 6)
As of July 15, Olgin’s killer walks free, and the police still refuse to investigate her murder as a hate crime, according
to ABC News. Chapa, who is recovering from brain injuries, has provided police sketch artists with details of the white male, who, with a large-caliber firearm, forced her and Olgin to walk to a grassy area to be shot and left for dead.
LGBTQ youth face homelessness, bully-ing, harassment, violence and death at the hands of haters and bigots at astronomical rates. Some are driven to suicide. And when someone dares to fight back — like CeCe McDonald, a young African-American trans-gender woman in Minneapolis — more often than not it is THEY who suffer the consequences, not their tormentors. McDonald was recently unjustly sentenced to more than three years in prison
for defending herself against a violent, racist, anti-trans attack. The ruling class’s ideas of hate and divi-sion keep the rich laughing all the way to the bank. They can get away with lowered wages for everybody and put blame for society’s ills on everyone but themselves. Is it any wonder that misguided, hateful individuals feel emboldened to carry out heinous acts?
The 1%’s system of capitalism and ex-ploitation might come to an end if these ideas were challenged in a mass way, and the 99% united for a mighty struggle to overturn this rotten system, which is run for profit and not for people.
In the meantime, every act of solidarity and compassion by the 99% strengthens our movement and helps lead inexorably to the day when the ideas of the ruling class will be the ideas of the multination-al, multigendered, multisexuality major-ity of working-class humanmajor-ity.
Justice for Mollie Olgin and Mary Cha-pa! Free CeCe McDonald! An injury to one is an injury to all.
PHOTO: TOM OLIN, ADAPT
Rainbow Solidarity In Defense of CUBA
This groundbreaking book documents revolutionary Cuba’s inspiring trajectory of progress towards liberation of sexualities, genders and sexes.
Book available at Amazon.com and bookstores around the country The Lavender & Red series of articles by Leslie Feinberg, author of Stone Butch Blues, is now available online. workers.org/lavender-red.
The Lavendar & Red Series includes: Teen lovers Mary Chapa,
left, and Mollie Olgin.
Free CeCe McDonald
WW
The Occupy 4 Jobs Network opened the Charlotte Solidarity Center office the week of July 8 at Area 15, a community arts space. The Solidarity Center, at 514 East 15th St., is now being used as a local organizing hub for the March on Wall Street South Coalition, which is organiz-ing various events around the Demo-cratic National Convention, to be held in Charlotte Sept. 1-6. Some of these events include a Festivaliberacion on Sept. 1, a march and rally on Sept. 2 and a Southern Workers Assembly on Sept. 3. The Char-lotte Local Organizing Committee of the
March on Wall Street South meets every Monday night at 7 p.m., and its office hours are Monday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. The public opening of the Charlotte Solidarity Center kicked off with a packed open house on July 13, where progressive activists and individuals from Charlotte and many cities in North Carolina and other areas met, along with people from Wisconsin. For more information, call 704-266-0362, Twitter@ WallStSouth, email: [email protected], view website www.wallstsouth.org.
— Report & photo by Bryan G. Pfeifer
Wells Fargo settles suit
Home foreclosure crisis rages on
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Another consent order has been issued by the Department of Justice, this time with Wells Fargo & Company, the largest loan originator in the United States. Of-ficials from both the Attorney General’s office and the bank signed the decree. It admits no wrongdoing on the part of this financial institution despite the devasta-tion from its predatory lending practices.
The announced “settlement” of $175 million is misleading. At least $50 million is slated to go toward loan assistance pro-grams that target people in African-Amer-ican and Latino/a communities, who the DOJ says were victims of excessive fees. The remaining $125 million appears to be set aside for people who can prove they were charged additional bank fees be-cause they belonged to oppressed groups.
Nowhere in the consent order does it call for a halt or moratorium on foreclos-ing homes where Wells Fargo has been involved in discriminatory loan prac-tices. In other words, the home seizures will continue, even though some of the current homeowners may be eligible for monetary “damages.”
The fact that Wells Fargo maintained that it does not engage in discrimina-tion speaks volumes about the character of those running the bank. In the signed legal documents, bank officials agreed to the consent order “solely for the purpose of avoiding contested litigation” with the DOJ.
According to Reuters, “A government investigation found 34,000 instances of Wells Fargo charging African Americans and Hispanics higher fees and rates on mortgages compared with white borrow-ers with similar credit profiles. In 4,000 of those cases, minority borrowers were steered into subprime mortgages even though they qualified for cheaper loans.” (July 12)
The consent order only covers mortgag-es written between 2004-2009. People Wells Fargo victimized before and after
these dates are ineligible for assistance. This settlement comes in the aftermath of a similar legal decision involving Bank of America, Chase and other institutions, allegedly valued at $335 million. That agreement, signed last winter, also fails to stop foreclosures.
