WfJlIllEIiS '.II".1i1) 50C!: No. 625 ~X'523 30 June 1995

The fight to save U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu­ Jamal has reached a critical hour. Late in the night of June I, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge signed four death warrants, including one for Jamal, who has been on death row since 1982, framed on charges of killing a Philadelphia cop. Ridge vindictively signed the order setting Mumia's execution for August 17 knowing full well that his defense attorneys planned to file papers on June 5 demanding a new trial, a stay of execution and the removal from the case of notorious "hanging judge" Albert Sabo, who presided over Mumia's frame­ up trial and sentencing in 1982. The state has now taken a giant step in its longstanding campaign to silence Jamal, an eloquent journalist who years ago earned the title "voice of the voiceless" for his com­ mentaries on the oppression faced by minorities and the poor in racist America. Mumia was immediately moved from his cell in the Greene "supermax" isolation facility into more restric­ tive custody, which he called "a prison within a prison within a prison." In a telephone message, Mumia told oto his supporters that Ridge's action "WlJS clearly political. New York City, June 5: A thousand demonstrators rally in midtown Manhattan demanding, "Save Mumia He is at the call of those who are calling for my blood." Abu-Jamal!" As we go to press, it was announced that the hear­ Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, coast-to-coast and internationally, together with the ing for a stay of execution and to recuse Judge Sabo the Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and others. powerful legal brief, breached the media wall of silence is being held in Philadephia on July 12. The protests were kicked off with a press conference and slander against Jamal. For the first time in memory, The signing of the death warrant was met with a and rally of 600 people in Philadelphia, as Jamal's both Philadelphia daily newspapers wrote accurate arti­ wave of protests in over 40 cities in the U.S. and reach­ legal team, led by noted civil liberties attorney Leonard cles on Mumia's defense case, covering many of the ing around the world. In the last two weeks, Mumia's Weinglass, filed court papers unequivocally establish­ key points of the legal statement. As well, the black cause has been taken up at a workers demonstration in ing his innocence. Weinglass told the crowd, "Mumia press nationwide has been flooded with front-page arti­ Johannesburg, South Africa of some 15,000 trade Abu-Jamal never had a trial." Evidence was suppressed, cles protesting Jamal's threatened execution. The Wall unionists and another in Rome, Italy drawing 60,000 witnesses were coerced, black jurors were purged. The Street Journal (16 June), however, ran a front-page to 70,000 workers and youth. Governor Ridge has new legal papers document 19 constitutional violations article which sneers at "radical-left groups," including already received over 20,000 faxes, letters and cards in Jamal's "trial" and present new evidence based on the Spartacist League (described as "a group of 20 opposing Jamal's execution. One. measure of the eyewitnesses as well as a re-examination of medical people"), who "have a new hero, Mumia Abu-Jamal." grounds well of support for Jamal is that Ridge's office and ballistics reports which tear apart the prosecution's This is a clear attempt to denigrate and diminish the has shut down his toll-free "800" number and has been bogus case. Mumia should not have spent a day in jail, growing movement to save Mumia's life. changing his fax number virtually daily in a vain and we must fight today to free him from the clutches Even as protests for Mumia mounted, on June 6 attempt to thwart the flood of messages demanding of this criminal injustice system. South Africa's Constitutional Court abolished the death that Mumia must not die. Weinglass and PDC staff counsel Rachel Wolken­ penalty in that country, where executions of black and A leader of the Black Panthers in his teens and later stein gave a full explanation of the case for Jamal's leftist militants were a key prop of the brutal, racist a supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE group, Jamal innocence and evidence that he was the victim of a apartheid system. This action throws into stark relief was sentenced to die for his political beliefs. Jamal has racist, politically motivated frame-up. The Philadelphia the bloody machinery of legal lynching in the U.S., continued to speak out even in prison, event was the largest demonstration to date for Jamal which is rooted in the subjugation of black people under writing regular columns which have in his hometown. This and other protests for Mumia ; continued on pa{?e 8 ~~ been published in Workers Vanguard and in the black press nationwi intensely compassionate writings on ~ prison life, the death penalty and rac­ ~ ist oppression have now been brought co to a broader audience through his new -..T book, Live from Death Row, published l"­ N in May by Addison-Wesley. - 11) N The emergency demonstrations on June 5 were built by the Partisan The Frame-Up 01 Mumia Abu-Jamal r-- Defense Committee, Refuse & Resist, Mobilize Labor Against RaeistCop'· Terror! S.F. Police Beat Black Man to Death SAN FRANCISCO-On the night of opposite direction. Kimberly Williams, cop who--in that infamous shoot-to-kill while his chief opponent, Democratic June 4, Aaron Williams, a 35-year-old his sister, said the cops stood on the street force-was suspended for 30 days and mayor and' former police chief Frank black man, died after 12 SF cops and shouted, "Aaron Williams, we know written up by a superior as a violent Jordan, has launched no less than three viciously beat him in front of his apart­ you're up there. We know you're on "cowboy." Moreover, pepper spray is whitewash investigations ... by the cops, ment and family. News of this atrocity parole. If you don't come out, we'll come potentially lethal: an ACLU study the Police Commission, and the cop­ was met with outrage in the city. It was in and get you" (San Francisco Exam­ recently documented 27 deaths in Cali­ friendly Office of Citizen Complaints. the second of three killings by cops in iner, 6 June). When Williams emerged, fornia after its use by police. Yet SF cor­ Meanwhile, in the last week riot police San Francisco in a matter of weeks, he was beaten with club$ and sprayed at oner Boyd Stephens dismissed this and have been converging daily on San Fran­ and provoked immediate comparisons least three times with pepper spray­ tried to blame the victim, announcing a cisco's UN Plaza, brandishing billy clubs to the 1991 videotaped beating of including at least once while handcuffed. "preliminary" finding of death due to to disperse hungry people trying to eat black motorist Rodney King by the He was hogtied and a surgical mask cocaine-induced "excited delirium." The food distributed by the activist group LAPD. The 1992 acquittal of those cops placed over his mouth and nose. Wit­ labor-hating San Francisco Examiner Food Not Bombs. While Clinton and led to a multiracial upheaval in Los nesses saw several arriving cops acknow­ prominently displayed a "statement" by other luminaries celebrate the 50th anni­ Angeles that still haunts America's racist ledge Williams and then kick him as he Kimberly Williams accusing her brother versary of tne UN Charter, nearly 100 rulers. lay gagging and spitting blood. of attacking police. But then it came out people have been arrested, including The death of Aaron Williams is a . Police terror is' a fact of life in that the statement was actually written Food Not Bombs supporter Donald James tragic result of the racist "war on drugs America's black ghettos. Aaron Williams by Andaya, and Kimberly said she was Lanier, who was hospitalized. and crime," the green light for brazen lived and died in the Western Addi­ forced to sign it under threat of having The racist police are the armed fist police-state rule in the ghetto. A parolee tion, recently nicknamed "lower Pacific her kids taken away! of the capitalist state, and cannot be released last December following a Heights" as yuppie gentrification drives As the cops and the local capitalist reformed. An army of cops mobilized minor drug conviction in 1987 and sev­ out black residents. His uncle, Bill media were spreading the outrageous lie when 50 protesters gathered to support eral parole violations, Williams was a Bowser, said, "It's getting to the point that Williams died from a "drug over­ the Williams family, who were meeting marked man. He was indeed the classic where every black man in this neighbor­ dose," ,San Francisco's liberal estab­ with Jordan at City Hall on June 7. faceless black man hunted down, jailed hood is being harassed. Every time lishment, from prominent black rever­ Another protest at the Police Commis­ and executed by America's racist cops. something happened here, they come ends and reformist misleaders to the sion hearing was cleared out by a pha­ According to the cops' own story, they to arrest Aaron or his brother, Darren" Board of Supervisors, immediately lanx of riot police. The San Francisco went to his apartment after a break-in (San Francisco Examiner, 7 June). moved to put the lid on angry protests. labor movement, with the integrated several blocks away where a "black man" Marc Andaya, the cop who began the Black Democratic mayoral candidate Muni bus drivers and longshoremen in was supposedly seen running south-the pursuit of Williams, is a former Oakland and legendary Sacramento power broker the forefront, must mobilize in defense Willie Brown has refused to say a word, of the besieged black community! _

Remember the Heroic Rosenbergs! June 19 marks the anniversary of the chill­ ing execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, at the height of the McCarthyite witchhunt. The Rosenbergs were railroaded to death in the electric chair for supposedly On June 26, hundreds of San Fran­ less, radicals, blacks and anybody "conspiring" to pass the "secret of the cisco cops cordoned off a demon­ who "gets in their way." Last night's atomic bomb" to the Russians. They went stration for Mumia Abu-Jamal and mass arrest comes in the context to their deaths heroically, denouncing the then brutally and wantonly dragged of vicious cop attacks on the home­ TROTSKY government's anti-Communist frame-up to LENIN off nearly 300 people, including five less and Food Not Bombs activists the very end. The then-Trotskyist Socialist children. In response, the Partisan over the past week. The wanton bru­ Workers Party (SWP), which came to the defense of the Rosenbergs, denounced their Defense Committee initiated an emer­ tality of Mayor Jordan's Operation execution as "a deed of class hate and class vengeance." Today, Mumia Abu-Jamal gency protest the next day against Matrix, which has made homeless­ is threatened with becoming the first political prisoner to be executed in this country the arrests and issued the following ness and feeding the hungry a "crime" since the Rosenbergs. In an editorial written before the execution of the Rosenbergs, statement to San Francisco District in San Francisco, has been brought the SWP emphasized the need for labor to rally to their defense and denounced the Attorney Arlo Smith. home with a vengeance to "clean up" criminal passivity of the Cold War bureaucracy of the trade unions. The Partisan Defense Committee the streets for the United Nations A terrible and irreversible injustice may soon take place in the Rosenberg case. demands the immediate release and "celebrations." Down with Operation Representatives of all sectors of the nation have rallied to the defense of the Rosen­ the dropping' of all charges against Matrix! bergs, but labor has not yet been heard from. And the labor movement is the only nearly three hundred protesters who The jailing of 274 people, many on power strong enough to stay the hand of the executioner. were rounded up ~nd thrown in jail frame-up felony charges (!), is the The official leaders of the trade unions of America may feel that labor has no by the SF cops last night. This assault biggest mass arrest in San Francisco stake in this case. They may argue that only those who are sympathetic to "commu­ on a demonstration in defense of black since 1992, when the police trapped nism" or to the Soviet Union need be concerned ab.9ut the fate of the Rosenbergs. death row prisoner Mumia Abu­ and busted 575 demonstrators protest­ They are wrong .... Jamal, an innocent man who was ing the racist acquittal of the L.A. Labor must recall the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were adjudged innocent years framed up and sentenced to die for cops who beat black motorist Rodney after their execution by Felix Frankfurter, who now sits on the Supreme Court which his political beliefs, is part and parcel King within an inch of his life. The refused to give the Rosenbergs a chance to present new evidence. Labor must recall of a sinister and frenzied national ven­ comparison is hardly coincidental as that Tom Mooney, also sentenced to death in a hysterical atmosphere, was saved by detta by the "Fraternal Order of Po­ the current mass arrest of anti-racist the protest of labor and also later found to be innocent. lice" to have Jamal executed and to protesters comes on the heels of the Time is short! Labor must act at once. The top leadership of the AFL, the CIO intimidate and silence his supporters. killing of Aaron Williams, who was and the independent unions have a clear duty to appeal for a stay of execution and With an ex-police chief as mayor, beaten to death by a sadistic gang of for a new trial. If they fail in this duty, they may help the witch hunters to strike the SF cops increasingly act like they twelve SF cops. one of the greatest possible blows against labor. are a law unto themselves, marauding Drop all charges against the anti­ -"Labor Must Fight This Injustice," Militant (8 June 1953) in the streets and assaulting the home- racist protesters!

Spartacist~ Forums !!!!~!!M~~!~!~/!.! ~ DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster EDITOR: Jan Norden EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan f'uller CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe EDITORIAL BOARD: Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Speakers from the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee Internationalist) . Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except Skipping three alternate issues in June, July and • Eyewitness Report from South Africa on the Fight for Jamal August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 Thursday, July 6, 7:30 p.m. ,Saturday, July 8, 7 p.m. (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, 122 West 27th St., 10th Floor Finn Hall, 1819 Tenth St. Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. For more information: For more information: (510) 839-0851 or Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. (212) 267-1025 (415) 777-9367 T.he closing date for news in this issue is June 27.

