llil 'AN"AIIIJ 50e No. 626 ~X-623 28 July 1995

JULY 24-Mumia Abu-Jamal is slated to be executed Jamal's attorneys, led by noted civil rights advo­ in barely three weeks. As the executioner's clock is cate Leonard Weinglass, first argued that Sabo, as ticking, across the country and around the world a retired judge, had no valid jurisdiction in this case. thousands of people are rallying to save the life of In ruling against the defense, Sabo exhibited what this fighter for black freedom. The fight to save would become a pattern of abuse of Jamal's attorneys Jamal has come to symbolize the struggle against and blatant bias in favor of the district attorney's the death penalty and the whole system of racist prosecutorial team. Known as the "King of Death capitalist oppression in America. In these crucial Row" for sentencing more people to death (at least weeks, we must muster all energy and strength for 31,28 of whom are minorities) than any sitting judge the battle which has been engaged. Particularly in the U.S., Sabo served 16 years as a Philadelphia important is to mobilize the power of the organized, 'tmdersheriff and is a "former" member of the Fra­ multiracial working class at the head of oppressed tenial Order of Police (FOP), which is actively cam­ minorities and all those committed to social justice paigning for Jamal's death. Despite overwhelming to demand: Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die! evidence of bias, Sabo refused to remove himself Jamal, the former Black Panther, award-winning from the case. He then refused to rule on the stay black journalist and supporter .of the MOVE organ­ of execution, saying the date was "not close enough." ization, has been on death row since 1982, when he And, in a move that death penalty experts called was framed up on charges of killing a cop. As FBI unprecedented, Sabo asked the defense to provide Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) files witnesses to testify as to why the stay should be show, this champion of black rights had been tar­ granted. geted by the Philly cops and FBI since the late 1960s. When court resumed two days later, Sabo again He was railroaded in a far-reaching conspiracy by refused to rule on the stay, saying that he would the Philadelphia police, judiciary and city rulers who Jennifer Beach take it "under advisement," i.e. delay the ruling as Philadelphia City Hall, July 12-Death row run this 40 percent black city as if it were Philadel­ pOlitical prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal heard long as he wished. He also denied a defense motion phia, Mississippi in the days of Jim Crow. From chants of over 800 demonstrators who for discovery, which would have required prosecu­ arch-racist Frank Rizzo, who as Philly's police com­ rallied in his defense on first day of court tors to turn over evidence that had been withheld. missioner (later mayor) lined up the Black Panthers hearing before "hanging judge" Sabo. The following week, Sabo demanded that the defense naked at gunpoint in the street in 1970, to black call witnesses to begin an evidentiary hearing on Democratic mayor Wilson Goode, who helped carry judge" Albert Sabo from this case. The defense the merits of the appeal on only two days' notice.' out the murder of eleven black men, women and papers give proof of Jamal's innocence and starkly Fighting against this outrageous maneuver, on July children in the 1985 bombing of MOVE, Philadel­ expose the mockery of justice which characterized 18 Jamal's attorneys obtained a one-week continu­ phia has come to symbolize black oppression in Jamal's arrest, trial and sentencing in 1982. Hearings ance from the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court. extremis in America today. on the appeal began on July 12 in front of Sabo in The hearing on the PCRA is scheduled to resume Now Mumia Abu-Jamal struggles for his life, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. on July 26, in Sabo's court. caught in the murderous net of the racist "justice" This court sessililn was the first time Mumia had' Sabo's intentions are crystal-clear: to keep Jamal's system. On June 1, the Harrisburg Patriot-News been able to appear in front of his supporters in appeal in his court as long as possible in order to reported that Jamal's attorneys were about to file Philadelphia since his banishment to death row 13 thwart attempts to appeal to a higher court, while papers for a new trial. That very night, Governor years before. The courtroom was divided, with racing ahead into hearings, giving Jamal's attorneys Thomas Ridge signed Jamal's death warrant, order­ scores of cops-virtually all white-on one side and virtually no time to prepare witnesses. Meanwhile, ing the execution by lethal injection to take place Mumia's family and supporters on the other. As the clock keeps ticking. After watching the proceed­ at 10 p.m. on August 17. The appeal for post­ Mumia entered, his supporters stood in silent soli­ ings on July 12, radical black academic Cornel West conviction relief (PCRA) filed on June 5 calls darity, until his grandson cried out, "Hi, grandpa!" remarked, "I've never ,seen a Jim Crow court until for a new trial. At that point, cheers for Mumia rang out inside the today. The whole atmosphere of this court is Mis­ 30 Together with that, court, and in the hall outside as well, where scores sissippi 1955" (Philadelphia Daily News, 13 July)...... Jamal's attorneys of people waited who could not get in. Throughout As we wrote in our last issue: filed motions for a the morning, and at every court appearance since, "Mumia is being set up to be the first political pris­ stay of execution hundreds of demonstrators rallied and marched out­ oner executed in the U.S. since Julius and Ethel and the recusal of side the court building, where their cries of "Sabo Rosenberg were killed in the electric chair in 1953, 7 25274I 81030I 7 notorious "hanging must go!" and "Free Mumia!" could be heard. continued on page 1 0 Chicago: Hundreds Die in Heat Wave

Only wben the bodies started piling retirees were afraid to even open their up on Saturday did Daley declare an windows for fear of the crime that seg­ Victims Are Mainly Poor, Aged, Blacks emergency. The flimsy emergency plan regation, racist neglect and massive entailed the use of "cooling centers" (but unemployment have brought to their CHICAGO-It was business as usual in no longer exploitable by a decaying cap­ made no mention of transporting peo­ neighborhoodS. City Hall when the worst heat wave on italist system, they were killed by offi­ ple to them) and called for issuing press Cook County Medical Examiner record scorched its way across Chicago cial indifference, social service cutbacks, releases about the dangers of 105-degree Edmund R. Donohue called the heat in mid-July. But by Saturday, July 15, declining medical care. temperatures. In other words, city offi­ wave a natural disaster, "an act of God" the thiro day in a row of 100-plus tem­ "We're talking about people who die cials told people it was really hot (Chicago Tribune, 20 July). But Quentin peratures intensified by high humidity, because they neglect themselves," said and they should go somewhere to cool Young, a Chicago physician and presi­ emergency vehicles were lined up out­ city Human Service Commissioner Dan­ down. dent of Health and Medicine Policy Re­ side a city morgue already jammed with iel Alvarez, while Mayor Richard Daley What help did' arrive was too little search Group, told Workers Vanguard, dead bodies. Refrigerated food trucks questioned the medical examiner's too late. Throughout the crisis profit­ "The heat wave was natural enough, but were borrowed to house the cadavers that method of counting the dead. But the conscious hospital administrators saved the disaster was avoidable. It's about as turned up over the next several days in administration's callous portrayal of old on overtime by refusing to beef up emer­ 'natural' as children dying of measles funeral homes and neglected apartments hermits stubbornly baking themselves to gency staffs. As a result, at least 16 hos- . because they don't get their immuni­ across the metropolitan area. By July 20 death was given the lie by the massive pitals went on "bypass" status, refusing zations." Young adds, "Our technical the toll of the dead in Cook County stood 50-60 percent jump in 911 emergency to accept patients. Like planes in- a hold­ resources and communication systems, at 456-mostly elderly, mostly poor, dis­ calls over the two hottest days, a collec­ ing pattern, ambulances were forced to properly organized and inspired, can proportionately black. A social "surplus" tive S 0 S from a desperate population. drive around for 35 minutes or more handle this problem extremely well." before finding a hospital that would take The heat wave struck on the same day heat victims. that welfare cuts ordered by the state Feeling some heat himself, Daley legislature went into effect. The entirely Hiroshima and Nagasaki: War lambasted Commonwealth Edison for preventable heat tragedy merely exposed a weekend power outage in a mostly the growing decay of the capitalist social Crimes of U.S. Imperialism white, upscale North Side neighbor­ order marked by welfare and medi­ August 1995 will mark the 50th anniver­ hood. (Indeed, CornEd scrambled to cal cuts, rampant unemployment and sary of one of the greatest atrocities in world restore power to Wrigley Field in time segregation. What is needed is not an history: the A-bombing of Hiroshima and for a Saturday night Cubs game while emergency plan, but a planned econ­ Nagasaki by U.S. imperialism. This mass residents in the surrounding area didn't omy, in which decent housing and health murder of defenseless Japanese people get power restored until Monday morn­ care are available to all. The capital­ expressed both the intense racism of the ing.) But most of the heat deaths occurred ist economy, based on profit, will not white American ruling class and the looming not where the electricity was lost and cannot provide for the basic needs Cold War against the Soviet Union. While but in poverty-stricken areas like the ofthe population. That will take a social­ the Japanese government was ready to sue TROTSKY LENIN South and West Side ghettos, where ist economy, in which production and for peace, the atomic bomb was dropped to many can't afford air conditioners or services are based on human needs, demonstrate to the Soviet leaders that the U.S. had developed a weapon of unprec­ the jacked-up CornEd bills they bring. and there is no such thing as "surplus" edented destructive power. Almost half a century later, the Cold War ended with Despite the sweltering heat, many black population. _ capitalist counterrevolution and the destruction of the Soviet Union as the Kremlin Stalinist bureaucracy disintegrated under the weight of its own contradictions and the all-sided pressure of Western and Japanese imperialism. The post-Soviet world is marked by increasing interimperialist rivalries between the United States, Germany and Japan pointing to a new world battle over markets and spheres of exploitation. A third imperialist world war could bring the annihilation of mankind. Following the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon stated: In two calculated blows, with two atomic bombs, American imperialism killed or injured half a million human beings. The young and the old, the child in the cradle and the aged and infirm, the newly married, the well and the sick, men, women, and children-they all had to die in two blows because of a quarrel between the impe­ rialists of Wall Street and a similar gang in Japan .... American imperialism has brought upon itself the fear and hatred of the whole world. American imperialism is regarded throughout the world today as the enemy of mankind. The First World War cost twelve million dead. Twelve million. The Second World War, within a quarter of a century, has already cost not less than thirty million dead; and there are not less than thirty million more to be starved to death before the results of the war are totaled up .... Before the Second World War, with all its horror and destruction of human life and human culture, is formally ended, they are already thinking and planning for the third. Don't we have to stop these madmen and take power out of their hands? Can we doubt that the peoples of all the world are thinking it cannot go much further, that there must be some way to change it? Long ago the revolutionary Marxists said that AP the alternative facing h.umanity was either socialism or a new barbarism, that capitalism Autopsy technicians move bodies into refrigerated trucks, as over 450 die threatens to go down in ruins and drag civilization with it. But in the light of what during Chicago heat wave. has been developed in this war and is projected for the future, I think we can say now that the alternative can be made even more precise: The 'alternative facing mankind is socialism or annihilation! It is a problem of whether capitalism is allowed to remain or whether the human race is to continue to survive on this planet. Letter -James P. Cannon, "The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (August 1945) gays engage in "unnatural acts," the Who's Revolting? Secret Service think AIDS is transmitted through a shake of the hand. How about Bay Area producing some giant condoms to sheath 10July 1995 Helms et al. and protect the rest of us Editor from the deadly infection of their medi­ !!!!~!!Ym~~!~!~f!.! ~ Workers Vanguard eval perversions?_ DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster Senator Jesse Helms wants to cut EDITOR: Jan Norden· . spending on AIDS research and treat­ EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson ment because gays engage in "deliberate, PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller disgusting, revolting conduct." CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe CORRECTION EDITORIAL BOARD: Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Some eminent authority, a near rocket In our last issue (WV No. 625, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg scientist, in answer to the question "Is 30 June), in the article "Mumia The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth sex dirty?" once observed, "Only when Abu-Jamal Must Not Die!" the Internationalist) . it's done right." caption of the photo of a demon­ Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3· week interval in December, by the Spartacist A. Worker stration for Jamal on June 5 Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 in Oakland misidentified Brian (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, WV responds: Speaking of "revolting," ¥cWilliams of the International Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. along with Jesse Helms, there's Clinton's Longshoremen's and Warehouse­ Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Secret Service agents, who put on rubber men's Union as president of The closing date for news in this issue is July 25. gloves to "hamlle" gay and lesbian Local 10. McWilliams is Inter­ No. 626 28 July 1995 elected officials who were invited to the national president of the ILWU. White House on June 13. Helms says 2 WORKERS VANGUARD On the morning of July 1, over 200 seum on July 6. Now Pitta is praising bellhops, waiters, housekeepers and Giuliani and even Police Commissioner maintenance staff walked out the front William Bratton as friends of labor! door of the luxury Drake Swissotel in The Drake strikers launched their Manhattan and set up picket lines out­ struggle on the same day that AFSCME side. Drake management, led by District Council 37 president Stanley Hill Swissotel's union-busting V.P., Andreas and the UFT's Sandra Feldman pledged Meinhold, is determined to break the to deliver $1.2 billion in union givebacks unions at this posh East Side estab­ to the capitalist politicians over the next lishment. Yet at the same time, New York Meanwhile, in a backstabbing attack tract providing some improvements in three years. A class-struggle leadership mayor Rudolph Giuliani was brokering on the Drake strikers, union elevator pay, pension and medical benefits, and in the unions could have galvanized a deal between hotel owners and union mechanics, laundry and sanitation work­ preserving the closed shop. In exchange, all the city's w6rkers, minorities and tops to avert a strike of 22,000 hotel ers have been crossing the picket lines, the union bureaucrats agreed to a six­ impoverished youth behind the fight not workers on the July 4 weekend. where the bosses have set up video cam­ year contract which won't expire until only against the hotel owners-sleazy When Dr~ke strikers went out on July eras to finger militant strikers. Angry after the year 2000. At the Grand Hyatt, and arrogant profit-gougers like Donald I, theyw(}fe left fighting on their own West Indian and Hispanic hotel workers no deal has been struck and employees Trump and Leona Helmsley-but also as the Hotel Trades Council's president told Workers Vanguard that the union had are working without a contract. against the vicious budget cutbacks Vito Pitta (who also heads H.E.R.E. planned a large strike support demo on The city administration, hotel bosses imposed by Republican Giuliani and the Local 6) extended the contract negotiat­ July 12, but union negotiators quashed and union tops all remember and fear Democratic City Council. ing deadline at 79 other hotels. Drake it to take the heat off the Drake's bosses. the militancy sparked by the last NYC Drake workers must not fight alone. bosses brought in out-of-town scabs who Dreading the prospect of a strike in hotel strike in 1985. This time H.E.R.E. Mass pickets and genuine union solidar­ are living inside and working 16-hour the heart of Manhattan during the height leader Pitta posed tough, but then con­ ity is needed to stop the union-busters days. Now acting as general manager, of the tourist season, Giuliani personally spired with the bosses to fashion it deal and run out the scabs. That means no Meinhold's racist arrogance is buoyed intervened to stop the hotel showdown. which would prevent a hot summer of deliveries, no utilities-and let the trash by his experience in busting a union at On July 4 at City Hall, Pitta cut a deal labor unrest. The pact was pushed pile high. Picket lines mean don't cross! a Swissotel in Puerto Rico. with the owners of 70 hotels for a con- through at a mass meeting at the Coli- Victory to the Drake strike! _

bosses' rules. If you play by the bosses'