This settlement needs a judge’s approv-al. In all likelihood the corporate media will trumpet this consent order as a vic-tory for African Americans and Latina/os. Under the consent order, other claims made against Wells Fargo will be consid-ered settled. This includes a 2009 suit ini-tiated by the state of Illinois on behalf of borrowers and an investigative complaint filed by the Pennsylvania Human Rela-tions Commission.
Also settled was a lawsuit the city of Bal-timore filed in 2008 charging Wells Fargo with engaging in the intentional target-ing of oppressed communities when issu-ing predatory loans. The bank ostensibly reached an agreement over predatory lend-ing in Memphis durlend-ing May involvlend-ing the same practice of targeting oppressed com-munities in what is called “reverse redlin-ing.”
“Redlining” refers to the denial of loans to people of color or charging punitive fees. The practice is widespread within the banking and insurance sectors of the U.S. economy.
In all likelihood the corporate media will trumpet this consent order as a vic-tory for African Americans and Latina/os. But that is hardly the case. Only complete restitution of property or payment for to-tal financial loss will do.
Moratorium on foreclosures needed
Neither the consent orders between the federal government and Wells Fargo nor the earlier agreement signed by Bank of America, Chase and other institutions will stop the epidemic of foreclosures and evictions. What is needed is a fed-eral moratorium on foreclosures to stop all home seizures by the banks and the government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agencies.
With the existence of widespread fraud and racial discrimination in the mortgage industry, the only sure method of pro-viding relief to home owners would be a moratorium. Halting seizures and evic-tions would provide the federal govern-ment time to sort out the massive fraud and to hold those institutions financially and legally responsible.
Offering a few thousand dollars to fami-lies and individuals who have been denied fair treatment and due process is insult-ing. Those who have been put into foreclo-sure or who have already lost their homes will not receive justice from this consent order.
In addition, the loss of homes, dispos-able income, tax revenues, property val-ues and the overall devastation of urban communities can in no way be addressed with a mere $175 million spread across
numerous municipalities throughout the country. Working people’s homes are often the only real wealth they possess. Therefore, the seizure of their real estate is tantamount to complete economic dis-enfranchisement.
Using an executive order, President Obama could easily place a moratorium on all foreclosures throughout the U.S. Besides, most loans since the 2007-2008 economic crisis have been underwritten and assumed by the federal government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Consequently, it is the tax dollars paid by the working class and all oppressed people in the U.S. that is subsidizing fore-closures and evictions by the banks. Thus the federal government has the respon-sibility to provide relief by immediately stopping this financial theft impacting millions throughout the country.
The Obama administration’s ‘Greater East’
By Manlio Dinucci
For 236 years, the U.S. has defended democracy everywhere: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted this in Cairo. Thus she must have erased from history the more than 160 military inter-ventions abroad that U.S. imperialism made starting from the 1940s; the wars of the Cold War period in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Lebanon; the coups the CIA orchestrated in Guatemala, Indo-nesia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina; and the wars of the post-Cold War period in Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
Clinton guarantees that the Obama ad-ministration is making the same commit-ment to carry out these actions. In fact, from the strategy launched by Republican George W. Bush of the Greater Middle East (including North Africa and Central Asia), Democrat (and Nobel Peace Prize laureate) Barack Obama has moved to the strategy of the Greater East, which aims
at the entire Asia-Pacific region in an open challenge to China and Russia.
The first step was the war against Libya, which (as Bill Clinton and Bush did with Yugoslavia) has been demolished as a uni-fied state to put into power rulers loyal to Washington. This led to the “free elec-tions” in the “free Libya,” won by the “lib-eral” Mahmoud Jibril whose success is at-tributed to the popular will.
To claim this ignores the fact that the U.S. and other Western powers spent mil-lions of dollars in Libya to secure the sup-port of organizations and tribal groups. It ignores that Jibril has Washington’s confi-dence since he is an economist trained in the U.S., responsible for promoting eco-nomic neoliberalism in the Arab world. In 2007 Jibril was made head of the govern-ment office in Libya for economic devel-opment, linked to U.S. and British multi-nationals. In this capacity, Jibril warned Washington that the plan to privatize the Libyan economy and form a new
pro-MARCH ON WALL STREET SOUTH
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
Another electoral fraud has taken place in Mexico. On July 1, Andres Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO and the candidate of the left, was robbed of the presidency — for the second time. This time, however, the conditions were very different from the election of 2006, when the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary declared Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party (PAN) the winner over AMLO.