No. 625 30 June 1995

2 WORKERS VANGUARD ,/

When New Yorl< City cops went ber,: serk at a national police meeting in Washington, D.C. on May 15, ripping apart seven hotels and terrorizing guests, it was no joke. This was an ominous show of unrestrained cop power, as the enforcers of capitalist "law and order" flaunted, downtown in the nation's cap­ ital, the wild and wanton way in which they police the ghettos and barrios every day and night. The yearly gathering of drunken, depraved police in Washington each May has more than a whiff of fascism about it. This year marauding cops banged on doors, pulled fire alarms, sprayed corri­ dors with fire extinguishers and forced the evacuation of several Washington hotels at 3:15 a.m. Among those who experienced this chilling spectacle were trade unionists from the Letter Carriers and nurses, who were holding national gatherings in Washington. Somebody called the cops, but the perpetrators were the cops. When the D.C. police arrived and discovered the rioters were the NYPD, they left without making arrests. The police "blue wall of silence" held solid as the scandal mounted in the following weeks. So far one woman cop from Queens has resigned as the designated fall guy, and two men were "suspended." The drunken' rampage was preceded by a mass meeting of uniformed police addressed by Bill Clinton. Attending as an honored guest was Maureen Faulkner, widow of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Jose Rosario/Courtesy EI Diario-La Faulkner, for whose shooting death in La Paz? San Salvador? No, it's the Lower East Side, New York City. Mayor Giuliani sent in NYPD armored personnel 1981 black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal carrier to oust squatters as helicopters circled and submachine gun-toting cops moved in, May 30. was framed and is now facing execution. New York's rulers didn't appreci~te this unauthorized public display by their blue-uniformed thugs, but the NYPD back of 16-year-old Yong Zin Huang's by a labor bureaucracy whose collabo­ from Wall Street to Washington, which soon staged some very official demon­ head in March was cleared as a grand ration with the city rulers' class war on dictates their moves. strations of its armed might. Two weeks jury ruled the discharge "accidental." labor, minorities and the poor is destroy­ There is a tremendous potential for after the D.C. rampage, an army of Outrage still burns in the South Bronx ing union strength in this city. class struggle in this city. From CUNY hundreds of cops wielding submachine over the police killings in February. Last month it was documented (by students to city workers to tenants rights guns-supported by helicopters circling Anthony Baez was killed with a choke Wayne Barrett in the Village Voice, 30 activists, there are many thousands who overhead and an armored assault vehicle hold for the "crime" of tossing a foot­ May) that five city union leaders, in­ are eager to be mobilized in struggle. clanking up East 13th Street-mounted ball near a police car. Anthony Rosario cluding Sandra Feldman for the UFT What's needed is a leadership committed an attack on squatters on the Lower East and Hilton Vega were shot in the back, and Stanley Hill of AFSCME's DC 37, to class struggle instead of the class col­ Side. fourteen and eight times respectively. signed a letter drafted by Mayor Giuliani laboration which has brought us Giuliani, Margarita Rosario, Anthony's mother asking Governor Pataki to cut the state Pataki and Clinton. A class-struggle The massive police operation on May and Hilton's aunt, has been tireless in contribution to the city budget by hun­ workers party would fight for jobs for 30 was aimed at a couple dozen artists and anarchists who for the past ten years seeking justice for this crime. She is dreds of millions of dollars. Why? Since all; for free quality health care, including the city must put up "matching funds" free abortion on demand; for free 24-hour have been rehabilitating several aban­ organizing a protest on July 7 outside to state contributions, cutting the state day care; for open admissions, no tuition doned buildings on Manhattan's Lower the Bronx Supreme Court. East Side. "We just can't allow people The increasingly bonapartist New funds would allow the city to slash its and living stipends for college students, Medicaid and welfare allotments. Be­ and full ~itizenship rights for all immi­ to not pay rent," intoned Giuliani as a York City police force is spurred on by die-hard defender of "property rights." Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who came to hind this was the union bureaucrats' vile grants. The city already pays almost one­ So with police snipers on the rooftops, office as the "cops' candidate" after egg­ scheme to "protect" jobs-.by starving wel­ fifth of its budget in debt service to the banks-so cancel the debt! But a real the bomb squad at the ready and the ing on a mob of 10,000 armed white fare recipients and slashing medical block sealed off by hundreds of riot cops cops as they stormed City Hall in a 1992 services to the poor! '. fight for such a program will soon see But while this Old Guard o(NYC labor the debt collectors showing up looking with full-size bulletproof shields, black­ riot against the then mayor, black Dem­ officialdom is working hand -in glove suspiciously like the 82nd Airborne. suited ninja squads moved in. They came ocrat David Dinkins. Now the NYPD's with Giuliani, trading in the human mis­ As we wrote in "Giuliani's Budget of over the roofs with guns drawn, cut open swaggering, badge-toting bullies are the ery of the unemployed minority popula­ Doom" (WV No. 618, 10 March): "In the doors which had been welded shut spearhead of GIuliani's frontal attack on tions (and sacrificing their own members' New York and everywhere, the fight to by the squatters and dragged the -resi­ minorities, workers, students, the home­ jobs), the more activist union leaders like defend the unions, to beat back racist dents through the darkened stairways. less and the poor. Dennis Rivera of Local 1199 still polit­ cop terror, for housing for the homeless The NYPD's armored vehicle was poised Bipartisan Capitalist ically handcuff the workers' struggles to and health care for the poor, must be to ram through the front doors of the Class War the Democratic Party. Whether it is Dem­ part of a struggle to sweep away the buildings on command. ocrat Dinkins or Republican Giuliani in profit system of the racist rulers and their Then, on June 12, the Puerto Rican In mid-June, a bipartisan budget City Hall, it is the capitalist ruling class, state.". Day parade up Fifth Avenue erupted in agreement was worked out between the Bronx cheers, as Giuliani was booed sol­ mayor and the Democratic-controlled idly along the march route. The mayor City Council, including an $800 million barely missed being hit with flying man­ spending cut and another $600 million gos at one point. So that night, the cops to be coughed up by the municipal SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY (or City Hall directly) decided it was unions. The public school system will payback time. As thousands of Puerto be especially devastated, with deep cuts National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 Rican families were sitting on: their to day care and "special ed" and elimi­ Atlanta Chicago Oakland stoops and dancing in the streets in the nating summer programs. And now City Box 397 Box 0441, Main PO Box 29497 late evening, police descended on the University is carrying out a racist purge, Decatur, GA 30031 Chicago, lL 60680 Oakland, CA 94604 Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. further gutting open admissions, by jack­ (404) 521-9338 (312) 663-0715 (510) 839-0851 The cops went block by block, stop" ing up tuition and slashing SEEK reme­ Boston Los Angeles San Francisco ping cars, cracking heads, spraying pep­ dial programs, notably English-language Box 390840, Central Sta_ Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta_ Box 77494 per gas and dragging people into the courses which hav~_ allowed thousands Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94107 paddy wagons. They declared the Puerto of immigrant students to go to college. (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (41 5) 777-9367 Rican flags on sticks being carried home Over the past several decades, New New York Washington, D.C. from the parade were "weapons." Win­ York City has lost hundreds of thousands Champaign-Urbana Box 75073 dows and doors of apartment buildings of industrial jobs. Just since 1989, Box 2644 Box 3381, Church S1- Sta. Champaign, IL 61825 New York, NY 10008 Washington, D.C. 20013 were smashed as the cops busted in to another 270,000 private sector jobs have (217) 352-3359 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 gain "access" to the roofs. More than been eliminated. Now Giuliani is seeking J36 people were arrested in the midnight to crn tens of thousands of municipal roundup. workers. Against the menacing power of TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA And from Brooklyn to the Bronx, the the racist cops, and the budget ax being Toronto Montreal Vancouver number of minority victims of racist wielded as brutally as the billy club, what Box 7198, Station A C_P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. cop terror steadily mounts. The cop in is needed is old-fashioned class struggle. Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 Sheepshead Bay who fired a 9mm semi­ - But the fight to defend jobs, hospitals, (416) 593-4138 Montreal, ac H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 automatic at pointblank range into the schools and social programs is sabotaged 30 JUNE 1995 3 Pro-COl "Socialists" Substitute Fist for Brain ... Again .. ISO Goons Beaten· Back On June 17, the International Socialist tingly or unwittingly, the ISO's gang­ ing in Oklahoma, Clinton is ramming gether. In this way, too, the ISO leader­ Organization (ISO) assaulted members sterism41eaves them open to being used through a new COINTELPRO. ship does the bourgeoisie's dirty work. and suppQrters of the Spartacist League as the tool of more sinister agencies. The ruling class understands, as do Clearly the purpose here is for. the ISO who were distributing a leaflet pointedly Our rebuff of the ISO's attack and our we, that a mass protest to free Mumia to control its membership by drawing a questioning the ISO's belated defense of immediate full exposure of the incident Abu-Jamal and abolish the racist death blood line. A number of ISO members death row political prisoner Mumia Abu­ stands in contrast to their gUilty pub­ penalty strikes a blow against the whole have seen the fight to free Jamal as vital Jamal, particularly in light of their view lic silence and semiprivate and ever­ system of capitalist repression. So do to the fight against racist American cap­ that the racist cops can be won to the twisting lies on the Internet. Finally, their media mouthpieces. The ISO's italism, and one which they rightly side of the working class and oppressed on June 24, the ISO "Steering Commit­ attack came on the heels of a front-page thought the ISO should be involved in. through "struggle." This leaflet and a tee" came up with an "official" statement article in the 16 June Wall Street Journal Finally their leadership responded with protest statement are reprinted below. which, however, is not for public distri'­ which portrayed Jamal's supporters and articles in defense of Jamal, but the fact The ISO's gangsterism is devastating bution! Here we find the following amal­ the Spartacist League in particular as that we have long been in the lead in evidence that their "support" to the cam­ gam of slander: the SL's "actions, rather cultists. Recall the government's mass the campaign for Jamal, mobilizing and paign for Jamal isn't worth the paper it's than helping to build our movement, are murder of the black men, women and cooperating with diverse groups and ten­ printed on. For years, while the ISO aimed at destroying it"; "among the children in the MOVE commune in Phil­ dencies, gives the lie to the ISO leader­ maintained a stony silence, the Partisan Spartacist League's initiatives is the Par­ adelphia or the 87 charred bodies of the ship's satanic depiction of our organiza­ Defense Committee, a legal and social tisan Defense Committee"; "the PDC has Branch Davidians in Waco to understand tion' as a bunch of crazed sectarians and defense organization affiliated with the been heavily involved with the campaign the deadly impact of being declared a "disrupters." Violence and slander is the SL, initiated mass rallies and protests on to free Pennsylvania death row inmate cult on the front page of a major capitalist way they resolve that contradiction. behalf of Jamal seeking to unite the Mumia Abu-Jama\." You don't need to newspaper. The abject hypocrisy of the ISO's cur­ broadest possible spectrum of political read between the lines to get the message Beyond"the lies, the ISO's statement rent stance of opposition to violence is groups, unionists and others in this coun­ of this smear job-i.e., one of the main reveals breathtaking contempt for their revealed in the following news from try and internationally for a common organizations fighting to' mobilize in own membership. Hundreds of partici­ South Africa. When a supporter of the purpose while scrupulously maintaining Jamal's defense are "thugs" .who want pants at their national gathering in ISO's affiliate, the International Social­ the right of all participants to raise their to "destroy" the workers movement and Chicago saw SL supporters distributing ists of South Africa (lSSA), was in­ own particular political viewpoints. therefore ... you shouldn't get involved. literature and engaging in political dis­ formed of the Chicago events, he boasted Who benefits from the ISO's slan­ It will take more than a large bucket cussion. Yet the ISO statement asserts of his own participation in "gooning" der, censorship and violence against us? of clorox to make this wash. But again, that one of our sales teams "carried no Spartacist comrades in Britain and Answer: the racist rulers and their cui bono (who benefits) from the ISO's literature and made no attempt to talk to screamed at our comrade, "You are noth­ cops who want to see Mumia dead. The slanders? The international outcry for anyone arriving for the meeting." ISO ing! You are a peanut of an organization." FBI's "counter-intelligence. program," Jamal is a thorn in the side of the capitalist members face the grim choice of corrup" Troubled by this response, an observer COINTELPRO, used the same tactics­ rulers who want to press ahead with the tion: either they must swear to a story from the South African Communist Party lies and "dirty tricks" aimed at fomenting first explicitly political execution in this they know is not true, or, if they are trou­ (which claims 50,000 members) replied, disunity and violence-in their campaign country since the murders of Julius and bled by lies and violence, they will be "By your logic, then the South African against the left, particularly aimed at Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. Seizing on the driven out of the organization and per­ Communist Party ought to do the same destroying the Black Panther Party. Wit- heinous bombing of the federal build- haps give up on left-wing politics alto- thing to you." Think about it.

On June 17 outside a publicly ad­ lies and violence. As Trotskyists, we rel­ vertised gathering of the International ish the clash of opinion in open political Socialist Organization at DePaul Univer­ l';1...C··.··.. " C'd'" .•..•... .. ··Atl.. ··········· br .....• ...~S ···· debate which is essential to distilling sity in Chicago, an ISO goon squad got ttf'\ . '.' '.' " ..... e, revolutionary class consciousness. This