Illinois itJJV~"l"War Zone" Workers Need rules, you lose. The only illegal strike is one that loses. Strikes are won at the point of production. That's where our Class-Struggle Leadership power is. Strikes are not won at super­ markets, banks or at shareholders' meet­ DECATUR, Illinois-Two hundred washed down the drain in an uncondi­ their locals and internationals. ings. While it is important to point out unionists gathered here on June 24 for tional surrender by URW leadership (see Below are excerpts from remarks that there is a capitalist class and it has a War Zone Labor Conference, which "Anti-Japanese Racism Kills Rubber made at the conference by Kevin Quirk, solidarity, and it does rule, it is a diver­ was followed the next day by a 2,500- Strike," WV No. 624, 2 June). a member of Amalgamated Transit sion to push consumer boycotts and "cor­ strong march and rally to support strik­ The conference unanimously adopted Union (ATU) Local 241 in Chicago. porate campaigns" while scabs are run­ ing Caterpillar workers and locked out a resolution introduced by support­ ning the plants. Staley workers. The conference and rally ers of the Partisan Defel1se Commit­ * * .* These strikers have been sacrificed on came on the heels of a defeat for the tee, to support political prisoner Mumia A defeat-a major defeat-has been the altar of racist, flag-waving anti­ United Rubber Workers (URW) in Deca­ Abu-Jamal, who is threatened with inflicted on the labor movement here in Japanese protectionism and support for tur and elsewhere, whose ten-month execution on August 17, and calling Decatur. The battle is not over here, but Democratic Party politics by the pro­ strike against Bridgestone-Firestone was on participants to raise Jamal's case- in if we are to move forward and win we capitalist bureaucrats in the unions. must call things by their right name. I Someone on the podium spoke of the agree with the sister who spoke earlier lack of international support. How do about the need to stop the scabs. That is you expect to win international support all-important. The only way workers can when you spread the vile lie that workers win is to shut down production. It's all of other countries are the enemy? The there for us in the annals of labor's strug­ main enemy is at home, right here in the gles: picket lines that no one crosses, corporate boardrooms of America. mass picketing-real effective solidarity There is a need for new leadership in On July 23, Ramona Africa, a prom­ Defense Committee in Canada wrote like hot-cargoing scab goods. the unions. We need to get rid of all the inent representative of the Concerned in a protest statement to the Canadian This is racist America. The labor dinosaurs in the AFL-CIO leadership. Family and Friends of Mumia Abu­ Minister of Citizenship and Immigra­ movement is getting a little taste of what We can't afford to replace one dinosaur Jamal, was grabbed by Canadian tion: "Tens of thou sands of individuals has been the daily fare in the cities and with another, the way Kirkland replaced immigration authorities at Montreal's and organizations representing mil­ ghettos of this country for years. Minor­ Meany. We need a bold class-struggle Dorval airport, detained overnight and lions more have joined the interna­ ities and all oppressed layers would rally leadership in the unions that will fight deported the following afternoon. tional campaign to save Jamal's life .... to the side of a strong, bold and fighting the bosses' attacks. We need to build a Ramona, the sole adult survivor of Your department's actions against labor movement. It is urgently necessary party that will lead that fight, one which the 1985 police bombing of the Ramona Africa are an outrageous for a combined stJ,"uggle' against our com­ is totally independent of the capitalist Philadelphia MOVE house, had attempt to disrupt this important inter­ mon enemy: the union-busting bosses Democratic Party: We need a revolution­ been invited to address public meet­ national effort." Join in demanding and racist state terror. '. .. , ary workers party that will fight all the ings and protest rallies in defense of that the ban on Ramona Africa's entry These strikes were defeated.'because way to put power in the hands of those Jamal across Canada. As the Partisan into Canada be rescinded! the existing leadership sold them out. who toil and create the wealth in this The union leadership played by the country-the workers. _

Mobilize Labor/Black/Minority Power! .···~I~~I~!·sx~F~~i~~t ·1~""~~I·.~~st .•..• ot ..... Di~!, .• ·It,c;"lD."tli.JZ),,,alfYl: Fri., Aug. 11, 7, p.m. For more information: SEIU Local 399 Union Hall (213) 380-8239 1247 W. 7th St. (at Witmer, West of 110 Fwy.) LOS ANGELES

Demonstrate! Mon., Aug. 14, 5 p.m. Initiated by the Partisan Thurs., Aug. 3, 4-7 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 3, 4:30 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 10, 7 p.m. U.S. Consulate Defense Committee Foley Square Assemble at Rally at 1095 West Pender and co-sponsored by the 14th and Broadway (at Thurlow) New Democratic Youth across from University of Illinois of Canada and March to the Federal Building For more information: U.S. Federal Courthouse the Canadian Union of and then to Rally at at Chicago (604) 687-0353 40 Centre Street Postal Workers HERE Local 2850 Chicago Circle Center VANCOUVER (Vancouver Local) (Take any train to Chambers St.) (20th St. between Illinois Room San Pablo and Telegraph) 750 S. Halsted For more information: For more information: For more information: Mon., Aug. 14, 5 p.m. Sponsored by the (212) 406-4252 (312) 663-0719 (510) 839-0852 U.S. Consulate Committee to Free Mumia 360 University Ave. Abu-Jamal and the Partisan Defense Committee NEW YORK CITY OAKLAND CHICAGO (between St. Patrick and Osgoode subway stations), For more information contact TORONTO Initiated by the Partisan Defense Committee the POC: (416) 593-4138

28 JULY 1995 3 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. 16 June 1995 Not M'\A,ch Left: 'The Movement' Is Anti-Communist Smear Pretty StiliNoWadays * * * Despite the GOP Revolution, Targets Jamal Campaign Radical Groups Can't Win to The signing of a death warrant against cation." The Journal is fully aware that press. Converts Their Brand black jOllrnalist and political prisoner a lot more than the "radical left" has It's nasty business to be depicted as a Mumia Abu-Jamal on June I touched off taken up the fight to save Jamal from cult on the front page of a major capi­ By LAURIE P. CoHEN a series of worldwide protests that con­ execution. But the point of this mocking talist mouthpiece. As radical journalist Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL NEW YORK - It was May Day in the tinue to build with the approach of the piece is to denigrate and diminish this Alexander Cockburn noted following the first year of the Contract With America. August 17 execution date. As the central struggle as it intensifies with the government's mass murder of the Waco hA,dU1trarign"flU:' ". ; ·WJt!Ulitl1f":m 'W~o focus of the fight against the racist death approach of Jamal's scheduled execution Branch Davidians: "What really did in m more concerned," he says. penalty in the U.S., the struggle to stop by portraying his supporters as a bunch the Branch Davidians was the word The radical-left groups also have a new the execution of this passionate fighter of wild-eyed crazies grooving over a 'cult.' You can do more or less anything hero, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and a convicted cop-killer from for minorities and the poor has drawn "cop-killer." to a cult" (quoted in NY Press, 3 May). Philadelphia who has written a book called thousands across the country into strug­ In this light, Cohen takes pains to go The bombing of the Philadelphia MOVE "Live From Death Row." His dreadlocks gle against the systematic police terror after the Spartacist League, which along group in 1985 is another example. The currently adorn the cover of almost every and government attacks on blacks and with the Partisan Defense Committee has SL forthrightly protested the MOVE and radical-left publication. . the poor inherent in the American capi­ been out front in mobilizing support for Waco massacres (while almost the entire few blocks from Mr. Du talist system. And this has some ruling­ Mumia Abu-Jamal since 1987. Cohen left remained silent or alibied these class circles seeing red. does manage an accurate reference to our grisly acts of state terror). The Journal Capitalists' house organ sneers at The 16 June Wall Street Journal ran aims, describing them as "familiar": article appears at a time when the Clinton Jamal campaign, seeking to trivialize a front-page article by one Laurie Cohen "The Spartacist League wants to 'expro­ administration is obscenely attempting, broad-based international support. titled, "Not Much Left: 'The Movement' priate the capitalist class and sweep using the pretext of the Oklahoma City Is Pretty Still Nowadays." As is to be away its state apparatus of repression'." bombing atrocity, to equate leftist polit­ lynching. The fact that revolutionary expected from the house organ of Amer­ But she then attempts to ridicule this pur­ ical activity with right-wing terrorism. Marxists are playing a prominent role in ican finance ·capital, the piece sneers at pose, quoting Charlene Mitchell of the A couple of weeks later, the New York a campaign against the racist rulers is a range of "secretive" leftist organiza­ Committees of Correspondence (a right­ Times (30 June), which has been pushing considered an offense by the Journal, tions with "hardly familiar names: The wing split from the Communist Party) the theme that right-wing militias are which endlessly brays about the supposed International Socialist Organization, the who claims the SL is "a group of 20 derived from the anti-government pro­ "death of communism." For over eight Freedom Socialists, Radical Women, the people who ... don't represent anything." tests of the '60s New Left, wrote that years, the SL and PDC have initiated united-front defense actions on behalf of ~ Jamal, seeking to mobilize fighters for "1J :::r black rights, leftists, defenders of civil o 0" liberties and particularly sections of the labor movement to take up his cause. We have linked the demand to save Mumia from execution with the struggle to abolish the racist death penalty. And we have generated financial and legal support so that Mumia could have the best possible defense in the courts to challenge the racist frame-up against New York's Penn Station, him. To their credit, the Maoist Revolu­ June 5: tionary Communist Party/Refuse & Outpouring of Resist have also fought against Jamal's protest in persecution for a number of years. emergency In recent months, a host of other leftist demonstration organizations have joined this fight, following signing along with a growing number of trade of Jamal's death unions, parliamentarians and civil rights warrant. organizations around the world. This is all to the good-the task now is for every organization siding with labor and the oppressed to throw its weight into mobi­ lizing mass protests to stop the execution Spartacist League.~' The article quotes The article takes a more sinister turn the rhetoric of the anti-technology "Una­ of this militant, courageous spokesman Noam Chomsky as saying that with the when it goes on to cite the "International bomber" was "a blend that.might have for the downtrodden. labor movement "demolished" and with Bolshevik Tendency, a group of former come from Trotsky or Thoreau." Re­ "no intellectual left left to speak of," Spartacists,': who "deride their old party sponding to a subsequent inquiry from "Leftists" in the Service what remains are "marginal groups" that as 'Jimstown,' a takeoff on Jonestown in the Associated Press on the "Unabomb­ of the State "have no impact." Guyana, the jungle site of mass suicide." er," a spokesman for the Spartacist Toward the end of the article, Cohen The "Bolshevik Tendency" (BT) -a clot League stated: "We oppose his purposes At least everyone knows where the complains of this left that is supposed of embittered ex-members, most of and deplore his means. Rather than try­ Wall Street Journal is coming from when to be dead, "The radical-left groups also whom quit our organization some years ing to eliminate those who are in charge it tries to witchhunt communists. But it have a new hero, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a ago--has always sought to be the instru­ of commercial technology, we believe, was the "leftists" of the International former Black Panther and a convicted ment of bigger forces with its provocative as did Trotsky, Lenin and Marx, that Socialist Organization who, the day after cop-killer from Philadelphia who has slurs and slanders against the Spartacist human beings must overcome class divi­ the Journal article appeared, fleshed out written a book called 'Live From Death League. Now they've finally made it into sions and take over the means of pro­ its insidious intent through a violent Row.' His dreadlocks currently adorn the the big time, in the pages of the most duction, placing those means in the attack on Spartacist and PDC comrades cover of ~lmost every radical-left publi- virulently anti-communist bourgeois hands of the majority of the society, the outside an ISO conference in Chicago. workers Who produce the wealth." While our comrades ably defended them­ Then came an editorial titled "Extrem­ selves, the ISO went on to launch a lying ists of the Manic Right" in the San Fran­ campaign, primarily through the Inter­ cisco Examiner (9 July), scurrilously net. As we noted regarding the ISO's blaming the bloody crimes of the statement: "true believers of the extreme right" on "Here we find the following amalgam of Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League the "extreme left," which supposedly slander: the SL's 'actions, rather than helping to build our movement, are became so "frustrated" with "peaceful aimed at destroying it'; 'among the Spar­ o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal protest" that it carried out "acts of terror, tacist League's initiatives is the Partisan (includes English-language Spartacist, Women and Revolution assault and murder.... Eventually, the Defense Committee'; 'the PDC has been and Black History and the Class Struggle) Weatherpeople disappeared into myth heavily involved with the campaign to international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail free Pennsylvania death row inmate along with Black Panthers, Progressive o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) Mumia Abu-Jama\.' You don't need to Labor Party, Spartacists and others who read between the lines to get the message o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espano!) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) sought an elusive apocalypse" (see the of this smear job-i.e., one of the main Name ______Spartacist League letter to the Examiner, organizati9ns fighting to mobilize in reprinted on page 5). Jamal's defense are 'thugs' who want to Address ______'destroy' the workers movement and Sneers and all, the Wall Street Journal therefore ... you shouldn't get involved." ______Apt. # Phone ( __) ______article indicates some angst among the - "ISO Goons Beaten Back," powers that be over the wave of protests WV No. 625, 30 June City State Zip ______---;= 626 for Jamal, which has drawn increasing To the ISO's gangsterism one can add Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 numbers of youth, trade unionists and .redbaiting. Currently, the SL and PDC others into struggle against U.S. legal are building labor-centered demonstra- 4 WORKERS VANGUARD 38 Black Panther Party members. The violence of the '60s was perpetrated San Francisco Examiner Smear by the U.S. government, which also used its fascist henchmen. There was The following letter was sent as a under the headline "Marxists Not Mob­ for the wholesale attack on fundamen­ a direct line from the FBI to segrega­ formal protest against an editorial by sters," the Spartacist League's success­ tal constitutional guarantees, from the tionist Birmingham police chief "Bull" the San Francisco Examiner, the flag­ ful suit compelling then-California right to bear arms to freedom of speech Connor to the KKK nightriders. For­ ship of the Hearst newspaper chain, Attorney General Deukmejian to retract and association, being pushed by both mer FBI agent Gary Rowe has testified which printed false accusations against his inclusion of our organization in a Clinton's Democrats and Gingrich's to the actual participation of the FBI the Spartacist League and other leftists report on terrorism. In 1983, the Wash­ Republicans. (in the person of himself) in the 1965 in reckless disregard of the truth. A ington Times responded to a libel suit The mass arrest in San Francisco, on murder of Viola Liuzzo, a white civil highly truncated version of our letter brought by the Spartacist League/Spar­ June 26, of nearly 300 demonstrators rights wo.rker shot to death on an Ala­ was printed in the 16 July Examiner. tacus Youth League with a written protesting the planned execution of bama highway. retraction of its malicious libel of our Mumia Abu-Jamal is a vivid example These are the antecedents of today's July II, 1995 organization as "provoking violence" of the drive to criminalize all left-wing fascistic militias. Timothy McVeigh, at a mass anti-Klan demonstration ini­ political dissent. Most of those arrested San Francisco Examiner the principal suspect in the Oklahoma tiated by the SLIU.S. in Washington, were held behind bars for almost 48 City bombing, was reportedly driven To the Editor: D.C. on November 27, 1982. Similarly, hours on phony felony counts of arson! by virulent bigotry against black peo­ Your July 9 editorial, "Extremists of in 1984 the Spartacist League success­ Your editorial follows a front-page ar­ ple and hatred for affirmative action the manic right," claims that in the '60s, fully concluded a suit against the FBI ticle in the Wall Street Journal (16 and abortion rights. While hardly its the "extreme left. .. evolved into violent and U.S. Attorney General which forced June) sneering at "radical-left groups," intent, your editorial does serve as a words and, eventually, into acts of ter­ the FBI to revise its slanderous "defi­ including the Spartacist League, who useful reminder that laws ostensibly ror, assault and murder." Into this hash, nition" of our organization and concede "have a new hero, Mumia Abu-Jamal." aimed at curbing right-wing violence you throw the "Black Panthers, Pro­ that advocacy of Marxist political prin­ Jamal-a former Black Panther, sup­ will in fact be used against the left, gressive Labor Party, Spartacists and ciples cannot be equated with violence, porter of the MOVE organization and working people and minorities. others who sought an elusive apoca­ terrorism or criminal enterprise. an award-winning journalist-is an As the cover letter from our attorney lypse." This is a deadly smear of Your editorial is a belated, but no innocent man who has been sentenced states, we will consider the printing of the Spartacist LeaguelU.S. (and other less grotesque, contribution to the to die for his political beliefs. this letter in the "Letters to the Editor" left and radical groups) as violence~ media's attempt, in the wake of the The Wall Street Journal article and column in next Sunday's (July 16) edi­ mongers and perpetrators of criminal appalling Oklahoma City bombing, to the S.F. Examiner editorial are clear tion of the S.F. Examiner as redress to and terrorist acts. Simple justil~rde­ equate leftist opponents of this racist attempts to denigrate and diminish the the deadly smears of our organization mands an immediate retraction. capitalist state with the fascistic net­ growing mo>,ement to save this coura­ contained in your July 9 editorial. Your editorialists are no doubt aware work of "patriot militias," abortion geous man. that the Spartacist League is a political clinic bombers and KKK/Nazi killers. From age 15, Jamal was a target of Yours truly, organization, neither "violent" nor "ter­ The purpose of this attack on "extrem­ the FBI's deadly COINTELPRO pro­ Emily TurnbuIl rorists." In 1981 your paper reported, ism" is transparent: to beat the drums gram which resulted in the murder of for the Spartacist League/U.S.

