By Sara Flounders
Published May 24, 2007 12:47 AM workers.org
The urgent need for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle was put in sharpest terms this May.
Israeli air strikes targeted apartment houses, cut off vital supplies and carried out a new round of targeted assassinations in Gaza. The Israeli army moved tanks and soldiers over the Gaza border and carried out eight air strikes on May 17 and 18.
This week in the West Bank the Israeli army invaded the Jenin refugee camp and the nearby Kufer Dan village in the northern part of the West Bank and clashed with members of the local resistance.
On May 21 the Israeli army also invaded Nablus and nearby villages, attacked Palestinian media outlets in the city and confiscated media equipment. Troops also attacked the southern West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, searching homes and kidnapping four civilians.
While Israeli forces attacked Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the U.S.-backed Lebanese government surrounded and shelled a refugee camp housing more than 30,000 Palestinians in northern Lebanon, outside Tripoli. More than 60 people are dead. Electricity and water have been cut off to the camp and health workers are not permitted in to evacuate the injured.
In the face of these attacks it is more important then ever to increase the support and defense of the Palestinian people and their heroic struggle for sovereignty, self-determination and the full right of return.
Despite decades of occupation and the most extreme use of imprisonment, torture and mass displacement, the Israeli state has been unable to defeat the Palestinian resistance. This present crisis in Gaza is rooted in the U.S./Israeli policy of using every means—military, political and economic—to exacerbate factional differences within the Palestinian movement.
Since the democratic election of a Hamas-led government in Gaza, Israel has attempted to break the national resistance, starve the entire population and sow dissention. The Israelis have stepped up bombing and assassinations in combination with a financial blockade.
By withholding tax revenues and promised funds, they have cut off wages to the Palestine Authority’s civil servants, teachers, and security forces. More than one-third of the population in Gaza is dependent on this income for survival. Israel’s seizure of Palestinian funds has impacted on schools, hospitals, sanitation, water, electricity and the most basic urban maintenance.
Media reports of military clashes between Hamas and Fatah forces—the two major Palestinian organizations—seem to reflect the same U.S./Israeli divide and rule tactics. Fatah National Security Advisor Mohammed Dahlan initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian Unity Government and provoked the latest round of fighting.
The Bush administration was opposed to the formation of a National Unity Government in Gaza including both groups and opposed to the decision of the president of the Palestine Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to join the coalition government with Hamas in order to end the crisis in Gaza.
Israel tried to further envenom the divisions and factional clashes by opening a bombing campaign in the midst of the fight between the two Palestinian factions. Hamas and other resistance forces responded by firing Qassem rockets from Gaza into Israel.
The left secular forces—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—have organized joint demonstrations in both northern and southern Gaza demanding national unity and calling on both Hamas and Fatah to end the clashes and “point the guns at the occupation.”
In the face of Israeli bombing, President Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas have agreed to a new ceasefire as of May 22.
War on defenseless in Lebanon
Meanwhile the Lebanese government has opened attacks on the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Over 450,000 Palestinian refugees within Lebanon have lived in the most oppressed and impoverished conditions in 13 refugee camps for almost 60 years. The government claims the attack is in response to a bank robbery carried out by an isolated group called Fatah El Islam which lacks popular support and is allegedly linked to Al Qaeda.
This Lebanon army offensive against the most oppressed sector in Lebanese society comes at a time when the shaky and illegitimate Lebanese government is trying to again focus attention and blame on Syria rather than the U.S. and Israel for the continuing crisis in Lebanon.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora’s weak, divided government—an ally of U.S. imperialism—is in the midst of a political crisis. The Lebanese Parliament has not met in months. A broad opposition coalition led by Hezbollah and including secular, progressive and some Christian forces has called for the resignation of Siniora’s government for nine months. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, has been the scene of ongoing massive political street protests and a giant encampment in front of Parliament that has lasted for months. This opposition is a united force that cannot be politically marginalized or ignored.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Communist Party and other groups opposing the government have continually warned that Washington and reactionary Lebanese forces backing the weakened government may try to enflame civil war and sharpen religious, sectarian and national differences in order to break up the progressive opposition.
The attack took place when Washington was again pushing the U.N. Security Council to initiate a war crimes tribunal to charge Syria with the assassination two years ago of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The Bush administration immediately issued messages of support for the Lebanese government’s attack. The BBC described the clashes as “Lebanon’s bloodiest internal fighting since the country’s civil war ended 17 years ago.”
Hezbollah issued a statement on May 22 that said: “We feel that there is someone out there who wants to drag the army to this confrontation and bloody struggle ... to serve well-known projects and aims. We are hearing calls for more escalation and fighting, which will ultimately lead to more chaos and confrontation in Lebanon.” The statement called for a political solution to the crisis.
This crisis is still developing. Little is known of the group under attack. What is known is that U.S. policy in the region has always been to attempt to divide the resistance and enflame the situation when faced with a crisis.
New understanding of old tactics
The British Empire achieved world domination in the 19th and early 20th century through a sophisticated and cynical policy of divide and rule in every region of its empire. The British Colonial Office’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, which opened Palestine to Zionist settlement, was the expression of this policy in the Arab world.
The state of Israel was from the beginning an instrument of British and then U.S. control in Western Asia. In 1948 with the establishment of Israel, British troops were withdrawing and there were no U.S. troops in the region. At the time of the June 1967 Arab/Israel War, there were no U.S. troops or bases in the area. By arming and supplying Israel, U.S. imperialism was able to attack Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan again and again and set back social and political gains.
A sea change has now developed in the consciousness of the masses. Despite decades of occupation, road blocks, walls and hundreds of check points, Israel was forced to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The Israelis’ many efforts to break and demoralize the Palestinian resistance have also failed in the occupied West Bank despite even more extreme walls, ghettos and land confiscation.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, despite a massive bombardment of the entire country, faced a powerful, well-organized resistance and failed to secure a position even one mile inside Lebanon.
This all means that despite an endless supply of the most high-tech weapons in the Pentagon’s arsenal and an endless line of credit, Israel is no longer able to carry out the very tasks for which the U.S. has funded and supported it for decades.
Not only has the Israeli position changed, but U.S. imperialism can no longer rely on Israel to successfully police the region in U.S. interests. Now Washington must send its own forces and become the focus of global hatred.
But the Iraq experience has shown that even this drastic step is no sure solution for Washington. Despite stationing 150,000 troops in Iraq and 100,000 private contractors—that is, mercenaries—tens of thousands of other forces in the region, a whole series of bases and aircraft carriers, the U.S. has been unable to secure control of Iraq. Despite doing all in its power to create and intensify sectarian divisions in the Iraqi population, U.S. imperialism faces an irresolvable disaster in its attempt to occupy Iraq.
The high-tech weapons of the Pentagon are ever more destructive and deadly. But they no longer have the ability to create massive panic and chaotic flight. Their political weapon of division, while still dangerous and combustible, is also losing its impact.
The resistance in Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq deserves the full support of all progressive forces who struggle for unity and human solidarity.
May 17 Rallies demand: 'FREE MUMIA'
As lawyers appeal for new trial
Rally demands: 'FREE MUMIA'
By Betsey Piette Philadelphia
Published May 24, 2007 12:38 AM www.workers.org
Over a thousand people rallied in support of death row, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal on May 17 outside the Federal Building in downtown Philadelphia, where a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit convened to hear oral arguments on his right to a new trial.
Around 200 Mumia supporters, including Dick Gregory, former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Lynne Stewart, Kathleen Cleaver, and international delegates from France and Germany, were also eyewitnesses on Mumia’s behalf inside the courtroom. Abu-Jamal was prohibited from attending this oral hearing.
Participants included busloads from New York and Boston; youth organized by FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) and Students for a Democratic Society, who traveled overnight from North Carolina; a car caravan from Georgia led by McKinney; and supporters from Richmond, Cleveland and as far away as Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, the overwhelming majority were from the Philadelphia area, many who took off from work to attend.
There were rallies supporting Abu-Jamal in several other U.S. cities (see page 7 round-up article) and demonstrations in many countries around the world, including France, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Britain.
The oral arguments were presented before Chief Judge Anthony Scirica and Judge Robert Cowen, both Reagan appointees, and Judge Thomas Ambro, a Clinton appointee. All three appeared to be familiar with the arguments contained in written briefs filed by attorneys prior to the hearing. During their time on the Third Circuit all three have overturned capital convictions based on the same claim Abu-Jamal is making about race-based exclusion of jurors by the prosecution.
Abu-Jamal was represented by Attorneys Robert Bryan and Judith Ritter, along with NAACP Attorney Christina Swarns. They argued that racial bias in jury selection and improper instructions by the prosecutor to the jury during the sentencing phase of Abu-Jamal’s 1982 murder trial provided grounds for a new trial. Arguing for the prosecution, Assistant District Attorney Hugh Burns presented the state’s appeal of the December 2001 decision by Federal Judge William Yohn that overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence even though he remains on death row.
Burns, who was the first to present, often referred to Abu-Jamal’s court appointed attorney Anthony Jackson and his failure to file a complaint about racism in jury selection during the trial. Jackson, assigned to “represent” Mumia by Judge Albert Sabo, was disbarred in 1992 for drug abuse, yet the state is still using this attorney to prosecute Mumia 25 years later.
Jackson did file a pre-trial motion in March of 1982 requesting information on the racial composition of the entire venire (jury pool) because he strongly suspected that there would be a problem. However, his motion was denied by Sabo, and the fact that Jackson did not raise this concern again during the trial proceedings was used by Burns to argue that it should not be considered today.
The appellate judges devoted considerable time debating whether racism in jury selection could be determined if the racial makeup of the jury pool was unknown. When asked about the racial composition of the jury pool at Abu-Jamal’s PCRA (Post Conviction Relief Act) hearing in 1995, Prosecutor Joseph McGill claimed he didn’t remember. However, given that African Americans made up 44 percent of the population of Philadelphia in 1982, the fact that less than 15 percent (two out of fourteen) of the jurors at Abu-Jamal’s trial were Black should be evidence enough.
The racial composition of the final pool of jurors is known. Twenty-eight out of forty-three were white and fifteen Black. Each side in a trial can use twenty challenges to eliminate potential jurors without stating why; however, these peremptory challenges may not be used to keep members of a particular race off the jury. McGill used 15 peremptory challenges to remove 10 of the 15 remaining Black jurors, but only five of the 28 whites.
An added factor in support of defense claims was the systematic pattern of exclusion of African Americans from juries by Philadelphia prosecutors around the time of Mumia’s 1982 trial. This was addressed by Swarns, who presented oral arguments contained in an amicus brief on behalf of Abu-Jamal by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The LDEF pioneered the affirmative use of civil actions to end jury discrimination. Their 31-page brief, which underscores the seriousness of the evidence of racial discrimination, can be found at www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/jury/Abu-Jamal_v_Horn_amicus_brief.pdf.