a richly deserved lesson in what happens vr;a~ or "I: •.•. -~ -- is perceived as a threat by the ISO which to people who mistakenly think they can (b~P\U\\\!;t'\ pursues a frenzied chase for "popularity" physically assault the Spartacist League. .. ~...... /I, . . ":." ... . 5oc.lt)"is •f instead of political program. Attacks on All leftists who have witnessed and expe­ the left are the corollary of their quest rienced the ISO's bureaucratic exclusions 8\aJUf. for "respectability" in the eyes of the and violent gangsterism against commu­ capitalist state. Karl Marx's observation nists and socialists should savor our COdtl1tr~ seems most apt when applied to the ISO: defense of workers democracy and vic­ "The only antidote to mental suffering tory over their thuggery. 1~UKYI)1 LfAGU is physical pain." The ISO has a long history of intol­ The lesson in workers democracy erance to open political discussion or delivered to the ISO on June 17 in Chi­ debate. Instead the ISO attempts to seal cago ought to have some educational off its members by drawing a blood line value for ISO members everywhere. As against left-wing critics. Evidently, we the founder of American Trotskyism, hit a very raw nerve with our leaflet (see James P. Cannon, said of the early Trot­ facing page) which questionshQw the skyists' militant defense of their rights ISO reconciles their new (and shame­ against Stalinist gangsterism, the Stalin­ fully belated) defense of death row polit­ For years the International Socialists/ISO cowards have been infamous for ists saw the Trotskyists "not only stand ical prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal with their thug attacks on other leftists. Above: Trotskyist League of Canada their ground and give back blow for blow their longstanding support to cops, protests I.S.' frenzied anti-communist attack on our comrades, August 1992. but also give the ignorant, misguided prison guards, and their pervasive illu­ young hoodlums a propaganda speech sions in and support to the capitalist picket lines to cheering the feds' take­ one Joe Allen, was deposited on his ass. and a tract for the good of their souls." state. Or perhaps, as the ISO tries to over of the Teamsters-was too hot to As Allen cried and wailed for an ambu­ And the Trotskyists recruited a few on worm its way into the Staley workers handle? lance, panicked ISOers backed away. the firing line. defense milieu, our exposure of ISO sup­ The facts are these: Spartacist mem­ Then they called over the campus cops. The ISO and their cothinkers interna­ port to union-busting-from crossing bers and supporters distributed literature Gangsterism is the trait which defines tionally are on notice: This is a political on Fullerton Avenue outside and well the ISO and its affiliates worldwide. fight and we welcome it. If you want to away from the public sessions of the ISO Last fall at Boston University, the ISO distribute literature in support of racist national educational. A distribution on assaulted Spartacus Youth Club mem­ cop "unions" outside our meetings in Spartacist· League June 16 went without incident, but on bers who were distributing literature defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, that's the next night, after an appearance by advocating the abolition of the racist your right. If you want to come in Public Offices ISO leader Ahmed Shawki and his side­ death penalty and the urgent defense and explain why you cross picket lines -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ kick Joel Geier, the ISO amassed a large of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In Britain, the and support government union-busting, goon squad and began bumping and Socialist Organisergroup called for an while we outline how to build a class­ Bay Area shoving our vastly outnumbereg com­ official labor movement inquiry into the struggle workers party, that's your right Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. rades as they prepared to leave the site. gangsterous violence ,directed at other too and we will scrupulously uphold it. 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) The grotesque sensibilities and coward­ political tendencies at the annual summer Oakland,California Phone: (510) 839-0851 The ISO leadership knows this. In fact, ice of the ISO were consistently mani­ week of "discussion and debate" organ­ the ISO spoke along with many other Chicago fested in their proclivity to especially ized by the British Socialist Workers participants at the PDC-initiated June Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m. sil}gle out black people and women for Party (the parent tendency of which the 5th rally in Chicago to protest the sign­ Sat.: 11 :00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. their bully boy tactics. ISO is an abused child). In August 1992, 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor ing of the death warrant for Mumia Abu­ Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 An SL supporter who intervened to the ISO's Canadian affiliate launched a Jam~\. But if you throw up your goon try and defuse the situation was jumped brutal, misogynist assault on a small squad, if you try to silence our revolu­ New York City from behind and hit in the back of the woman comrade of ours in Toronto, an tionary message with fists, then you will Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. outrage which prompted public protest 41 Warren St. (one block below head with a blunt instrument, sustaining do so at your own risk. Chambers St. near Church St.) a gash requiring five stitches. Then, by an independent witness. New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 every ISO goon was swept aside swiftly It is the ISO's excruciating political Chicago Spartacist League and effectively while their chief bully, contradictions which give rise to their 18 June 1995 4 WORKERS VANGUARD . ist death penalty is an integral part of Tbe ISO, tbe Deatll Penalty and tile Cops our fight for black freedom in a socialist America. Now is the time that all oppo­ nents of the racist death penalty-par­ ticularly the multiracial working class which has the social power to strike a Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! real blow against this whole system of racist reaction-must be mobilized to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! United-front actjons, in which all partic­ ipants can express their particular views, For over a decade, Mumia Abu-Jamal by John Molyneux, a leading "theoreti­ men, women and children and inciner­ also allow for the exchange and clash of has been entombed in a cell on death cian" of the ISO's parent organization, ating an entire neighborhood. opinion which is vital to building a rev­ row in Pennsylvania for" a crime he did the British Socialist Workers Party. In Today, seizing on the hideous Okla­ olutionary workers party that can lead not comrrtit, sentenced to die for his polit­ his misnamed "Teach Yourself Marxism" homa bombing, the Clinton administra­ the fight for a socialist America. It is a ical beliefs. A former Black Panther, sup­ column, Molyneux opined that "part of tion has rammed through a new good thing that the ISO has finally porter of the MOVE organization and an the struggle to smash the state may COINTELPRO, the "Omnibus Coun­ decided to take up the defense of Jamal. award-winning journalist who even on involve supporting rebellions of sections terterrorism Act," which targets virtually But the ISO's policy of slander, exclu­ death row continues to use his searingly of the police against their officers and the entire population of the U.S. In a sionism and violence are antithetical to eloquent voice to expose the crimes of employers" (Socialist Worker, 28 August leaflet at UC Berkeley the ISO the cause of mobilizing mass social pro­ America's rulers, Jamal is the symbol of 1993)! responded by asking "Can we rely on test to save Mumia's life. Less than a what the death penalty is all about in the Cop "rebellions" are aimed at getting the FBI to protect us?" That self­ year ago, several ISO thugs physically racist, capitalist U.S.A. On June I, Penn­ rid of any restrictions on their ability to proclaimed socialists would even pose attacked three members of the Spartacus sylvania governor Tom Ridge signed an terrorize the inner cities, smash strikes such a question, speaks volumes of the Youth Club outside a death penalty execution warrant against Jnmal. and exact vengeance against all other ISO's view of the state as a benign and forum at Boston University. Petitions The Partisan Defense Committee, a perceived "enemies." The Philadelphia in some cases even a benevolent force and literature for Jamal were ripped out non-sectarian legal and social defense police "union," the Fraternai Order of (particularly in its Democratic Party of our comrades' hands, seized in stacks organization whose purpose is in accord­ Police, has been on campaign footing to face). off our literature table, torn to shreds ance with the political views of the Spar­ have Jamal put to death. With the back­ That's why the ISO meekly submits and thrown out on the street. Substituting tacist League/U.S., has long fought to ing of other police "unions" they have control of anti-fascist protests to the rac­ the fist forthe brain, the ISO leadership's mobilize the broadest social forces in the been mobilizing to silence Jamal and ist police. Typically, the ISO waltzes its tactics have long been to attempt to draw fight to save Mumia's life. This cause intimidate his supporters. Socialist members add supporters into fenced-in a blood line to seal off new members has been taken up in the U.S. and inter­ Worker denounces the racism of the police pens-surrounded by cops with from political debate. nationally by 'many thousands of trade Philly cops but presumably the ISO their guns, their gas, their nightsticks and In a taped message from death row to unionists, leftists, writers, artists, polit­ would support them if they were "on their horses-to impotently "protest" the a 1993 New York rally in his defense ical figures and other opponents of the strike" for better pay and working con­ fascists without ever mobilizing to stop sponsored by the Partisan Defense Com­ racist death penalty. ditions i.e., more money to carry out them. That's also why the ISO appeals mittee, Mumia spoke powerfully to what After years of silence, the Interna­ their terror. to the agencies of the U.S. government­ is posed: "This government, which tional Socialist Organization published In its review of Jamal's book "Live anti-labor .gangsters with state power­ born bed babies in Philadelphia and Bagh­ an article in Jamal's defense in the June from Death Row," Socialist Worker notes to rid the Teamsters of "mob influence." dad, which mows down babies in Soma­ 9 issue of Socialist Worker. This is an that the "most powerful essays in the The whole demeanor and language of lia, is sowing the seeds of their own about-face and we look forward to the book describe the barbaric and dehuman­ the ISO is that of housebroken "social­ destruction. It is a time, not for confusion, ISO mobilizing its forces in the desper­ izing routine of prison life." The hands­ ists" who take care not to "offend" the but for opportunity, to transform what is ately needed united-front efforts to save on agents of this barbarism are the prison powers that be and the "public opinion" into what must be." For us, to "transform Jamal's life. At the same time, taking up guards. Yet the ISO's mentors in the Brit­ (i.e., bourgeois ideology) the capitalist what is into what must be" means a pro­ the cause of a man who the media, the ish SWP have happily bragged of prison rulers purvey. letarian revolutionary fight to bring down government and the cops lyingly revile guards setting up Socialist Worker read­ The title of a recent Socialist Worker the entire system of American capitalism as a "cop killer" must pose some excru­ ers' circles! (12 May) article, for example, reads which is predicated on racist exploitation. ciating contradictions for the ISO to deal And what of other police agencies? "Death Penalty Not a Deterrent to Mur­ To accomplish this task there can be with (and perhaps this is the reason for Since the time he was a 15-year-old der." But the death penalty is murder, no confusion over the nature of the cap­ their belated defense of Jamal). spokesman for the Philadelphia chapter executed by the racist capitalist rulers. italist state, its cops, prison guards and The police frame-up of Mumia Abu­ of the Black Panther Party, Jamal was a We are opposed to the death penalty on other agencies of repression. While the Jamal is stark testimony to the Marxist target of the Philly cops and the FBI's principle. We do not accord this govern­ ISO leadership's belated defense of understanding that the cops are the COINTELPRO program. Thirty-eight ment the right to say who lives and who Jamal smacks of Oscar Wilde's state­ armed thugs and enforcers for the rac­ Panthers were murdered and hundreds dies. In racist America, the death penalty ment that "hypocrisy is the homage that ist rule of the wealthy few against any of others jailed on frame-up charges in is the lynch rope of the Ku Klux Klan vice pays to virtue," those who genuinely who would oppose them. But how does this deadly FBI vendetta. Jamal is a sup­ made "legal," embedded in a history want to fight for a socialist America this jibe with the ISO's view that the porter of the MOVE organization. In going back to the slave codes which would do well to at least ponder the evi­ . police are "workers in uniform" whose 1985, in a joint operation of the Philly defined black people as chattel. dent contradiction between this goal and strikes and demands for "union" rights cops, city administration, FBI and Rea­ For the Spartacist League/Spartacus the political views of the ISO. should be supported? One of the baldest gan government, the MOVE household Youth Club the fight to save the life of Spartacist League expressions of this position was made was firebombed, murdering 11 black Mumia Abu-Jamal and to abolish the rac- 16 June 1995 .

Over 1,500 hospital workers rallied to save the L.A. County-USC Medical Center on June 21. Angry Workers .-Protest Plan to Joined by hundreds of workers from other SEIU locals, health care workers from SEIU Local 660 protested a proposal to close the largest public hos­ pital in the country and slash as many as 18,200 jobs. The largely black· and· Hispanic workers Close L.A .. County Hospital angrily denounced the budget cuts at a raucous Board of Supervisors hearing at the County Hall of Administration. County-USC provides crucial medical services for hundreds of thousands of minorities and immi­ grants, including 40 percent of the care to AIDS patients in the county. Closing this hospital would literally condemn these people to die in the streets. The proposal to close the hospital comes on the heels of the passage of the racist, anti-immigrant Prop 187 and Governor Wilson's recent elimination of all state affirmative action programs. The fight to save County-USC and other public hospitals demands a response by all L.A. labor, from Teamster truckers to the powerful ILWU long­ shoremen, from SEIU's militant "Justice for Jani­ tors" to the unionized public employees facing mass layoffs. The recent organizing drive by Mexican and Latin American carpenters in Orange County shows the deep roots of militancy which immigrant tabor has infused into this historically open-shop city. Breaking with the pro-capitalist union tops, whose only strategy is support for phony "pro-labor" Dem­ ocrats, is critical. Bust the budget cutters! Keep County-USC open! For free, quality health care for all!

30 JUNE 1995 5 1982 Trial a Mockery of Justice On Monday, June 5, Mumia Abu­ er's CBS-TV Evening News, tried Jamal's legal team, led by promi­ to demonize Mumia as a vicious nent civil liberties attorney Leonard and sadistic "cop killer" by cyni­ Weinglass, filed some 500 pages of cally parading around the dead legal papers seeking a new trial and cop's widow. In account after nau­ the overturn of Jamal's death sen­ seating account, Maureen Faulkner tence. Early the previous Friday "recalled" how Jamal "smiled" at morning, as he was preparing his her while a criminalist held up her case In the prison law library husband's bloodied shirt during the at Pennsylvania's Greene Correc­ trial to display the bullet holes. But, tional Institution isolation facility, as the trial transcript shows, Jamal Jamal was handed an execution was not even in the courtroom when warrant by prison authorities. He this alleged incident happened. was immediately removed from The forces of death have also there, deprived of his notes and propagated the lie that Jamal was other possessions and taken to a accorded "due process" of law and new cell in an even more restrictive found guilty by a "jury of his peers." area of death row where prisoners Thus, in a June 2 letter to actors are held after warrants have been Ed Asner and Mike Farrell and other signed. Knowing full well that prominent supporters of Jamal, on Jamal's lawyers were about to sub­ the official stationery of Philadel­ mit papers which unambiguously phia District Attorney Lynne Abra­ demonstrated his innocence, on ham, Assistant D.A. Arnold Gordon the night of June 1 Governor Tom wrote: Ridge had rrevertheless gone ahead "From an evidentiary standpoint, and signed Jamal's death warrant the case against Mumia Abu- Jamal scheduling his execution by lethal was overwhelming, one of the strongest I have seen in my twenty­ injection for August 17. Ridge's five years as a prosecutor. A jury aim, he cynically proclaimed, was found him guilty and pronounced "to fulfill a campaign promise." a justly deserved death sentence." This vindictive act was but the lat­ In fact, Mumia's trial was a est chapter in the grotesque history mockery of justice from beginning of the racist state vendetta 'against to end, deeply tainted in every Mumia Abu-Jamal. respect, as we will show in detail For 13 years, Mumia Abu-Jamal in examining the "overwhelming" has been imprisoned on death row, evidence outlined by Gordon and falsely charged and convicted for presented by the prosecution in the killing of Philadelphia police no June-July 1982. As lead counsel Jamal in hospital after being shot and beaten by Philadelphia cops, December 1981. officer Daniel Faulkner in Decem­ Failing to kill him in the streets, the "justice" system framed him up and now threatens Len Weinglass said at a June 5 ber 1981. For 13 years, Jamal has to execute this courageous fighter for the oppressed. press conference following the fil- proclaimed his innocence and in­ ing of the legal. papers, "Mumia dicted the system of racist injustice that young black man who got ensnared in a When Mumia told MOVE's side of the Abu-Jamal never had a trial." As these seeks to kill him. He has powerfully racist nightmare by being in the wrong story following a bloody 1978 cop siege papers document, the "trial" was replete accused his accusers of a politically place at the wrong time. As a Black of its Powelton Village home, then with violations of Jamal's constitutional motivated frame-up, a frame-up aimed at Panther Party activist, journalist, poten­ mayor and former police commissioner rights and marked by widespread police silencing forever his powerful voice on tial black leader and later supporter of Frank Rizzo fingered a "new breed" of and prosecutorial misconduct, including behalf of the oppressed. By the time of the Philadelphia MOVE organization, journalist, such as Jamal, which, he suppression of evidence of Jamal's inno­ his arrest, Jamal was widely recognized Mumia was targeted for death by the threatened, would one day "be held cence, coercion of witnesses and racist as one of the most prominent young forces of "law and order." responsible and accountable for what elimination of potential black jurors. In broadcast journalists in Philadelphia and As 700 pages of FBI files recently you do." Three years later, on a dark an article in New York Newsday (22 president of the Philadelphia chapter of released after a three-year battle show, Philadelphia street at four in the morn­ June), writer Terry Bisson captured the the Association of Black Journalists. For from the time he emerged as a 15-year­ ing, the cops finally got the chance blatant miscarriage of justice at Jamal's his fearless and incisive exposures of old spokesman for the Philadelphia they'd been waiting for. trial: racism and police brutality, Mumia had Panthers in 1969, he was subjected to The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal has "Abu-Jamal's murder trial was a police­ earned the title the "voice of the voice­ constant surveillance, harassment and come to symbolize what the barbaric and man's dream. Denied the right to repre­ less"-as well as the undying hatred of frame-up attempts by the FBI's COIN­ racist death penalty is all about, and the sent himself, he was defended bya reluc­ the Philadelphia cops and their "law and TELPRO terror operation aimed at "neu­ "law and order" reactionaries hate him tant incompetent who was later disbarred order" allies in government and the (and who has since filed an affidavit tralizing" black and leftist militants, A for this as well. They seek to paint the detailing his delinquencies). Abu-Jamal media. 24 October 1969 FBI report urging that 3,000 people-overwhelmingly poor, was prosecuted by a district attorney who In many respects, Mumia was Jamal be placed under high-level sur- black or Hispanic--on the country's was later reprimanded for withholding accorded the frame-up "justice" typi­ veillance noted: ' death rows as nameless, faceless sadistic evidence in another trial. Abu-Jamal was cally meted out to black people by this allowed only $150 to interview witnesses. "In spite of the subject's age (15 years), killers. And Mumia's eloquent and com­ "But best of all was the judge. A life-time capitalist system, which regularly rail­ Philadelphia feels that his continued par­ passionate voice puts the lie to that. member of the Fraternal Order of Police, roads ghetto youth into prison hellholes ticipation in BPP activities in the Phila­ branded a 'defendant's nightmare' by the delphia Division, his position in the Phil­ The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of and has the highest rate of incarceration Police (FOP) and its allies have Philadelphia Inquirer, Judge Albert F. of any industrialized Western country. adelphia Branch of the BPP, and his Sabo has sentenced more men to die (31 past inclination to appear and speak at waged a vicious and frenzied vendetta But in this case there was more. Mumia to date, only two of them white) than public gatherings, the subject should be to silence Jamal and intimidate his any other sitting judge in America. A fel­ Abu-Jamal was not just an ordinary included on the Security Index." supporters. Following a rally for Jamal low judge once called his courtroom a Everly/Philadelphia Daily News in Philadelphia in 1990, FOP head Rich­ 'vacation for prosecutors' because of his bias toward convictions." ard Costello screamed for the electric . chair for Mumia and an "electric couch" From the time the Partisan Defense for his supporters. When last year Committee took up Jamal's case more National Public Radio agreed to air than eight years ago, we have empha­ a series of commentaries on prison life sized that the fight to save him can­ by Jamal, the FOP launched a noisy not rely on the capitalist courts but campaign of intimidation which was rather must look to the mobilization of Mumia taken up by Republican Senator Dole the masses, centrally the social power Abu-Jamal and succeeded in censoring Jamal. of the labor movement. Since then, taken out of And Democratic president Clinton has trade unions representing millions of courtroom by . made a point of appearing at the FOP's workers-in the U.S., Britain, France, sheriffs. Mumia annual Washington, D.C. rallies for cop Germany, South Africa and elsewhere­ wasn't allowed to power. defend himself have spoken out for Jamal. Many or even to be When a collection of Jamal's prison tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of present for much commentaries was brought out this May thousands, have signed petitions or writ­ of the trial by as a book by a major publisher, Live from ten letters to the Pennsylvania gover­ notorious Death Row (Addison-Wesley, 1995), the nor's office demanding that "Mumia "hanging judge" forces who want to see him dead orches­ Abu-Jamal must not die!" Thousands Albert Sabo. trated a high-powered media campaign have taken to the street, including in seeking to drown out the passionate emergency demonstrations following the humanity expressed in his writings. The signing of the death warrant. Thou­ big media, ranging from the Washington sands must now be turned into tens Post to the New York Post and Dan Rath- and hundreds of thousands, bringing 6 WORKERS VANGUARD weeks, through the singing of the Con­ demned prisoners in B Wing. It was An Open Letter to President Mandela awful-one of the worst experiences of my life. Please, Mr. President, let our South to Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal African experience speak loudly and clearly to save the life of Mumia Abu­ racist governor, George Wallace. The Joel Joffe, was also the attorney repre­ Jamal in Pennsylvania, in memory of By Paul Trewhela following year he supported the senting the ANC and Umkhonto we Mini, Khayinga, Mkaba, and so many founder of the Black Panther Freedom Sizwe heroes Vuyisile Mini, Wilson others. Use the force of your interna: Party, Huey Newton, then in prison. Khayinga and Zinakile Mkaba. On the tional reputation to urge that the exe­ For Atterition: cution be set aside, in the same way His trial in 1982, following the death day before their hanging in Pretoria President Nelson Mandela that an international campaign helped of a policeman in a shoot-out the Central Prison on 6 November 1964, State President's Office to stay the hand of the judge in your previous year, was crowded with Joel brought us messages from our Cape Town trial. irregularities. doomed comrades and we sent our own Republic of South Africa I .. The address of the Governor of I have supported the campaign to message of love and solidarity to them, Dear President Mandela, with Joel. Pennsylvania is: Governor Tom Riljge, save the life of Abu-Jamal since 1990, Main Capitol Building, Room 225, We held a memorial service for them . I am appealing to you to use the when I spoke at a meeting in London Harrisburg, PA 17120, United States of in the yard at the Fort, as I'm sure you respect in which you are held interna­ in his defence. I said then that in a America. tionally to try to stop the execution in society in which "the black 9 percent did also on Robben Island. Ivan the United States of a black political of the population of Pennsylvania gives Schermbrucker and Eli Weinberg, both With deep respect, prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. birth' to 56 percent of the popUlation now dead, guided our thoughts. Paul Trewhela I am writing to you as a fellow on death row, we are in the presence A year later we white political pris­ Political prisoner, Johannesburg and mugwenya from the grim time in the of truly South African conditions." oners were transferred from Pretoria Pretoria, 1964-67. early 1960s, when the shadow of the If South Africa can· suspend the death Local Prison to Central Prison, when Editor, Umkhonto we Sizwe under­ gallows hung over you too. penalty, that should apply at least the authorities wanted to use our cells ground newspaper, Freedom Fight­ Abu-Jamal is due to be executed in equally for Abu-Jamal. to hold their Namibian prisoners from er, Johannesburg, 1963-64. Pennsylvania on 17 August. He has When I think about Abu-Jamal, my Swapo, including Toivo, while they Co-editor, Searchlight South Africa, been involved in radical black politics emotions go back to the time when my brutalised and tortured them. London, 1988-94. in the U.S. since he was first arrested fellow co-accused and I were in the During the six months we were held Aylesbury, Britain. at the age of 14, in 1968, in a protest Fort Prison in Johannesburg, on trial, in Pretoria Central, we listened to the 16 June 1995 against the presidential campaign of the in late 1964. Our courageous solicitor, executions of black prisoners every few South Africa Freedom Day