tions in New York, Oakland and Chicago ISO's defense following our repulsing attack on a supporter of the SL in the the chains of racial oppression be calling to stop the execution of Jamal their goon attack was a veritable rogues' CWA phone workers union. Petroni oh­ achieved short of a socialist revolution and to abolish the racist death penalty. gallery of anti-Spartacists whose com­ so-reasonably calls for "an investigation which destroys the whole murderous So now comes an Internet message by mon traits include documented personal and a public hearing" on what happened state apparatus of cops and prisons. The one Ben Burgis, who issued the first ISO participation in gangsterism against outside the ISO conference. Just who is fight for Mumia's freedom requires the statement after the Chicago attack, other leftists. Among these is Tim Wohl­ to investigate whom? To update an adage broadest possible mobilization of social which coyly asks, "Has anyone else ever forth, former leader of the counterfeit­ of Stalin, the Internet will take anything protest, linking minorities and youth to noticed that the Spartacists seem to feel Trotskyist Workers League (WL) and that's posted on it. the labor movement. Gangsterism and the need to put the word 'Labor' in now a brazen social democrat who has The ISO's attempt to tar the SL with defamatory ravings about the SL as a everything they sponsor, even though the come out for American intervention in the brush of its own anti-working-class "cult" feed into the Wall Street Journal's rest of the world knows the event is Bosnia, as well as for the U.S. occupa­ practices has prompted a number of indi­ vintage redbaiting, which is aimed at Spartacist?" tion of Haiti. Wohlforth is only too happy viduals who are aware of their record of spiking the necessary mass protest that It's inconceivable to these reformist to add his keystrokes to the Spartacist­ gangsterism to denounce the Chicago is essential in fighting for Jamal's social democrats, whose idea of "fight­ bashing-by-modem, writing on June 28 attack on us. A supporter of the Bay Area freedom. ing" fascist terror is to waltz into police that "my sympathy is with the ISO Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights The use of violence and the "Big Lie" pens at anti-Klan demonstrations, that in this matter." No doubt. Back when (BACORR) wrote on June 20, "While to discredit communists in the public the dozens of unions and labor officials this pimp for imperialism was masquer­ BACORR in general, and myself in par­ eye is nothing new. In fact, it is a method representing tens of thousands of work­ ading as a Trotskyist, the WL repeatedly ticular,have political disagreements with commonly used by the bourgeoisie ers who have endorsed the upcoming ral­ launched violent attacks on the SL and the SL on a wide range of issues, the and its bought-and-paid-for media lies for Jamal would see the fight against other leftists. Now he lectures that "the most principled ways to debate these dif­ mouthpieces to thwart the emergence his persecution by the state as their fight Sparts conduct themselves in a manner ferences is through political struggle and of communist-led struggle, particularly also. As if to answer these apprentice which only contributes to the left's polemic-not unprincipled thuggery as when it intersects the explosive black finks, one Philadelphia trade-union offi­ further weakening. Therefore any social­ has [been] used by. the International question. In the 1930s, liberals led by cial told PDC representatives recently, ist who really CARES about the struggle Socialist Organization' (ISO) on more the NAACP joined with the capitalist "You're socialists. So what? We're talk­ of American and worldwide workers, than one occasion." In fact, the SL and press in a campaign of lies and calumny ing about saving this man's life." minorities, women must hate those who PDC have been able to coll~bOr,ate effec­ against the Communist Party and the Thus, only weeks before the scheduled act in a manner which hurts the strug­ tively with a range of very diverse organ­ International Labor Defense during the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, with the gle." But how should they feel toward izations in common work in defense of campaign to save the Scottsboro Boys­ Philly cops slavering for Jamal's death Wohlforth, who cares to rally to the sup­ Jamal, while carrying on political debate nine black youths in Alabama faced with and the Philadelphia D.A.'s office issu­ port of racist U.S. imperialism (on the inside this framework. But the principles execution after being falsely accused of ing threatening letters to celebrities sup­ "Peacenet" no less)? of workers democracy and united-front raping two white women. While the porting Jamal, the ISq and a claque of Also among the sleazy netsurfers was action are completely alien to the ISO, CP/ILD mounted an international protest professional anti-Spartacists are doing 'one Carlos Petroni, who denounces which has been noticeably absent (or campaign, with millions of workers con­ their part to stir up an anti-communist physical confrontation between leftists represented by token teams) at recent ducting strikes and mass demonstrations, witchhunt against Mumia's most prom­ and says that he shouid know because demonstrations for Jamal. the NAACP denounced the CP's agita­ inent supporters on the left. As we noted he himself has been a "participant and/or To understand the current anti­ tion and propaganda and preached com­ after the assault in Chicago, "The ISO's an apologist for it." No "or" about it. In Spartacist witchhunt for what it is, just plete reliance on the courts-which gangsterism is devastating evidence that 1982, as a leader of the "International look at who is contributing to it. On the meant putting faith in Southern Iynch­ their 'support' to the campaign for Jamal Workers Party," Petroni personally led a one hand, there is the bankers' mouth­ law "justice." But it was precisely the isn't worth the paper it's printed on." goon squad against SL comrades, wield­ piece, the Wall Street Journal. On the mass protest of workers and the Rushing through cyberspace to the ing a claw hammer in a potentially fatal other hand, a gaggle of reformists and oppressed around the world-and not the sleazy renegades, who: 1) are certified workings of the racist "justice" system­ ~ practitioners of thuggery against the left that saved the Scottsboro Boys from "1J :y (ISO, Wohlforth, Petroni); 2) lie; and 3) legal lynching. o spread illusions in the cops, the hired As Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon guns of the capitalist rulers, who the ISO wrote in response to early objections to claims are "workers in uniform." Deadly the ILD's mass agitation for the Scotts­ illusions in these uniformed racist thugs boro Boys: "Not to the courts alone, and are spread as well by groups like the BT, not primarily there, but to the masses , which several years ago joined "Cop­ Touching faith must the appeal of the persecuted of class watch" in the San Francisco Bay Area, in bourgeois and race be taken. There is the power state: reformist whose work involved "monitoring" and there is the justice" (Militant, 16 Jan­ ISO willingly police abuse in order to somehow modify uary 1932). Today, in the fight to free submits to their reign of terror against the ghettos Mumia Abu-Jamal there is literally not being frisked and barrios. a moment to lose. Anti-communist witch­ and corralled hunting and violence directed at Jamal's into police pens Witchhunts and Frame-Ups supporters are poison to this struggle, at Illinois There can be no justice for Mumia at whether it comes from the voice of the anti-Klan rally, the hands of the cops who have vowed Wall Street bankers or from "socialists" June 3. to kill him or in the capitalist courts that whose venomous hatred of the Trotskyist have railroaded him to death row. Nor Spartacist League far outweighs their will the liberation of black people from professed defense of Jamal. ..

28 JULY 1995 5 David North "Abolishes" the Right to Self-Determination . I' i The collapse of the former workers states of Eastern Europe and the ex­ lflWorkersPress Soviet Union unleashed an orgy of na­ -"_01' ...... __--._ .. _...... _ 010_ "'oct .. tionalist bloodletting. Today the imperi­ Halt imperialist genocide alist media denounces Serbian war crimes in the fratricidal slaughterhouse WORKERS MUST that is now Bosnia. But "ethnic cleans­ ing" is hardly a practice unique to the ~ AIDBOSNIA Serbs. Not only are grisly atrocities car­ I '",'-ld • •• ~JiI;~~! ~'" ried out by all sides in the Balkans, but no less bloody national wars have been waged between Armenians and Azeris

PART ONE OF TWO

for possession of Nagorno-Karabakh, by Georgia against the Ossetians and Abkha­ zians, and throughout the Caucasus. To assert its domination in the region, the Russian army launched a full-scale mil­ itary invasion of Chechnya which has virtually obliterated the capital city of Grozny and devastated the countryside. To read the bourgeois press one would Cliff Slaughter (right) and David North {below right)-forme(henchmen of deceased political bandit Gerry Healy-wage their own Balkan war. Slaughter's Workers Press get the idea that these gruesome nation­ pushes support to Bosnian Muslim government in league with Western imperialists alist slaughters are inspired by the revival as British and French troops, in guise of UN "peacekeepers," rode shotgun for of some ancient "tribal" fTrotskyism through that pigsty some There can be no democratic solution . ing class throughout the formerYugo- the campaign for "Workers Aid to Bos" years ago-and not without the complic­ to the bloody nationalist conflict in slavia to overthrow their bourgeois­ nia." Running supplies to the bourgeois- ity of one David North. Bosnia and other regions of ex- nationalist leaders in an internationalist 6 WORKERS VANGUARD struggle for a socialist federation of the they aided and abetted reactionary Balkans. nationalism in Eastern Europe and the To realize such a perspective, to forge ex-Soviet Union, today international cap­ proletarian unity and bring revolutionary italism is far from happy that the spoils consciousness to the working class of they expected to loot from the victory the Balkans, requires a leadership which of capitalist counterrevolution are being in Lenin's words acts as a "tribune of drowned in a sea of bloody nationalist­ the people," fighting against every man­ inspired regional conflicts. While raising ifestation of nationalism, chauvinism a hue and cry about "poor little Bosnia," and ethnic hatred. Only in this way can the imperialist rulers now generally decry the various competing nationalisms be the very nationalist forces they fomented, undercut and the common class interests and the Northitis join the chorus. of all of the working people be brought to the fore. It was in this respect that the Was It All Gerry Healy's Fault? Bolshevik Party championed the right to self-determination for the myriad nations In his article, "Permanent Revolution and peoples imprisoned in the tsarist and the National Question Today" (The empire. Fourth International, Winter-Spring 1994), David North declares that Healy's But such a leadership is not what the WRP "systematically betrayed the prin­ Northites have on offer, nor could they. ciples of Trotskyism as it subordinated While they write that the "strong inter­ Latvian rifle battalions in Petrograd played heroic role In 1917 the proletariat to ... bourgeois regimes nationalist traditions of the Yugoslav Revolution. Lenin's support for the right of self-determination for all oppressed such as those of Libya, Iran and Iraq." proletariat must be revived on the basis nations in the tsarlst empire was key to forging unity between Russian and non-Russian workers. From here he goes on to opine that only of a scientific analysis and revolutionary the "split within the International Com­ program," in "The Road to Tuzla" they oppressed nations in order to advance movement" (Bulletin, 15 September mittee made possible an intensive re­ simultaneously write off the whole ques­ the interests of international proletarian 1981). In 1990, they echoed crazed anti­ examination of the entire historical sig­ tion of the defense of the right to self­ class struggle. Communists like U.S. Senator Jesse nificance of the movements of 'national determination as an anachronism, inap­ Helms in denouncing then-president liberation' and their relation to the pro­ plicable in today's "global economy": North's ICFI and George Bush for refusing to take retali­ Nationalist Reaction letariat and the perspective of socialist "In politics, tenns which had a definite atory action against the Soviet Union for revolution. " social and class content in one perioQ The Northites try to find refuge in the often come to represent something~'~' its clampdown on the right-wing nation­ North certainly has an elastic view of different in the next. This is the case with statement that in "Eastern Europe and alist Sajudis government in Lithuania. his own history-similar to his organi­ the slogan of 'self-detennination.' ... the former Soviet Union in particular, An articl~ headlined "Gorbachev zation's relation to any question of "Those who advance the demand for nationalism arises today as part of a ret­ Steps Up Stalinist AggreSSion Against Marxist principle or proletarian morality. self-detennillation through national sep­ rograde tendency seeking to restore both aratism and bourgeois rule are responsi­ Lithuania" (Bulletin, 30 March 1990) His support to bourgeois-nationalist ble for the global consequences of such direct imperialist domination and capi­ decried that the "Bush administration forces was far from abstract. In 1979, slogans. This 'right' will be championed talist property relations." But nationalist has pointedly refused to make any con­ North's Bulletin reprinted articles from by imperialist powers and backed by reaction is not simply a product of coun­ demnation of the Soviet military actions Healy's News Line hailing the execution their military forces in other parts of the terrevolution. It was also a driving force in Lithuania." As we wrote in our article, Balkans and throughout the world." of 21 Iraqi Communist Party members for capitalist restoration in the former "Imperialists Demand the Baltics" (WV by Saddam Hussein's Ba:athist govern­ Beyond Bosnia, the Northites argue Stalinist-ruled workers states. In the lat­ No. 518, 18 January 1991): ment. The Bulletin (30 March 1979) even against the right of self-determination ter case, North's organization was among "As Leninists and internationalists, we reprinted from News Line an official for Kashmir, the Punjab and other the bigger fans of nationalism. stimd for the democratic reorganization Iraqi communique, under the grotesque nations locked into the "prison house of For decades the imperialist rulers of the Soviet Union and for the right of headline, "Where the Iraqi Communist any nationality with a leadership that op­ peoples" that is the Indian bourgeois howled about the "oppression" of the so­ Party Went Wrong." That same year, cel­ state. Similarly, they come out against poses counterrevolution to withdraw to called "captive nations," seeing them as any extent it sees fit. But in Lithuania ebrating the "Tenth Anniversary of the the national rights of the Tamils in Sri a battering ram for shattering the former and the other Baltic republics the fig leaf Libyan Revolution," the Workers League Lanka and the Quebecois in Canada. Soviet bloc. And the Northites howled of 'national independence' is being used sent a telegram to Qaddafi praising his The ICFI statement invokes the right along with them. In 1979-80, when as a cover for capitalist restoration. And "progressive socialist policies." The this must be fought.... To prevent the authority of the Marxist movement and the Soviet army intervened in Afghani­ disintegration of the USSR amid frat­ ICFI, including North and his current Lenin. But in fact the Northites' position stan, we of the Spartacist League said, ricidal nationalism, it is necessary to cohorts, also enthused over "the anti­ is a purely chauvinist one which accepts "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan," noting recapture the proletarian international­ imperialist content of the struggle being the rule of the dominant nation in multi­ that this brought with it the possibility, ism which animated the Bolshevik Party waged by Khomeini"-i.e., the Iranian of Lenin and Trotsky." national states. Or as Lenin himself put albeit unfulfilled, of breaking the chains ayatollah's "struggle" for an Islamic it in "The Right of Nations to Self­ of Islamic feudal reaction and extending Looking to establish their own inde­ Republic (to the best of our knowledge Determination" (1914): "Repudiation of the gains of the October Revolution to pendent capitalist states, the nationalist this praise was gratis). the right to self-determination, i.e., the that hideously backward country. The movements in Lithuania, Latvia and Healy's financial ties to Arab regimes right of nations to secede, means nothing Northites, in contrast, 'squealed along Estonia had their own program for "eth­ were a notorious scandal on the left long more than defence of the privileges of with U.S. president Jimmy Carter that nic cleansing," calling for the suppres­ before the 1985 implosion of his Workers the dominant nation and police methods the Soviet intervention was an attack sion of any and all rights of other peoples Revolutionary Party in Britain. As for of administration .... " on "the national rights and feelings of (Russians,. Ukrainians, Byelorussians, the so-called "split" in the ICFI, it would Far from having become some kind the Afghan people" (Bulletin, 8 July Jews, Poles and others) within these better be described as a falling out among of anachronism, defense of the right of 1986). But there was no Afghan "nation," states, if not openly advocating their thieves. Healy was ousted, North rushed self-determination is, if anything, in­ and the peoples whose "rights" were forcible removal. But this didn't much to claim his mantle as the ICFI "leader," creasingly important. The escalation of being attacked were a cabal of tribal bother the Northites then. " and Slaughter took the name of the WRP interimperialist rivalries coming in the chiefs and Islamic mujahedin funded by Now they try to palm themselves off and ran. For years, North & Co. have wake of the collapse of the former Soviet the CIA. as the epitome of proletarian internation­ sought to clear their name by claiming Union, the drive by major powers to redi­ Together with-the Vatican and the CIA, alism. Not only is this a monumentili they had no idea Healy was being paid vide the world into regional trade blocks North's Workers League made the coun­ fraud, but the ICFI's new-found opposi­ for the role as publicity agent for Hussein, and the increasing offshore prodUction terrevolutionary cause of the Pilsudskiite tion to nationalism is neither "orthodox" Qaddafi and others. In other words, their in low-wage "Third World" countries nationalist Solidarnosc in Poland their nor even vaguely leftist. Rather, once defense is that they betrayed the very reinforces the need for' communists to o'wn, hailing it as "an undaunted, young, again, their position mirrors that of the same Trotskyist principles-except that, champion the rights of neocolonial and vigorous and independent trade union imperialist rulers. Whereas yesterday continued on page 13

Healy's Gold Pipeline

Workers News Li bya ...... £542,267 Kuwait ...... 156,500 Qatar ... , ...... , 50,000 Abu Dhabi ...... 25,000 PLO ...... 19,997 Iraq .. , .... , ...... 19,697 Unidentified or other sources ...... 261,702 Total ...... £1,075,163

In late 1970s-early '80s, Healy/North's International Committee acted as bought-and-paid-for agents of bloody Arab bourgeois regimes, hailing Libyan nationalist strongman Qaddafl and justifying the execution of Iraqi Communists by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athists.