Several months ago, in the midst of AMLO’s electoral campaign, there was great enthusiasm among the supporters of his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the progressive movement in general. But his victory was not certain.
Then, something changed in the politi-cal scene in Mexico.
A youth movement arose that rejected his main opponent, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled the country for most of the 20th century. The PRI’s con-trol of the federal government was ended in 2000, four years after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, when the former chief executive of Coca-Cola in Mexico, Vicente Fox, brought the PAN to power for the first time.
That was a victory for the U.S. impe-rialist agenda of pushing neoliberalism and privatization. Fox was followed by six more years of a PAN presidency un-der Calun-derón. However, the more than 60,000 people killed during Calderón’s term in a violent drug war ordered by the U.S., plus the privatization of education and other anti-people policies, caused the PRI to come in third in this election.
During the 12 years of PAN presidents, NAFTA’s impact, which had opened up Mexico as a market for U.S.-government subsidized corn, led to the ruination of many peasants who had worked commu-nal lands for generations. They were forced to emigrate by the millions across the bor-der to find work. A growing income gap in Mexico worsened the social conditions.
While no longer controlling the federal government, the PRI has been entrenched
in many states. However, it ruled with an iron fist in the past and still has blood on its hands.
One of its most recent crimes was committed by Peña Nieto when he was governor of the state of Mexico. On May 3 and 4, 2006, more than 3,000 repres-sive agents of the police and State Secu-rity forces were called in to fight against the people of Atenco, who had gathered to defend the right of small vendors to sell flowers in front of the municipal market.
The people were met by brutal state force, resulting in the deaths of two young men, the rape of 26 women, and the viola-tion of the human rights of 209, includ-ing torture of 206 people. (eleconomista. com.mx)
‘Yo soy #132’ springs up
This May 11, when the PRI’s Peña Nieto went to campaign for president at the Ibe-ro American University (UIA), a private college attended by children of the middle class, he thought he would be welcomed. Instead he was met by intense question-ing. The students protested his role dur-ing the Atenco repression, shoutdur-ing “At-enco will not be forgotten.”
Peña Nieto then took responsibility for the repression but defended his action, angering the students further. Finally he took refuge in a bathroom, after which his security team whisked him away through the back door of the building to avoid a peaceful protest the students had orga-nized. (mexico.cnn.com)
The university president then said that the protesters were not students but rather members of AMLO’s movement. But 131 UIA students who had been at the event made a video showing their uni-versity IDs. They posted it on YouTube, where it went viral.
A movement was thus formed, mostly through the social networks YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, where other UIA students declared “Yo soy #132″ (I am number 132).
Since then, the movement spread all over Mexico, including other universi-ties, both private and public, and non-stu-dents. They received support from artists nationally and internationally and from movements throughout the world. They
organized several mobilizations and even a presidential debate with all the candi-dates — where Peña Nieto refused to ap-pear. On the website animalpolitico.com, they published a statement and demands to attain a “freer Mexico, with more jus-tice and prosperity.” They said, “We want the current situation of misery, inequality, poverty and violence to be resolved.”
Massive evidence of electoral fraud
As the exposure of Peña Nieto, par-ticularly by the Yo soy #132 movement, became massive, the PRI initiated a cam-paign through its dominant media — Tele-visa, TV Azteca and others. They praised Nieto, the candidate of the oligarchy, and demonized AMLO. They reported as fact deceptive polling results, making it ap-pear that Peña Nieto was so far ahead that it would be impossible for AMLO to win the election.
Mounting evidence of electoral fraud has appeared all over the social networks, alternative media and progressive news websites like Cubadebate and Telesur. The evidence ranges from oral testimo-nies, photos, videos and statements to government documents accessed by ac-tivists like Anonymous, who hacked the website of the Federal Electoral Institute.
Mexicans were urged to take pictures of voting lists in every location and up-load them to Facebook and other net-works, where they could be compared. Several websites exist for this purpose: OpenPrep.org, Contamos.org.mx and Fo-toXCasilla.mx. According to this effort, the votes counted give a lead to AMLO. (cubadebate.cu)
It has also emerged that the PRI re-sorted to other illegal maneuvers, such as the distribution of cards redeemable at the Soriana chain of grocery and depart-ment stores in return for votes. This be-came a major scandal, which the PRI had not counted on, as masses of voters went to the stores to cash in their cards. Some stores had to close because of the enor-mous demand.