to bear the weight of the working class began converging on the scene. Jamal tant D.A. Gordon in his June 2 letter, you want to find out whether a gun has in this urgent phase of the struggle to was found critically wounded from a bul­ runs as follows: been fired recently, it's not hard: just save Mumia and secure his freedom. let through the chest. Nearby lay a "Abu-Jamal, who had been driving a cab smell the barrel for the odor of burnt wounded Faulkner. Jamal eventually in the area, ran from across the street gunpowder. (Ballistics experts say that recovered after surgery, but the cop died toward Officer Faulkner. Abu-Jamal shot the smell remains for four to five hours, the officer once in the back. Officer The Prosecution's Case: an hour later. Faulkner fell to the ground; Abu-Jamal and certainly would be present after four As Jamal's lead counsel Leonard aimed and shot the officer four more to five minutes.) Either the police incred­ Three Legs, All Lies Weinglass said at the Philadelphia press times, including a shot through the center ibly failed to perform this simple test, conference on June 5, the prosecution's of his face. Officer Faulkner was able to or they hid the fact that Jamal's gun was In dissecting the travesty of justice case against Jamal rested on three legs. fire one shot at Abu-Jamal during the shooting." indeed not used that night. As for the +P which placed Mumia Abu-Jamal on First, the prosecution claimed three eye­ bullets, this variety of pistol ammunition death row, we will begin by looking at witnesses identified Jamal as the shooter. Gordon goes on to say that the bullet is widely available. And while cops say the prosecution's account of the shoot­ Second, the prosecution claimed Jamal that killed Faulkner was "fired within Jamal's gun, which was licensed to him, ing incident. What happened in the early "confessed" to the shooting when he twenty inches of the officer's face," the had five spent cartridges, the cops never morning hours of 9 December 1981? It arrived at the hospital to be treated one in his back "was fired from a dis­ recovered more than three bullets from is undisputed that the events unfolded for his wounds. Third, the prosecution tance of approximately nine inches, and the scene. One of these was removed when an old VW owned by Jamal's argued that the fact that Jamal's gun was the shots that went through his clothing, from Faulkner's body. As Jamal's le­ brother, Billy, was pulled over by Faulk­ found at the scene showed he did the were also fired at extremely close gal brief notes, "the Medical Examiner ner. One of the occupants got out. The shooting. As Jamal's new legal filings range." According to Gordon, two guns judged the fatal bullet to be a .44 caliber. cop started beating him. Jamal, who show in careful detail, each prosecution were recovered at the scene: "Officer Mr. Jamal's gun was a .38 caliber pistol." was moonlighting as a cab driver at the claim was false and based on evidence Faulkner's weapon had been fired once, The police crime lab reported just time, happened to be in the area and which had been twisted around to impli­ and Abu-Jamal's weapon contained five enough test results to show that the saw this. These events took place at cate Jamal. spent cartridges." These were +P car­ rifling pattern of Jamal's gun (eight lands about 3:55 in the morning in the mid­ tridges, and, says Gordon, "The bullet and grooves and a right-hand twist) was dle of Philly's red light district. The that was removed from OfficeiFa~lkner "consistent" with the bullet that killed street was dark, but the bars were clos­ The Non-Smoking Gun: was also a +P bullet, but it was so muti­ Ballistics and Forensics the cop. But there are millions of guns ing and a number of people were in 1 lated that no comparison could be made with that rifling pattern in the U.S. A the area on foot or driving through. A Let us first deal with the question of to a bullet test fired from Abu-Jamal's ballistics expert retained by Jamal's cur­ number of shots rang out. The whole the gun and the shooting. The prosecu­ gun." rent legal team, having examined the incident lasted less than two minutes, tion theory of what happened during the Note carefully that Gordon does not police reports, lists a series of "issues and a number of police car.s immediately shqoting incident, as outlined by Assis- talk of Jamal's gun having been fired. If of a firearm evidence nature which Philadelphia Daily News required further investigation and test­ ing." Either police failed to do the nor­ mal tests or, more likely, the results proved Jamal's gun was not used and so they were kept secret. Particularly damn­ ing is the cops' failure to report if they tested Jamal's hands for gunshot residue. Yet, the ballistics expert pointed out, "In 1981 such tests were frequently per­ formed when a suspect was apprehended immediately after a shooting incident." The police ballistics report was so incon­ clusive that a Homicide Division captain admitted at the time: "One expert might say the bullet came from Mumia's gun and another might be brought in from Iowa who will say, 'I've got 20 years' experience and I say it didn't come from that gun.' We just don't know." - Philadelphia Bulletin, 11 Dec,ember 1981 A re-examination by Jamal's experts of the forensics reports also disproves the prosecution theory of how the shoot­ ing took' place. If Faulkner was shot at "extremely close range," there normally Left: Philly cops beat Delbert Africa in 1978 raid on MOVE heme in would have been gunshot residue (stip­ Powelton Village. Above: Racist mayor of Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, pling) on the back of his jacket, but there at press conference where he justified the assault and threatened "new was none. Moreover, the prosecution breed" of journalist. Mumla Abu-Jamal is at left in photo. continued on page 10 30 JUNE 1995 7 1953, victims of McCarthyite Cold War Jamal Must anti-Communism. We must not let that happen! It is nec­ essary to build on the momentum of the Not Die! ... wave of recent protests with a strategy (continued from page 1) aimed at mass mobilizations of blacks, chattel slavery. The current rate of exe­ Hispanics and all the intended victims cutions in the U.S., now the only indus­ of capitalist repression, centrally seeking trialized Western country to retain the to unlock the social power of the inte­ death penalty, is double that of the highest grated labor movement. The Spartacist previoUs annual rate "Since the assembly League and PDC have insisted on the line of death was started up again in 1976 importance of united-front defense of after a brief pause. For his part, Ridge class-war prisoners, emphasizing the has ordered 15 executions since taking need for different organizations to join office in January after winning the state together in common action while freely house on a right-wing, pro-death plat­ proclaiming their own political views. It form. In May, Keith Zettlemoyer became is noteworthy that of late a number of the firs'! victim of "Governor Death" and leftist groups have joined the campaign the first to be executed in the state since to save Jamal. We have also insisted that 1962. this is not only a struggle for Mumia's The threat to execute Jamal comes in life-it's a fight against the institution the context of a concerted effort by the of the death penalty itself, a barbaric Democratic White House and Republi­ means of repression which in the U.S. can Congress to massively increase po­ is necessarily racist. Free Mumia! Abol­ lice powers. By near-unanimous vote,. on ish the racist death penalty! Philadelphia, June 5: Several hundred marched to protest planned execution June 7 the U.S. Senate approved Clin­ of Jamal following press conference by his lawyers. ton's draconian "Counterterrorism" bill. Worldwide Rallies Demand: Mumia Must Not Die! Among many other attacks on basic lib­ warrant was announced, Philadelphia have imposed new disciplinary measures erties, this bill guts centuries-old habeas assistant district attorney Arnold Gordon aimed At sealing off Jamal from the The emergency demonstrations in the corpus protections against wrongful im­ issued a letter to celebrities who have public. Only days after the signing of U.S., which brought thousands onto the prisonment by limiting challenges of spoken out for Jamal. Repeating the the execution warrant, Pennsylvania streets across the country, were the larg­ death sentences to one federal appeal tissue of lies that made up the prosecu­ launched a vindictive disciplinary action est protests against the death penalty in within one year of conviction-which in tion's "case" against Mumia, the letter against Jamal, accusing Mumia, his decades. At a rally in Boston held at the many cases will mean no right to appeal denounced the "ill-advised" publication attorneys, Addison-Wesley and others memorial to the black Civil War soldiers at all. of Jamal's book as "the only true mis­ with being part of a "conspiracy" to help of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, a In the midst of a bipartisan attack on carriage of justice here" and threatened bring his book out! The effect of this statement was read from Michael and social programs from welfare to Medi­ Jamal's supporters for their "insult to has been to further cut Mumia off from Robert Meeropol, children of the Rosen­ care, particularly targeting the black police officers." his attorneys and the media. On June 27, bergs. They stated: "Our parents were ghetto masses, Clinton and Gingrich are When it comes to "miscarriage of jus­ Jamal filed for an injunction against the almost saved by the mobilization of intent on reviving J. Edgar Hoover's. tice," the Philly cops and their honchos prison to stop the authorities' interfer­ thousands of Americans .... We must not COINTELPRO terror operation of the in Harrisburg have been up to their necks ence with Jamal's correspondence with shy away from the defense of Mumia. 1960s and '70s. This program of assas­ in scandals and convictions. Former his attorneys and to allow paralegal vis­ We must make sure that NO AMERI­ sination, disruption and surveillance Philly FOP head John Shaw was recently its and press interviews. CAN POLITICAL PRISONER suffers against leftist and black organizations­ sentenced to prison for racketeering and Mumia refuses to be silenced by such the fate of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg." which led to the killing of 38 Panther fraud, another Philly cop was convicted measures. Even while facing the most In Oakland, California over 500 dem­ members-also went after Mumia from earlier this month for shaking down restrictive conditions, Jamal has pro­ onstrated, including a contingent from the time he was a 15-year-old leader of motorists, and state attorney general duced a stream of new articles counter­ the International Longshoremen's and the Philadelphia Panth~rs. Now the gov­ Ernest D. Preate Jr. just resigned after ing the campaign to kill him. In "First Warehousemen's Union, which unfurled ernment wants a new COINTELPRO pleading guilty to an illegal gambling Amendment Rites," he reports on a June its banner next to the speaker's platform. directed at the entire population. scam. Furthermore, a Jewish ex-cop has 9 Department of Corrections hearing Owen Marron, executive secretary of the In their quest to kill this award­ sued the Philadelphia police department where an examiner concluded: Alameda County Central Labor Council, winning journalist, the state of Pennsyl­ for blatant anti-Semitism. "'Jamal does not deny the [journalism] linked the defense of Jamal with the vania has joined ranks with the reac­ Ominously, as Philadelphia's Police charges but cites a violation of First struggle against anti-labor repression and tionary regime in Iran, which issued a Advisory Commission announced hear­ Amendment rites.' ... pledged labor's support in the fight for Jatwa (death sentence) against author ings into the savage 1994 cop killing of "The 'examiner' found me 'guilty' and Jamal's life. Also on the West Coast, the sentenced a man with less than 75 days Salman Rushdie for his humanistic writ­ Hispanic truck driver Moises Dejesus, to live, to 30 days 'DeS' or disciplinary Los Angeles County Democratic Party ings, and Bangladesh, where a similar FOP head Richard Costello baldly custody status, to start immediately. Central Committee recently passed a res­ edict was proclaimed by Islamic reac­ vowed that no cop would cooperate "(I've been called many things, but 'con­ olution urging a new trial for Mumia and tionaries against leftist woman writer with the panel. Such statements show victed journalist''? That's a new one!)" the recusal of Judge Sabo, who, it notes, Taslima Nasrin. that the enforcers of capitalist "justice" The racist rulers iQtend to execute "has sentenced more people to death (31, The publication of Jamal's book had feel they are above even the fig leaf of Mumia as a sign that they will brook no all but two persons of color) than any already touched off a well-orchestrated legal restraint. In 1990 the FOP's Cos­ defiance. Murderous police terror has other judge in the United States." national campaign by the Fraternal Order tello threatened that Jamal's supporters intensified a~ the ruling class pushes In New York, over 1,000 marched of Police (FOP) to vilify Jamal as "prof­ should be-put on an "electric couch." through a program aimed at wiping out around Madison Square Garden, chant­ iting from a crime" and to call for a boy­ a whole layer of the ghetto population ing, "Free Mumia!" A truck driver who cott of Addison-Wesley. Last month, rac­ They Want to Silence by dismantling welfare and other social honked his horn in solidarity was ist FOP thugs from New York, New. Jamal Forever programs. In this climate of social reac­ arrested by police on the spot. Earlier, Jersey and Philly picketed a fund-raising As state officials ready the execution tion, Mumia is being set up to be the on June 3 in Minneapolis, cops viciously event for Jamal in Manhattan featuring gurney, they have ~imultaneously esca­ first political prisoner executed in the attacked a demonstration of 200 Jamal the actor Giancarlo Esposito and other lated their campaign to silence Jamal U.S. since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg supporters, charging into the crowd on prominent personalities. And the day the and his supporters. Prison authorities were killed in the electric chair in horseback, macing them and arresting

Mumia Abu-Jamal tiles appeal against scheduled execution

White police officers Black police officers 50 it 31nsl~r~aln News white Philadelphia police Black journalist for \be E. Hampton said during a .,__ .. ____ --~ Mumia Abu-Jamal.