The LDEF brief cites the 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky, in which the Supreme Court declared that a criminal defendant who is able to prove that his trial prosecutor used peremptory challenges to exclude potential jurors on the basis of race is entitled to a new trial. Attorneys on behalf of Abu-Jamal are asking the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to consider the combination of factors that infer that his was unquestionably a racially charged case.
Case tainted with racism
Abu-Jamal is African-American and the victim was a white policeman. In the months between the Dec. 9, 1981, shooting death of Daniel Faulkner and the July 1982 trial, the local media continually emphasized the racial aspects of the case, particularly Abu-Jamal’s membership in the Black Panther Party and his support of the MOVE organization, including the political prisoners known as the MOVE 9.
In his work as a journalist, Abu-Jamal often reported on prisons and police brutality and in one instance publicly challenged then Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. He also wore his hair in dreadlocks at the time and the LDEF brief cites a Philadelphia Inquirer article from June 10, 1982, which stated, “Several prospective jurors left the courtroom Tuesday saying they were too upset and afraid to serve after being questioned by Abu-Jamal, who wears his hair in the dreadlocks style of the MOVE sect.”
Swarns argued that the trial prosecutor in Abu-Jamal’s case, Joseph McGill, had a history of systematically striking Black jurors. The LDEF brief notes that “a survey of homicide cases tried by Mr. McGill between September of 1981 and October 1983 reveal that he excluded prospective African-American venire persons approximately three times as often as he excluded non-black prospective jurors.”
The brief points out that “A comprehensive statistical study of Philadelphia County death penalty cases tried between 1981 and 1997 reveals that, ‘in 317 capital trials in Philadelphia between 1981 and 1997, prosecutors struck 51 percent of black jurors and 26 percent of non black jurors.’” Both Swarns and Bryan made reference to a notorious video training tape prepared by Philadelphia D.A. Jack McMahon advocating the systematic exclusion of African-American prospective jurors based on his experience in the D.A.’s office.
Swarns also noted that African-American jurors were struck from the jury pool because they were unemployed, divorced or single parents, yet these criteria were not applied to white jurors. Black jurors were asked if they had heard Abu-Jamal on Black radio stations, yet white jurors were not asked if they had heard Abu-Jamal’s commentaries that played on NPR. One African-American man was dismissed because he admitted to having a hearing problem, while a white juror who had to turn up his hearing aid to listen to Prosecutor McGill’s questions was allowed to remain.
One African-American woman whom McGill picked for the jury because “she hated Abu-Jamal” was later thrown off by Sabo when she had to attend to a dying pet. She’d asked for a brief time off but was refused. Meanwhile Sabo adjourned the proceedings for an entire afternoon so that a white, male juror could take a civil service exam.
The issue of McGill’s clearly inappropriate instructions to jurors during the July 1982 sentencing phase was addressed by Ritter who also questioned the legality of McGill’s three-page verdict form.
Each death sentence must rest on two findings: proof beyond a reasonable doubt of at least one aggravating circumstance that would have increased the seriousness of the crime; and the finding that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency in sentencing. The verdict form in Abu-Jamal’s case consisted of a list of aggravators without any instructions on their application.
While the law doesn’t require jurors to be unanimous when it comes to considering mitigating circumstances (for example, positive character witnesses or the fact that the defendant in this case had never been convicted of a crime), the verdict form provided no space for jurors to indicate that some jurors felt these were relevant even if not all agreed upon them.
In fact McGill’s instructions gave jurors the impression that they had to be unanimous in order for mitigating circumstances to be considered. In addition, Ritter challenged the constitutionality of McGill’s charge to the jury that it was alright if they gave Abu-Jamal the death sentence because he would have “appeal after appeal.”
A third appeal by Abu-Jamal’s attorneys argued that his 1995 PCRA hearing was constitutionally flawed because the judge—the same Judge Albert Sabo who tried Mumia’s original case—was biased in favor of the prosecution. The PCRA transcript shows that Sabo denied subpoenas of witnesses requested by the defense, cut off defense lines of questioning and threatened Abu-Jamal’s attorneys with contempt of court when they challenged him. One defense witness who testified to being coerced by prosecutors to lie in the 1982 trial, found herself arrested in the courtroom while she was still on the witness stand in the PCRA hearing.
Sabo’s racism and bias against Abu-Jamal is also evidenced by his comment to another judge, “I’m going to help them fry the n****r,” overheard by court stenographer Terri Maurer Carter.
‘The Mumia rule’
While many of the cases cited as legal precedent by Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have been grounds for the reversal of a number of convictions in capital cases, that is no guarantee of a new trial for Abu-Jamal. In a May 15, article by author Dave Lindorff and columnist Linn Washington Jr. titled “Justice System on Trial as Mumia Case Reaches Climax,” they point out that over the course of Abu-Jamal’s more than two-decade-long appeals process, the courts have shown a willingness to create special exceptions that apply only to him.
They note an example of what might be called ‘The Mumia Rule’ that occurred in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The state’s top judges in 1986 overturned a death sentence where McGill had made the same closing arguments to jurors at the conclusion of a murder trial presided over by none other than Sabo.
The state’s top court declared that McGill’s language had “minimized the jury’s sense of responsibility for a verdict of death” and ordered a new trial. Three years later in 1989, this court reversed itself when it came to upholding Abu-Jamal’s conviction. Eleven years later in 1997 the court flip-flopped again and barred such language by all prosecutors “in all future trials.”
In his closing arguments during the May 17th hearing, defense attorney Robert Bryan made a point of this when he listed defendants whose capital cases have come before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals—Donald Hardcastle, Arnold Holloway, Curtis Brinson and Harold Wilson—whose convictions were overturned because of racial discrimination in the proceedings. “Are we to believe that there was no racism in this highly charged case in which a political Black defendant was accused of killing a white police officer; that his is the exception to the rule?” Bryan charged.
The three white, male judges appeared to take a cavalier view when discussing the “criteria” by which they would decide whether racism was a factor in this case. An example of this was their debate over what percentage of exclusion of African Americans from a jury would constitute “bias.” At one point Judge Ambro even acknowledged that the intentional exclusion of even one juror on the basis of race violates Abu-Jamal’s constitutional rights.
John Parker, a Mumia supporter who flew in from Los Angeles, told Workers World that “While some have applauded the judges for their ‘fair attitude’ at the hearing, in the first place it’s ridiculous that there had to be a hearing since there is more than ample proof that Mumia did not have a fair trial. The judges read the arguments before the trial started. They should have granted a new trial automatically. In the second place, if these judges were really concerned about fairness, truth and decency, they would see more of a sense of urgency in getting Mumia free, not waiting a month or so to make a decision while Mumia remains tortured under the conditions he’s placed in on death row.”
The judges are expected to return a ruling within the next 45 to 90 days.
Before, during and after the two-hour-plus legal proceedings, demonstrators took to the streets, including marching up Market Street and several times around City Hall, blocking traffic for nearly 30 minutes. The march was led by a sound truck packed with youthful supporters. Along the way, shoppers, motorists and workers on their lunch hour stopped to receive material on the case, ask questions and often express their support by honking their horns and waving their fists in the air.
Widespread support was also evident at three separate events the night before, including a reception at the Friends Center for Cynthia McKinney and the French delegation, a teach-in at Drexel University sponsored by Educators for Mumia, and a jam-packed hip-hop and spoken word performance at the Rotunda featuring Immortal Technique.
This community support is a critical factor in winning freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. For all the legal dancing around how the federal courts should weigh the claims raised by the attorneys, many suspect that this case will not be determined on the basis of law, but on the basis of the political movement mobilizing in the streets.
Speaking at the teach-in the night before the appellate hearing and at a public forum the following evening, German author and researcher Michael Schiffman provided stark evidence that a lot of people have lied in order to put Abu-Jamal on Pennsylvania’s death row and to keep him there. Schiffman presented a slide show of photos taken by press photographer Pedro Polakoff that exposes police manipulation of the 1981 crime scene and contradicts statements made by key witnesses for the prosecution and is further evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. Schiffman noted, “To bring this to light would put many careers on the line—some in very high places.”
Already an on-line petition is being circulated calling on the Third Circuit Court judges to do the right thing and rule in favor of a new trial, but organizing has to be done to raise broader awareness of the facts in the case and to prepare Abu-Jamal’s supporters for what comes next. Toward this end, the Philadelphia International Action Center has issued a call for a meeting on May 29 at 7 p.m. at the Calvary Church, 48th and Baltimore in Philadelphia. Call 215-724-1618.
Piette was an eyewitness to the May 17 oral argument.
Solidarity for Mumia in 6 U.S. cities, 8 countries
Published May 24, 2007 12:14 AM www.workers.org
In at least five U.S. cities outside Philadelphia and at least eight other countries demonstrations in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal took place aimed at bringing attention to the latest court hearing May 17 and winning the political prisoner a new trial on the way toward freeing him.
In Ankara, Turkey’s capital and Istanbul, its biggest city, activists protested against the United States for imprisoning Mumia unfairly for 25 years. The group included academics, journalists, human rights activists and also correspondents of the daily Evrensel in front of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara and the Central Post office in Istanbul. They delivered a petition to the U.S. Embassy demanding a fair trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The Cleveland Lucasville Five Defense Committee demonstrated during rush hour downtown. Signs called for the freedom of Abu-Jamal and the Lucasville Five, innocent men who face execution in Ohio in relation to the 1993 Lucasville prison uprising, and demanded “Justice for Aaron Steele.” Steele, a 23-year old African-American bus mechanic, died May 8 after being shot multiple times by Cleveland police. Passersby grabbed hundreds of newsletters on Mumia’s case. Other Mumia supporters had held a protest during the morning rush hour.
Members of the San Diego International Action Center and the San Diego Mumia Coalition gathered at a busy community intersection and distributed newsletters and other material on Mumia’s case to workers on their way home from work in the evening commute. Several motorists pulled over to get more details on Mumia’s struggle. Poet Jim Moreno read his Ode to Mumia for the assembled activists.
Organized in only one week, a broad-base of labor and community activists joined to support a May 17 press conference and protest in Milwaukee demanding a new trial for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Speakers from Africans on the Move, AFSCME Local 82, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), International Action Center-Milwaukee, the National Lawyers Guild, Pan African Revolutionary Socialist Party, Peace Action-Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Green Party spoke in downtown Milwaukee at the Henry Reuss Federal Plaza.
Prior to the May 17 action IAC-Milwaukee organizer Bryan G. Pfeifer was invited to speak about the struggle surrounding Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case on “The Eric Von” show hosted by African American- radio journalist Eric Von and “The Word Warriors Report,” hosted by African- American City Councilman Michael McGee Jr.
In Houston, in the execution capital of the country, where 16 executions are scheduled over the summer, anti-death penalty activists were fired up by the strong turnouts at two demonstrations. Outside the criminal courthouse, notorious for sending Shaka Sankofa, Frances Newton and Joseph Nichols to the execution chambers, demonstrators faced down a phalanx of cops in riot gear, mounted police and undercover cops everywhere that outnumbered the protesters 10-1. “Maybe they thought Mumia was joining us,” said one of the organizers.