28 JULY 1995 7 Among the many thousands who have Rosenbergs all over again have not sub­ spoken out in defense of death row polit­ sided. The latest installment, reported in ical prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal are the the press the day of Mumia's July 12 sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In hearing for a stay of execution before a statement to a Boston meeting of the Judge Albert Sabo in Philadelphia, came Partisan Defense Committee on Febru­ with the release by the super-secret ary 16, Michael and Robert Meeropol National Security Agency (NSA) of sup­ wrote: posed Soviet diplomatic telegrams from "We are gathered here tonight because the 1940s allegedly proving the Rosen­ for the first time since the execution of bergs to be "atomic spies" for the Soviet our parents, a political prisoner sits on Union. Death Row. Make no mistake about it. As Robert Meeropol remarked, "The The death penalty was imposed in this case because of the POLITICS of Mumia documents themselves don't tell you any­ Abu-Jamal. Make no mistake about it; thing." They refer to an agent code­ the legal system is brushing aside all evi­ named "Liberal," whom the NSA help­ dence of prosecutorial misconduct and fully identifies as Julius Rosenberg. But other denials of due process because of Mumia Abu-Jamal's POLITICS .... to believe the NSA, the "Soviet trans­ "We must not shy away from the defense missions" themselves pinpoint "Liberal" of Mumia. We must make sure that by naming "the wife of his wife's brother, NO AMERICAN POLITICAL PRIS­ Ruth GREENGLASS," described as "an ONER suffers the fate of Ethel and Julius intelligent and clever girl" who is "21 Rosenberg." years old" and "lives on STANTON The parallels between the Rosenberg [STANTAUN] Street." (It's hard to imag­ case and that of Mumia Abu-Jamal are ine an intelligence service so foolish as striking. Both were sent to death row as to send out such detailed information; a result of racially biased, politically why bother with cover names then?) motivated frame-ups. Both were victims Moreover, as Meeropol pointed out in of vendettas by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI: an interview with Workers Vanguard, Jamal through the notorious COINTEL­ these messages were decoded beginning PRO terror operation which aimed to in 1946 and were supposedly instrumen­ "neutralize" black militants in the 1960s, tal in breaking the "Rosenberg spy ring," the Rosenbergs as part of the McCarthy­ yet the Rosenbergs were not arrested until ite witchhunt which sought to outlaw 1950, "leading me to believe," he said, "reds" as Soviet agents. Both became "that my parents' names were plugged symbols of defiance for their refusal to into these documents after the arrest and AP bow before this racist, capitalist ruling prosecution." The feds say, "trust us, trust The heroic Rosenbergs, martyrs of Cold War witch hunt. class. But where the Rosenbergs had us," added Meeropol, but "politically been plucked from obscurity to become we've learned you can't trust them." sacrificial victims of the frenzied anti­ the government to use them as it had ber Revolution, which remained despite The full truth of the Rosenberg case Communist frustration of an American other finks and turncoats. But they would the Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration of isn't likely to be revealed until a victo­ imperialism which had just lost its not. Julius Rosenberg had been a political that revolution. The destruction of the rious workers revolution opens the gov­ nuclear monopoly, Mumia Abu-Jamal activist from the age of 15, when he former Soviet degenerated workers state ernment's secret files. In a socialist had long been singled out by the Phila­ enlisted in the campaign to free impris­ at the hands of Yeltsin's imperialist­ America, the Rosenbergs will be hon­ delphia cops and the FBI for his artic­ oned labor leader Tom Mooney; Ethel backed counterrevolution ultimately ored as martyrs to the cause of expro­ ulate and outspoken writings against as a young textile worker had been a expressed the impossibility of building priating the world's bourgeoisies. racism and police brutality. strike leader. They would not forsake "socialism in one country," the nation­ On the evening of 19 June 1953, Julius their class and let themselves be used as alist dogma of a narrow and privileged A Cold War Show Trial and Ethel Rosenberg walked their last tools of the witchhunters, even under Soviet bureaucracy. In the name of The U.S. government knew it had no steps to the execution chamber in New penalty of death. "peaceful coexistence" 'Yith imperial­ case against the Rosenbergs for espio­ York's Sing Sing prison. To the very end, ism, Stalin and his heirs repeatedly nage. So they were charged not with they proclaimed their innocence of the They Keep Trying to Kill the betrayed proletarian revolutionary strug­ espionage but conspiracy to commit accusation of having passed "the secret Rosenbergs All Over Again gle in the capitalist countries which espionage. The government knew, as the of the atomic bomb" to the Soviet Union. alone could have preserved the socialist FBI papers show, that the Rosenbergs Their "trial" two years earlier had been Having murdered the Rosenbergs in economic foundations of the Soviet did not "steal the secret of the Atomic a mockery of justice from begifllHng to 1953, the U.S. rulers and their anti­ Union and by extending them lay the bomb." They were political scapegoats, end. Around the worI9, millions raised communist apologists have time and basis for genuine socialism. executed on the altar of the Cold their voices in an outcry demanding jus­ . again tried to kill the memory of this Yet even now, when the former Soviet War anti-Communism of the so-called tice for the Rosenbergs. But from the . honorable couple, trying to bury the vol­ Union has been drowned by capitalist "American Century," in which the U.S. White House on down, the American rul­ umes of evidence exposing their frame- counterrevolution, attempts to frame the rulers saw the USSR as the main obstacle ing class was united in its determination up under mounds of lies and slanders. to make an example of these courageous In 1983, Ronald Radosh and Joyce Mil­ Jewish leftists. As U.S. imperialism ton, two "god that failed" New Leftovers geared up for nuclear war against the who claimed to have finally "seen the Soviet ·Union and waged a red purge at light," raised a flap with their book, The home to regiment the American labor Rosenberg File, which retailed and movement, the blood of the Rosenbergs embellished on the FBI's original case. was to be a warning to all who refused As we wrote in "Cold War Rad-Libs to capitulate to the prevailing winds of Embrace FBI Frame-Up: They're Trying anti-Communism. to Kill the Rosenbergs All Over Again" (WV No. 440, 21 October 1983): In his book, My Secret War, the great Soviet spy Kim Philby rightly called " ... the debate on the Rosenberg case has focused narrowly on the question of them the "heroic Rosenbergs." Clearly whether or not Julius Rosenberg en­ committed in their own way to the Soviet gaged in espionage for the Russi·ans. Yet Union and the struggle for social progress it is clear that the government killed the and equality, the Rosenbergs went to their Rosenbergs for political purposes. The question of their innocence or 'guilt' deaths refusing to bargain with their exe­ mattered not at all. Nor is it the key ques­ cutioners. Even as first Julius and then tion for revolutionaries in this historic Ethel were strapped into the electric . case .... For Radosh/Milton and the rest chair, a U.S. marshal stood outside the of the social-dems, Russian espionage is execution chamber, waiting for a nod a crime not only on the law books but in their own American social-patriotic from either of them indicating that they eyes. For revolutionaries, on the con­ would "confess" and "name names." Two trary, those who helped the Russians . FBI agents waited by a special phone achieve nuclear capacity did a great service for humanity." , with an open line to Attorney General UPI Brownell, ready to call off the execution _ The nuclear arms of the Soviet Union Judge Irving Kaufman (left) sent Rosenbergs to the electric chair as McCarthy if the Rosenbergs capitulated and allowed were a defense of the gains of the Octo- aide Roy Cohn (far right) acted as chief prosecutor. ' 8 WORKERS VANGUARD to American imperialist world hegem­ Jamal was sentenced to death on the repeatedly threatening to nuke Russia House Un-American Activities Commit­ ony. According to the U.S. Constitution, basis of the prosecutor's claim that Jamal during early confrontations in the Cold tee was controlled by Dixiecrats like "treason," a capital crime, is defined '!,s was necessarily a "cop killer" because War-in 1946, in 1948 over Berlin, Mississippi's John Rankin, who raved giving aid and comfort to the enemy in of his Black Panther Party background, again in 1950 over Korea. U.S. rulers with undisguised anti-Semitism against wartime. But the USSR was an ally of the Rosenbergs were convicted on the reacted with shock to the ending of their liberal Hollywood personalities like the U.S. in World War II, when the sup­ argument that all reds were by definition short-lived monopoly of nuclear arms. June Havoc: "We found out that her real posed crime took place! Soviet spies who deserved to die. Shortly FBI chief Hoover seized on the Soviets' name is June Hovick .... Another one is The case against the Rosenbergs con­ after the Rosenbergs' arrest, Congress August 1949 atomic test to unleash his Eddie Cantor and his real name is sisted solely of the testimony of self­ passed the McCarran Internal Security army of G-men to hunt down the "atom Edward Iskowitz .... There is one who confessed perjurers. They were sen­ Act stigmatizing all members of the CP spies" who supposedly stole the "secret" calls himself Edward G. Robinson. His tenced to death under the provisions of and "Communist Front" groups as of the nuclear bomb, a convenient excuse real name is Emmanuel Goldenberg" an act which didn't apply to their case "agents of the Soviet Union," while for ratcheting up the already existing (quoted in Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal and repeatedly denied appeals by one right-wingers like Westbrook Pegler campaign of repression against the left. Emhrace: Jews and the State, 1993). court after another. And when, at the called for completely outlawing mem­ It was hardly coincidental that all the Meanwhile, a Washington, D.C. outfit eleventh hour, U.S. Supreme Court Jus­ bership in the CP and to "shoot or oth­ principals in the "atom spy" case-the called the "Pentagon Patriots" ranted tice William Douglass granted a stay of erwise put to death all persons convicted Rosenbergs themselves, their codefen­ that if the Rosenbergs were not executed, execution, . Attorney General Brownell Keystone an "outraged nation" would "drag them got Chief Justice Vinson to convene an from their prison cell.. .to swing and die unprecedented emergency session of the and dangle from the Hangman's rope!" court, recalling justices who were In 1950, the Chicago Sentinel report­ already on summer vacation to overturn ed: "Since the outbreak of the Korean the stay hours before the execution. war, American immigration authorities The Rosenbergs' judge, Irving Kauf­ in Germany have practically discontin­ man, was cut of the same cloth as Judge ued issuing visas to Jewish DPs [dis­ Sabo, the hanging judge who signed placed persons] who were fully entitled Jamal's death sentence and is widely to them on the wholesale suspicion that known as a "prosecutor in robes." Kauf­ all Jewish DPs are communists. Every man was a fanatical anti-Communist Jewish DP who applies for a visa now from his days as one of the only Jewish is subjected to an inquisition by the students at New York's Catholic Ford­ Counter Intelligence Service" (quoted in ham University, the FBI's traditional re­ Jewish L!fe, December 1950). cruiting ground. While piously invoking A series of "security" investigations "spiritual guidance," he took his march­ of government scientists at Fort Mon­ ing orders directly from the chief pros­ mouth, New Jersey were so flagrantly ecutors, hard-bitten witchhunters Irving anti-Semitic that they created a furor in Saypol and Roy Cohn. In his autobiog­ the bourgeois press: 16 of 18 scientists raphy, Cohn cynically recalled, "the suspended in 1948 were Jewish (the closest [Kaufman] got to prayer was the other two were black), as were 40 of 50 phone booth next to the Park Ave. Syn­ suspenqed four years later. Many of the agogue. He called from that booth to a Jewish scientists under suspicion were phone I used behind the bench in the forced to wear yellow badges-recalling courtroom to ask my advice on 'whether the treatment meted out to Jews in he ought to give the death penalty to the ghettos of East Europe under the Ethel Rosenberg. We often communi­ Nazis-and assigned to a "Leper Col­ cated during the Rosenberg case in this ony" (Jewish Life, December 1954). The manner." key criterion for determining who was One of the key prosecution "wit­ suspect was if they "went to the wrong nesses," Harry Gold, was a pathological college"-New York's City College, liar who admitted to having become "so called "Jew-CCNY" by anti-Semites. tangled up in a web of lies ... it is a wonder This was the same basis on which the steam didn't come out of my ears." The FBI tracked down Julius Rosenberg's pliable Gold readily picked up on his supposed "accomplices." FBI interrogators' "hints" to spin ever Many of McCarthy's closest allies new and more elaborate-and often con­ and supporters were fascistic anti­ tradictory-tales about his role as a sup­ Semites who railed that "there are too posed Soviet courier. Yet not even Gold many Jews in Washington" (Jewish Life, testified to ever having met or known February 1954). McCarthy himself de­ Julius or Ethel Rosenberg. The linchpin nounced the Nuremberg anti-Nazi trials of the prosecution's case rested on the for being controlled by a "vengeance" accounts of Ethel's sister-in-law, Ruth team of "Americans of very recent ori­ Greenglass, and her husband David, a gin," calling one "a "3ger,' meaning by hysterical hustler who had apparently that a non-Aryan refugee from Hitler Germany." stolen a piece of uranium while working . AP as an army technician at the Los Alamos Cold War frame-up of Rosenbergs provoked mass protests around the world. Yet the major bourgeois Jewish organ­ nuclear facility in 1945. WorrIed that Demonstration in Paris (top) on eve of execution; in U.S., Jewish Chronicle izations, like the American Jewish the feds would use his former member­ pointed to anti-Semitic aspects of witchhunt. . Committee and the misnamed Anti­ ship in the Young Communist League to Defamation League, played a despicable throw the book at him when they came role in this period, as they do today. With poking around on one of their fishing of such." Time- and again, Kaufman dant Morton Sobell and his accuser Max the likes of Kaufman, Saypol and Cohn expeditions, the despicable Greenglass admonished the jury to take note of the Elitcher, the Greenglasses, Harry Gold­ leading the way, these outfits joined agreed to "name names," setting his ~is­ "link ... between aiding Russia ... and were Jewish, as were the prosecutors forces with the witchhunters and bayed ter and her husband up as fall guys. As being members of the Communist and judge, chosen in a transparent at­ for the blood of the Rosenbergs. AJC a trained engineer who 'had been dis­ Party." Coming in the midst of a full­ tempt to cover up the stench of anti­ spokesman S.A. Fineberg penned a scur­ missed from a Signal Corps job in 1945 fledged red scare exacerbated by jingoist Semitism surrounding the triaL Yet, as rilous hatchet job, The Rosenherg Case: on charges of being a CP member­ hysteria over the U.S.-fed imperialist the Indiana Jewish Chronicle (7 March Fact and Fiction, which regurgitated which he denied-Julius Rosenberg was war against the North Korean deformed 1952) observed, "Not a single jury mem­ every FBI lie and added a few, gro­ an ideal candidate for this set-up. workers state and Mao's China, this was ber was Jewish, and this in the city of tesquely accusing the Rosenbergs' sup­ The ingredients the FBI threw togeth­ ammunition enough to send the Rosen­ New York, which has a Jewish popula­ porters of "injecting" anti-Semitism into er for its case against the ~osenbergs bergs to the electric chair. tion amounting to one-third of the total the case and "exploiting" the children were the stuff of a third-rate spy thriller. Julius Rosenberg was arrested three population. Strange, or rather sinister, if for political ends. As Julius Rosenberg There was the supposed Jello box top weeks after the outbreak of the Korean you ask us." The judge and the prose­ angrily charged in a letter from prison, tom in two to identify a courier; the War and less than a year after the first cutors ganged up to ensure a jury made these "self-appointed leaders of Jewish password "I come from Julius"; an Soviet A-bomb test. American nuclear to order: no Jews, no manual workers or organizations took on the role of an alleged Russian "gift" of an "expensive" scientists had repeatedly made it clear teachers, no one with the slightest leftist American Judenrat." The Judenriite table which it turned out the Rosenbergs that it was only a matter of time before sympathies. After a list of I 05 "subver­ (Jewish councils) were the Nazis' puppet had bought at Macy's for $21; a facsim­ other industrial powers managed to sive" organizations-including the likes administrators in the European ghettos. ile of Greenglass' crude drawing of the develop their own atomic bombs. This of the American Jewish Labor Coun­ "implosion" device for' the Los Alamos was particularly so for the USSR, whose cil, the Jewish Peoples Committee and Honor the Heroic Rosenbergs! A-bomb, which scientific observers at scientists were already engaged in pio­ the School of Jewish Studies-was read Racism and anti-Semitism have his­ the time derided as "not much of a neering nuclear research on the eve of out to the jury pool, Kaufman asked torically been the handmaidens of polit­ secret" and "illogical, if not downright Hitler's 1941 invasion of the Soviet "whether any juror has been a mem­ ical reaction, from the Dreyfus Affair in unworkable." In fact, the only hard Union. Three days after the U.S. ex­ ber of, contributed to or been associ­ tum of the century France to the 1915 evidence against the Rosenbergs intro­ ploded its first test bomb in July 1945, ated with, or any member of his family, lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Geor­ duced at the trial was a contribution box the Joint Chiefs of Staff adopted a policy or close friend, with any of those gia, which signaled the resurgence of the found in their home for Spanish Civil of "striking the first blow" in a nuclear organizations." Ku Klux Klan, to the post-World War I War refugees and Ethel's signature on a war. And two months after Washington Rampant McCarthyite hysteria had Palmer "Red Scare" and the post-World petition for a Communist candidate for dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and unleashed a barrage of anti-Semitic agi­ War II McCarthyite witchhunt. Today, as New York City Council. Nagasaki, the Pentagon mapped out a tation reviving the Hitlerite war cry the ruling class drives to eviscerate all plan to launch a nuclear attack on 20 against "Jew-Bolshevismr" The anti-red social welfare programs and to wipe out An American Dreyfus Case Soviet cities. witchhunt began in earnest with the 1947 a wh01e layer of the black ghetto popu­ This, however, went to the core of the _ Throughout the next few years, the prosecution of the Hollywood Ten, six lation, blatant anti-Semites like Patrick government's case. Just as Mumia Abu- U.S. engaged in nuclear blackmail, of whom were Jewish. The infamous continued on page 14 28 JULY 1995 9 Arlen Specter, a former Philly D.A., com- . Earlier that week, Channel 29 broad- frllll Jalllalt"'-."'-."'-. ~a.\.Q..e.d. tQ tb...e. Q...e.~\\\"ka.Q.. ~a.t\.QQ..a.\.. c'QI:..\\.­ <:.a.'i>t. a. 'i>~t. \..\.Q..~\.Q..~k~"\\Q.m.\\ t..b....'-~a..t...,,:' (continued from page 1) mittee about the "rush to judgment," crit­ at City Hall to Jamal's supporters. Wolk­ icizing Sabo's order for an immediate enstein demanded these statements also victims of McCarthyite Cold War anti­ evidentiary hearing, which would occur be retracted. Jamal himself issued a state­ Communism. "without sufficient interval for review ment on July 14 lashing out at these news "We must not let that happen! It is nec­ essary to build on the momentum of the of documents and preparation." Specter reports, saying they were "rumor­ wave of recent protests with a strategy continued: "You cannot maintain a pen­ damning rumor designed to demonize, aimed at mass mobilizations of blacks, alty as severe as the death penalty without not just myself, but anyone daring to call Hispanics and all the intended victims being meticulous in how it is applied." themselves supporters." Referring to the of capitalist repression, centrally seeking to unlock the social power of the inte­ A staunch advocate of the death penalty, 1985 bombing of MOVE, Jamal went grated labor movement.... this is not and contender for the Republican presi­ on: "And where did the report come only a struggle for Mumia's life-it's a dential nomination, Specter represents a from-of a 'bomb threat' allegedly 'con­ fight against the institution of the death wing of the bourgeoisie which doesn't nected'to 'the MumiaAbu-Jamal case'­ penalty itself, a barbaric means of repres­ want to see the U.S. murder machine but from the Police Department-the sion.which in the V:S. is necessarily rac­ ist: Free Mumia Abu-Jama/! Abolish the gummed up by Sabo's antics. very experts of bombings-experts of racist death penalty!" . Along with Specter's complaint came mass murder! The source of this alleged editorials in the "mainline" bourgeois 'news' is the source of this threat itself­ Courtroom Battle of Philadelphia Inquirer (16 July) and the the Philadelphia Police Department-the Class Forces more right-wing Philadelphia Daily F.O.P.-Babykillers." Sabo's kangaroo-court proceedings News (21 July). The Inquirer wrote: show that Mumia Abu-Jamal faces the "The behavior of the judge in the case Protests Across Europe same racist, politically motivated frame­ was disturbing the first time around­ The cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal has and in hearings last. week he did not give up that sent him to death row in the first the impression to those in the courtroom been taken up by thousands throughout place. Hanging over the court is the spec­ of fair-mindedness. Europe, including key sections of the tre of the state's murderous vendetta "Instead, he gave the impression, dam­ workers movement. In Italy, the Jamal against MOVE. When Weinglass argued aging in the extreme, of undue haste and campaign has directly intersected the on July 18 for time to gather witness hostility toward the defense's case." struggle against capitalist attacks on files to prepare his case, Sabo claimed The Daily News editorial, "A Live Con­ workers' livelihoods. On June 24, a labor vict, Not a Dead Martyr," echoed this WVPhoto that Jamal has had the files for the past Outside the court in Philadelphia, protest in Rome of more than 70,000 13 Ir;.:~~rs. Wein~lass replied, "His .files line: July 12. Support rallies have contin­ workers against government austerity were'oestroyed m the MOVE bombmg." "The orchestrated worldwide campaign ued every day of hearings. measures joined the campaign to save On July 18, it was revealed that the on Abu-Jamal's behalf-misdirected as Jamal. A 700-strong contingent demand­ it may be-has generated enough doubt , prosecution had subpoenaed the defense to justify serious consideration of a of the signing of the death warrant. ing Jamal's freedom marched in the dem­ witnesses. When one did not show up in retrial.... A jurist with an astonishing Last week, the FOP massed 300 armed onstration, and a representative of the court, the D.A. demanded that Sabo im­ record of murder convictions, (Sabo] has cops outside the headquarters of hospital Italian National Committee Against the mediately issue a warrant for his arrest! become part of the defense's argument." workers union Local 1199C, with signs Death Penalty and for Freedom for Rachel Wolkenstein, Partisan Defense The line of the capitalist media is to reading, "Lethal injection for convicted Mumia Abu-Jamal spoke from the Committee staff counsel and one of maintain the lie that Mumia is guilty, cop killers now," because that union had podium. The rally chairman put forward Jamal's lawyers, blasted this as "part of but should be entombed for life instead dared to come out in support of Jamal a motion demanding "freedom for Jamal" a whole history and pattern of harass­ of being executed and becoming a mar­ (see page 16). Led by FOP fUhrer Richard that was approved by universal cheering. ment, of persecution, of coercion against tyr. Life imprisonment would itself be a Costello, the cops have also been omi­ Leonard Weinglass has reported re­ anybody who will speak the truth about grotesque travesty of justice. Mumia is nously smearing Jamal's legal team, and ceiving a call from the consul general this case." . innocent! He was marked and is perse­ the hundreds of supporters who gather of Italy, who said, "the Italian govern­ The D.A.'s reply to the defense motion cuted because of his beliefs and his cou­ in his defense each day of the court pro­ ment in Rome wants an explanation as for a stay of execution baldly revealed rageous exposures of oppression in cap­ ceedings, as "outside agitators" and "ter­ to what's happening to Mumia Abu­ that the death penalty is at the c!;!nter of italist America. True justice demands: rorists." These smears are meant, above Jamal." Meanwhile, WV has learned that the state machinery of repression: "The Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! all, to tar Jamal and speed his execution. on July 10 the Florence city council death penalty ... is the highest exercise of On July 21, Rachel Wolken stein voted to demand a stay of execution, a the state's authority; and it should not FOP Campaign of Filth demanded a retraction from WTFX -TV, new trial and a new judge for Jamal. lightly be disturbed." Revealing the The Philadelphia cops are acting like Channel 29, after the station aired a state­ This has a particular symbolic impor­ state's utter racist contempt for the life a lynch mob, packing the court each ment by Costello that railed, "Let these tance, as Florence abolished the death of Mumia Abu-Jamal, it grotesquely morning, wearing T-shirts reading, "The out-of-town lawyers, these out-of-town penalty in the 1700s. On July 12, the states that "The carrying out of a valid Jury Said Death ... Do It." They parade terrorists, get the hell out of here and leadership of the CGIL, Italy's main death sentence cannot constitute irrepa­ in with the widow of policeman Daniel leave Philadelphia to us. This is our union federation of over five million rable injury for purposes of requesting Faulkner, whom Jamal was falsely con­ city." Wolkenstein wrote, "Your broad­ members, passed a similar motion. All a stay"! victed of killing. Her slanders of Jamal cast labeling attorneys and supporters of this week there will be demonstrations With the eyes of the world on Sabo's allegedly gloating over her dead hus­ Mumia Abu-Jamal as 'terrorists' is utterly outside American consulate offices in court, the daily display of racist bias and band's "bloody shirt" in the 1982 "trial," false, without any factual basis and is cities throughout Italy. the blatant railroad job being carried out retailed in the capitalist media during the defamatory. . . . These types of accusa­ In Berlin on July 22, some 5,000 have evoked a storm of criticism even FOP's campaign against Mumia's book, tions against 'outsiders' come right out people, mainly youth, marched to the from within the Philadelphia bourgeois Live from Death Row, were designed to of the 'old South' and the Scottsboro American consulate in a national' dem­ establishment. Republican U.S. Senator "soften up" public opinion in advance Boys case." onstration for Jamal called by anti-racist