8 WORKERS VANGUARD eleven. In his column '''Free' Speech = Police Riot," Jamal condemns the cop aI6t f(iilabtlpliiajluqnim' 12 June 199,5 attack, remarking that the demonstrators "don't need to read Live from Death Row Mumia files to find out how innocent people can be for new -trial FBI file on Abu-Jamal beaten and arrested by brutal cops, nor how cops routinely lie in police reports Meanwhile, his supporters recalls another era to support arrests. They now know by stage two demonstrations 10'''*'- ...... For five years starting in 1969, there was little tha1 U05 Ang~1~5 mtm~5 their lived experience, what they saw, - n.J),N..."-Sb.{fW"",, he did that the FBI did not know about. 8 June 1995 heard or felt, how this evil abuse of state power proliferates." Lawyers Seek New Trial for Pennsylvania , Demonstrations for Jamal were also held in numerous other cities, from Seat­ Death Row Inmate, Saying Evidence Was Withheld ercion and harassment," he added. Legal Lynching tle to Detroit to Toronto, Vancouver and A spokesman for the kM:a1 Frater­ nal Order of Police dlsq,reed. Montreal in Canada. Around the world, ..!t'. fUll like the IlttJe kkt who us crumbs.lI_round his mouth and be More Obscene the fight for Jamal has become the focal telll his JI'IOIher, 'I didn't eat the cookie.' .. said the ,roup's vice presi­ point of struggle against the racist death dent, Ken Rocks. Than Any Film penalty in the U.S. Trade unions repre­ senting millions of workers have added • Mumia Abu-Jamal has become their voices to demand that Mumia must a cause for Hollywood liberals, not die. On June 15, the European Parlia­ who are ment unanimously approved a resolution reaffirming its "complete opposition to States and indeed exactly the same law The 60,000 to 70,000 workers there then worldwide movement in the 1930s to the death penalty" and calling for a and order lobby that is at work in this shouted their unanimous agreement with prevent the legal lynching of the Scotts­ stay of execution and a new trial for country as well." John Monks, head of this proposal, placing the demonstration boro Boys, nine black youths framed on Jamal, noting "the appeals of many peo­ the British Trades Union Congress, has officially on record in defense of Jamal. charges of raping two white women in ple, human rights organizations, trade also sent a protest statement to Ridge. Demonstrations in several cities in Alabama. What is particularly critical unions and other organizations world­ A June 23 protest in Warsaw drew 200 Germany have drawn Turkish and Kurd­ today is to turn the support Mumia's wide, which are fighting to save the life supporters of Mumia's cause. In Italy, a ish immigfant youth, anti-fascist mili­ cause has begun to receive from the labor of Mr. Mumia Abu-Jamal." national demonstration for Jamal in tants and leftists, including two protests movement into the sort of concrete Nowhere is. support for Mumia grow­ Rome on June 24 was made an official in Berlin of some 300 people each. The action indicated by the workers' protests ing faster than in South Africa, where part of a larger protest against pension June 7 Berlin protest heard a statement in Johannesburg and Rome. While in the militants identify his plight with their cuts the same day. Demonstrators in the from Markus Wolf, a refugee from Hit- ' U.S. in particular the trade unions have own struggle against apartheid terror (see Jamal contingent chanted, "Freedom for ler's Third Reich who was later the head taken one blow after another under their WVNo. 624,2 June). In a May 31 letter Mumia Abu-Jamal!" "Freedom for all of East German intelligence and himself pro-capitalist misleaders, as part of the to Governor Ridge condemning the threat the comrades in jail!" and "Freedom for victimized by a vicious witchhunt by the struggle to reinvigorate the labor move­ to execute Jamal, the predominantly all communists!" As Jamal's supporters German Fourth Reich. Wolf recalled his ment it is necessary to translate the evi­ black Congress of South African Trade merged with the larger rally, a banner parents' support to the international cam- dent sentiment for Jamal's cause into Unions (COSATU) wrote that "our or­ mass protest and struggle. ganisation has struggled against all forms o There is no place in this fight, or in J:: of racism, oppression and the use of [the] a. the labor movement in general, for the death sentence to silence political activ­ ~ police, black or white. Whatever their ists." Now the country's second-largest personal feelings about the death pen­ union federation, the National Council alty, black cops are just as much a part of Trade Unions (NACTU), has added of the capitalist apparatus of racist its voice to the fight to save Jamal. repression as their white brothers-in­ Oakland, June 5: The very day the signing of Jamal's Brian McWilliams, blue. At the June 5 Philly rally, after a death warrant was announced, African president of representative of the National Black National Congress (ANC) secretary gen­ International Police Officer's Association spoke, PDC eral M.e. Ramaphosa fired off a protest Longshoremen's speaker Ed Jarvis said of the threatened letter to Ridge. On June 19, at a rally in and Warehouse­ execution of Jamal: Johannesburg organized by COSATU as men's Union "This legal lynching is one side of the part of a national day of action, a spokes­ Local 10, legal lynchings that go on every day man for the Partisan Defense Committee addresses rally against black people, against working­ addressed a crowd of 15,000 workers to save Mumia class people by both black as well Abu-Jamal. as white cops.. .. It's time to build a who enthusiastically took up the chant, working-class party_ It's time to save "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal!" Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abolish the death Internationally, within days of Ridge's penalty! Finish the Civil War!" execution order, protests spread from The state's lust for the blood of a Sydney, Australia to Tokyo and Paris. was set up next to the official podium paign for the labor martyrs Sacco and man whose "crime" is to speak force­ While on tour in London, Jesse Jackson reading, "Save the Life of Mumia Abu­ Vanzetti, executed in 1927, and,declared, fully for those on the bottom of this was informed of the death warrant and Jamal! No to the Racist Death Penalty!" "During Nazi rule and the Holocaust we society is an object lesson for all those told a public meeting June 4, "We are all signed by the Committee for Social and owed our lives to international solidar­ struggling, for social equality and a in prayer that Mumia Abu-Jamal must Workers Defense, a fraternal organiza­ ity .... I therefore ask every individual decent life for all. Black freedom, and not die by capital punishment." Address­ tion of the PDe. After a speaker from who has met with injustice or who is the liberation of all from conditions of ing a June 7 London rally, Labour-Party the Mumia contingent from Naples fighting for his rights to join the demand social decay and regimentation, will Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn called for Jamal's freedom, one of the to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal." finally come only through a workers said, "This proposed -legal murder of 'official platform speakers said, "I think revolution that sweeps away the bloody someone who is not even guilty of the that I can safely say that all of us here A Proletarian Strategy to capitalist state, its prisons, courts and crime for which he has been charged is want to express our - solidarity with Smash Racist Repression cops, and with it the death penalty and yet another example of the brutality of Mumia Abu-Jamal, that we all defend A massive outcry to save Mumia's life all other barbaric vestiges of oppression the law and order lobby in the United Mumia Abu-Jamal. Do you all agree?" is urgently necessary. It took a powerful and exploitation. _

;\.arJl.

Workers Hammer .' ...... Jt... ~ International protests against death senJence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. From left: Tokyo, London, Berlin. .. '":4 Left: Spartacist Group Japan sign reads, "Death Penalty in Japan: Barbaric Legacy of Feudalism. Death ...... Penalty in America: Racist Legacy of Slavery." 30 JUNE 1995 9 Frame-Up ... (continued from page 7) claim that Jamal was shot while standing over an already wounded Faulkner is physically impossible, according to Dr. John A. Hayes, a forensic pathologist who is the New York City Associate Medical Examiner and a former chief resident in anatomic pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Hayes points out that the bullet Faulkner fired at Jamal had a steep downward trajectory, entering his chest at the nipple and lodging in his lower back. Rizzo with his hero, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1972. Above: "Prosecutor in robes" Judge Sabo and The "Confession": Pennsylvania "Governor Death" Tom Ridge. 2 A Belated Fabrication The second leg of the prosecu­ Camino Books tion's case is that Jamal-an experi­ frequently had coffee with him. At the trial, Scanlan said he couldn't charges awaItmg trial in Philadelphia. enced court reporter and journalist­ More importantly, neither Bell nor the identify the shooter at all. Furthermore, Following the shooting, Faulkner's pre­ supposedly made a loud "confession" of security guard said anything about a none of these "eyewitnesses who had cinct was given her photo and told to gUilt in the hospital. Again we quote "confession" until more than two months never lost sight" of Jamal saw him being refer her to the Homicide Division if she Assistant D.A. Gordon: after the fact, when Jamal pressed bru­ shot. was taken in. In the next ten days, she "While doctors were attempting to pro­ tality charges against the cops who beat As for Chobert, he initially told arriv­ was taken to Homicide twice-on pros­ vide emergency treatment to Officer him at the hospital. It was not in Bell's ing police that the shooter was 225 titution charges! Each time she was let Faulkner, other police officers were try­ police log that night nor in a statement pounds an"d "ran away." Chobert later off; each time she tailored her story more ing, despite Abu-Jamal's resistance, to he gave a week later. However, Gary said the shooter ran "30 steps," and then to the cops' liking to implicate Jamal. bring him into the emergency room. While in the vestibule, Abu-Jamal turned Wakshul, the cop who was assigned to changed that at the trial to only ten feet. The prosecution primly denied that to Officer Faulkner's former partner and guard Jamal and was with him the entire Jamal, however, weighed 170 pounds White had been offered a deal for her said, 'I shot the mother fucker and 1 hope time between his arrest and his medical and was found where he fell critically testimony. But another witness, Veronica the mother fucker dies.' Abu-Jamal treatment, wrote in his official report that wounded at the scene. Chobert, who is Jones, a prostitute who knew her, testi­ shouted this again when he was brought day that "during this time the negro male fied that a few weeks after the shooting, within a few feet of the area where Offi­ white, supposedly identified Jamal from cer Faulkner was being unsuccessfully made no statements." among three black men with dreadlocks police hauled Jones in and offered to treated. (Hospital workers testified to on the scene that night. Chobert's "iden­ give her a deal like White: Jamal's rantings at his trial)" The Witnesses: tification" of Jamal consisted of the "They were getting on me, telling me I In the first place, by the time Jamal police asking "is that the guy?" as they was in the area and I seen Mumia, you 3 Coercion and Concoctions opened the van in which Jamal lay with know, do it, you know, intentionally. was brutally dumped on the floor outside They were trying to get me to say some­ the door of the emergency room, with Now we come to the prosecution's his face and chest "very, very bloody" thing that the other girl said ... and they his arms handcuffed behind his back, he "eyewitnesses." Gordon writes: (as another witness reported). During told us we can work the area if we tell was in no condition to shout or "rant" "Officer Shoemaker, the first officer on this period, Chobert was on probation them." much of anything. He had been shot the scene; saw Officer Faulkner lying in for felony arson (he was paid for throw­ Judge Sabo struck that testimony from through the liver, with a bullet lodged a pool of blood and saw Abu-Jamal sit­ ing a Molotov cocktail at a school), with ting on the curb next to a gun. He ordered the record as "not relevant" and "far against his spine. A doctor who exam­ Abu-Jamal to freeze. Abu-Jamal instead two prior charges for driving while afield." However, White did indeed con­ ined Jamal no more than ten minutes reached for the gun. Officer Shoemaker intoxicated. Given that his livelihood tinue to "work the area" not only with after his arrival found him "weak .. :on again yelled, 'freeze,' but Abu-Jamal depended on driving a taxi, this made impunity, but with police protection. A the verge of fainting." Another doctor continued reaching for his weapon which him eminently susceptible to police recent affidavit by an investigator who the officer kicked out of his reach .... pressure. who saw Jamal when he was first Abu-Jamal was identified as the shooter tried (unsuccessfully) to interview White brought in-at the time of the alleged on the scene by three eyewitnesses who The star prosecution witness was Cyn­ on Jamal's behalf at the time reveals: confession--only heard him moan as a had never lost sight of him during the thia White. She was the only trial witness "There were always two (2) plain­ cop kicked him. entire incident." who claimed to see Jamal, gun in hand, clothesmen near where she worked her The "hospital workers" who claimed Even by the cops' own accounts of shoot Faulkner. Initially even she denied corner on Locust." So much for the pros­ to hear Jamal loudly proclaim his guilt what happened at the time, this story seeing Jamal with a gun. White claimed ecution's "three eyewitnesses." were a cop and a security guard. The stinks. The "three eyewitnesses" were the shooter was 5'8"-Jamal is 6'1". On the other hand, while only the cop was Garry Bell, Faulkner's part­ Cynthia White, a prostitute who said she White claimed to be standing right where dubious White claimed (belatedly) to ner and "best friend," who admitted was working the southeast corner at 13th the'VW pulled over. But no other wit­ "see" Jamal shoot Faulkner, at least five he threatened to kill Jamal. (Three years and Locust at the time of the shooting; ness-including Chobert and Scanlan­ witnesses saw a black male run from earlier, Bell had shot dead a motorist Robert Chobert, a cab driver; and Mark saw her there, and the only witness who the scene after the shooting in the direc­ after pulling him over for an alleged Scanlan, a young white motorist who recalled seeing her at all· said she was tion of an alley about the distance of traffic violation in the middle of the candidly admitted he'd been drinking over a half block away. White had a Chobert's "30 steps" away. Two ofthem, night in the black ghetto of West Phila­ and what he remembered was "confu­ police record a mile long. At the time of Chobert and William Singletary, explic­ delphia.) The security guard, who first sion." On the scene, Scanlan told police the trial, she was serving 18 months for itly said the running man was the lied that she didn't know Fallikner at that Jamal was the VW driver, and said prostitution in Massachusetts, with 38 shooter. Jones also initially reported see­ all, subsequently admitted thaf she'd he didn't know where the shooter went. prior arrests and three prostitution ing one or two men "sort of jogging"

Spread the word! The current issue of the POC's 2 Class-Struggle Defense Notes is devoted to the Join the Campaign! struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal. Order bundles of this P"rti§iln .aefen§e special campaign issue from the POC, 25 copies for Organize protest! Pass motions in your unions, ':::O...... ittee $10.00. Get your local bookstore to stock Jamal's pow­ campus, community and church organizations. Get 1 erful Live from Death Row. Contact the POC for speakers, your union or organization to make a contribution and to arrange showings of tl:1e POC's video, From Death join rallies and protests for Jamal. Publicize Jamal's case Row, This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. The video can be in your union or organization's newsletter. Prepare for purchased for $30.00 from the POC at the address emergency demonstrations-get on the Partisan De­ below. fense Committee phone tree to organize in your area. Send protests to: Governor Tom Ridge, Main 3 Capitol Building, Room 225, Harrisburg, PA 17120. In the first week after he signed Jamal's death warrant, Ridge received over 20,000 letters of protest. Now he's changing his phooe and fax number daily to try and stay ahead of the growing movement for Jamal! As we go to press, the numbers are: phone (717) 787-2500; fax (717) 783~8609. Funds are urgently needed! To get a new trial and 4 overturn the death sentence could cost over a mil­ lion dollars. Make a contribution today to the Bill of Rights Foundation (earmarked "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Defense") and mail it to: Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Amsterdam Ave., No. 115, New York, NY 10023-5001. Write to Jamal to express your solidarity: 5 Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. Contributions of $5.00 or more to the POC Roy Furman Highway, Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090. include a year's subscription to CSDN.