In the afternoon from 4-6 p.m. there was another militant demonstration and rally, this one showing unity among young and older and Black, Latin@, Asian and white protesters from the Nation of Islam, the National Black United Front, the New Black Panther Party--whose youth distributed almost 600 of the Mumia newspapers--the Anarchist Black Cross, Code Pink, World Can’t Wait, gay activist/leader Ray Hill, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Zapatista supporters who just returned from meeting Zapatistas with La Otra Campana across the border, the director of S.H.A.P.E. Center where the Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty is based, the leader of the Venezuela Solidarity Committee and others as every group took the microphone.
In San Francisco over 300 people rallied in front of the federal building to demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal be set free, in an action sponsored by the locally-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. A broad coalition of students, union members, community activists and prisoner advocates spoke out, including Rudy Corpuz, Jr. and other members of United Playaz, who linked the fight to free Mumia with the everyday reality of repression and racism in the Black and Brown communities of the Bay Area.
Kiilu Nyasha, a local activist and former Black Panther Party member, delivered a solidarity statement to the crowd on behalf of the San Francisco 8 who are former BPP members and community activists who were arrested this spring and charged with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco policeman. Cristina Gutierrez of Barrio Unido called upon the crowd to unite to “change this system. His freedom is our freedom. His life is our life.” Judy Greenspan spoke at the rally representing Workers World Party. Other speakers demanded a new trial and freedom for Mumia.
Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier’s statement to Mumia was read from the podium in Milwaukee, Houston and other cities.
Cihan Celik in Istanbul, Susan Danann, Bob McCubbin, Bryan G. Pfeifer, Gloria Rubac and Judy Greenspan contributed to this article.
Rally demands: 'FREE MUMIA'
By Betsey Piette Philadelphia
Published May 24, 2007 12:38 AM www.workers.org
Over a thousand people rallied in support of death row, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal on May 17 outside the Federal Building in downtown Philadelphia, where a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit convened to hear oral arguments on his right to a new trial.
Around 200 Mumia supporters, including Dick Gregory, former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Lynne Stewart, Kathleen Cleaver, and international delegates from France and Germany, were also eyewitnesses on Mumia’s behalf inside the courtroom. Abu-Jamal was prohibited from attending this oral hearing.
Participants included busloads from New York and Boston; youth organized by FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) and Students for a Democratic Society, who traveled overnight from North Carolina; a car caravan from Georgia led by McKinney; and supporters from Richmond, Cleveland and as far away as Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, the overwhelming majority were from the Philadelphia area, many who took off from work to attend.
There were rallies supporting Abu-Jamal in several other U.S. cities (see page 7 round-up article) and demonstrations in many countries around the world, including France, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Britain.
The oral arguments were presented before Chief Judge Anthony Scirica and Judge Robert Cowen, both Reagan appointees, and Judge Thomas Ambro, a Clinton appointee. All three appeared to be familiar with the arguments contained in written briefs filed by attorneys prior to the hearing. During their time on the Third Circuit all three have overturned capital convictions based on the same claim Abu-Jamal is making about race-based exclusion of jurors by the prosecution.
Abu-Jamal was represented by Attorneys Robert Bryan and Judith Ritter, along with NAACP Attorney Christina Swarns. They argued that racial bias in jury selection and improper instructions by the prosecutor to the jury during the sentencing phase of Abu-Jamal’s 1982 murder trial provided grounds for a new trial. Arguing for the prosecution, Assistant District Attorney Hugh Burns presented the state’s appeal of the December 2001 decision by Federal Judge William Yohn that overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence even though he remains on death row.
Burns, who was the first to present, often referred to Abu-Jamal’s court appointed attorney Anthony Jackson and his failure to file a complaint about racism in jury selection during the trial. Jackson, assigned to “represent” Mumia by Judge Albert Sabo, was disbarred in 1992 for drug abuse, yet the state is still using this attorney to prosecute Mumia 25 years later.
Jackson did file a pre-trial motion in March of 1982 requesting information on the racial composition of the entire venire (jury pool) because he strongly suspected that there would be a problem. However, his motion was denied by Sabo, and the fact that Jackson did not raise this concern again during the trial proceedings was used by Burns to argue that it should not be considered today.
The appellate judges devoted considerable time debating whether racism in jury selection could be determined if the racial makeup of the jury pool was unknown. When asked about the racial composition of the jury pool at Abu-Jamal’s PCRA (Post Conviction Relief Act) hearing in 1995, Prosecutor Joseph McGill claimed he didn’t remember. However, given that African Americans made up 44 percent of the population of Philadelphia in 1982, the fact that less than 15 percent (two out of fourteen) of the jurors at Abu-Jamal’s trial were Black should be evidence enough.
The racial composition of the final pool of jurors is known. Twenty-eight out of forty-three were white and fifteen Black. Each side in a trial can use twenty challenges to eliminate potential jurors without stating why; however, these peremptory challenges may not be used to keep members of a particular race off the jury. McGill used 15 peremptory challenges to remove 10 of the 15 remaining Black jurors, but only five of the 28 whites.
An added factor in support of defense claims was the systematic pattern of exclusion of African Americans from juries by Philadelphia prosecutors around the time of Mumia’s 1982 trial. This was addressed by Swarns, who presented oral arguments contained in an amicus brief on behalf of Abu-Jamal by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The LDEF pioneered the affirmative use of civil actions to end jury discrimination. Their 31-page brief, which underscores the seriousness of the evidence of racial discrimination, can be found at www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/jury/Abu-Jamal_v_Horn_amicus_brief.pdf.
The LDEF brief cites the 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky, in which the Supreme Court declared that a criminal defendant who is able to prove that his trial prosecutor used peremptory challenges to exclude potential jurors on the basis of race is entitled to a new trial. Attorneys on behalf of Abu-Jamal are asking the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to consider the combination of factors that infer that his was unquestionably a racially charged case.
Case tainted with racism
Abu-Jamal is African-American and the victim was a white policeman. In the months between the Dec. 9, 1981, shooting death of Daniel Faulkner and the July 1982 trial, the local media continually emphasized the racial aspects of the case, particularly Abu-Jamal’s membership in the Black Panther Party and his support of the MOVE organization, including the political prisoners known as the MOVE 9.
In his work as a journalist, Abu-Jamal often reported on prisons and police brutality and in one instance publicly challenged then Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. He also wore his hair in dreadlocks at the time and the LDEF brief cites a Philadelphia Inquirer article from June 10, 1982, which stated, “Several prospective jurors left the courtroom Tuesday saying they were too upset and afraid to serve after being questioned by Abu-Jamal, who wears his hair in the dreadlocks style of the MOVE sect.”
Swarns argued that the trial prosecutor in Abu-Jamal’s case, Joseph McGill, had a history of systematically striking Black jurors. The LDEF brief notes that “a survey of homicide cases tried by Mr. McGill between September of 1981 and October 1983 reveal that he excluded prospective African-American venire persons approximately three times as often as he excluded non-black prospective jurors.”
The brief points out that “A comprehensive statistical study of Philadelphia County death penalty cases tried between 1981 and 1997 reveals that, ‘in 317 capital trials in Philadelphia between 1981 and 1997, prosecutors struck 51 percent of black jurors and 26 percent of non black jurors.’” Both Swarns and Bryan made reference to a notorious video training tape prepared by Philadelphia D.A. Jack McMahon advocating the systematic exclusion of African-American prospective jurors based on his experience in the D.A.’s office.
Swarns also noted that African-American jurors were struck from the jury pool because they were unemployed, divorced or single parents, yet these criteria were not applied to white jurors. Black jurors were asked if they had heard Abu-Jamal on Black radio stations, yet white jurors were not asked if they had heard Abu-Jamal’s commentaries that played on NPR. One African-American man was dismissed because he admitted to having a hearing problem, while a white juror who had to turn up his hearing aid to listen to Prosecutor McGill’s questions was allowed to remain.
One African-American woman whom McGill picked for the jury because “she hated Abu-Jamal” was later thrown off by Sabo when she had to attend to a dying pet. She’d asked for a brief time off but was refused. Meanwhile Sabo adjourned the proceedings for an entire afternoon so that a white, male juror could take a civil service exam.
The issue of McGill’s clearly inappropriate instructions to jurors during the July 1982 sentencing phase was addressed by Ritter who also questioned the legality of McGill’s three-page verdict form.
Each death sentence must rest on two findings: proof beyond a reasonable doubt of at least one aggravating circumstance that would have increased the seriousness of the crime; and the finding that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency in sentencing. The verdict form in Abu-Jamal’s case consisted of a list of aggravators without any instructions on their application.
While the law doesn’t require jurors to be unanimous when it comes to considering mitigating circumstances (for example, positive character witnesses or the fact that the defendant in this case had never been convicted of a crime), the verdict form provided no space for jurors to indicate that some jurors felt these were relevant even if not all agreed upon them.
In fact McGill’s instructions gave jurors the impression that they had to be unanimous in order for mitigating circumstances to be considered. In addition, Ritter challenged the constitutionality of McGill’s charge to the jury that it was alright if they gave Abu-Jamal the death sentence because he would have “appeal after appeal.”
A third appeal by Abu-Jamal’s attorneys argued that his 1995 PCRA hearing was constitutionally flawed because the judge—the same Judge Albert Sabo who tried Mumia’s original case—was biased in favor of the prosecution. The PCRA transcript shows that Sabo denied subpoenas of witnesses requested by the defense, cut off defense lines of questioning and threatened Abu-Jamal’s attorneys with contempt of court when they challenged him. One defense witness who testified to being coerced by prosecutors to lie in the 1982 trial, found herself arrested in the courtroom while she was still on the witness stand in the PCRA hearing.
Sabo’s racism and bias against Abu-Jamal is also evidenced by his comment to another judge, “I’m going to help them fry the n****r,” overheard by court stenographer Terri Maurer Carter.
‘The Mumia rule’
While many of the cases cited as legal precedent by Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have been grounds for the reversal of a number of convictions in capital cases, that is no guarantee of a new trial for Abu-Jamal. In a May 15, article by author Dave Lindorff and columnist Linn Washington Jr. titled “Justice System on Trial as Mumia Case Reaches Climax,” they point out that over the course of Abu-Jamal’s more than two-decade-long appeals process, the courts have shown a willingness to create special exceptions that apply only to him.
They note an example of what might be called ‘The Mumia Rule’ that occurred in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The state’s top judges in 1986 overturned a death sentence where McGill had made the same closing arguments to jurors at the conclusion of a murder trial presided over by none other than Sabo.
The state’s top court declared that McGill’s language had “minimized the jury’s sense of responsibility for a verdict of death” and ordered a new trial. Three years later in 1989, this court reversed itself when it came to upholding Abu-Jamal’s conviction. Eleven years later in 1997 the court flip-flopped again and barred such language by all prosecutors “in all future trials.”