On July 12, AMLO held a press confer-ence presenting all the evidconfer-ence on which he is basing his demand to annul the elec-tion results. In sum, he states that 5 mil-lion votes were bought by the PRI.
Part of the PRI strategy, according to AMLO’s findings, was buying votes in the poorest regions of the country through the intervention of PRI governors, who prom-ised cash, redeemable cards, construction materials, fertilizer and so on in exchange for votes. (lopezobrador.org.mx)
National Convention and Mexico’s future
While the forces around AMLO are ini-tiating suits against the electoral fraud in the legal arena, a great deal of activ-ity continues at all levels. Workers World spoke with José Humberto Montes de Oca, the foreign secretary for the militant Mexican Electricians Union (SME). The SME is part of the National Convention Against the Imposition, an emergency conference organized to devise a plan of action against the imposition of the PRI in the elections.
He said the conference met July 14 and 15 under the slogan “To surrender is for-bidden.” Some 800 delegates attended, representing 250 organizations from 25 Mexican states. The Yo soy #132 and the People’s Front in Defense of the Land wel-comed the participants.
The main points for discussion were a plan of action against the imposition, the setting up of a structure for building the National Convention, and a program for struggle. Several demonstrations were approved, including a national day of marches and actions on July 22.
Asked about his view of these new de-velopments, Montes de Oca replied that there are three main forces in the post-electoral period. One is AMLO’s coalition and electoral parties. The second is civil society organizations, among them the Yo soy #132. Last is the unorganized civil so-ciety, which has convened in a spontane-ous manner.
This, he said, is a very important devel-opment. They do not belong to any party but are political and encourage the rest of the people to struggle peacefully for a program of transformation of the country. He continued, “We are in a time of recon-figuration, of recomposition of the politi-cal scene. If all these forces consolidate and become active forces, it will be very interesting, beyond December” — when the new president takes office.
Vote buying, manipulation of media
Mexico progressives charge fraud
in defeat of AMLO
The Obama administration’s ‘Greater East’
Western ruling class had been blocked by Gadhafi, and that competition from China and Russia was increasing. Jibril’s victory was already on the drawing board.
On March 30, 2011 (ten days after the beginning of the war against Libya), the New York Times wrote, based on informa-tion from the government: “If the Ameri-can and Western intervention overthrows Muammar Gadhafi, Mahmoud Jibril could be the leader of Libya.”
The war on Libya is the model that the U.S. has adopted to disintegrate other states, including Syria and Iran, which hinder its advance eastward. Since many countries are reluctant to host U.S. mili-tary bases, the Pentagon is deploying in international waters, starting from the Persian Gulf and moving gradually east-ward, using special ships that serve as floating bases for special forces.
Other air and naval bases have been in-stalled or upgraded in Thailand, the
Phil-Continued on page 9
PHOTO: ALAN ROTH Thousands of supporters march with leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City to close the campaign.
Letters from behind the walls
Inmates write about conditions
in the world’s largest prison system
Occupy the Socialist Revolution
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Workers World Party (WWP) fights for
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See page 2.
The racist ‘war on drugs’
In a WW editorial you mentioned just a few facts dealing with America’s racist atrocity called the “wars” on drugs and crime. I’ve been researching this for 30 years and there is not one fact to support this “war” in the “freest, most just” America, but thousands that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that history will call it a “crime against humanity,” equaling slavery.
I was 18 when Malcolm was killed and 20 when Martin was. I came to realize it was no accident, no coincidence, that these wars, aimed directly to get blacks (at that time) came right after the civil rights victories. Blacks were given rights finally and then “entrapped” and sent to prison.
America shrieks to the world that it is the freest, most just nation on earth but imprisons at a rate up to 20 times that of nations we condemn as less free and just. Supreme Court Judge Kennedy also noted that “The U.S. has prison sentenc-es eight timsentenc-es longer than Europe’s.”
Gov. Cuomo has about 58,000 in his prisons, needing about 30,000 correc-tions staff. The economic multiplier effects result in up to 120,000 private sector jobs created or saved. Total prisoner-generated employment is up to 150,000. If all have a spouse and two kids, up to 600,000 voters and future voters get to live comfortably from a mere 58,000 kept in cells.
If we tried other nations’ freer, more just and still effective crime and drug laws, up to 90 percent of state prisons would close. Also reduced would be the number of judges, court staff, prosecu-tors, defense attorneys, parole officers, police, etc.