Party. Order bundles of the spe­ cial campaign issue of Class­ Join the Campaign! Struggle Defense Notes and Get your The Frame-Up of Mumia Organize protest! Pass-motions in your unions, Abu-Jamal, 25 copies of 1 campus, community and church organizations. Get either publication for $10.00. button and your union or organization to make a cOntribution and For only $1, buy the PDC's join rallies and protests for Jamal. PubliCize Jamal's case new button: "Free Mumia newPDC in your union or organization's newsletter. Prepare Abu-Jamal! Abolish the for emergency demonstrations-get on the Partisan Racist Death Penalty!" Get pamphlet Defense Committee phone tree to organize in your your local bookstore to stock area. Jamal's powerful Live from Death Spread the word! The current issue of the PDC's Row. Contact the PDC for speakers, 2 Class-Struggle Defense Notes is devoted to the to arrange showings of the PDC's video, From Death Row, struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal. And just out from the This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. The video can be purchased PDC is a new pamphlet, The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu­ for $30.00 from the PDC at the address below. Contribu­ Jamal, exposing in detail the prosecution's case of lies, tions of $5.00 or more to the PDC include a year's subscrip­ the coercion of witnesses and the FBI's COINTELPRO tion to Class-Struggle Defense Notes. terror campaign against Mumia and the Black Panther 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 phone 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) 772-3155. 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 J.amal to express your solidarity: • 5 Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. Roy Furman Highway, Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090.

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

10 WORKERS VANGUARD decade to promote my former Black Panther mem­ bership, why is it suddenly improper to examine Judge Sabo's former FO.P. membership? Even if the governmS!nt granted a new trial, before an unbiased jurist, how could I receive-the assistance of John Africa at the defense table, or of Theresa Africa as a paralegal, when this selfsame government murdered them in the massacre of May 13th, 1985, Statement of July 12 by shooting and bombing them, incinerating them out of this existence? / As expected, Judge Sabo has denied the motion: ica embraces its second season of neo-apartheid, as The same D.A. 's office prosecuting this blatantly we are not surprised. What does one expect from a racist demagogues run on raw hatred-the political unjust death sentence, looked at the bloody carnage "retired': member of the FO.P. who now masquerades flavor of the '90s. of May 13th-with 11 men, women & children as a fair, impartial senior jurist?, Several years ago, at my so-called "trial," I bombed into oblivion-and saw no crime, no viola­ As a matter of fundamental fairness, would not a repeated Mao Zedong's familiar quote: "Political tions of any law. "fair," "impartial" judge have announced to the power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The same D.A. 's office that intentionally removed defense, before trial, of his professional associations, In retrospect, perhaps a more fitting quote 11 black jurors from my jury pool, had the nerve to especially in a case such as this? would've been: "Political power grows out of the select an "investigating" grand jury in the May 13th That he did not is silent and sufficient testament seat of an electric chair." bombing of my brothers and sisters, only to "recom­ to what "fairness" and "impartiality" mean in the Look-and you'll see a widening politics of mend" that they file no charges in a case of premed­ city of Philadelphia. DEATH; from the D.A., to the Mayor; from the itated mass murder. A blind man can see that I didn't receive a fair judgeship, to the governorship; from the Congress­ From such an entity, what can the word "justice" trial, and now, to compound this outrage, I have been man, to the President-all allied in death centrism. really mean? denied a fair PCRA hearing. Politicians all-running on death. True justice requires more than a stay of execu­ As South Africa assigns the death penalty to the Who brought you the massacres of the MOVE tion-it requires a complete dismissal of this clearly garbage can of history, Philadelphia whets its racist bombing, the mass murders of Waco and the many political persecution! appetite as it bays for more black bloQd. In the most mini-murders in between-all whitewashed by the It requires more: it requires the committed mobi­ benighted sectors of South Africa, from the laagers same government that claims to be "tuff on crime"­ lization of our communities to resist a system that of Afrikanerdom, to the drunken shebeens of the unless it's their own; for people get trial and prison, is more repressive than South Africa's-to abolish ~ townships, all know that the Constitution protects while governments get hearings and re-elections. this racist death penalty! the fundamental "right to life." You have seen a trial where a man has peen denied It requires freedom-for all MOVE political pris­ Here, in Philadelphia, the very place where the his right to select a jury; to defend himself; to have oners, and all political prisoners of whatever persua­ American Constitution was written, signed and pub­ counsel of his choice, or even to have' competent sion! Now! lished, the Constitution is no more than a passing counsel of the state's choice. thought; it is a minor hindrance, to be tolerated when You have seen a trial where evidence of my inno­ It requires a continuing revolution-to beat back able, and ignored when necessary, when the state's cence was withheld, false evidence utilized, all pre­ the forces of the neo-apartheid state. goals are death. sided over by a card-carrying member of the FO.P. Organize! Mobilize.! Whar does it protect, save the interests of the ("retired"), where "presumption of innocence" was From South Africa to the U.S.A., push the racist established? an inside joke. death penalty away! As South Africa takes a great leap forward, Amer- If it was proper for the state to go back over a Ona Move! Long Live John Africa!