In his closing arguments during the May 17th hearing, defense attorney Robert Bryan made a point of this when he listed defendants whose capital cases have come before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals—Donald Hardcastle, Arnold Holloway, Curtis Brinson and Harold Wilson—whose convictions were overturned because of racial discrimination in the proceedings. “Are we to believe that there was no racism in this highly charged case in which a political Black defendant was accused of killing a white police officer; that his is the exception to the rule?” Bryan charged.
The three white, male judges appeared to take a cavalier view when discussing the “criteria” by which they would decide whether racism was a factor in this case. An example of this was their debate over what percentage of exclusion of African Americans from a jury would constitute “bias.” At one point Judge Ambro even acknowledged that the intentional exclusion of even one juror on the basis of race violates Abu-Jamal’s constitutional rights.
John Parker, a Mumia supporter who flew in from Los Angeles, told Workers World that “While some have applauded the judges for their ‘fair attitude’ at the hearing, in the first place it’s ridiculous that there had to be a hearing since there is more than ample proof that Mumia did not have a fair trial. The judges read the arguments before the trial started. They should have granted a new trial automatically. In the second place, if these judges were really concerned about fairness, truth and decency, they would see more of a sense of urgency in getting Mumia free, not waiting a month or so to make a decision while Mumia remains tortured under the conditions he’s placed in on death row.”
The judges are expected to return a ruling within the next 45 to 90 days.
Before, during and after the two-hour-plus legal proceedings, demonstrators took to the streets, including marching up Market Street and several times around City Hall, blocking traffic for nearly 30 minutes. The march was led by a sound truck packed with youthful supporters. Along the way, shoppers, motorists and workers on their lunch hour stopped to receive material on the case, ask questions and often express their support by honking their horns and waving their fists in the air.
Widespread support was also evident at three separate events the night before, including a reception at the Friends Center for Cynthia McKinney and the French delegation, a teach-in at Drexel University sponsored by Educators for Mumia, and a jam-packed hip-hop and spoken word performance at the Rotunda featuring Immortal Technique.
This community support is a critical factor in winning freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. For all the legal dancing around how the federal courts should weigh the claims raised by the attorneys, many suspect that this case will not be determined on the basis of law, but on the basis of the political movement mobilizing in the streets.
Speaking at the teach-in the night before the appellate hearing and at a public forum the following evening, German author and researcher Michael Schiffman provided stark evidence that a lot of people have lied in order to put Abu-Jamal on Pennsylvania’s death row and to keep him there. Schiffman presented a slide show of photos taken by press photographer Pedro Polakoff that exposes police manipulation of the 1981 crime scene and contradicts statements made by key witnesses for the prosecution and is further evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. Schiffman noted, “To bring this to light would put many careers on the line—some in very high places.”
Already an on-line petition is being circulated calling on the Third Circuit Court judges to do the right thing and rule in favor of a new trial, but organizing has to be done to raise broader awareness of the facts in the case and to prepare Abu-Jamal’s supporters for what comes next. Toward this end, the Philadelphia International Action Center has issued a call for a meeting on May 29 at 7 p.m. at the Calvary Church, 48th and Baltimore in Philadelphia. Call 215-724-1618.
Piette was an eyewitness to the May 17 oral argument.
Solidarity for Mumia in 6 U.S. cities, 8 countries
Published May 24, 2007 12:14 AM www.workers.org
In at least five U.S. cities outside Philadelphia and at least eight other countries demonstrations in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal took place aimed at bringing attention to the latest court hearing May 17 and winning the political prisoner a new trial on the way toward freeing him.
In Ankara, Turkey’s capital and Istanbul, its biggest city, activists protested against the United States for imprisoning Mumia unfairly for 25 years. The group included academics, journalists, human rights activists and also correspondents of the daily Evrensel in front of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara and the Central Post office in Istanbul. They delivered a petition to the U.S. Embassy demanding a fair trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The Cleveland Lucasville Five Defense Committee demonstrated during rush hour downtown. Signs called for the freedom of Abu-Jamal and the Lucasville Five, innocent men who face execution in Ohio in relation to the 1993 Lucasville prison uprising, and demanded “Justice for Aaron Steele.” Steele, a 23-year old African-American bus mechanic, died May 8 after being shot multiple times by Cleveland police. Passersby grabbed hundreds of newsletters on Mumia’s case. Other Mumia supporters had held a protest during the morning rush hour.
Members of the San Diego International Action Center and the San Diego Mumia Coalition gathered at a busy community intersection and distributed newsletters and other material on Mumia’s case to workers on their way home from work in the evening commute. Several motorists pulled over to get more details on Mumia’s struggle. Poet Jim Moreno read his Ode to Mumia for the assembled activists.
Organized in only one week, a broad-base of labor and community activists joined to support a May 17 press conference and protest in Milwaukee demanding a new trial for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Speakers from Africans on the Move, AFSCME Local 82, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), International Action Center-Milwaukee, the National Lawyers Guild, Pan African Revolutionary Socialist Party, Peace Action-Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Green Party spoke in downtown Milwaukee at the Henry Reuss Federal Plaza.
Prior to the May 17 action IAC-Milwaukee organizer Bryan G. Pfeifer was invited to speak about the struggle surrounding Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case on “The Eric Von” show hosted by African American- radio journalist Eric Von and “The Word Warriors Report,” hosted by African- American City Councilman Michael McGee Jr.
In Houston, in the execution capital of the country, where 16 executions are scheduled over the summer, anti-death penalty activists were fired up by the strong turnouts at two demonstrations. Outside the criminal courthouse, notorious for sending Shaka Sankofa, Frances Newton and Joseph Nichols to the execution chambers, demonstrators faced down a phalanx of cops in riot gear, mounted police and undercover cops everywhere that outnumbered the protesters 10-1. “Maybe they thought Mumia was joining us,” said one of the organizers.
In the afternoon from 4-6 p.m. there was another militant demonstration and rally, this one showing unity among young and older and Black, Latin@, Asian and white protesters from the Nation of Islam, the National Black United Front, the New Black Panther Party--whose youth distributed almost 600 of the Mumia newspapers--the Anarchist Black Cross, Code Pink, World Can’t Wait, gay activist/leader Ray Hill, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Zapatista supporters who just returned from meeting Zapatistas with La Otra Campana across the border, the director of S.H.A.P.E. Center where the Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty is based, the leader of the Venezuela Solidarity Committee and others as every group took the microphone.
In San Francisco over 300 people rallied in front of the federal building to demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal be set free, in an action sponsored by the locally-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. A broad coalition of students, union members, community activists and prisoner advocates spoke out, including Rudy Corpuz, Jr. and other members of United Playaz, who linked the fight to free Mumia with the everyday reality of repression and racism in the Black and Brown communities of the Bay Area.
Kiilu Nyasha, a local activist and former Black Panther Party member, delivered a solidarity statement to the crowd on behalf of the San Francisco 8 who are former BPP members and community activists who were arrested this spring and charged with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco policeman. Cristina Gutierrez of Barrio Unido called upon the crowd to unite to “change this system. His freedom is our freedom. His life is our life.” Judy Greenspan spoke at the rally representing Workers World Party. Other speakers demanded a new trial and freedom for Mumia.
Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier’s statement to Mumia was read from the podium in Milwaukee, Houston and other cities.
Cihan Celik in Istanbul, Susan Danann, Bob McCubbin, Bryan G. Pfeifer, Gloria Rubac and Judy Greenspan contributed to this article.
U.S. Marines unlikely to report civilian abuse: study
By David Morgan
Fri May 4, 3:33 PM ET
Reuters - Only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of U.S. Army soldiers deployed in Iraq say they would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi, a Pentagon report released on Friday shows.
The Army survey, which showed increasing rates of mental health problems for troops on extended or multiple deployments, also said well over one-third of soldiers and Marines believe torture should be allowed to elicit information that could save the lives of American troops or gain knowledge about Iraqi insurgents.
Overall, about 10 percent of the 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines covered in the survey said they had mistreated civilians, either through physical violence or damage to their personal property. The survey was conducted by U.S. Army medical experts between August 28 and October 3, 2006.
"Soldiers with high levels of anger, who had experienced high levels of combat or who screened positive for mental health symptoms were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants," acting Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock told reporters.
The findings, which included the first survey of ethics among U.S. troops in combat, were released Friday in an 89-page report posted on the Web site www.armymedicine.army.mil. It was delivered to senior military officials in November.
Claims of U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi detainees and civilians have shadowed American forces in Iraq from revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 to reports of the November 19, 2005, killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha.
EXTENDED TOURS
The survey data came out a month after Defense Secretary Robert Gates extended tours for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to up to 15 months instead of one year as U.S. forces increase their numbers in Iraq under a plan ordered by President George W. Bush.
The extended tours were widely seen as the latest sign of strain placed on the U.S. military by the two wars.
There are currently some 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 25,000 in Afghanistan. Bush's plan calls for boosting the U.S. deployment in Iraq by 28,000 combat and support troops.
The report, the fourth prepared by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team since the war in Iraq began in 2003, showed that mental health problems such as acute stress, anxiety and depression rose among troops facing longer deployments or their second or third tour in Iraq.
Overall, about 20 percent of Army soldiers and 15 percent of Marines showed mental health symptoms of either anxiety, depression or acute stress. The rate was at 30 percent among troops with high combat experience.
Among Army soldiers, 27 percent of those with more than one tour of duty tested positive for a mental health problem, versus 17 percent for soldiers on their first deployment.
The rate of anxiety, depression and acute stress stood at 22 percent among soldiers deployed for more than six months and at 15 percent for troops in Iraq for less than six months.
Army experts recommended that the Pentagon extend the interval between deployments to 18 to 36 months so that troops could recover mentally.
Gates said last month that troops in the region covered by the U.S. Central Command -- from East Africa to Central Asia -- could expect to spend 12 months at home between deployments.
Fri May 4, 3:33 PM ET
Reuters - Only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of U.S. Army soldiers deployed in Iraq say they would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi, a Pentagon report released on Friday shows.
The Army survey, which showed increasing rates of mental health problems for troops on extended or multiple deployments, also said well over one-third of soldiers and Marines believe torture should be allowed to elicit information that could save the lives of American troops or gain knowledge about Iraqi insurgents.
Overall, about 10 percent of the 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines covered in the survey said they had mistreated civilians, either through physical violence or damage to their personal property. The survey was conducted by U.S. Army medical experts between August 28 and October 3, 2006.
"Soldiers with high levels of anger, who had experienced high levels of combat or who screened positive for mental health symptoms were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants," acting Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock told reporters.
The findings, which included the first survey of ethics among U.S. troops in combat, were released Friday in an 89-page report posted on the Web site www.armymedicine.army.mil. It was delivered to senior military officials in November.
Claims of U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi detainees and civilians have shadowed American forces in Iraq from revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 to reports of the November 19, 2005, killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha.