For more information:- Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 • (212) 406-4252

10 WORKERS VANGUARD was ever even charged in the police bombing of which she was the victim?) What of the trial Commonwealth v. Connor, where a man, based on police, ballistics and witness testi­ mony, was convicted of first-degree murder of a girl child, prosecuted by Prosecutor McGill, and sen­ tenced to spend the rest of his natural life in prison hellholes, where he was beaten, stabbed, spit on and dogged because he was a convicted "baby-raper"; "An Easy Ki II ... " was this a "strong" case? . After 11 years of this hell, through the efforts of an extraordinary defense attorney and his family, it was The root of the legal term "trial" i~ the English the defendant to walk out, that is fine. There is nothing learned that the "murder weapon" presented to the jury, word, "try." I can do and there is nothing that the judge or anyone a 12 gao shotgun, did not cause the baby's death, as could do that would affect that in any way. At the root of every trial is the state prosecutor, who "If you find the defendant guilty of course there would she was not shot, but stabbed, repeatedly, with an "tries" to convict the accused, using every means at be appeal after appeal and perhaps there could be a ice-pick. (Mr. Connor was arrested largely on the basis his considerable disposal; the wealth of the state, the reversal of the case, or whatever, so that may not be of his known ownership of a 12 gao shotgun.) police, experts, and behind it all, the power of gov­ final." [From Commonwealth V. Abu-Jamal, 7/1/82, p. In all of these cases, McGill (now a defense lawyer ernment to compel, to intimidate, to destroy. 146] for cops in the FOP who rob, steal, or kill) played For far too many defendants, their meager re­ Why would a prosecutor, one wonders, tell a jury the role of prosecutor, sending men to Death Row sources are no match for the awesome resources of such a thing, in his "strongest case ever tried"? or life in prison, with a mustached smile, and a prom­ a government of millions, and the "battle" is lost But, of course, in this life, all things are relative, ise to most jurors of the defendants' right to "appeal before it is even truly joined. as are the terms, "strong" or "weak." For instance, after appeal after appeal." One need look no further than that daily American most men think of women as "the weaker sex," but For such a guy, what does a "strong" case look true-life soap opera, "The Simpsons" (O.J., not if men had to give birth the very thought would make like? Homer) where you have an enormously wealthy most faint. 8 June 1995 defendant, holding his own with the state, as he fields, Were Commonwealth V. Beasley, Com,monwealth ©1995 by Mumia Abu-Jamal quite literally, some of the best legal talent money V. West, Commonwealth V. Simmons, or Common­ can buy. Consider if his name were, say, "OJ. Jack­ wealth V. Baker also "strong" cases? Logic suggests son," and he was an average, poor Joe, with a mort­ they were weak ones, for, in each case, Prosecutor Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia black jour­ gage, a 7-year-old car, and alimony to pay. Given McGill made the exact, almost verbatim argument to nalist, is on death row at Pennsylvania's Greene the same set of facts, isn't it the simple unvarnished the- jury, and each case was reversed, by at least one state prison. Framed up because of his political truth that this O.J. would be on Death Row by now, appellate court. views, Jamal faces death for his defiance of the facing two death sentences? Was the trial of MOVE bombing survivor Ramona racist, capitalist order. His columns appear peri­ What does this say about "Justice" in America? Africa a "strong" one, where the jury was told "not odically in Workers Vanguard and other news­ I thought of these things after my death warrant to worry," "do not concern yourselves about when, papers. was signed a few days ago" and I read, somewhere, or if, others, police, firemen, city officials will be To get involved in the fight to save Mumia Abu­ that the prosecutor at my trial, Joseph McGill, charged in connection with the MOVE bombing," Jamal and abolish the death penalty, contact the remarked that it "was the strongest case I ever tried." and "that is not for you to consider"? Here, again, Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal My first thought was, if that was so, why did he McGill played prosecutor, and Ramona spent 7 long Street Station, New York, NY 10013. If you wish to feel the need to argue, at the guilt/innocence stage years in a prison hellhole, for surviving her attempted correspond with Jamal, you can write to: Mumia of the trial: murder. (Is it mere coincidence that no other person, Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. Roy "If your decision of course were to acquit, to allow no cop, no official, no one except Ramona herself, Furman Hwy., Waynesburg, PA 15370.