Autonomen youth. Flags from the Social included a representative from the Inter­ titled "From Here to Death Row," dom. What is desperately needed to Democratic Party and its youth organi­ national Parliament of Writers whose demanded a new trial and denounced the unchain labor/black power against racist zation could be seen, as well as trade­ president is Salman Rushdie. In addition, harassment directed at Jamal for his American capitalism is the leadership of union flags of IG Medien, IG Metall and Paris' "newspaper of record," Le Monde, book, decrying that: "what the Fraternal a class-struJ?J?le workers party which the commerciallbank workers union. A has repeatedly published quarter-page Order of Police hopes are the last 40 champions the rights of all the oppressed. contingent of over 100 people marched appeals signed by prominent individuals days of his life may pass as wretchedly The August 3 New York rally has won under the banners of the Spartakist demanding, "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal," as possible." important support from the 1199 National Workers Party and Committee' for Social submitted by MRAP and the Committee H.ealth& Human Service Employees Defense (KfsV). Along with the enor­ for Defense of Liberty and the Rights of Mobilize the Power of Union, along with several SEIU public mous outpouring of support for Jamal in Man, associated with the French Com­ Labor and Blacks! service unions, the chairman of the Phil­ Germany, the case has now been taken munist Party. The latter is also circulating Stop the Execution! adelphia chapter of the Coalition of Black up by former German president Richard 1.5 million leaflets in defense of Jamal. Just as the mobilization of the world Trade Unionists, Refuse & Resist and von Weizsacker, who, according to The fact that Jamal has been perse­ working class in the 1930s prevented the other groups. Connecting Mumia's strug­ Neues Deutschland (22 July), intends "to cuted for his written and spoken com­ legal lynching of the Scottsboro Boys, gle with the fight against racist cop terror, communicate his support to Abu-Jamal's mentaries has generated important sup­ today the forces of organized labor must the rally has been endorsed by Margarita lawyer and appeal to the Governor of port from world-renowned writers. On be brought to bear in the fight to free Rosario, mother of Anthony Rosario and Pennsylvania." July 17, the International Parliament of Jamal. This is the significance of ral­ aunt of Hilton Vega, two Bronx youth In London on July 22, a united-front Writers (IPW) issued an appeal to save lies, initiated by the POC, to "Mobilize gunned down in a wave of racist cop demonstration initiated by the Partisan Jamal and sent a protest letter to Gov­ Labor/Minority Power" to stop Jamal's killings. The demonstration in Oakland Defence Committee brought out over ernor Ridge signed by over 500 writers, execution and abolish the '.racist death has been endorsed by a mainstay of Bay 300 people who marched past the U.S. including Jorge Amado (Brazil), Breytan penalty which have been called'for New Area labor, ILWU longshore Local 10, embassy to a rally at Belgrave Square. Breytenbach (South Africa), Mohamed York and Oakland on August 3 and for as well as a number of SEIU locals, The National Union of Journalists, Harbi (Algeria) and Harold Pinter (Brit­ Chicago on August 10. incluoing the fargely Latino Local 1877 Southern and Eastern regions of the ain). Also signing the letter was Salman Mobilizing the labor movement ("Justice for Janitors"). Among those Trades Union Congress, the Fir,e Bri­ Rushdie, living in Britain under a death against racist repression is crucial, not backing the emergency rally in Chicago gades Union, and local branches otrail­ threat issued by the reactionary Islamic only in fighting against Jamal's threat­ are Amalgamated Transit Union Local way and public service· workers backed regime in Iran. The PEN American Cen­ ened execution, but for the very survival 241 and Operation PUSH. the march, along with several socialist ter and the Committee to Save Mumia of the unions. Working people have been Speaking to a crowd of Jamal's sup­ and minority groups and the Green Party. Abu-Jamal are holding an emergency reeling under the bosses' union-busting, porters outside Sabo's court on July 18, The protest was also supported by press conference in New York City on wage-gouging attacks, while the unions Rachel Wolkenstein underscored the Labour Members of Parliament Bernie August I to coincide with a Paris press have been decimated, hamstrung by a importance of mass social protest: Grant, Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn. conference organized by the IPW. leadership that falsely identifies work­ "Speaking for myself now, on behalf of In Paris on July 8, 300 people came The fight to save Jamal has also been If the organization that I work with, the ers' interests with their exploiters'. the Partisan Defense Committee, I want to out to a rally called by the Comite taken up in Brazil. The Brasilia Cam­ labor movement is to be revitaJized, it make it clear that as far as I am con­ de Defense Sociale (CDDS-associated paign to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, which must take up the struggle against racist cerned, Mumia Abu-lamal cannot get a with the Ligue Trotskyste de France), includes the Unified Black Movement terror-of the extralegal KKK/skinheads fair trial in this city. If there was ever a the Socialist Party, the Paris region of and the Union of Professional Journal­ as well as of the cops and courts-and question before we walked into that courtroom, then it is abundantly clear the CGT labor federation and others. ists, has called a demonstration on the defense of immigrants and others vic­ now. Hopefully there will be a decision Supported by the International Organi­ August 2 at the U.S. embassy and has timized by the capitalist rulers. in the courts, but it's not going to hap­ zation of Journalists, the rally heard gathered 1,500 signatures on petitions Any unionist who doesn't already un­ pen without your support and without speakers including. African writer for Jamal. Vicente Paulo da Silva, pres­ derstand the connection between the fight more-ten, twenty, a thousand times the Madjeu Matcheu and Nobel Prize winner ident of the powerful CUT labor feder­ support--organizations, trade unions, for Mumia and the struggle for labor politicians, artists, unemployed, out there Theodore Monod. A statement by Julia ation, has signed a statement in Mu,mia's rights need only look at the ominous cop demanding: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Wright, the daughter of Richard Wright, defense. On August 9, a demonstr,ation mobilization against Local 1199C in Phil­ Abolish the racist death penalty!" author of the classic American novel of initiated by Luta Metalurgica (Metal­ adelphia last week. The ruling class owns The farce being enacted in Sabo's black oppression, Native Son, was read. workers Struggle) will be held in Volta the means of production, education, the courtroom makes it amply clear that It noted, "I am convinced that my father, Redonda. media, and protects its profits through a Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot expect the Richard Wright, would have taken on the Significant new support in the U.S. is whole apparatus of governmental repres­ least justice froin this criminally unjust challenge of Mumia Abu-Jamal's pend­ also coming in. Jesse Jackson issued a sion. The multiracial working class has system of terror and repression. Mumia ing execution on August 17th." 13 July letter to Governor Ridge stating, the numbers, organization and the power should not have spent a day in jail in On July 12, the CDDS joined a dem­ "The National Rainbow Coalition sup­ which is derived from the fact that it the first place, and he should not be on onstration of some 500 people called by ports Mumia Abu-Jamal in his fight for produces all the wealth in this society. death row now. Black freedom and the the Movement Against Racism and for life and in the battle to uphold his con­ To realize this power is a matter of liberation of all humanity requires work­ Friendship Among Peoples (MRAP) in stitutional right to have an impartial consciousness and leadership. ers revolution to sweep away the capi­ front of the American consulate in Paris, court of law hear the facts of his case." Labor can and will only become a force talist state:-1ts prisons, courts and cops, with placards reading, "Save Mumia! - Author E.L. Doctorow, iii an "op-ed" against capitalist exploitation when it and to once and for all aboliSh the bar­ Stop the Legal Lynching!" Speakers column in the New York Times (14 July) actively takes up the fight for black free- baric death penalty. _

28 JULY 1995 . ,~.' 11 ~

WV Photos Jamal campaign has resonated among black workers in South Africa. Workers at June 6 COSATU demonstration in Johannesburg hold up Jamal flyers. COSATU and NACTU union federations representing millions of workers have taken up Jamal's cause.

," ~,-artheid Death Penalty Abolished , ffc£~~~!n¥-~ ~. !!_ DO lIlt May 1995

TO Go¥wnor Tem Ridge Metn~Bu.~"V ROOm 225 HARRISBURG PA 17120 South African Workers Dear aov.rno,. RI!Jge Th. COtIgrwu Of SOUIh Afncan T"-de Urnons, r~""trng one and halt fItIj)oIedOtlJOl.M'nalrst.m""OO_._~I"".""'.""",_"""",_ ...lIrnI.~ -.. -...... - ""--w...... - __...... ~., .... "" __- Fight to Save Jamal -shouk!beCOtrlrnuredandlhlltthe~l1tcor'dotlbltn.l___ .... ~ As the campaign to save Mumia Abu­ rant was signed. Now the ANC news­ his life fighting for the freedom of his oner, Mumia Abu-Jamal." Now WOSA, Jamal intensifies with the August 17 paper, Mayihuye (July 1995), has run people. together with other organizations, has execution date looming, support from an article headlined "Race On to Save "Our members are on the death row in your state. We join millions of people launched a South African Committee to South African trade unions and civic Mumia Abu-Jamal," and an editorial not­ and organisations around the world who Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, which has led organizations has surged. On June 19, at ing, "The Jamal case is a classic example direct passionate appeals to you, to inter­ weekly pickets of the U.S. embassy in a demonstration of 15,000 trade union­ of the racism, prejudice and barbarism vene and save the life of Jamal." Cape Town. ists in Johannesburg, workers took up which still lurks in the US judicial and A number of civic and human rights The WIRFI sent a protest telegram the chant, "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal!" law enforcement system." organizations have also taken up the call denouncing the racist police frame-up of The Congress of South African Trade In South Africa, where the death pen­ to stop Jamal's execution. The South Jamal, stating, "We take courage from Unions (COSATU), the predominantly alty was finally abolished by ·the Con­ African Prisoners Organisation for the principled struggles waged by the black union federation representing 1.5 stitutional Court on June 6, execution Human Rights (SAPOHR) issued a July comrades around Abu-Jamal and support million workers, as well as the country's was long used as a weapon of terror to 6 statement together with other organi­ you wholeheartedly." New Unity wrote second-largest labor federation, the enforce apartheid segregation against zations, including the South African that "Governor Ridge and his follow­ National Council of Trade Unions the black and "coloured" (mixed-race) National Civic Organisation (SANCO) ers ... now wish to claim the life of (NACTU), have passed resolutions and population and to smash workers' strug­ and Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR). Mumia to provide a blood-sacrifice on sent letters of protest. gles. During the early 1980s, striking rail­ South African political organizations the altar of mounting fascist war on lib­ A host of key unions have come way workers of the SARHWU union which have issued appeals to stop the erty and justice." to Jamal's defense. These include the were hanged, as were participants in execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal include The black proletariat of South Africa South African Commercial Catering and the township rebellions of 1983-87. Thus the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the came to the fore of the anti-apartheid Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU), the urgent campaign against the "legal" South African Communist Party (SACP) struggle in the huge class battles to forge the Food Farming Beverage and Allied lynching of an anti-racist fighter in the and the Azanian Peoples Organisation the black unions. It was their social Workers Union (FFBAWU), Chemical United States has particular resonance (AZAPO). Among tho~e left groups weight which rocked the white­ Workers Industrial Union, Turning among South African unions and leftists. which have taken up Jamal's cause are supremacist regime. But the aspirations Wheel Workers' Union, the Steel Min­ Most recently, the Media Workers' the Workers Organisation for Socialist of the workers and township youth who ing and Commercial Workers Union Association of South Africa (MWASA) Action (WOSA), the Workers Interna­ have fought for freedom from racist (STEMCWU), the Transport and Gen­ sent a July 13 letter to Pennsylvania gov­ tional to Rebuild the Fourth International oppression and capitalist exploitation eral Workers Union (TGW,U) and ernor Tom Ridge, signed by General Sec­ (WIRFI), the New Unity Movement, the have been blocked by the "power shar­ the National Union of Metalworkers retary Sithembele Khala, stating: Socialist Workers Organisation (SWO) ing" deal aimed at preserving South Afri­ (NUMSA). "Our history goes back to the early sev­ and the International Socialist Move­ can capitalism. The African National Congress enties in the Union of Black journal­ ment (ISM).' Just as black Americans saw in apart­ (ANC), now the leading party in the ists .... We engagedlhe racist government WOSA passed a resolution at its June heid rule a mirror of their own oppres­ "power sharing" government, has also of the National Party, in the struggle for national conference which "called on sion, today South African workers organ­ taken up Mumia's case. ANC secretary liberation. For this role we paid dearly .... the American government not to execute izations are adopting Jamal's case as "This union's National Executive and its general Cyril Ramaphosa sent a protest membership decided to grant Mumia the African-American political pris- their own .• letter to Pennsylvania governor Ridge on Abu-Jamal honorary membership. He is June 2, the day after Jamal's death war- a widely acclaimed journalist who spent

SOUrH AFfllCAN COMMUNIST PARrY African National Congress lrdflow.C-tuH-. Iley4lSlAef * P.O·iIoo:IO'l1 1117~NTUN CMIroI Comm,~ lOIoJOIf"i'lNE$BlJRG • tel: (OU) 1)0-7000 ~1.,...Slrecl~f12001 ~ fu:(OU)ll3-4~ T

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ATLANTA NEW YORK CITY 2 JwW 1~9! o..r Qo"."nor R~dq. Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal! MiA C41t.Ol ~i141D9 Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! .....----­*""swq ....'1'7120 ••.. 1iIlIaU AOv.-.:r_l Down with the New COINTELPRO! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! . ... 1no. .."-1 SAC:p to uQ:~q ...."11' 1Ihai. Qdd Abu-.1_l.__ to ~ at.t • ".I!"r."t Ilq toe... Unchain Labor/Black Power! Fight for a .,..1' QGW~r '-ic!ge Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal! Th. QCp b • ·~UJ."-nt PGlJ.U.... l P&tty ill hltt;b Atri ...... ,IU ua. ... t ••.DAIa tM two Gablllat IJ.nuot.en, aar.. -""ty aiJtt.t.ni, 1 .... t or II.ine r MruPro",iItc::.1"-l..... t . Pt"-.L_., .... 51 ... La til. ___til Ur1can Class-Struggle Workers Party! ~ .. co you. CO u" you-power a. QOWrDO , 1;.0 Saturday, August 12, 7 p.m. ~th.r1~. .-,t.~ \l~ i~ upon ..-,1- ,u.u.J_l u4 1A ~t1OD~U to 'ftI. Abu....r... l ...... II..q -.ny dhtudlu-, .:11-.1..,.., Little Five Points Community Center Thursday, August 10, 7:30 p.m. allow. I'tIcru,l 01: bit ca.. · ..._ ten: )'ClUJ: ~.l"'C. ncoutAllnt.1OQ. 01: u. -~ 1083 Austin Ave., N.E. Borough of Manhattan Community College ~~,!,",,-~ =.=:, ...... -.--'" _ .... tl"-Y~;~ til-. tort_I .... v.r.uc:t ~ to lie ...... '-'---'ly (BMCC), Student Development Center, • tIIq-. t. •• _v. or net.. baoo tc'ul For more information: (404) 521-9338 .. t.MIIIt yw tor )"OIU' coal1M.ntLoa of t.bLI _t.u¥· ~"'" .~'tn, 199 Chambers Street and. tb. ·~t ~LJw, ot AlIu-..1_1. , IUt, lit ta. _nell1 Of the "y. tta. _ ~ t_tun ot aU, i. 1''''''1' -ten. I101tJ.on W pant.t "1t:,b jUCIJ.ctal ~i_. All .. For more information: (212) 732-7860 POUtu'.. l pri~ ill ea. .. PUt!wid PE"i--.. I ~ ttlr-...... h .. U ~- j ....t 20 YardIr ....Y t>:'Oll _ or tb. _t -..eiv. 'IJIIl~ In til. Iiorld. I CoIn teft.Uy to tboo d~L!o, _rr-=e ~tl_ BOSTON Yji2, 1:1 .... 011 .. ra-nal _yat_. lID:!. 011; ;II Wbol. 1IOc;:1.ey. M.C. Tb. SAo> lui. con.1ae.nUy ~ ~ ....tb P'WlIIley. III &pen Mumia Abu-Jamal Must Not Die! WASHINGTON, D,C. I99J O\U:" "-"'r.. l -_ret .. l'}'. "l1li til. __net _t PGpql..,. PGl.1t:iCII.l i."d... in SO"tIIUnCoi (.tr...... ). atrb ....i .... r c If.~-....s..l The Death Penalty and Clinton's New Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! n."'lIUm-.!... wa"-r-'!J.II""lr"~t.tonot""'it.elPlUl~t.