EXTENDED TOURS
The survey data came out a month after Defense Secretary Robert Gates extended tours for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to up to 15 months instead of one year as U.S. forces increase their numbers in Iraq under a plan ordered by President George W. Bush.
The extended tours were widely seen as the latest sign of strain placed on the U.S. military by the two wars.
There are currently some 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 25,000 in Afghanistan. Bush's plan calls for boosting the U.S. deployment in Iraq by 28,000 combat and support troops.
The report, the fourth prepared by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team since the war in Iraq began in 2003, showed that mental health problems such as acute stress, anxiety and depression rose among troops facing longer deployments or their second or third tour in Iraq.
Overall, about 20 percent of Army soldiers and 15 percent of Marines showed mental health symptoms of either anxiety, depression or acute stress. The rate was at 30 percent among troops with high combat experience.
Among Army soldiers, 27 percent of those with more than one tour of duty tested positive for a mental health problem, versus 17 percent for soldiers on their first deployment.
The rate of anxiety, depression and acute stress stood at 22 percent among soldiers deployed for more than six months and at 15 percent for troops in Iraq for less than six months.
Army experts recommended that the Pentagon extend the interval between deployments to 18 to 36 months so that troops could recover mentally.
Gates said last month that troops in the region covered by the U.S. Central Command -- from East Africa to Central Asia -- could expect to spend 12 months at home between deployments.
Over 500 Rally for Immigrant Rights In Charlotte
by David Dixon, May 1, 2007
Charlotte, NC
Over 500 people, mostly Latin@, rallied at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Government Center in uptown Charlotte for “fair immigration laws”. It was organized by Communities For Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Speakers said that everyone had a right to be there, pointing out that the massive new jail & other huge buildings around had been built largely by immigrants. Immigrant workers are not criminals, they are just seeking to make a better life for themselves and families.
They pointed out that immigrants pay taxes like everybody else, every time they buy something. In addition, taxes & Social Security/Medicare withheld from workers pay checks deemed “illegal” are never credited to them. Hence, they pay more taxes than the average person in America.
Ahmad Daniels gave a message of solidarity from the African-American Community. He said the current struggle for immigrant rights was like the African-American’s struggle for civil rights. He urged all present to be proud of whatever country they are from and their cultures.
A young girl from Honduras spoke about she had lived here in Charlotte for 10 years and was afraid her parents could be deported and her family torn apart. Angeles Ortega with the Latin American Coalition also spoke and a message of solidarity from Charlotte City Person Jennifer Roberts was delivered. There were a few musical performers that played acoustic guitar and sang.
Some young Latin@s sang the national anthem and Pledge of Allegiance to the flag to demonstrate their love for their new country. Organizers wanted to make clear that they were here at the rally & the U.S. in the spirit of friendship and wanted to continue to be a part of the community.
When racist counter-protesters showed up with a large sign reading “Seal The Border”, David Dixon, with Action Center For Justice (local International Action Center affiliate), stood directly in front of it with a sign reading, “No Human Is Illegal! Full Rights For Immigrants NOW!”
This got a lot of attention from the media & those present as Dixon, one of the only whites present, debated one of the counter-protesters. The Latin@ press covered & recorded the whole exchange as Dixon explained everyone that wants to come work & bring their families here had a right to. This country was built by immigrants. The American & big corporations can cross any border they want to and underpay & take advantage of people, so the people have a right to come to the U.S. if they want to. He pointed out that a large portion of the southwestern U.S. used to belong to Mexico until it was stolen from them by the U.S.
While the corporate media focused on some rallies being smaller than last year, some of the busiest streets in Charlotte were noticeably empty. An untold number of thousands stayed out of work & some students from school as their way of taking part in the May 1 Immigrant Rights actions.
May 1 Charlotte Movement For Worker & Immigrant Rights
www.may1charlotte.info
Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
Charlotte, NC
Over 500 people, mostly Latin@, rallied at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Government Center in uptown Charlotte for “fair immigration laws”. It was organized by Communities For Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Speakers said that everyone had a right to be there, pointing out that the massive new jail & other huge buildings around had been built largely by immigrants. Immigrant workers are not criminals, they are just seeking to make a better life for themselves and families.
They pointed out that immigrants pay taxes like everybody else, every time they buy something. In addition, taxes & Social Security/Medicare withheld from workers pay checks deemed “illegal” are never credited to them. Hence, they pay more taxes than the average person in America.
Ahmad Daniels gave a message of solidarity from the African-American Community. He said the current struggle for immigrant rights was like the African-American’s struggle for civil rights. He urged all present to be proud of whatever country they are from and their cultures.
A young girl from Honduras spoke about she had lived here in Charlotte for 10 years and was afraid her parents could be deported and her family torn apart. Angeles Ortega with the Latin American Coalition also spoke and a message of solidarity from Charlotte City Person Jennifer Roberts was delivered. There were a few musical performers that played acoustic guitar and sang.
Some young Latin@s sang the national anthem and Pledge of Allegiance to the flag to demonstrate their love for their new country. Organizers wanted to make clear that they were here at the rally & the U.S. in the spirit of friendship and wanted to continue to be a part of the community.
When racist counter-protesters showed up with a large sign reading “Seal The Border”, David Dixon, with Action Center For Justice (local International Action Center affiliate), stood directly in front of it with a sign reading, “No Human Is Illegal! Full Rights For Immigrants NOW!”
This got a lot of attention from the media & those present as Dixon, one of the only whites present, debated one of the counter-protesters. The Latin@ press covered & recorded the whole exchange as Dixon explained everyone that wants to come work & bring their families here had a right to. This country was built by immigrants. The American & big corporations can cross any border they want to and underpay & take advantage of people, so the people have a right to come to the U.S. if they want to. He pointed out that a large portion of the southwestern U.S. used to belong to Mexico until it was stolen from them by the U.S.
While the corporate media focused on some rallies being smaller than last year, some of the busiest streets in Charlotte were noticeably empty. An untold number of thousands stayed out of work & some students from school as their way of taking part in the May 1 Immigrant Rights actions.
May 1 Charlotte Movement For Worker & Immigrant Rights
www.may1charlotte.info
Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
May 1st Coalition Condemns Police Brutality at Immigrant Rights Demonstrations
Action Center For Justice endorses this statement & stands in solidarity with all those attacked.
May 1st Coalition Condemns Police Brutality at Immigrant Rights March in Los Angeles
New York Police also attack local demonstration
By now the people of this country and around the world have witnessed through video footage the horrific attack by Los Angeles police at the May 1st immigrant rights rally organized by several organizations.
In New York, the police also attacked the demonstration organized by the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant & Worker Rights. Footage of this attack can be seen on by clicking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RstfALrC1s
(LA footage see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdNkXJMH9A
& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8f5KVNWyg -ACJ)
Javier Rodriguez of the National May Day Movement for Worker & Immigrant Rights said “Behind the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department is the message from higher up that there is an attempt to destabilize the immigrant rights movement. The actions of the LAPD were heinous. At the next national conference meeting we plan to take this up and we will propose launching a national movement against police brutality. ”
The police attack in New York resulted in the arrest of at least one immigrant worker, Rosendo Bonifacio. Rosendo, who is from Mexico, was held over night and released around 12noon the next day, May 2nd. Charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest were brought against him and he was ordered to return to court on July 17.
According to the police, the attack against Rosendo and the group of people around him began over the fact that Rosendo and others were wearing masks. The masks are used in Mexico by wrestlers—“luchadores” as they are commonly known. The masks are popularly worn in the Mexican community by tens of thousands of people, especially at demonstrations and are a source of pride.
Teresa Gutierrez of the New York May 1st Coalition, who is organizing coalition support for Rosendo stated “The video footage of the attack against Rosendo simply for wearing a mask, really shows how much immigrants are feared in this country. What is really being masked is the racist hatred of Latino and other immigrant workers by police and other officials. Efforts are being made by the government to squash the movement. The reaction by Rosendo and his friends and family to go public with his case however show that just the opposite is happening. The coalition maintains that Rosendo is innocent and we will mobilize for his court date, July 17. Rosendo is a hero.”
Panama Vicente Alba also of the New York Coalition and labor activist stated “It is clear that law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have taken a violent and aggressive stance toward the immigrant mobilizations, these mobilizations are the main way immigrants can express themselves.”
Transport Worker Union member Charles Jenkins and a coordinator of the May 1st March in New York said that the NYPD violated the permit regulations applied for in a timely and suitable manner by the coalition. “The NYPD broke up the march in several places and for long periods of time in effect violating our parade permit” said Jenkins. “This contributed to breaking down our unity and militancy by dividing the march.”
Walter Sinche, a leader of the NY May 1 Coalition says “The attacks by the police on immigrants are inhumane and savage, which shows the hatred towards Latin-Americans, how it has been and is toward people of African descent. We want people to know that this is a stage of intimidation by the security forces and large corporations. It is time for us to defend, organize and be determined to obtain what we are looking for: humane immigration reform. We demand that it be declared on a national and international level a HUMANITARIAN CRISIS, for the million people without documents working in the U.S. We think, yes we can do it."
NY May 1st Coalition For Immigrant Rights: www.may1.info
National coalition: www.maydaymovement.blogspot.com
Charlotte: www.may1charlotte.info
La Coalición 1ro Mayo de NY Condena la Brutalidad Policiacaa la Marcha Pro-Derechos Inmigrantes en Los Angeles
Policias de Nueva York también atacan demostración local
Ahora la gente de este país y alrededor del mundo han presenciado a través de video el ataque horrendo por las policías de Los Ángeles en la marcha pro-derechos inmigrantes de 1ro de mayo organizada por varias organizaciones.
En Nueva York, los policías también atacaron la demostración organizada por la coalición de 1ro Mayo Pro-Derechos Inmigrantes y Trabajadores. El material de video de este ataque puede ser visto haciendo clic en http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RstfALrC1s
(LA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdNkXJMH9A
& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8f5KVNWyg -ACJ)
Javier Rodriguez del Movimiento Nacional Primero de Mayo Pro-Derechos Inmigrantes y Trabajadores dijo "Detrás de las acciones del departamento del policía de Los Ángeles está el mensaje que viene de más arriba que hay un intento a desestabiliza el movimiento pro-derechos inmigrantes. Las acciones del LAPD fueron atroces. En la próxima reunión nacional planeamos tomar este asunto y propondremos en lanzar un movimiento nacional contra brutalidad policiaca."
El ataque policiaco en Nueva York resultó en la detención por lo menos de un trabajador inmigrante, Rosendo Bonifacio. Rosendo, que es de México, fue detenido por toda la noche y puesto en libertad alrededor del mediodía el día siguiente, el 2do de mayo. Los cargos de conducta desordenada y de resistir arresto traído en su contra y le ordenaron volver a la corte el 17 de julio.