away, but later recanted under police that Mumia was denied even a sem­ "prosecutor in robes." When he learned ber 1981) headline read, "Jamal: An Elo­ pressure. Dessie Hightower, a defense blance of "due process," from his initial he had been rated unqualified by one­ quent Activist Not Afraid to Raise His witness, actually testified at the trial that arraignment to jury selection to final third of attorneys surveyed, Sabo openly Voice," the Philly Daily News (9 Decem­ he saw a black man flee the scene after sentencing. During the course of the bragged about his pro-prosecution bias, ber 1981) was quick to point out that the shooting. Another witness, Debbie trial, Jamal repeatedly protested the vio­ saying if he were a defense attorney "I Jamal "wears his hair in dreadlocks and Kordansky, who was not available for lation of his rights, exclaiming on one wouldn't vote for me, either." was associated with several black activ­ testimony, also saw a man run away in occasion: The prosecutor, Joseph McGill, was ist causes." the same direction. "I have been told from the duration of no stranger to frame-up prosecutions. Radio talk shows were flooded with Singletary was threatened with vio­ this trial, the beginning of the trial, the McGill put another defendant, Matthew calls, some of them demanding that lence and arrest during his interview at inception of the trial, that I had a number Connor, away on a life sentence for of constitutional rights. Chiefly among Jamal be lynched. Article after article police headquarters, as the cops threw them the right to represent myself. The allegedly shooting a young girl, largely hammered away at his connections with away every statement he wrote until he right to select a jury of my peers. The on the basis that a shotgun was found in MOVE and the Black Panthers, repeat­ finally relented by denying that he had right to face witnesses and examine them his home; only after elev~n years did edly invoking the Panthers' use of the seen the shooting. Following this, he was based on information they have given. it come to light that the girt had been Maoist slogan, "political power grows repeatedly harassed and threatened at his Those rights were taken from me .... I want my rights in this courtroom because killed not with a shotgun but with an ice out of the barrel of a gun." place of business, until he finally shut my life is o~ the line." pick! McGill's jury arguments against Two days after the shooting, the Daily down and moved to another state. Jamal were a textbook in prosecutorial Jamal got a "trial" in name only. He News falsely reported that "Preliminary Singletary's story, which the police kept dirty tricks. With Judge Sabo egging him had no counsel to speak of. An indigent ballistics tests indicate the shots that from Jamal and his attorney at the rime, to "go ahead," McGill told the jury not man jailed without bail, Jamal was killed Police Officer Faulkner were fired has been revealed for the first time in to worry about sentencing Jamal to death granted only $150 each for an investi­ from the gun recovered from radio news­ Jamal's new legal filings. because he would have "appeal after gator and medical and ballistics experts. man Mumia Abu-JamaL" Four weeks Finally, as to Assistant D.A. Gordon's appeal after appeal." Knowing this case No pathologist or baHistician would later, a front-page headline blared, claim that Jamal "reached for the gun" had racially polarized the city, McGill acc~pt so low a retainer, and the inves­ "Jamal Confessed," attributing the claim when the cops arrived on the scene, that pushed the overwhelmingly white jury tigator ran out of funds after tracking not to Garry Bell but to a police inspector story was invented by cop Shoemaker to return a conviction because "the peo­ down only two of the over 100 people (who was subsequently convicted on to justify his kicking Jamal, wounded ple of Philadelphia" demand "action." interviewed by the police. His court­ payoff and tax evasion charges). This and bleeding, in the face. The report filed appointed attorney, Anthony Jackson, inspector was never called to testify at that night by Shoemaker's own partner protested he was too busy to handle the A Kangaroo Court Jamal's trial. By the time of the trial, all noted only that Jamal was pleading for 2 case and needed help. Four times, Jack­ but seven of the 80 or so members of help-saying, ''I'm shot, I'm shot"­ son requested additional funds from the In a "bedside arraignment" on 9 De­ the jury pool admitted to being familiar while the partner "went to the curb and court; four times, the request was denied. cember 1981, Jamal was charged with with media coverage of the case. recovered two revolvers ... because I saw Finally, Jamal asked to represent himself murder in the first degree, i.e., premed­ an intoxicated white male walk down Judge Sabo and prosecutor McGill and prepared his own case for trial. Then, itated murder. But even by the cops' own carefully screened the jury to ensure its from the corner. .. [and] was concerned on the first day of the trial, the court account, there could have been no pre­ "law and order" bias. On the third day about him going near the weapons." completely stripped Jamal of his self­ meditation in this shooting incident of jury selection, Sabo denied Jamal­ representation rights and forced Jackson which, from the time Faulkner pulled who . was then still formally repre­ to take over the defense. When J,amal over the VW until he lay wounded on senting himself-the right to interview The "Trial": protested, he was ejected from the court the street, lasted less than two minutes. prospective jurors, claiming that the pace A Travesty of Justice and missed large portions of the trial. Presiding over the arraignment was ... was too slow. McGill systematically That left the unprepared, unwilling and Municipal Judge Lynne Abraham, cur­ excluded blacks from the jury, using bungling Jackson-who failed even to rently Philadelphia D.A. eleven of his 15 peremptory challenges 1 A Hanging Judge subpoena witnesses or prepare them Long before Mumia had his "day in to remove all but three of 14 potential before putting them on the stand-to court," he had been tried and convicted black jurors. One of the remaining three, This, then, was the morass of con­ handle the defense alone. by the Philadelphia media. Faulkner's a black woman who was the only juror trived, coerced, partial and contradictory Sabo is the most notorious hanging death was front-page news-and he was person'ally selected by Jamal and who "evidence" which Assistant D.A. Gor­ judge in the country, the "king of death treated with all the sympathy and honor the judge had opposed from the begin­ don claims to be "overwhelming, one of row." He had served for 16 years as an the capitalist press accords a dead cop­ ning, was then removed by Sabo behind the strongest" cases he has ever seen. To undersheriff and is a retired member of while Jamal was a prominent and con­ Jamal's back after she left briefly before secure a conviction on this basis, the - the Fraternal Order of Police. Even for­ troversial black personality. While an the trial began to attend to a. personal cops, prosecutors and courts saw to it mer prosecutors have called Sabo a initial Philadelphia Inquirer (10 Decem- continued on page 12 30 JUNE 1995 11 is a liar on the stand." also sought to convince them that they Jamal is fighting for his life in a cli­ Frame-Up ... Most importantly, Sabo, McGill and would bear no responsibility for the legal mate of all-sided racist reaction. Just the cops ganged up to make sure that lynching, claiming that Jamal could sub­ look at the political rulers of this country. (continued from page 11) Jamal's police guard Wakshul, who could mit "appeal after appeal after appeal," Democratic president Bill Clinton took emergency. (When a white juror had to have refuted the purported "confession," so that in reality the death sentence time out from his 1992 presidential leave for a day in the middle of testi­ would not testify. When Jamal's lawyer would be no death sentence at all. This, campaign, when he was governor of mony, Sabo not only provided him with called for Wakshul to appear, the follow­ as well, was a flagraqt violation of Arkansas, to rush back to Little Rock to a court escort but rescheduled the pro­ ing exchange ensued: Jamal's rights. personally ..Dversee the execution of a ceedings to suit him.) The black juror "Court: What is this officer that you brain-damaged black man. The U.S. was then replaced by a white man who want? What is he going to testify to? "Appeal After Appeal Congress last year added-with near "Jackson: That he picked Jamal up at the After Appeal"? unanimity-some 60 more capital of­ openly confessed to bias in the case scene. 4 when'interviewed by Jamal's attorney. "Court: So? When in 1989 Jamal appealed this fenses to the federal lawbooks. Now, New evidence also reveals that during "Jackson: DUTing this time the negro flagrant use of his political associa­ with equal bipartisan fervor, it intends jury deliberations a clique of white jurors male made no comment. He was with tions in his sentencing, the Pennsylva­ to define virtually any crime involving him the entire time. a handgun as a "terrorist" act warranting formed a secret faction which met to dis­ "Prosecutor: He is not around. I am nia Supreme Court backed up its man cuss the case at night and then took over going to object to bringing this guy in." McGill, arguing that Jamal's member­ the death penalty. And more than once the deliberations by picking one of their ship in "an unpopular political organi­ in the past year alone, the courts have Then, as McGill supposedly went to allowed the executions of death row pris­ own as foreman. check on Wakshul's whereabouts, Sabo zation" like the Black Panther Party In being excluded from the judge's demonstrated his "longstanding disdain oners who were demonstrably innocent. . insinuated, "he could be on vacation." Meanwhile, more than one and a half consultation over the black juror and Sure enough, despite a "no vacation" another secret consultation, Jamal's million people, most of them black and order on Wakshul's police report, McGill Hispanic, already languish behind prison rights were violated both as legal counsel soon returned to report that "he is on and as defendant. When Jackson pro­ bars. As Jamal points out in his column, vacation until July 8th." Sabo then "An Easy Kill ... " (see page 11 in this tested on one occasion, "I would not want adamantly den;ed Jamal's appeal for to do that out of the presence of Mr. issue), only with the millions of dollars a continuance, sneering: "Your attorney of an OJ. Simpson can a black man hope Jamal," Sabo snapped back: "I don't care and you goofed." about Mr. Jamal." Indeed, Jamal's rights for even a semblance of justice in Amer­ ica's courts. were violated time and again during the trial. The court rejected repeated requests 3 The Lynch Law Sentence In Pennsylvania, Jamal's case is a for a lineup to test White and Chobert's defining political issue. The governor is Following this monstrous frame-up, a fervent advocate of the death penalty identificat-ion of Jamal. The court al­ on 2 July 1982, the jury returned a ver­ lowed the cops and prosecution to refuse who was once a prosecutor himself. In dict of first-degree murder. The next day, response to a question about racial bias to hand over the addresses of people they the Saturday of the July 4th weekend, interviewed. The prosecution not only in Jamal's trial, where the jury was over­ Jamal was sentenced to death. Jamal's whelmingly white, Ridge ludicrously concealed evidence of Jamal's inno­ appointed attorney made no effort to pre­ cence, but also intimidated and coerced asserted that juries are "colorblind .... pare for the sentencing hearing and Color has nothing to do with their ulti­ witnesses to conform to the cops' story. didn't call a single character witness to This was a clear and flagrant violation mate decision." In the 1987 McCleskey say why this talented and courageous ruling, even the U.S. Supreme Court of the constitutional right to due process. writer, who had no prior criminal record The Brady rute stipulates that the pros­ admitted that race has plenty to do with and no history of violence, should not death sentences, but ruled that it didn't ecution's failure to disclose evidence die. When Jamal rose to read a statement favorable to the defense invalidates a matter. Ultimately, this boils down to the protesting the guilty verdict and the "principle" enunciated by Chief Justice guilty verdict. The most egregious exam­ denial of his rights, Sabo used this as an ple of this in Jamal's case is how the Jamal's recently published book has Taney in the 1857 Dred Scott slavery excuse to let McGill openly introduce infuriated his persecutors. case, that blacks "had no rights which a cops threatened Singletary into changing Jamal's political past and beliefs into the his story and then forced him out of white man was bound to respect." It took trial. McGill "cross-examined" Jamal for the system." The entire proceedings a Civil War to overturn that verdict and town. But it is not the only instance. The about a 1970 newspaper interview in had an extraordinary character. Jamal's prosecution refused to reveal that one of the slave' system which it represented, which he talked about his Panther activ­ appeal was decided on by only four of and it will take workers revolution to the witnesses (Hightower) who saw a ities. The trial transcript shows the fol­ the seven' justices. Chief Justice Nix man run from the shooting scene had overturn capitalism and its system of lowing exchange: actively intervened in the oral arguments criminal injustice. Our fight against the passed a lie detector test. They hid the "Q: You've often been quoted as saying against the district attorney, making the fact that at least one other witness (Rob­ racist death penalty is part and parcel of this: 'Political power grows out of the point that the argument of repeated the struggle to finish the unfinished tasks ert Harkins) was shown a photo array barrel of a gun.' Do you remember say­ appeals had already been found uncon­ and apparently did not identify Jamal as ing that, sir? of the Civil War through a third, socialist "A: I remember writing that. That's a stitutional in instances where the same American revolution. the shooter. Harkins was never called to D.A. (McGill) used the same language quotation from Mao-Tse-Tung .... The application of the death penalty testify and recently admitted to Jamal's "Q: Do you recall saying: 'All power to before the same judge (Sabo). Yet mys­ is racist everywhere in the United States, new investigator that a "detective' down­ the people'? .. teriously, the chief justice did not par­ but it is perhaps even more egregiously town'" told him "not to talk with anyone "A: Yes. ticipate in the vote. from the defense." The prosecution also "Q: Do you believe that your actions as so in Pennsylvania. Well over half the well as your philosophy are consistent Three years later, in a 1992 ruling on men on death row in Pennsylvania were withheld numerous other pieces of infor­ with the quote: 'Political power grows the Dawson case, the U.S. Supreme mation, including secret meetings with out of the barrel of a gun.' sentenced in heavily minority Philadel­ Court overturned a death sentence be­ phia, which has consigned more people witnesses and evidence concerning the "A: I believe that America has proven cause the prosecutor had cited the defen­ unreliability of the autopsy. that quote to be true." to the death mills than any city except dant's association with the fascist Aryan Houston in the Deep South. Although Another key legal guideline discarded McGill then argued that Jamal should Brotherhood. Yet the U.S. Supreme in Jamal's case was the Chambers ruling die because" these decade~old quotes sup­ Philadelphia (40 percent black) and Alle­ Court twice turned down a review of gheny County (Pittsburgh and its sub­ which mandates that the jury must be posedly proved that he had intended to Jamal's appeal on the same grounds, allowed to hear testimony which would kill a cop "all the way back then." Based urbs, which are 90 percent white) have once in 1990 and again at the time the roughly the same population, Philadel­ affect the credibility of prosecution wif~ on constant surveillance by the Philly Dawson case was pending before the nesses. Sabo refused to allow Chobert cops and the FBI and on Jamal's police phia has sent 15 times as many people court. In this and a hundred other ways, to death row, and 80 percent of those to be cross-examined on his previous fel­ files, which they didn't disclose, the it is clear that Jamal's trial was a political ony conviction. He struck the prostitute prosecution knew that from "way back from Philadelphia are black. The Phila­ frame-up from start to finish, from bot­ delphia D.A. seeks the death penalty in Veronica Jones' testimony of a police then" Jamal had never committed any tom to top. deal with Cynthia White. And when the criminal acts but had simply spoken out as much as 85 percent of capital cases. defense asked for the detectives who for his political beliefs. The Philadelphia juridical system is interviewed Jones to testify, Saba fumed, In his argument to the jury during marked by an unconstitutional "Homi­ "we don't have to prove every witness the sentencing phase, prosecutor McGill Justice Demands cide Unit" of hanging judges-like Sabo-who only hear murder cases. Freedom/or This special panel is apparently self­ Mumia Abu-Jamal! selecting: these are the judges who rea\ly groove on death. Jamal's lawyers have The frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal is moved to disqualify Sabo as a' biased an object lesson in the class nature of judge, but under Pennsylvania's rules Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League the capitalist state. The cops, the courts Sabo comes out of semiretirement to rule and the entire "criminal justice" system on his own bias! o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal colluded and conspired to bring down For many years, Philadelphia was (includes English-language Spartacist, Women and Revolution and Black History and the Class Struggle) this man whose only crime was that he Rizzotown, as the notoriously racist international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail was an eloquent and effective critic of police commissioner and then mayor the racist oppression they perpetrate and ran the city with an iron fist of ter­ o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) promote. As the legal papers recently ror and.' brutalized the black popula­ o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espano!) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) filed by Jamal summarize in conclusion, tion. But it did not require a Rizzo to Name ______"In this case, every basic trial element­ frame up Jamal, nor to firebomb the the defense, the prosecution, the jury, and MOVE home in 1985, killing eleven Address ______the court-was so riddled with prejudi­ 'black men, women and children and ______Apt. # Phone ( __ ) ______cial error as to deny Mr. Jamal any sem­ destroying an entire city block. That blance of a fair proceeding." M umia Abu­ heinous police crime was overseen by City State Zip _____-= 625 Jamal did not have a fair trial, he could' black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode, Make checks payable/mail to: SpartacistPublishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 not have had a fair trial and he would who at the same time refused to go to not now be allowed to have a fair trial. the scene because he' said he feared 12 WORKERS VANGUARD La Migra's Privatized Prisons Warren Goldberg Rev'olt in INS Hell On June 18, some 300 refugees who this case literally) thousands of refu­ were being held by the Immigration and gees in the most appalling conditions. Naturalization Service (INS) at a hor­ The Elizabeth detention center, a con­ rific "prison for profit" in Elizabeth, verted warehouse in an industrial area, New Jersey rose up in anger and des­ was run by Esmor Correctional Serv­ peration and drove out their racist tor­ ices, one of the largest of the score of Desperate mentors. The furious prisoners virtu­ companies managing private, for-profit asylum seekers ally destroyed the jail before being prison operations across the country. who rebelled overpowered six hours later by club­ For operating this and other jails, against inhuman wielding riot cops. The devastation tes­ Esmor gets $75 tq $100 a day from the treatment in tified to the detainees' bitter resent­ INS for each detainee and then turns a Elizabeth, ment: metal tables bolted to the floor profit by brutalizing the inmates and . New Jersey were ripped up and torn to pieces, driving conditions down to an inhuman immigration jail cinderblock walls were smashed, and level (an incredibly low $1.12 per day are rounded up sinks, toilets and other fixtures were was spent for each person's meals). by cops. pulverized. On the wall near the guards' In Elizabeth, prisoners were shack­ post was painted the single word, led to tables and chairs when meeting "Freedom." with visitors, lights were left on all grants of public benefits, and the status which allowed people fleeing These prisoners were locked up with­ night preventing sleep, and no one was approval by the Republican-dominated death squad terror in Guatemala and out having been accused of any crime allowed outside of the windowless House of Representatives of a welfare Salvador to remain in the U.S., expos­ -practically all were seeking political building for exercise. Yet these condi­ bill that would virtually deprive legal ing some 200,000 refugees to possible asylum in the U.S. Many had endured tions, which many endured for more immigrants of access to federal assis­ forced return and savage repression. horrendous persecution in their coun­ than six months as they waited for hear­ tance programs. Meanwhile, Democrat Recently, Clinton kicked off his '96 tries of origin. Yet, as with most asy­ ings on their appeals for political asy­ Clinton is rapidly expanding the Border presidential campaign by engaging in lum seekers who arrive in this country lum, are not substantially worse than Patrol and has called for cutting immi­ some electoral Japan-bashing at the without the proper documents in hand, those in the notorious centers run by gration by one-third and barring all General Motors plant in Edison, New no sooner had they landed at New la migra itself, such as El Centro unskilled workers. Jersey. In the present period of height­ York City's airports than the INS sum­ in California's Imperial Valley, "El It has also been revealed that the ened interimperialist rivalries and bur­ marily hauled them off to jail. There, Corral6n" (The Big Corral) in Bayview, Clinton administration is developing geoning trade wars, anti-immigrant they were physically and sexually Texas, and the Krome Avenue facility "contingency plans"-inspired by its racism is fostered by the bourgeois pol­ assaulted by guards, denied food and in Miami. racist policy of sending Haitian refu­ iticians to undercut the integrated exercise, and bombarded with racial The revolt by refugees in Eliza­ gees to U.S. military bases in Pana­ working-class struggle that's urgently and ethnic slurs. Now the INS threatens beth takes place against the backdrop ma and Guantanamo, Cuba-to create needed to bring down this bankrupt to hit the "ringleaders" of this des­ of a growing anti-immigrant frenzy military-run concentration camps for capitalist system. No reprisals against perate revolt with criminal charges or whipped up by both capitalist parties. immigrants fleeing an economic crisis the Elizabeth INS prisoners! Asylum deportation. This was symbolized by the passage or "political upheaval" in Mexico or for victims of right-wing terror! Full In a blatant attempt to discourage last fall of Proposition 187 in Califor­ Central America. At the same time, the citizenship rights for everyone who's asylum seekers, the INS warehouses (in nia, which would deprive illegal immi- federal government ended the protected made it to this country!

for his life at the hands of the cops. ities, that the Pennsylvania Department 14-year-old anti-racist protester, spied shown it will tell any lie to see Jamal In Philly, many of the same people of Corrections has been intercepting, on by the local "red squad" and the FBI, dead, when the judges are hangmen in who hounded Jamal from the time he copying and evidently circulating privi­ placed on "subversives" lists and sub­ robes-what possible chance does Jamal was a teenage political activist until they leged correspondence between Jamal and jected to several attempted frame-ups as ever have to get a "fair trial" from this railroaded him onto death row are still his attorneys. This includes several letters a teenage youth. He was then shot by lynch mob? Simple justice demands that around today in positions of power. The this year and at least two letters from the cops in the dead of night, and when Jamal be freed immediately. He must be Philadelphia D.A. in 1981 was Ed 1994 which contained sensitive informa­ they failed to execute him on the streets, ftee to write, free to publish, here on the Rendell, who two days after Jamal's tion about the .legal strategy and inves­ they have tried ever since to kill him outside where he belongs and where he arrest was already proclaiming Jamal tigation being pursued in Jamal's quest through the courts. His trial was a trav­ can continue to struggle against racist guilty of murder; today Rendell is mayor. for a new trial and the overturn of his esty of justice from thet>tart, presided capitalist oppression. The Assistant D.A. who prosecuted death sentence. And since the warrant over by a notorious hanging judge, with From IWW revolutionary labor organ­ Jamal, Joseph McGill, is today openly was signed, all of Jamal's correspond­ evidence suppressed, witnesses intimi­ izer Frank Little to San Franci-sco union­ working as an attorney for the FOP, ence with his attorneys is being opened. dated and black jurors excluded. The ists Tom Mooney and Warren Billings defending its members against charges This blatant violation of Jamal's consti­ death sentence was blatantly based on to anarchist workers Nicola Sacco and of bribery, theft and corruption. And the tutional rights is.a concerted conspiracy his political beliefs, and his appeals have Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the early years arraignment judge in Mumia's case, to spy on and spike his legal defense been dismissed out of hand. But despite of the century, to the heroic Rosenbergs Lynne Abraham, is now the "liberill" efforts. the overwhelming forces arrayed against in the McCarthyite 1950s, to the 38 D.A. whose office has weighed in to try This sinister web of spying, intimida­ him, he has continued to fight, to be the Black Panthers who were gunned down to intimidate opposition to Jamal's legal tion and frame-up is not an aberration "voice of the voiceless." in the '60s-and the many more who lynching. which can be cleansed from the system, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been a special were jailed, some of them still behind Assistant D.A. Gordon's letter laid out as liberals would have it. "Rather it goes target of the racist rulers, because he bars today, like Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) the prosecution's tissue oflies in Jamal's to the very core of the capitalist state dared and dares to speak out with force -Mumia Abu-Jamal is one in a long case, and also issued some very real which, with its cops and courts, its pros­ and passion against their injustices. But line of fighters for social justice who threats. He concluded with a denun­ ecutors and executioners, is an instru­ the system which has tormented him also have been grievously victimized by the ciation that the" "ill-advised Addison­ ment for the repression of the working oppresses black and Hispanic minori­ capitalist rulers. Jamal should not Wesley decision to publish Mr. Abu­ class and the oppressed. This is part of ties as a whole, as its apparatus of have spent a day in jail in the first place, Jamal's book and reward him with a the Marxist understanding of the capi­ legal repression defends the property and he should not be in prison now. profit for his deed, looks to be the only talist state, and as Marxists we under­ and interests of the tiny handful of He should be allowed to join his fam­ true miscarriage of justice here," and stand that it will take nothing less than fabulously wealthy capitalists against ily and to join all those who seek ominously warned that those who'sup­ a workers revolution to sweep away this the working people who produce their and struggle for a society in which there port Jamal are guilty of an "insult to machinery of state terror whose purpose wealth. Jamal's case serves as a reminder will be no racist frame-ups and legal police officers, families of murder vic­ is to keep profits and interest payments of the fundamental realities of capital­ lynchings. While Jamal's lawyers pull tims and the thousands of law-abiding flowing into the coffers of Wall Street. ism, for the nightmare he has endured every possible legal lever to win his citizens who are no doubt repulsed by As part of a multiracial revolutionary continues today. The recent FBI/cop freedom, what's urgently needed is to your misguided and misinformed sup­ workers party which champions. the street execution in Philadelphia of an mobilize millions of workers and the port for this very cunning but despicable cause of all the oppressed, black wor~ers unarmed 23-year-old black man, Glenn oppressed worldwide to demand: Free murderer." will play a key role in sweeping away Thomas, is but one of the countless state­ Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racist Nor did the FBI and its agents and this system of exploitation, war and sanctioned murders which are a daily death penalty!_ surrogates in Pennsylvania cease their racism. Only in a socialist America, as occurrence in the ghettos and barrios. scrutiny and surveillance of Jamal with part of an international socialist society, In Clinton/Gingrich's America, what the demise of the Black Panther Party will working people and minorities find possibility is there for a valiant fighter NOTICE and the supposed dissolution of CO­ not only civil but social justice, a soci­ against oppression like Mumia Abu­ INTELPRO's Murder, Inc. As revealed ety in which youth will be faced not with Jamal to find justice in the criminal court Workers Vanguard skips by Jamal's recently released FBI files, a nightmare of ghetto and prison hell­ system? The legal proceedings against alternate issues in June, they continued to keep tabs on him and holes but education and meaningful him have been hopelessly tainted. When July and August. his supporters at least as recently as 1991. employment. the police have ruthlessly suppressed, Now it has been determined, on the basis Jamal's case is what capitalist state destroyed, and mutilated the evidence Our next issue will of pretrial discovery in a civil rights law­ (epression is all about: he was brutally beyond recognition, when the D.A.'s be dated July 28. suit by Jamal against the prison author- beaten by the Philadelphia police as a office with its smear campaign has 30 JUNE 1995 13 "- series of Balkan wars. rewrote its "Order No.1" for an ·"out­ . the Balkans with the same unilateral dis­ Balkans ... These began in the frontier regions of of-area" deployment of German military dain for its imperialist "allies," this Croatia as local Serbian militias backed fmces to include "vossib\e suVVmt fm would further anta~oni1.e the West Euro- \L\)'I\'h'l\)\~h ':ymm PQ:g~ \