MILANO-On July 15, six supporters Jamal defense banner taken down. of the Lega Trotskista d'Italia (LTd'l) A week earlier, on July 8, Rifon­ were brutally attacked by goons from dazione goons had launched another the Rifondazione Comunista (RC) party attack against the Lega Trotskista's lit­ here. Our" comrades, three of them erature table outside the RC festival. women, were distributing literature along That time as well the RC took down the with other left groups at an RC "festival" CODISPRO banner, which only a few in Milano. The RC thugs also removed days earlier (on June 24) had been prom­ a banner of the Committee for Social inently displayed next to the speakers and Proletarian Defense (CODISPRO), platform in a union demonstration of which called to "Save the Life of Mumia some 70,000 which endorsed the demand Abu-Jamal," the former Black Panther to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. and political prisoner scheduled to be The LTd'I was distributing a leaflet pro­ executed in the U.S. on August 17. The testing that earlier attack when they were CODISPRO is affiliated with the LTd'I, set upon again on July 15. and fraternally linked to the Partisan Rifondazione Comunista is the Euro­ Banner demanding, "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal!" was carried in workers Defense Committee in the U.S. stalinist rump of the Italian Communist demonstration in Rome, June 24. Rifondazione Comunista goons took down The goon squad at first forced, the Party (PCI), which largely liquidated this same banner and attacked our comrades outside RC gathering in Milano. Trotskyists to move to the entrance of itself into the social-democratic PDS the Lampugnano metro station. Then (Democratic Left Party) led by Achille PDS reformists have imposed the strait­ ties with bourgeois parties with the jacket of the popular front, which binds perspective of a class-collaborationist more RC thugs arrived and with kicks Occhetto. RC continues the same old government. So while the top cop of and fists pushed our comrades away reformist politics, adorned with the PCI's the working elass to the bourgeoisie, on the Berlusconi government, Roberto from the festival, to a place where our hammer-and-sickle fig leaf (instead of the combative Italian proletariat. Maroni, is welcomed with full honors literature couldn't be seen by RC mem­ the PDS' oak tree symbol). In a press release issued the evening onto the platform of the Lihera:ione fes­ tival, the communists of the Trotskyist bers. The men were expelled first, so On July 8, the RC goons particularly of July 15, the LTd'I stated: League are removed with physical vio­ that they couldn't see what was happen­ went after a placard stating, "Build a "We energetically protested this brutal lence. The despicable message of dis­ ing to the women. Then the RC goons Leninist-Trotskyist Party. No to the action in the tradition of Stalinist and credited Stalinism now being used grabbed one woman comrade of the Class Collaboration of the PDS and RC!" social-democratic violence against revo­ against those who spearheaded the cam­ LTd'I by the neck, lifting her off the No doubt the goon squad was also lutionaries. We are for open political paign in Italy to defend Jamal is a deadly debate in the workers movement and blow against those fighting for his free­ ground, and slapped another one. Leaf­ offended by the LTd'I placard, "No Vote underline that this revival of violence in dom from racist capitalist 'justice' and lets and copies of the LTd'I publica­ to the Anti-Worker, Anti-Woman, Anti­ the tradition of Stalinism goes hand has done a great service to his would-be tion, Spartaco, were ripped up" and the Immigrant Popular Front!" The RC and in hand with the strengthening of RC's executioners." •

Right of Nations to Self-Determination": retical breakthroughs" has been known cheer on in the name of Solidarnosc David North ... "on the one hand, the absolutely direct, to the Marxist movement for over a cen­ counterrevolution). unequivocal recognition of the full right tury now. It's otherwise known as Lenin recognized that imperialism (continued from page 7) of all nations to self-determination; on imperialism! was the epoch of capitalist decay, in unlike Healy, they did it for free! But the other hand, the equally unambiguous Up until the mid-1880s, Marx and Eng­ which the development of a national even this "defense" would appear to be appeal to the workers for international els judged national movements according economy and emergence of a vigorous rather threadbare, considering that, for unity in their class struggle." to their ability to consolidate modern in­ bourgeoisie were stifled by imperialist one, North's colleague Nick Beams; The right to self-determination is pure­ dependent nation-states favorable to eco­ exploitation and domination over the leader of the Australian Socialist Labour ly a bourgeois-democratic demand and nomic development. But with the devel­ more backward capitalist countries. The League, got censured by the Central as such is correspondingly a subordinate opment of imperialism the terms of understanding that the national bour­ Committee of his own organization in part of a revolutionary-internationalist reference changed. Marx and Engels geoisies of these countries are incapable February 1986 for failing to report the program. This question was posed point­ began to address this over the question of carrying out the most elementary receipt of monies from Arab regimes to blank for the Bolsheviks following the of Irish independence. As Marx wrote in bourgeois-democratic tasks, such as gen­ the IC (Socialist Labor League Internal 1917 Russian Revolution in the Ukraine a paper on the Irish question in 1869: uine national independence, is ABC Bulletin, February 1986). and in the Caucasus. In the latter region, "it is in the direct and absolute interest Trotskyism-in fact it is a fundamental To alibi their former support for a newly independent bourgeois regimes of the English working Class to get rid underpinning of Trotsky'S theory of per­ whole variety of reactionary nationalist sought and found the direct military back­ oftheir present connexion with Ireland .... manent revolution. causes and regimes, today North's ICFI ing ofthe imperialists-first the Germans The English reaction in England had its Of course, very real changes have acts as if nationalism has only recently and then the British-posing a direct roots in the subjugation of Ireland." taken place in the world in the aftermath become a "retrograde tendency." In the threat to the revolution. At the close of Marx's position on Ireland was further of the collapse of the former Soviet "Road to Tuzla," they write of the "pro­ the Civil War, the Bolsheviks took power developed by Lenin in his writings on Union. The relentless drive to destroy gressive, unifying characteristic of the in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan the national question. For Lenin the the Soviet workers state provided a national movements of the epoch- in through a combination of local uprisings question of self-determination had noth­ point of unity for the various imperi­ which Lenin put forwarl;! the slogan of and Red Army intervention. As Trotsky ing to do with the ability to develop a alist powers. With that removed, inter­ wrote two decades later, "Forceful soviet­ self-determination of nations." But in modem, economically independent cap­ imperialist rivalries have escalated. calling for military support to national ization was justified: the safeguarding italist nation. Indeed he polemicized at The global system of "free trade"­ movements fighting against imperialist­ of the socialist revolution comes before some length against Rosa Luxemburg, the economic cement which held to­ colonialist SUbjugation, Lenin never formal democratic principles" ("Balance who declared that self-determination had gether the U.S.-dominated anti-Soviet praised their supposed "progressive, uni­ Sheet of the Finnish Events" [April 1940] become an "illusory" demand with the alliance-has crumbled as the major fying character." On the contrary, in his in In Defense of Marxism). development of imperialism. In "The powers seek to redivide the world into "Draft Theses on National and Colonial Right of Nations to Self-Determination," regional trade blocs. But what is going Questions" at the Second Congress of The "Global Economy" Lenin answered: on is not "new." Rather, the post-Cold War world increasingly resembles the the Communist International (1920), Other than claiming that their new­ "Not only small states, but even Russia, Lenin called for: for example, is entirely dependent, eco­ pre-1914 world of heightened interim­ found "wisdom" on the national question nomically, on the power of the imper­ perialist rivalries intersecting regional ~' ... a determined struggle against at­ is the fruit of having got rid of Healy, ialist finance capital of 'rich' bour­ nationalist conflicts. tempts to give a communist coloufing to the ICFI claims a "new world reality" geois countries. Not only the miniature bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in for its line change: Balkan states, but even nineteenth­ The so-called "globalization of produc­ tHe backward countries; the Communist tion"-i.e., the export of capital-simply "Vast changes in world economic and century America was, economically, a International should support bourgeois­ colony of Europe, as Marx pointed out democratic national movements in colo­ political relations have created corre­ means that the capitalists have moved sponding changes in the character of the in Capital .... large chunks of industry to low-wage nial and backward countries only on con­ "For the question 'of the political self­ dition that, in these countries, the national movements .... Can it be 'seri­ "Third World" countries. This, for exam­ ously argued that the resurgence ofleth­ determination of nations and their in­ elements of future proletarian parties, dependence as states in bourgeois ple, has meant the attempted wholesale which will be communist not only in nic chauvinism in the Balkans, or for that society, Rosa Luxemburg has substi­ takeover of Mexico by U.S. imperialism name, are brought together and trained to matter in the former USSR or the Indian subcontinent, expresses an effort to put tuted the question of their economic under the conditions of the North Ameri­ understand their special tasks, i.e., those independence. " of the struggle against the bourgeois­ an end to the legacy of imperialist and can Free Trade Agreement. Far from democratic movements within their own feudal domination? Can one speak today Unlike the Northites, however, Rosa being a negation 'of the Leninist position nations." of the national bourgeoisie of Bosnia, or Luxemburg was animated by genuine on the national and colonial question, the Kazakhstan or Kashmir seeking to 'cap­ The Bolsheviks championed the right ture the home market,' thereby creating proletarian internationalism. Although current situation underlines the impor­ of self-determination not to advance the conditions for the 'victory of commodity wrong, her visceral opposition to the tance for communists of defending the cause of nationalism but to advance pro­ production' and hence a fuller develop­ right of self-determination was mo­ rights of neocolonial and oppressed na­ letarian class unity. The fundamental ment of the class struggle?" tivated by revulsion with the various tions against imperialist depredations in propositions of a Marxist position on the The idea of an "era of global economic bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nation­ order to advance the interests of interna­ national question in the imperialist integration" which North presents as if alist forces in Poland (forces which tional proletarian class struggle. epoch were underlined by Lenin in "The it were yet another of his unique "theo- some decades later the Northites would [TO BE CONTINUED]-

13 28 JULY 1995 ~ ~,;·4 ~ rampant that the Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia .._. rr ran two series by reporters Jonathan .£'" co Neumann and William Marimow on the (continued from page 16) :c c. subject in 1977 alone, one devoted to Qj the feds go back over the cases in which "0 police killings and the second on cop thesj;: cops were involved, the Philadel­ :c~ violence in the streets. The Inquirer's 24- phia Inquirer (28 June) reports "scores­ 0.. 27 April 1977 series, "The Homicide possibly hundreds-of bogus arrests" Files," includes this description: may be reversed. Meanwhile, Philadel­ "A four-month investigation by The phia's fledgling Police Advisory Com­ Inquirer has found a pattern of beat­ mission announced it would hold its first ings, threats of violence, intimidation, coercion an~d knowing disregard for con­ hearings this summer to investigate the stitutional rights in the interrogation of fatal beating of Moises Dejesus by Clinton and homicide suspects and witnesses .... police last August. Despite witnesses to Philadelphia "The illegal interrogations follow a the cop beating, the medical examiner mayo.r Ed Rendell pattern: ". They are conducted by teams of detec­ declared there was no evidence Dejesus at White House, tives at police headquarters-known as had been clubbed over the head, claim­ swearing in 153 the Roundhouse-at Eighth and Race ing that he died of a "cardiac arrest" new Philly cops, Streets. The suspect or witness is often caused by a drug overdose. At the same June 8. handcuffed to a metal chair, which is time, after a two-year investigation by bolted to the floor. Some of these ses­ sions have lasted 24 hours. the Police Department's Ethics Account­ ". Some of the techniques used in the ability Division, two former 19th Dis­ beatings leave no severe marks. Those trict cops were last month sentenced to techniques include placing a telephone prison for planting drugs on five victims book on a suspect's head and hammering it with a heavy object; beating his feet and robbing them of money, jewelry and and ankles; twisting or kicking his testi­ other possessions. Rendell was himself district attorney in are far larger, and have higher mur­ cles; and pummeling his back, ribs and The New York Times Magazine story 1982 and personally approved seeking der rates). kidneys. focused on D.A. Lynne Abraham's mani­ the death penalty against Mumia. As Jamal wrote in a recent column, ". Other techniques do leave marks. Tes­ acal and blatantly racist use of capital timony about interrogations that judges Philly D.A.s systematically seek the "D. A.-Insult to Justice" (3 July), "The have ruled illegal has shown that sus­ punishment: "no prosecutor in the coun­ death penalty every time the law per­ acronym, 'D.A.' might as well stand for pects have been beaten with lead pipes, try uses the death penalty more." Asked mits, ensuring that when these cases District Assassin given its accomplished blackjacks, brass knuckles, handcuffs, about her reaction to the execution in go to trial they will get a "death quali­ history of murdering Justice, especialIy chairs and table legs. One suspect was May of Keith Zettlemoyer, the first man fied" jury (purged of any jurors who when it GOmes to black and hispanic stabbed in the groin with a sword-like instrument. ... to be put to death in a Northeastern state oppose the death penalty) that is far lives, property and safety." "'What we're living in at the Round­ since 1967, she remarked coldly: "I don't more likely to convict. Moreover, the The sordid racist record of Philly cops house,' a former homicide detective said, feel anything." This vicious death sen­ D.A. knocks blacks off juries without is long and welI-documented. In fact, in 'is a return to the Middle Ages'." tence fanatic declared, "I've looked at cause and conceals evidence of a defen­ 1979 the U.S. Justice Department sued all those sentenced to be executed. No dant's innocence so regularly that in the city of Philadelphia, Mayor Rizzo A Philly First: Feds Sue Over one will shed a tear. Prison is too good 1992 a Superior Court judge protested and virtualIy the entire police adminis­ Police Brutality for them. They don't deserve to live." that "prosecutorial misconduct seems to tration, charging them with systematic The Justice Department's August 1979 Abraham, at the time a judge, presided arise in Philadelphia County more so police brutality, especially against blacks civil lawsuit against the city of Phila­ over the initial arraignment of Mumia in than in any other county in this and Hispanics, that "shocks the con­ delphia and the Rizzo administration 1981. The article notes that Philadelphia Commonwealth." Today, Philadelphia's science." This suit marked the first time charged a pattern of persecution which was "the first city to reserve a group of death row population of 105 has the in American history that the federal gov­ reads like a litany of police practices specialized judges to hear only homicide highest proportion of black people in the ernment has sued an entire police force in apartheid South Africa. The suit cited cases .... The most notorious was Judge country and is the third largest of any and local government administration for "widespread, arbitrary, and unreason­ Albert F. Sabo," who sentenced Jamal county (close behind Houston's Harris police brutality. Cop terror in Rizzo's able physical abuse" including "shoot­ to death in 1982. Philadelphia mayor Ed County and Los Angeles County, which Philadelphia in the late 1970s was so ing nondangerous, nonviolent, fleeing

breadth of the civilized world!" in the Kremlin. We hailed heroic Soviet Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Robert Rosenbergs ... In the U.S., support for the Rosen­ spies-like Kim Philby, Richard Sorge Meeropol said two years ago, "By refus­ bergs was limited by the McCarthyite and Leopold Trepper-who put their ing to falsely accuse themselves and oth­ (continued from page 9) anti-Communist hysteria, but around the lives on the line in defending the Soviet ers, they became powerful symbols of world there was indeed an enormous out­ Union against imperialism. At the same resistance." Today such symbols of res is­ Buchanan and Pat Robertson are increas­ cry on their behalf, extending even to time, the monstrous security apparatus tance are to be found in former Black ingly prominent in the Republican Party. the Pope and the French government. Le built up by the Kremlin Stalinists was Panther activists Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) (And as in the early '50s, these anti­ Monde decried the threatened execution brutally employed to extinguish those and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Geronimo has Semitic anti-Communists are courted by as a "ritual murder" and the Dreyfus fam­ who fought to revive the proletarian spent 25 years in prison for a crime the the ADL and other Zionists.) Robertson, ily made a personal appeal for the Rosen­ internationalism that animated Lenin and government knows he did not commit, whose Christian Coalition dominates a bergs' lives. But President Eisenhower Trotsky's Bolsheviks. repeatedly denied parole specifically for sizable chunk of the Republican Party, and the rest of the U.S. rulers turned a That Soviet security could be wielded his defiant refusal to repudiate his polit­ is the author of The New World Order, deaf ear to all pleas for clemency or a both in defense of the USSR and to mur­ ical beliefs. Mumia sits on death row, an anti-Semitic screed whose depiction new trial. The night of the execution, der those, like the Trotskyists, who alone with ail August 17 execution date hanging of an international Jewish conspiracy is machine guns ringed the U.S. embassy had a program for genuine ,defense of over his head, for his impassioned cham­ lifted straight from the pages of the noto­ in Paris as tens of thousands of protesters the world's first workers state, reflected pioning of all the oppressed. rious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a gathered outside. The CP's popular­ the contradictory nature of the Stalinist In the coming weeks, every potential tsarist secret police forgery concocted in frontist illuSions in American "democ­ bureaucracy. On the one hand, this par­ victim of this capitalist state's apparatus the late 1800s with the aim of insti­ racy" notwithstanding, U.S. imperial­ asitic caste derived its bureaucratic posi­ of frame-up and repression must exert gating anti-Jewish pogroms and. which ism's rehabilitation and embrace of the tion from sitting atop the gains of the every effort to mobilize the mass, labor­ denounced the Russian revolutionary Nazi mass murderers and its own mur­ October Revolution. At the same time, centered protest which is key in the fight workers movement as an "alien" force der of the Rosenbergs were two sides it served as the transmission belt for the to ensure that Mumia Abu-Jamal does controlIed by Jews. of the same coin: its ~nrelenting pursuit pressures of a hostile world imperialist not suffer the fate of the Rosenbergs. All While rightly emphasizing the anti­ of the counterrevolutionary destruction market that ultimately destroyed the honor to the Rosenbergs! Free Geron­ Communist character of the frame-up, of the Soviet bureaucratically degener­ Soviet Union. imo! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Rosenbergs were not oblivious to the ated workers state, which has now been Speaking of his courageous parents, the racist death penalty! • anti-Semitic elements involved in their realized. persecution and the broader anti-red purge. In a personal appeal for clemency The then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers to President Eisenhower three days Party underscored the true meaning of SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY before her execution, Ethel Rosenberg the Rosenberg verdict: "The Rosenberg National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 wrote: "Today, while these ghastly decision above all else was an act of [Nazi] mass butchers, these obscene rac­ rulingc\ass terror by a state that is pre­ Atlanta Chicago Oakland ists, are graciously receiving the benefits paring a war of world conquest, a war Box 397 Box 6441, Main PO Box 29497 of mercy and in many instances being directed primarily against the Soviet Decatur, GA 30031 Chicago, IL 60680 Oakland, CA 94604 reinstated in public. office, the great dem­ Union" (Militant, 27 October 1952). (404) 521-9338 (312) 663-0715 (510) 839-0851 During World War II, when the Stalinists ocratic United States is proposing the Boston Los Angeles San Francisco enlisted in U.S. imperialism's fraudu­ savage destruction of a small unoffend­ Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 77494 ing Jewish family, whose guilt is seri­ lent "war against fascism," the Trotsky­ Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94107 ously doubted throughout the length and ists became the first victims of tHe Smith (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (415) 777-9367 Act-which was later extensively used against the CP during the witchhunt­ Champaign-Urbana New York Washington, D.C. for their revolutionary opposition to the Box 2644 Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 75073 imperialist war. Champaign,IL61825 New York, NY 10008 Washington, D.C. 20013 NOTICE (217) 352-3359 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 To the bitter end, when the gains of Workers Vanguard skips the 1917 Russian Revolution were alternate issues in June, finally extinguished as a result of Yel­ TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA July and August. tsin's counterrevolution, we Trotskyists Toronto Montreal Vancouver Our next issue will called for unconditional military defense Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. of the Soviet Union and advanced a pro­ Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 be dated August 25. gram of proletarian political revolution (416) 593-4138 Montreal, ac H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 , to sweep away the bureaucratic betrayers