Según las policías, el ataque contra Rosendo y el grupo de gente alrededor de él comenzó sobre el hecho de que Rosendo y otros usaban máscaras. Las máscaras son utilizadas en México por los luchadores. Las máscaras son usadas frequentemente en la comunidad mexicana por diez de millares de gente, especialmente en las demostraciones y son una fuente del orgullo.
Teresa Gutierrez de la Coalicion Primero de Mayo de Nueva York, que esta organizando apoyo para Rosendo por la coalicion dijo “el material de video del ataque contra Rosendo simplemente por ponerse una mascara verdamente muestra cuanto los inmigrantes son temidos en este pais. Lo que verdamente se esta mascarando es el odio racista de Latinos y otros inmigrantes por la policia y otros oficiales. El gobierno está haciendo esfuerzos para frenar el movimiento. La respuesta de Rosendo y sus amigos y familia a ir al publico con su caso muestra que lo contrario está occuriendo. La coalicion mantiene que Rosendo es inocente y mobilizaremos para su dia de corte, el 17 de Julio. Rosendo es un héroe.”
Panama Vicente Alba tambien de la Coalicion 1ro Mayo de NY y activista laboral dijo: “Está claro que las agencias de Sistema Judicial a través de EE.UU. han tomado una postura violente y agresiva a las mobilizaciones inmigrantes, estas mobilizaciones son la manera principal que los inmigrantes se pueden expresar.”
Miembro del sindicato Transport Worker Union y un coordinador de la Marcha de Primero de Mayo en Nueva York, Charles Jenkins dijo que el NYPD habian violado las reglas de permisos lo cual la coalicion habia solicitado en una manera a tiempo. “Los policias interumpieron la marcha en varios lugares y por largo periodos de tiempo en efecto violando nuestro permiso de desfile,” dijo Jenkins. “Esto contribuyó a romper nuestra unidad y militancia con divider la marcha.”
Walter Sinche un dirigente de la Coalición 1ro de Mayo de NY, dice que: “Los ataques policiales a inmigrantes en las manifiestaciones son acciones inhumanas y salvajes, el cual demuestra el odio a los latino-americanos, como lo ha sido y es a los afro-descendientes. Nosotros queremos que sepan que esto es una etapa de intimidación por las fuerzas de seguridad y grandes corporaciones y es momento de defendernos, organizarnos y ser determinados a conseguir lo que buscamos: reforma migratoria humana. Exiguimos que se declare a nivel nacional e internacional una CRISIS HUMANITARIA, para los millones de personas sin documentos para trabajar en EE.UU. Creamos que sí se puede.”
NY May 1st Coalition For Immigrant Rights: www.may1.info
National coalition: www.maydaymovement.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------
May 1st Charlotte Movement for Worker & Immigrant Rights
www.may1charlotte.info
May 1st Coalition Condemns Police Brutality at Immigrant Rights March in Los Angeles
New York Police also attack local demonstration
By now the people of this country and around the world have witnessed through video footage the horrific attack by Los Angeles police at the May 1st immigrant rights rally organized by several organizations.
In New York, the police also attacked the demonstration organized by the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant & Worker Rights. Footage of this attack can be seen on by clicking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RstfALrC1s
(LA footage see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdNkXJMH9A
& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8f5KVNWyg -ACJ)
Javier Rodriguez of the National May Day Movement for Worker & Immigrant Rights said “Behind the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department is the message from higher up that there is an attempt to destabilize the immigrant rights movement. The actions of the LAPD were heinous. At the next national conference meeting we plan to take this up and we will propose launching a national movement against police brutality. ”
The police attack in New York resulted in the arrest of at least one immigrant worker, Rosendo Bonifacio. Rosendo, who is from Mexico, was held over night and released around 12noon the next day, May 2nd. Charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest were brought against him and he was ordered to return to court on July 17.
According to the police, the attack against Rosendo and the group of people around him began over the fact that Rosendo and others were wearing masks. The masks are used in Mexico by wrestlers—“luchadores” as they are commonly known. The masks are popularly worn in the Mexican community by tens of thousands of people, especially at demonstrations and are a source of pride.
Teresa Gutierrez of the New York May 1st Coalition, who is organizing coalition support for Rosendo stated “The video footage of the attack against Rosendo simply for wearing a mask, really shows how much immigrants are feared in this country. What is really being masked is the racist hatred of Latino and other immigrant workers by police and other officials. Efforts are being made by the government to squash the movement. The reaction by Rosendo and his friends and family to go public with his case however show that just the opposite is happening. The coalition maintains that Rosendo is innocent and we will mobilize for his court date, July 17. Rosendo is a hero.”
Panama Vicente Alba also of the New York Coalition and labor activist stated “It is clear that law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have taken a violent and aggressive stance toward the immigrant mobilizations, these mobilizations are the main way immigrants can express themselves.”
Transport Worker Union member Charles Jenkins and a coordinator of the May 1st March in New York said that the NYPD violated the permit regulations applied for in a timely and suitable manner by the coalition. “The NYPD broke up the march in several places and for long periods of time in effect violating our parade permit” said Jenkins. “This contributed to breaking down our unity and militancy by dividing the march.”
Walter Sinche, a leader of the NY May 1 Coalition says “The attacks by the police on immigrants are inhumane and savage, which shows the hatred towards Latin-Americans, how it has been and is toward people of African descent. We want people to know that this is a stage of intimidation by the security forces and large corporations. It is time for us to defend, organize and be determined to obtain what we are looking for: humane immigration reform. We demand that it be declared on a national and international level a HUMANITARIAN CRISIS, for the million people without documents working in the U.S. We think, yes we can do it."
NY May 1st Coalition For Immigrant Rights: www.may1.info
National coalition: www.maydaymovement.blogspot.com
Charlotte: www.may1charlotte.info
La Coalición 1ro Mayo de NY Condena la Brutalidad Policiacaa la Marcha Pro-Derechos Inmigrantes en Los Angeles
Policias de Nueva York también atacan demostración local
Ahora la gente de este país y alrededor del mundo han presenciado a través de video el ataque horrendo por las policías de Los Ángeles en la marcha pro-derechos inmigrantes de 1ro de mayo organizada por varias organizaciones.
En Nueva York, los policías también atacaron la demostración organizada por la coalición de 1ro Mayo Pro-Derechos Inmigrantes y Trabajadores. El material de video de este ataque puede ser visto haciendo clic en http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RstfALrC1s
(LA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdNkXJMH9A
& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8f5KVNWyg -ACJ)
Javier Rodriguez del Movimiento Nacional Primero de Mayo Pro-Derechos Inmigrantes y Trabajadores dijo "Detrás de las acciones del departamento del policía de Los Ángeles está el mensaje que viene de más arriba que hay un intento a desestabiliza el movimiento pro-derechos inmigrantes. Las acciones del LAPD fueron atroces. En la próxima reunión nacional planeamos tomar este asunto y propondremos en lanzar un movimiento nacional contra brutalidad policiaca."
El ataque policiaco en Nueva York resultó en la detención por lo menos de un trabajador inmigrante, Rosendo Bonifacio. Rosendo, que es de México, fue detenido por toda la noche y puesto en libertad alrededor del mediodía el día siguiente, el 2do de mayo. Los cargos de conducta desordenada y de resistir arresto traído en su contra y le ordenaron volver a la corte el 17 de julio.
Según las policías, el ataque contra Rosendo y el grupo de gente alrededor de él comenzó sobre el hecho de que Rosendo y otros usaban máscaras. Las máscaras son utilizadas en México por los luchadores. Las máscaras son usadas frequentemente en la comunidad mexicana por diez de millares de gente, especialmente en las demostraciones y son una fuente del orgullo.
Teresa Gutierrez de la Coalicion Primero de Mayo de Nueva York, que esta organizando apoyo para Rosendo por la coalicion dijo “el material de video del ataque contra Rosendo simplemente por ponerse una mascara verdamente muestra cuanto los inmigrantes son temidos en este pais. Lo que verdamente se esta mascarando es el odio racista de Latinos y otros inmigrantes por la policia y otros oficiales. El gobierno está haciendo esfuerzos para frenar el movimiento. La respuesta de Rosendo y sus amigos y familia a ir al publico con su caso muestra que lo contrario está occuriendo. La coalicion mantiene que Rosendo es inocente y mobilizaremos para su dia de corte, el 17 de Julio. Rosendo es un héroe.”
Panama Vicente Alba tambien de la Coalicion 1ro Mayo de NY y activista laboral dijo: “Está claro que las agencias de Sistema Judicial a través de EE.UU. han tomado una postura violente y agresiva a las mobilizaciones inmigrantes, estas mobilizaciones son la manera principal que los inmigrantes se pueden expresar.”
Miembro del sindicato Transport Worker Union y un coordinador de la Marcha de Primero de Mayo en Nueva York, Charles Jenkins dijo que el NYPD habian violado las reglas de permisos lo cual la coalicion habia solicitado en una manera a tiempo. “Los policias interumpieron la marcha en varios lugares y por largo periodos de tiempo en efecto violando nuestro permiso de desfile,” dijo Jenkins. “Esto contribuyó a romper nuestra unidad y militancia con divider la marcha.”
Walter Sinche un dirigente de la Coalición 1ro de Mayo de NY, dice que: “Los ataques policiales a inmigrantes en las manifiestaciones son acciones inhumanas y salvajes, el cual demuestra el odio a los latino-americanos, como lo ha sido y es a los afro-descendientes. Nosotros queremos que sepan que esto es una etapa de intimidación por las fuerzas de seguridad y grandes corporaciones y es momento de defendernos, organizarnos y ser determinados a conseguir lo que buscamos: reforma migratoria humana. Exiguimos que se declare a nivel nacional e internacional una CRISIS HUMANITARIA, para los millones de personas sin documentos para trabajar en EE.UU. Creamos que sí se puede.”
NY May 1st Coalition For Immigrant Rights: www.may1.info
National coalition: www.maydaymovement.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------
May 1st Charlotte Movement for Worker & Immigrant Rights
www.may1charlotte.info
May 1: Defying gov’t terror, Immigrants rally in scores of cities
Defying gov’t terror
Immigrants rally in scores of cities
May Day lives as workers demand rights and dignity
By John Catalinotto
Published May 3, 2007 1:52 AM www.workers.org
Photo slideshow at http://www.maydaymovement.blogspot.com/
Hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, mostly from Latin America, protested for their rights on May Day in cities and towns across the United States. For the second year in a row, the immigrant rights movement chose May 1, International Workers’ Day, to raise their demands.
Almost all the protests demanded full legalization and a halt to the raids and deportations. They also denounced the repressive “STRIVE Act” and George W. Bush’s proposed immigration “reforms.”
Many demonstrators who were undocumented came out despite the climate of terror generated by anti-immigrant raids and forcible separation and detention of family members by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). From New Bedford, Mass., to the San Fernando Valley in Calif., 125,405 people—a record number—were deported in the first six months of the 2007 fiscal year (ICE report).