a New World Order, a serious split in Pointing to the "extraordinary over­ lack of heavy weaponry, the current singing a different tune in Belgrade. Not NATO would quickly put an end to such reaction" to O'Grady's rescue, British Muslim offensive to break the siege of only will it be difficult for him to shove imperialist illusions. journalist Martin Woollacott castigated Sarajevo is unlikely to result in a deci­ a diktat down the throats of those fighting American foreign policy as "selfish, sive victory over the Serbs but only an in Bosnia, but Serbian society is not one U.S./UN/NATO Out of short-term, television-driven and subject intensification of the war with massacres seamless mass. While Milosevic, now the Balkans! to change at short notice" (London and counter-massacres by both sides. head of the Serbian Socialist Party, has In late April, the Croatian army Guardian, June 10). - If the imperialist "hawks" now vow aggressively played the nationalist card, launched an offensive taking over west­ These short-notice changes reflect in to fight to the last Bosnian Muslim sol­ his wife, Mirjana Markovic, is the leading ern Slavonia, a Serbian-populated region good part differences within U.S. ruling dier, the "doves" place thekhopes in, of ideologist of the "Communist Alliance­ which Serb forces had controlled since circles between, to use conventional all people, Siobodan Milosevit. Here is Movement for Yugoslavia," which has the first round of the Balkan war ended terms, hawks and doves. But in this case, a man vilified for years by Western pol­ been closely linked to the army and in late 1991. More than 5,000 Serbian the hawks wal]t to defeat the Serbs with­ iticians and the media as the preeminent claims to oppose nationalism. "For the refugees fled the advancing Croatian out fighting them. Instead, they propose "war criminal" in the Balkans, the archi­ last three years," she has written, "our army as hundreds were killed. The_Serbs to build up the war-fighting capacity of tect of "ethnic cleansing." Now he is pre­ newspapers have been making heroes predictably retaliated by shelling the the Bosnian Muslim forces. A prominent sented as the indispensable figure to out of war profiteers, killers driven by Croatian capital of Zag'reb and renewing ·spokesman for this line is Republican bring peace to the region. Washington is religious hatred and other criminals who artillery attacks on Sarajevo. Senate leader and presidential aspirant making a big diplomatic effort to induce make their sick atrocities out to be acts The Americans, overriding the objec­ Robert Dole, who calls for lifting the Milosevic to recognize Bosnia on the of patriotism and bravery" (quoted in Le tions of the British and French, decided UN-mandated arms embargo so that the basis of the boundaries it had as a Yugo­ Monde, 24 May). More fundamentally, o "punish!' the Serbs with air strikes Bosnian Muslims can supposedly fight slav republic in return for dropping the the working class, which has suffered against their arms depots in Bosnia. UN the Serbs on equal terms. international economic sanctions against greatly under the imperialist embargo and spokesman Fred Eckhardt blustered: The debate over the arms embargo Serbia. which in the pre-1991 Yugoslavia on "The idea was to send a strong political has become a diplomatic charade since There is no doubt that Milosevic is several occasions exploded in ethnically message that the escalating violence in in any case it is not being enforced. willing to sell out his embattled Serbian integrated class struggle, can only be Sarajevo had to stop." The Bosnian Over the past few years advanced weap­ brethren in Croatia and Bosnia in order harmed by this intercommunal slaughter. Serbs sent back a stronger message by onry has been pouring in to the Sara­ to convince the Western imperialists Marxist and proletarian international­ taking British and French soldiers hos­ jevo regime, mainly from Islamic coun­ that he is a man with whom they can ists oppose all sides in the squalid tage and chaining some of them to the tries, with U.S. approval. A senior State do business. But whether the Belgrade nationalist bloodbath that has ripped arms caches and other potential targets Department official conceded, "We're strongman can control Serbian forces in apart the former Yugoslavia, establish­ of American air power. The hostages not really against someone helping the Croatia and Bosnia, let alone the ultra­ ing capitalist rule over the corpses of were released in exchange for a promise Muslims" (Washington Post, 14 April). nationalists in Serbia itself, is another workers and peasants of all nationali­ of no further NATO air raids. The upshot The main "someone" arming the Bosnian question entirely. The crazed nation­ ties. We oppose all forms of impe­ was that the U.S. "get tough" policy Muslim forces is Iran, a state brtlnded alist fanatic Vojislav Seselj-once a rialist intervention in the Balkans, from toward the Serbs ended in humiliating by American imperialism as the center Milosevic henchman and ally, now an economic boycotts to "peacekeeping" its West European allies. of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism opponent-argues that "Whatever the troops to NATO air strikes. A democratic From the West European standpoint, and "international terrorism." But, as the superpowers gain with Milosevic· will and equitable resolution of the conflict­ insult was then added to injury by the saying goes, politics makes strange stay only on paper. His negotiating ing nationalist Claims in the Balkans can Captain Scott O'Grady affair, the U.S. bedfellows. power with other Serbs is minor now." only be achieved under the rule of the fighter pilot shot down by Bosnian Serbs The main obstacle preventing the Bos­ A deal between the NATO powers and proletariat, the only class without an who was rescued after hiding in the nian Muslims from getting the weapons Milosevic is no more likely to end the intere,st in pursuing nationalist goals. woods for six days. O'Grady was flown they want is, in fact, their sometime ally, seemingly interminable war in the Bal­ This bloody conflict underscores the to Washington where he was greeted by sometime enemy, the Croats. Bosnia is kans than the current Bosnian Muslim need for Trotskyist parties, built in the Clinton and the media like a conquering landlocked, so tanks and other heavy offensive. struggle to reforge the Fourth 'Interna­ hero. Cle(l,rly the American people are artillery have to pass through the Adri­ Milosevic has for some time been tional, to lead the fight for a socialist unwilling to risk the life of even a single atic ports in Croatia ... and sometimes carrying out a balancing act, trying to federation of the Balkans in a socialist U.S. soldier in the Balkan conflict. they don't pass through. Because of their placate the NATO imperialists while united states of Europe. _ 30 JUNE 1995 15 WfJ/iliE/iS"/I,,,/i,

Imperial­ ~ry, and the Ba er Last month, American warplanes tute in Washington, argues for scrapping bombed Bosnian Serb forces, which NATO altogether along with a total responded by taking British, French and withdrawal from Bosnia: "During the other UN "peacekeepers" hostage. Clin­ Cold War, NATO served a vital purpose. ton then announced that U.S. ground But, by keeping the alliance alive beyond troops would participate in "a recon­ its useful life, American policymakers figuration and a strengthening" of the risk seeing the United States sucked into UN forces. More than 23,000 U.S. mil­ obscure wars where the American interest itary personnel were dispatched or read­ is slight and where the American role-as ied for deployment to the Balkan region. in Bosnia-makes a bad situation worse" On June 3 at a NATO meeting in Paris, (Los Angeles Times, 30 May). Pentagon chief Perry pledged U.S. air U.S. policy in the Balkans, or rather support for a European "rapid reaction" the lack of any coherent policy, is not force. Yet that same day, following the determined by what is happening on the downing of a U.S. flier by Serb anti­ ground in Bosnia and Croatia but rather aircraft rockets, and facing an uproar by by Washington's shifting relations with the Republican-dominated Congress and London, Paris, Bonn, Moscow and, indi­ a hostile public reaction, the American rectly, Tokyo. For all their hesitancy, president backtracked, saying it was NATO's insertion of beefed-up strike "extremely unlikely" U.S. soldiers would forces points toward a change in the be involved, and then only to evacuate character of the war, "subordinating the the UN forces. Croat and Bosnian Muslim armies to an This kind of zigzag and double-talk imperialist war against the Serbs," as we is by no means unique to the hapless noted in our last issue. In that eventual­ and inept Clinton gang. Far from it. ity, it is the elementary duty of revolu­ Sounding macho, France's newly elected tionary Marxists and class-conscious rightist president, Jacques Chirac, de­ workers to defend the Serbs against an clared that French troops would no imperialist onslaught. longer be "humiliated" by the Serbs but would now fight back. The new 12,500- German Fourth Reich Pushed strong quick-reaction force has been set Bloody Breakup of Yugoslavia up for just that purpose. The French air­ craft carrier F och was dispatched to the The Socialist Federal Republic of Adriatic to join the USS Theodore Roo­ Yugoslavia was born out of World War II sevelt. At the same time, French officials S\jepanovic/AP when Tito's Communist Partisans suc­ were negotiating a private deal with Bos­ Serb forces bombed by U.S./NATO warplanes in Bosnia lastmQnth. cessfully battled the occupying Nazi nian Serbs to release UN "peacekeepers" ticated radar-jamming equipment will kan nationalists. The Croats and Bosnian German Wehrmacht as well as the Croa­ being held hostage against further NATO join NATO flights and provide air COVer Muslims, supposedly allies against the tian fascist Ustasha and Serbian royalist air strikes, and they are now talking of for the UN rapid-reaction force. This Serbs in a German-sponsored federa­ Chetniks. Emerging from the war with pulling out their troops-the. largest marks a major step for post-reunification tion, periodically tum on and fight one immense popular and moral authority, contingent of the UN/NATO fo~es in Germany, which has grown increasingly another. The Serbian nationalist camp, Tito and his comrades socialized the Bosnia-by the end of the year. assertive since annexing East Germany too, is divided into bitterly hostile fac­ economy-albeit in a bureaucratically The latest development is the decision in 1989-90. Bonn has already sent two tions quite capable of massacring each controlled and deformed manner-in the on June 26 by the German government warships to the area, 'and German offi­ other. name of the "brotherhood and unity" of to send armed forces to the Balkans. Tor­ cers are on board AWACS planes direct­ Fundamentally, the Balkan bloodbath the working people of Yugoslavia. Even nado fighter jets equipped with sophis- ing NATO air strikes, but this move is the product of capitalist counterrev­ a former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, marks the first combat mission for Ger­ olution in East Europe and the destruc­ Walter Zimmermann, contrasts the rela­ man military forces since World War II. tion of the Soviet Union under the pres­ tive national amity under the Titoist The decision is expected to be approved sure of world imperialism. Throughout system to the fratricidal nationalism of by the Bundestag (parliament), and has East Europe, that counterrevolution was today: split the opposition Social Democrats. fueled by, and in tum reinforced, resur­ "For all their sins, the Yugoslav Com­ munist leaders rarely incited their captive Still, German war minister Volker Riihe gent nationalism. At the same time, with audience to hate other Yugoslavs for their emphasized that Bundeswehr ground the disappearance of the Soviet Union ethnic origins .... Indeed the main cliche troops will not be sent to the former the system of Cold War alliances is fall­ of Tito's Yugoslavia was 'brotherhood Yugoslavia, where memories of the Nazi ing apart in the face of increasing inter­ and unity.' The nationalists are different. invasion are strong. imperialist rivalry, centrally between the From Belgrade and Zagreb they con­ stantly exhort citizens to hate members All of the parties involved in the United States, Germany and Japan. In of different ethnic groups." Balkan bloodbath-the various Western announcing Bonn's decision to send air -New York Review of Books, imperialists, the Russians, th~ local force, army and navy forces to the 2 February nationalists-engage in constant man­ region, German "defense" minister Riihe The murderous nationalism which euvers, backs tabbing and reversals of "said that contributing to the Balkans was characteristic of interwar capitalist policy. There have been countless and mission will give Germany more clout Yugoslavia has fed off and driven capi­ contradictory UN and NATO resolutions in Europe," the AP (26 June) reported. talist counterrevolution. This develop­ and "peace" plans, numerous cease-fires "'The Americans are clearly on the mar­ ment was prepared by the bureaucratic followed by new offensives and counter­ gins of the policy, with Britain and deformations and inherent limitations of offensives. Western governments rou­ France leading the way,' he said." Yugoslav Stalinism with its program of tinely denounce the Serbian leaders as The wars precipitated by the breakup building "socialism in one country." "war criminals" and then turn around and of Yugoslavia have exposed and inten­ Only extension of proletarian revolution negotiate new "peacekeeping" arrange­ sified the tensions within NATO, which to the advanced capitalist countries of Morris/Black Star ments with them. The disarray and divi­ has lost its central reason for existence. West Europe could provide the economic UN "peacekeepers" in Bosnia serve sions among the Western imperialists are Indeed, one right-wing ideologue in the basis for genuine national equality in the as cover for imperialists' maneuvers. mirrored by those of the embattled Bal- U.S., Jonathan Clarke of the Cato Insti- continued 011 page 14 16 30 JUNE 1995