14 WORKERS VANGUARD criminal suspects" or "suspects who cease flight," "shooting criminal sus­ pects who make gestures or verbal com­ ments while surrendering," and "physi­ cally abusing the witnesses (including victims) of shootings to discourage them from disputing the justification of the shooting fostered by the Homicide Division." Justice Department lawyers also charged that the medical examiner's office participated in coverups: "Once they had done an autopsy, they sit down with the police department to try to fit their findings in with a jus­ tifiable shooting" (Washington Post, 19 August 1979). After studying the city's own police and prison files, the Justice Department provided a list of thousands of people- 271 pages of names-who had been shot or beaten by the police. Earlier the same Ligato/Philadelphia Bulletin UPI year, a group associated with the Phila­ In racist obscenity, Rizzo's killer cops lined up Philadelphia Black Panthers naked on the street after 1970 raid (left); delphia Bar Association had determined Osage Avenue neighborhood burnt down after Mayor Wilson Goode okayed police bombing of MOVE commune in that 299 killings by Philadelphia police 1985 (right). between 1970 and 1978 were illegal by the standards of bourgeois law. The Jus­ program targeting the Black Panther rupted his 1992 campaign to rush back italist system which has produced this tice Department suit demanded a court Party and others for murder or frame-up. to Little Rock to oversee the execution terrible machirie of state murder. From injunction against the abuses and asked The close collaboration between Philly of a brain-damaged black man, should South Africa to Europe to the U.S., work­ that federal aid to Philadelphia be cut police and the FBI was manifested in ostentatiously support the Philly cops. ers, youth and fighters against racial off until reforms were made. Mayor the murderous 1985 assault on MOVE (After attending the annual national injustice are taking up the cause of free­ Rizzo responded by calling the suit "hog­ when the feds supplied the explosives police bash in mid-May, Clinton later dom for Jamal. This growing support is wash" and boasting that his cops were for the police bomb. And, as we showed presided over the swearing in of 153 key to stopping legal lynching. so powerful "we could invade Cuba and in our article, "Mumia Abu-Jamal: The new Philadelphia police officers on the In the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, win." In October 1979, a federal judge, COINTELPRO Files" (WV No. 624, 2 White Houst! lawn.) The government's the Spartacist League and Partisan without passing judgment on the sub­ June), 700 pages of recently obtained new "Omnibus Counterterrorism Bill" is Defense Committee place no confi­ stance of the Justice Department's accu­ FBI files prove that during years of sur­ a recipe for police-state powers to dence in the capitalist courts to dispense sations, dismissed most of the suit on veillance Jamal was a special target of regiment the entire population. "justice." Rather, we seek a massive jurisdictional grounds. this operation. This is a bipartisan program, carried mobilization of the social power of the The Justice Department suit was pre­ The 1979 federal lawsuit against Phil­ out by both Republicans and Democrats, proletariat, in this country and interna­ cipitated in part by the August 1978 adelphia was the culmination of years of as the example of Philadelphia shows: tionally. As we wrote in "The Frame-Up attack by the FBI and Philadelphia police public hearings and studies which doc­ Rizzo switched from Republican to of Mumia Abu-Jamal" in our last issue: . on MOVE. In that attack 600 cops bru­ umented the cops' Gestapo methods and Democrat to become police commis­ ~'This sinister web of spying, intimida­ tion and frame-up is not an aberration tally assaulted MOVE's Powelton Vil- the unchecked police powers in that city. sioner, he was elected mayor as a Nixon In 1972, the Pennsylvania State Com­ which can be cleansed from the system, lage home; when one cop was killed in Democrat, and in 1986 he switched back as liberals would have it. Rather it goes the crossfire, 12 MOVE members were mittee of the federal Civil Rights Com­ to the Republicans; black Democrat Wil­ to the very core of the capitalist state framed up and thrown in prison for years. mission noted that the city's police were son Goode, who beat Rizzo in the 1983 which, with its cops and courts, its pros­ When the Inquirer ran a series of chilling a "paramilitary institution" which acted primary, approved the '85 bombing of ecutors and executioners, is an instru­ like "a law unto itself' and had ment for the repression of the working photos of cops savagely stomping MOVE that was carried out with "tech­ class and the oppressed. This is part of MOVE member Delbert Africa, 400 off­ "avoided" the tradition that "military nical support" (C-4 explosives) supplied the Marxist understanding of the capital­ duty cops picketed the newspaper's forces in this country have been under by Republican Reagan's "Justice" De­ ist state, and as Marxists we understand office in an attempt to close it down. civilian control." It cited the fact that partment. By the same token, as the mur­ that it will take nothing less than a work­ ers revolution to sweep away this One year later, when three cops were "the police have become an organized der of Philly MOVE and the attempt to political force which uses the 'law and machinery of state terror whose purpose indicted for the beating, 500 police lynch Jamal have been supported by both is to keep profits and interest payments marched on City Hall, and the head of order' issue to play on the fears of many" capitalist parties, the struggle to free flowing into the coffers of Wall Street." the Fraternal Order of Police cried, so that "city officials and those who Mumia must be a fight against the cap- -WV No. 625, 30 June. "They should have killed him" (New aspire to political office tend to avoid York Times, 14 August 1979). In report­ the enmity of the police and often abdi­ cate the issue of civilian control" (Police­ ing on this hideous atrocity, Mumia Abu­ on July' 8 a hit team of cops stormed a Jamal came to sympathize with MOVE, Community Relations in Philadelphia, June 1972). FOP Rally ... wedding in a black church and seized and also earned the enmity of Rizzo, who the groom at the altar. Earlier on the day threatened the "new breed of journalism" A Web of Police Power (continued from page 16) of the FOP's racist siege of the union Jamal represented. Police victimization of blacks and His­ striking Philly transit workers. Scandal­ hall, 1199 president Nicholas had There was bitter irony in the federal panics is not limited to the Philadelphia ously, this was saluted by the Commu­ pointed out in a news conference that government suing the city of Philadel­ PD: it pervades the entire judicial sys­ nist Party! The CP is not alone in the there is a relationship between this vio­ phia for police abuse since some of the tem, including the district attorney's treacherous reformist view that the cops lation of a church and "the beating of most sinister police measures were insti­ office and the courts, and is backed up are some kind of "workers in uniform" our union brother at a South Philadelphia tuted in direct collaboration with the Jus­ by the mayor's office. Revealing the who can be won to labor's side through hotel" (Philadelphia Tribune, 21 Juiy). tice Department. In 1964, when the black absurdity of the bourgeoisie's claims of struggle. It is shared by other self­ The previous day some 1,500 unionists ghetto in Philadelphia was one of the "checks and balances" and a "separation proclaimed "leftists" like the Interna­ had protested the savage beating of a first in the U.S. to explode, the police of powers," the police, courts, city tional Socialist Organization. union official representing striking Pbil­ set up the notorious Civil Defense· (CD) administration and even Congress are As we warned in our article, "Victory adelphia hotel workers by Holiday Inn squad, which worked with the FBI to staffed by the same pool of people. D.A. to Philly Transit Strike!" (WV No. 620, security guards. FOP head Costello, who infiltrate or spy on virtually every civil Abraham, Judge Sabo, Mayor Rendell, 7 April), the FOP is no "union" but an was ranting that the suspension of three rights or political organization in the city. U.S. Senator Specter are all veterans of outfit of armed strikebreakers of the rul­ cops who headed up the church bust was Lieutenant George Fencl, who headed the machinery of Rizzo's police city­ ing class. Its "support" was a kiss of "politically motivated," doubtless had the CD unit, boasted that "we have some state. Today, in Sabo's court, you can death to the transit strikers: his appetite for vengeance whetted by 18,000 names" on file. The Philadelphia see how the cops, prosecution and judge "From hauling off arrested air traffic the 1199 president's protest. "counterintelligence" program served as make up a well-oiled machine, geared to controllers in their 1981 strike, to the Speaking to the danger of the "liaison" a model for the FBI's COINTELPRO carry out the execution of Jamal. As we 1985 bombing of Philadelphia MOVE between the leaders of the Philadelphia and the destruction of the Osage Avenue wrote in "The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu­ neighborhood, to running scabs through transit workers union and the cops, we Jamal" (WV No. 625, 30 June): "Mumia Teamster picket lines during the 1994 warned last April: "The FOP's threat to Abu-Jamal did not have a fair trial, he trucking strike, the cops are the sworn kill Philly's 'voice of the voiceless,' Spartacist League could not have had a fair trial and he enemies of labor and the oppressed. Mumia Abu-Jamal, is also a threat Mobilizations by the .cops in whatever against labor." Now this is being brought would not now be flllowed to have a fair guise, reflect their own agenda and are Public Offices trial." sinister attempts at police bonapartism, home in the FOP's sinister threats -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ This is the state machinery of death to slip the leash of civilian control. Cops against Philadelphia's 1199 hospital that is increasingly central to the system out of the labor movement!" workers union. Bay Area of racist repression in this period of. cap­ The Philadelphia cops have a long, The call to save the life of Mumia Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. ghetto~ bloody and notorious history of operat­ Abu-Jamal has been taken up by unions 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) italist decay, with inner city that Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 are vast reservoirs of the unemployed ing like an out-of-control gang of white across this country and around the world. and homeless, beset by every social ill ethnic toughs whose idea of "justice" Championing the cause of this eloquent Chicago and held in check by police who act like would insult the Mafia. An ongoing fed­ and powerful spokesman for the op­ Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m. an occupying army. "Rizzotown" is per­ eral investigation into police corruption pressed could be a vital component to Sat.: 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. 161 W. Harrison SI., 10th Floor haps the starkest expression of the gen­ in Philadelphia has uncovered a trail of revitalizing a fighting labor movement Chicago,lIIinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 eral trend to police bonapartism­ vicious frame-ups. The exposures of five in this country. That is what the racist Philly cops who issued phony search strikebreakers of the FOP want to stop. New York City untrammeled cop power-in the U.S. today, and Mumia Abu-Jamal has been warrants, manufactured and planted evi­ Black rights and union rights go Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. 41 Warren St. (one block below in their cross hairs for decades. But the dence, and bought off prostitutes to give forward together or fall backsepa­ Chambers St. near Church St.) system of capitalist oppression this epit­ fabricated testimony has to date led to rately. Unchain labor/black power! Free New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 omizes is far broader. It's no accident overturning 39 convictions. Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racist 'that President Bill Clinton, who inter- Among their more recent rampages, death penalty! _ 28 JULY 1995 15 WfJlIllllIS ''111'"'1111) "Capital of Capital Punishment" Police-State Philadelph la• In their drive to kill Mumia Abu-Jamal, bourgeoisie act as if they are lording it over the former Black Panther and crusading jour­ a backwater of the Jim Crow South, left an nalist whose execution is scheduled for indelible stamp. A recent profile of Philadel­ August 17, the Philadelphia police and the phia District Attorney Lynne Abraham in the "justice" system have stopped at nothing. In New York T~mes Magazine (16 July) shows Jamal's 1982 trial, the prosecution intimi­ how the entire police and prosecutorial appa­ dated witnesses who contradicted the state's ratus in this city that is the "capital of capital story, pushed others to falsely testify, punishment" is filled with Rizzo's proteges. knocked blacks off the jury, lied to the jury­ In the misnamed "City of Brotherly Love," all to convict ari'd sentence Jamal to death the cops are used to calling the shots. As for his political beliefs. It's a legal lynching. Rizzo once told a court magistrate, "All right, In appealing for a new trial, Jamal's lead you're the boss in here, but we're the boss attorney, Leonard Weinglass, told ABC News on the street." (25 July): Since long before Rizzo, Philadelphia "We are also basing our appeal on the fact police have spread murderous terror against that the prosecution withheld evidence, that the black and Hispanic population. They the prosecution manufactured evidence, that have carried out widespread spying and har­ the prosecution gave out favors to prostitutes assment of even "respectable" bourgeois crit­ in return for their testimony." ics, openly threatening everyone from news­ Mumia Abu-Jamal was a special target of paper editors to judges and the city council. the Philly cops who has been railroaded by Intimidation, torture, frame-ups, and at the a racist system of unchecked police power. center of it all, the death penalty: this is "law In fighting to free Jamal, we have empha­ and order," Philly-style. sized that the blatant frame-up of this cou­ Lately, Philadelphia has been full of the rageous fighter for the oppressed was pre­ stench of police corruption with several pared by years of harassment and attempts simultaneous investigations being carried to set him up by the capitalist injustice sys­ out into police brutality and frame-ups of tem. This travesty of "justice" is an object innocent victims. An investigation by the lesson in the class nature of the state. The FBI going back several years has centered entire apparatus of bourgeois repression­ on manufacturing of evidence and lying in the cops, the courts, the secret police-was court by cops of the 39th District in North mobilized to destroy Mumia for the "crime" Philadelphia. Five cops recently pleaded of opposing, exposing and denouncing this guilty in federal court to violating the civil system of racist oppression. The savage cru­ rights of people they arrested, framed and sade against Mumia was spearheaded by the sent to prison. In one case they set up a brutal regime of Frank Rizzo, the racist dem­ 53-year-old grandmother, Betty Patterson, on Frank Rizzo, racist agogue who, first as police commissioner charges of cocaine and crack dealing in order demagogue who terrorized beginning in 1967 and then as mayor during to manufacture evidence against her sons in black Philly as police 1972-80, ran Philadelphia for more than a a murder investigation. In another case, they commissioner and mayor in decade as a local police state. tried to frame a Temple University student, the 1960s-'70s. Left: MOVE It was under Rizzo's successors that Jamal Arthur Colbert, as a drug dealer, including member Delbert Africa is was gunned down in 1981 and then framed kidnapping, beating, putting a revolver to stomped by pOlice after cop his head, and hiring a prostitute to testify assault on MOVE's Powelton up, and that the home of the black MOVE .village hom_e in 1978. commune was bombed in 1985, killing against him. eleven black men, women and children. The So far, convictions in 39 drug cases in the fact that these atrocities were carried out in 39th District have been overturned. But as "Rizzotown," where the hired guns of the continued on page 14 Philly Cops Threaten Organized Labor

On July 19, the union hall of Local Police, Richard Costello, told reporters: 1199C of the National Hospital and "Let these out-of-town lawyers, these Health Care Employees Union in Phila­ out-of-town terrorists, get the hell out of delphia was to have been the site of a here and leave Philadelphia to'us." But fund-raiser for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who the FOP doesn't have its sighH; trained faces death at the hands of the state's simply on "outsiders." Sinisterly equat­ executioner on August 17. Instead, the ing the fund-raiser with "advocating union hall was besieged by a gang of the murder of a police officer," Cos­ 300 Philadelphia cops. They brought tello demanded an "apology" from the signs reading, "Lethal Injection for Con­ union and said that he was going to victed Cop Killers Now!" and chanted push the AFL-CIO District Council to with bloodthirsty glee, "Four More bring "sanctions" against 1199 president Weeks!" Henry Nicholas. Sounding like the leader of one of the This is a deadly threat aimed at lynch mobs who tried to run the lawyers the heart of organized labor. Last spring, the FOP made a bid to woo the unions Shadd/Philadelphia Inquirer for the Scottsboro Boys out of town in­ Philadelphia, July 19-Mob of 300 racist Philly cops besiege headquarters the "Old South" of the 1930s, the head by declaring its "solidarity" with the of hospital workers Local 1199C, denouncing union support for Mumia of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of continued on page 15 Abu-Jamal. 16 28 JULY 1995