Those in economically depressed regions of northern New York state want more and more prisoners, as Southern-ers once wanted more slaves to prosper from.
Today, religious leaders, academics, journalists, etc., will of course condemn all forms of slavery, but hypocritically their silence is beyond deafening regard-ing the neo-slavery that politicians have now initiated.
HENRY J. HAIN
Upstate Prison (plantation) Malone, N.Y.
Prison conditions get
‘usual rubber stamp’
Below are excerpts from a second letter to WW from Donnelly Le Blanc about atrocious and illegal conditions at SCI-Huntingdon, where he was kept in solitary. He included with it a memo he had received from an official named B. Salamon at Pennsylvania Department of Corrections informing him that a Region-al Inspection Team had toured the prison after Le Blanc wrote an earlier letter to WW on the conditions there. The team “did not find the facility to be in the condi-tion that you describe,” said the memo. It also told Le Blanc to “comply with DOC rules and regulations” so he could return to General Population and “participate in offense and behavior related program-ming.” Here is Le Blanc’s reaction.
This letter comes to you as another installment of our plight at SCI-Hunting-don.
I must begin by thanking you for your paper and the inspiration it constantly gives me and others whom I share it with to continue our struggle in the “bowels” of this dragon. SCI-Hun is not the “belly” — this prison is notorious for its proximi-ty to that of Eastern State in its treatment of prisoners and the over-all appalling conditions.
Your articles concerning Mumia have been a constant inspiration to me these last two years. My fight with the “criminal injustice system” here in Pa. is so much similar to his. …
B. Salamon makes a blanket statement that these “conditions are not found.” He contends that everything I wrote to you is a lie.
So let’s ask the first question. How do you fit over 2,100 men in a facility designed for less than 1,000? Is he say-ing there are not two men in every cell at Huntingdon and that some are even smaller than 8 by 8 [feet], which also holds the water closet, toilet, bed, shelv-ing and desk?
He makes sure he mentions my RHU [restricted housing unit] stay to discredit me as much as possible. Did they some-how lose C.O. Lantz’s conduct records? I doubt it. Did the mold and filth disap-pear? Nope!
The Regional Inspection Team of the ACA [American Correctional Associa-tion] gave this place the usual rubber stamp. How does the ACA approve a 120-year-old prison that violates every rule for prisons in the book? It does not even comply with their own rule of 55 square feet of cell space per prisoner — excluding fixtures.
Did they install windows in our cells, fans, or ventilators for adequate legally required air flow? Have they replaced the cracked and broken stairs and walkways; even the missing non-skid surfacing?
When the ACA was here, the food was great — big portions, too, but only for the noon meal. Yet even though it’s known that food only accounts for 5 percent of money spent, we get less and less. Huntingdon is probably down to 3 percent.
Before the ACA showed up they made sure they put some fresh paint on, had inmates scrub and wax halls. Now? Right back to the filth.
But neither they or the RIT look for cracks in the structure, broken stairs and catwalks on the upper tiers. They don’t go up there. And they certainly didn’t inspect all the hazardous, illegally unsafe
steam radiators that have none of the safety shields required by law and are always busting pipes.
Did “A” yard, the 60 by 1,000 foot alley where all 2,000 inmates must go to have yard, suddenly grow? Even our main yard, “C,” is not legally adequate.
Did they suddenly come up with jobs, or in lieu of that increase the amount of Maintenance Pay and the time we can collect it to a longer period so we are not destitute — without even cosmetics for our personal hygiene and writing materi-als for letters to friends? Maintenance Pay is 72 cents a day — after 6 months they cut you off. But there are NO jobs. If you are Level 3 or above you can’t work in the production plants. Even those jobs only pay 25 cents an hour for $15 an hour work. About 75 percent of inmates here are Level 3 or above and all of 90 percent have no outside source of income.
Did they suddenly get rid of the 75-year-old dentist who no longer has the hand strength left to properly extract teeth and tears your mouth and gums to shreds?
I must be hallucinating when I still see all the roaches and mice, and the black mold.
The ACA in 1959 set guidelines, stat-ing “Segregation for punishment should be for the shortest period … and in any event not over 30 days. … Excessively long periods for punishment defeat their own purpose by embittering and demor-alizing the inmate.”
You even have to sign a “Double Cell” agreement upon arrival. I still have the one I refused to sign. So far I have to do 6 months in the hole for that refusal and am still fighting.
I’m classified as “violent and danger-ous,” so why force another inmate in my cell?
DONNELLY LE BLANC