Immigrants defied these dangers to build what was the second-largest May Day demonstration in the United States in at least half a century—exceeded only by last year’s turnout of millions. This happened even though there was no central unifying theme, like last year’s revulsion toward the hated Sensenbrenner bill.
In many of the marches, speakers from African American organizations expressed solidarity with the immigrants, and so did some labor unionists.
Large outpouring in Midwest
In Chicago, some 150,000 people marched, far surpassing expectations of the broad March 10 Movement coalition that organized it. Two feeder marches from the Latin@ communities of West Town and Pilsen met for a rally at Union Park that filled its 10 acres.
A military-style ICE raid in the heart of Chicago’s Mexican community on April 24 added impetus to community outrage. More than 60 immigration police armed with high-powered rifles descended on the Little Village Discount Mall, kicked open bathroom doors with guns drawn, forced everybody “who looked Latino” to sit on the floor, and detained at least 150 customers and workers inside. In response, a spontaneous protest quickly erupted. Protesters with signs and megaphones closed the intersection of 26th and Albany for hours.
“This is our Sensenbrenner this year,” a May 1 protest organizer told media. Radio host Rafael Pulido stated, “I think this showed us that this is exactly what will happen if we don’t go out there and march.”
In nearby Milwaukee, more than 80,000 immigrants and their allies marched and then rallied at Veterans Park. According to the event’s sponsor, Voces de la Frontera—a leading member of the Wisconsin Legalization Coalition—this is the largest progressive march in Wisconsin history. Other actions took place in Madison and Racine.
“The people are sending a strong message that we need and want a law passed this year that will address an outdated and discriminatory immigration system that is hurting and terrorizing working-class families through raids and the politics of hate,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Voces director.
More than 120 businesses in Wisconsin, most in the metropolitan Milwaukee area, either shut their doors for the day or acceded to the right of workers to take the day off to march and rally.
Nearly 10,000 marched in Detroit—more than last May Day. Many restaurants and stores in the Latin@ business district closed for the day. Supportive shop owners and community organizations donated water and sweet coffee spiced with cinnamon to refresh those who marched the three-mile route. The City Council held a hearing after the rally to declare Detroit a sanctuary city.
A contingent of children and youth were at the front of the march. Many people came with small children and babies in strollers. The radio station “La Explosiva” reported that 200 businesses closed so the workers could attend the march. The Michigan Emergency Committee Against the War in Iraq (MECAWI) provided organizational support.
Across South and Southwest
In Raleigh, N.C.—the state with arguably the fastest-growing Latin@ immigrant population and the lowest unionization rate—several hundred immigrant workers and supporters gathered at the State Capitol after work to add their energy to the hundreds who had earlier walked out of work and school to participate in a day of political action at the State Legislature.
Several immigrant rights organizations and unions took part in the rally, including UFCW—which has been engaged in a long battle for a union and justice at the giant Smithfield hog-processing plant. Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee flew their black flags to seek support for their on-going efforts to organize migrant field workers.
This event took place within the context of an intense anti-immigrant atmosphere in which ICE raids are constantly threatened at work places and organizing centers and where police checkpoints are now frequently set up in immigrant neighborhoods.
North Carolina rallies also took place in Asheville, Burlington, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Greensboro, Hickory, Lumberton, Siler City, Wilmington and Charlotte, where 500 people, mostly Latin@, rallied for “fair immigration laws.” Charlotte’s streets stayed noticeably empty.
In Washington, D.C., two actions drew hundreds of people. A rally in Malcolm X Park drew support from the progressive movement. SEIU organized a march.
May Day demonstrators in Houston gathered at the Federal Building demanding an end to repression against immigrants. For several hours hundreds of people chanted “Stop the raids!” and “Free the detainees!” Despite a heavy police presence, protesters remained militant and spirited.
Also on May 1, the Coalition in Defense of the Community began a May 1st “Justice for Immigrants Fast” to demand respect for the dignity and rights of immigrants.
On April 28, more than 500 people—including those separated from their family because of raids and deportations—marched in Houston’s East Side despite information that ICE would have uniformed and undercover agents at the rally.
In downtown Tucson, Ariz., 10,000 people marched demanding an immediate end to the raids and deportations, and to say “No!” to the 2007 STRIVE Act. The marchers descended on the Federal Courthouse, where every day countless undocumented workers are prosecuted and deported. Demonstrators demanded an end to the militarization of the border and an end to La Migra (ICE) terror in the community. Many students walked out of school to participate.
Jobs With Justice, representing Tucson’s labor unions, had a large contingent.
Rally speakers from the Tucson May 1st Coalition reminded those gathered that the U.S. stole sections of Mexico which are today Arizona and New Mexico.
Almost every shop along the march route closed for the day and many provided food and water for the marchers. Although the temperature in Tucson was hot, it was nothing compared to the desert temperatures that immigrants in search of work in the U.S. are forced to endure. Last year there were over 200 migrant deaths in the Arizona desert.
California: Police brutality
Following a march of tens of thousands in Los Angeles during the day, police aggressively attacked a peaceful gathering at MacArthur Park in the evening. A crowd of thousands, including many children and elders, was trapped inside the park, while police yelled at everyone to disperse. Without provocation, according to eye witnesses who included a KPFK reporter, police started using tear gas on the crowd. At Alvarado and 6th Street cops fired rubber bullets into the crowd, that included mostly families.
Hundreds of LAPD officers and Los Angeles County Sheriffs arrived on the scene on bike and car. Driving recklessly, two LAPD patrol cars almost hit each other. Another cop on bike patrol chased down and grabbed an individual who would not follow his command, only to discover the man was Deaf. Cops in full riot gear blocked off the entire park and adjacent city blocks, needlessly creating a serious transportation nightmare.
The corporate media tried to downplay the march. But Javier Rodriguez, political and media strategist of the March 25th Coalition and member of the National May 1 Movement for Worker and Immigrant Rights, said he was “motivated by the turnout of ten of thousands of people who were able to shut down droves of downtown businesses and other parts of the economy.”
John Parker, program co-coordinator of the Los Angeles event and member of the national committee of the May 1 Movement, said, “This was the largest demonstration in L.A. since last year’s May Day marches, in spite of immigrant communities being threatened on a daily basis with deportations and terror raids. It bodes very well for the future of this movement. There was also broader representation from the anti-war movement, with a statement from author and Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic. And keynote speakers included former Congressmember Cynthia McKinney and the national assistant minister to Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan.”
In San Francisco, up to 10,000 people marched for “Unconditional Amnesty.” The event was grassroots organized. Demonstrators gathered at noon at Dolores Park, in the mostly Latin@ Mission neighborhood. Whole families took part. Students came to march instead of attending school. Many workers came in solidarity. Labor unionists stayed away from work to march, including workers from the ILWU, SEIU, UFW, Sign Display, United Educators of S.F., Teamsters and Building Trades.
Many, many community organizations took part that represent immigrants, Latin@s, day laborers, Filipinos, Chinese, Native American/Indigenous, African-American, Arab, Palestinian and lesbian/gay/bi/trans groups, and other progressive groups and revolutionary parties.
A Latina worker from Oakland told how workers disrupted the ICE raid on the paper products factory where she worked by quickly warning those who were still at home. Unsatisfied with the 18 people rounded up during their “audit” at the factory, ICE raided some 34 homes looking for workers and swept up other family members, too.
Clarence Thomas, speaking from ILWU Local 10, told the May Day rally that the longshore workers’ own founder, Harry Bridges was an immigrant who was prosecuted four times in deportation attempts.
Global solidarity in New York
Some 25,000 people, from every inhabited continent on the globe and every country in Latin America, gathered in New York’s historic Union Square at 4 p.m. for a two-hour rally and then marched downtown to Foley Square along Broadway.
Teresa Gutierrez, one of the coordinators of the May 1 Coalition that called the action and a co-chair of the rally, told Workers World: “It was a successful day. There were lots of young people there. New York continues to show the unique character of our coalition. We represent a completely multi-national group: Latin@, Caribbean, East and South Asian and Pacific Islander, European, African American, African. The crowd cheered every time someone mentioned Africa or when speakers denounced the war in Iraq. When attorney Lynne Stewart spoke, the crowd cheered to see a white woman activist supporting them. It was wonderful that the Filipin@ representative spoke in Spanish.”
Union participation included President Chris Silvera of Teamsters Local 808 and contingents from the Restaurant Workers Association, the Professional Staff Congress and Laborers Local 78—predominantly Polish asbestos workers.
In Buffalo, N.Y., high school students in revolt against their repressive school administration led a militant May Day march and a raucous rally. They chanted for their right to organize, their opposition to military recruiters and their support for immigrant rights. They drew the support of students and teachers from other high schools, as well as anti-war activist groups—including a student contingent from the University at Buffalo (SUNY). After the rally, students followed a car caravan to City Hall and to the ICE office to protest the criminalization of students and immigrants.
On Long Island, N.Y., 1,000 people rallied in Hempstead.
In Western Massachusetts, over 100 people attended a noon rally on the Amherst Commons to demand: “Stop the raids and deportations!” Over 50 students from Amherst High School walked out of their classes to attend. Many students from UMASS-Amherst also walked out to voice opposition to the brutal ICE raids, and to support New Bedford families torn apart in March raids.
Despite the recent high-profile ICE raid in nearby New Bedford, 2,000 immigrants— predominantly Latin@s—rallied in Central Square East Boston after marching two miles from downtown Everett and Chelsea, two relatively small communities. Chelsea Collaborative, a coalition of grassroots community groups, organized the loud, militant rally.
The Everett/Chelsea march was led by a USWA 8751 sound truck carrying President Franz Mendes and the union’s chief stewards. An SEIU 615 delegation also marched. Speakers included Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo and Minister Vladimir X from Rhode Island, who electrified the crowd when he charged, in Spanish, that the real criminals are in Washington, D.C.
Another 500 people rallied on Boston Common in a demonstration organized by the Boston May Day Coalition.
Contributing news for this article were Lou Paulsen from Chicago, Bryan Pfeiffer from Milwaukee, Cheryl LaBash from Detroit, Dante Strobino from Raleigh FIST, David Dixon from Charlotte, N.C., Pam Parker from Washington, D.C., Gloria Rubac from Houston, Paul Teitelbaum from Tucson, Ariz., Julia La Riva from Los Angeles, Joan Marquardt from San Francisco, G. Dunkel from New York, Ellie Dorritie from Buffalo, N.Y., Heather Cottin from Long Island, N.Y., Catherine Donaghy from Western Massachusetts and Liz Green from Boston.
Immigrants rally in scores of cities
May Day lives as workers demand rights and dignity
By John Catalinotto
Published May 3, 2007 1:52 AM www.workers.org
Photo slideshow at http://www.maydaymovement.blogspot.com/
Hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, mostly from Latin America, protested for their rights on May Day in cities and towns across the United States. For the second year in a row, the immigrant rights movement chose May 1, International Workers’ Day, to raise their demands.
Almost all the protests demanded full legalization and a halt to the raids and deportations. They also denounced the repressive “STRIVE Act” and George W. Bush’s proposed immigration “reforms.”
Many demonstrators who were undocumented came out despite the climate of terror generated by anti-immigrant raids and forcible separation and detention of family members by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). From New Bedford, Mass., to the San Fernando Valley in Calif., 125,405 people—a record number—were deported in the first six months of the 2007 fiscal year (ICE report).
Immigrants defied these dangers to build what was the second-largest May Day demonstration in the United States in at least half a century—exceeded only by last year’s turnout of millions. This happened even though there was no central unifying theme, like last year’s revulsion toward the hated Sensenbrenner bill.
In many of the marches, speakers from African American organizations expressed solidarity with the immigrants, and so did some labor unionists.
Large outpouring in Midwest
In Chicago, some 150,000 people marched, far surpassing expectations of the broad March 10 Movement coalition that organized it. Two feeder marches from the Latin@ communities of West Town and Pilsen met for a rally at Union Park that filled its 10 acres.
A military-style ICE raid in the heart of Chicago’s Mexican community on April 24 added impetus to community outrage. More than 60 immigration police armed with high-powered rifles descended on the Little Village Discount Mall, kicked open bathroom doors with guns drawn, forced everybody “who looked Latino” to sit on the floor, and detained at least 150 customers and workers inside. In response, a spontaneous protest quickly erupted. Protesters with signs and megaphones closed the intersection of 26th and Albany for hours.
“This is our Sensenbrenner this year,” a May 1 protest organizer told media. Radio host Rafael Pulido stated, “I think this showed us that this is exactly what will happen if we don’t go out there and march.”
In nearby Milwaukee, more than 80,000 immigrants and their allies marched and then rallied at Veterans Park. According to the event’s sponsor, Voces de la Frontera—a leading member of the Wisconsin Legalization Coalition—this is the largest progressive march in Wisconsin history. Other actions took place in Madison and Racine.
“The people are sending a strong message that we need and want a law passed this year that will address an outdated and discriminatory immigration system that is hurting and terrorizing working-class families through raids and the politics of hate,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Voces director.
More than 120 businesses in Wisconsin, most in the metropolitan Milwaukee area, either shut their doors for the day or acceded to the right of workers to take the day off to march and rally.
Nearly 10,000 marched in Detroit—more than last May Day. Many restaurants and stores in the Latin@ business district closed for the day. Supportive shop owners and community organizations donated water and sweet coffee spiced with cinnamon to refresh those who marched the three-mile route. The City Council held a hearing after the rally to declare Detroit a sanctuary city.
A contingent of children and youth were at the front of the march. Many people came with small children and babies in strollers. The radio station “La Explosiva” reported that 200 businesses closed so the workers could attend the march. The Michigan Emergency Committee Against the War in Iraq (MECAWI) provided organizational support.
Across South and Southwest
In Raleigh, N.C.—the state with arguably the fastest-growing Latin@ immigrant population and the lowest unionization rate—several hundred immigrant workers and supporters gathered at the State Capitol after work to add their energy to the hundreds who had earlier walked out of work and school to participate in a day of political action at the State Legislature.
Several immigrant rights organizations and unions took part in the rally, including UFCW—which has been engaged in a long battle for a union and justice at the giant Smithfield hog-processing plant. Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee flew their black flags to seek support for their on-going efforts to organize migrant field workers.
This event took place within the context of an intense anti-immigrant atmosphere in which ICE raids are constantly threatened at work places and organizing centers and where police checkpoints are now frequently set up in immigrant neighborhoods.
North Carolina rallies also took place in Asheville, Burlington, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Greensboro, Hickory, Lumberton, Siler City, Wilmington and Charlotte, where 500 people, mostly Latin@, rallied for “fair immigration laws.” Charlotte’s streets stayed noticeably empty.
In Washington, D.C., two actions drew hundreds of people. A rally in Malcolm X Park drew support from the progressive movement. SEIU organized a march.
May Day demonstrators in Houston gathered at the Federal Building demanding an end to repression against immigrants. For several hours hundreds of people chanted “Stop the raids!” and “Free the detainees!” Despite a heavy police presence, protesters remained militant and spirited.
Also on May 1, the Coalition in Defense of the Community began a May 1st “Justice for Immigrants Fast” to demand respect for the dignity and rights of immigrants.
On April 28, more than 500 people—including those separated from their family because of raids and deportations—marched in Houston’s East Side despite information that ICE would have uniformed and undercover agents at the rally.
In downtown Tucson, Ariz., 10,000 people marched demanding an immediate end to the raids and deportations, and to say “No!” to the 2007 STRIVE Act. The marchers descended on the Federal Courthouse, where every day countless undocumented workers are prosecuted and deported. Demonstrators demanded an end to the militarization of the border and an end to La Migra (ICE) terror in the community. Many students walked out of school to participate.
Jobs With Justice, representing Tucson’s labor unions, had a large contingent.
Rally speakers from the Tucson May 1st Coalition reminded those gathered that the U.S. stole sections of Mexico which are today Arizona and New Mexico.
Almost every shop along the march route closed for the day and many provided food and water for the marchers. Although the temperature in Tucson was hot, it was nothing compared to the desert temperatures that immigrants in search of work in the U.S. are forced to endure. Last year there were over 200 migrant deaths in the Arizona desert.
California: Police brutality
Following a march of tens of thousands in Los Angeles during the day, police aggressively attacked a peaceful gathering at MacArthur Park in the evening. A crowd of thousands, including many children and elders, was trapped inside the park, while police yelled at everyone to disperse. Without provocation, according to eye witnesses who included a KPFK reporter, police started using tear gas on the crowd. At Alvarado and 6th Street cops fired rubber bullets into the crowd, that included mostly families.
Hundreds of LAPD officers and Los Angeles County Sheriffs arrived on the scene on bike and car. Driving recklessly, two LAPD patrol cars almost hit each other. Another cop on bike patrol chased down and grabbed an individual who would not follow his command, only to discover the man was Deaf. Cops in full riot gear blocked off the entire park and adjacent city blocks, needlessly creating a serious transportation nightmare.
The corporate media tried to downplay the march. But Javier Rodriguez, political and media strategist of the March 25th Coalition and member of the National May 1 Movement for Worker and Immigrant Rights, said he was “motivated by the turnout of ten of thousands of people who were able to shut down droves of downtown businesses and other parts of the economy.”
John Parker, program co-coordinator of the Los Angeles event and member of the national committee of the May 1 Movement, said, “This was the largest demonstration in L.A. since last year’s May Day marches, in spite of immigrant communities being threatened on a daily basis with deportations and terror raids. It bodes very well for the future of this movement. There was also broader representation from the anti-war movement, with a statement from author and Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic. And keynote speakers included former Congressmember Cynthia McKinney and the national assistant minister to Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan.”
In San Francisco, up to 10,000 people marched for “Unconditional Amnesty.” The event was grassroots organized. Demonstrators gathered at noon at Dolores Park, in the mostly Latin@ Mission neighborhood. Whole families took part. Students came to march instead of attending school. Many workers came in solidarity. Labor unionists stayed away from work to march, including workers from the ILWU, SEIU, UFW, Sign Display, United Educators of S.F., Teamsters and Building Trades.
Many, many community organizations took part that represent immigrants, Latin@s, day laborers, Filipinos, Chinese, Native American/Indigenous, African-American, Arab, Palestinian and lesbian/gay/bi/trans groups, and other progressive groups and revolutionary parties.
A Latina worker from Oakland told how workers disrupted the ICE raid on the paper products factory where she worked by quickly warning those who were still at home. Unsatisfied with the 18 people rounded up during their “audit” at the factory, ICE raided some 34 homes looking for workers and swept up other family members, too.
Clarence Thomas, speaking from ILWU Local 10, told the May Day rally that the longshore workers’ own founder, Harry Bridges was an immigrant who was prosecuted four times in deportation attempts.
Global solidarity in New York
Some 25,000 people, from every inhabited continent on the globe and every country in Latin America, gathered in New York’s historic Union Square at 4 p.m. for a two-hour rally and then marched downtown to Foley Square along Broadway.
Teresa Gutierrez, one of the coordinators of the May 1 Coalition that called the action and a co-chair of the rally, told Workers World: “It was a successful day. There were lots of young people there. New York continues to show the unique character of our coalition. We represent a completely multi-national group: Latin@, Caribbean, East and South Asian and Pacific Islander, European, African American, African. The crowd cheered every time someone mentioned Africa or when speakers denounced the war in Iraq. When attorney Lynne Stewart spoke, the crowd cheered to see a white woman activist supporting them. It was wonderful that the Filipin@ representative spoke in Spanish.”
Union participation included President Chris Silvera of Teamsters Local 808 and contingents from the Restaurant Workers Association, the Professional Staff Congress and Laborers Local 78—predominantly Polish asbestos workers.
In Buffalo, N.Y., high school students in revolt against their repressive school administration led a militant May Day march and a raucous rally. They chanted for their right to organize, their opposition to military recruiters and their support for immigrant rights. They drew the support of students and teachers from other high schools, as well as anti-war activist groups—including a student contingent from the University at Buffalo (SUNY). After the rally, students followed a car caravan to City Hall and to the ICE office to protest the criminalization of students and immigrants.
On Long Island, N.Y., 1,000 people rallied in Hempstead.
In Western Massachusetts, over 100 people attended a noon rally on the Amherst Commons to demand: “Stop the raids and deportations!” Over 50 students from Amherst High School walked out of their classes to attend. Many students from UMASS-Amherst also walked out to voice opposition to the brutal ICE raids, and to support New Bedford families torn apart in March raids.
Despite the recent high-profile ICE raid in nearby New Bedford, 2,000 immigrants— predominantly Latin@s—rallied in Central Square East Boston after marching two miles from downtown Everett and Chelsea, two relatively small communities. Chelsea Collaborative, a coalition of grassroots community groups, organized the loud, militant rally.
The Everett/Chelsea march was led by a USWA 8751 sound truck carrying President Franz Mendes and the union’s chief stewards. An SEIU 615 delegation also marched. Speakers included Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo and Minister Vladimir X from Rhode Island, who electrified the crowd when he charged, in Spanish, that the real criminals are in Washington, D.C.
Another 500 people rallied on Boston Common in a demonstration organized by the Boston May Day Coalition.
Contributing news for this article were Lou Paulsen from Chicago, Bryan Pfeiffer from Milwaukee, Cheryl LaBash from Detroit, Dante Strobino from Raleigh FIST, David Dixon from Charlotte, N.C., Pam Parker from Washington, D.C., Gloria Rubac from Houston, Paul Teitelbaum from Tucson, Ariz., Julia La Riva from Los Angeles, Joan Marquardt from San Francisco, G. Dunkel from New York, Ellie Dorritie from Buffalo, N.Y., Heather Cottin from Long Island, N.Y., Catherine Donaghy from Western Massachusetts and Liz Green from Boston.
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