Date: Wed, 20 Apr 1994 20:28:51 -0700 From: James I Davis To: jdav@netcom.com Subject: People's Tribune (Online Edition) 4-25-94 ****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 21 No. 17 / April 25, 1994 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 Email: jdav@igc.org ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 'It wasn't no accident. That 50 cents wasn't going to make or break his business. Fifty cents wasn't worth that boy's life if he was going to die.' -- A resident of Lynnwood, California, after a shop owner shot a 14-year-old for allegedly stealing a bag of cookies +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 14-YEAR-OLD SHOT FOR ALLEGEDLY STEALING COOKIES OUTRAGED COMMUNITY SAYS 'ENOUGH!' LYNNWOOD, California -- Is the life of a 14-year-old boy worth a 49-cent bag of chocolate chip cookies? Can a shopkeeper accuse someone of theft, chase him, and then shoot him in cold blood? That's what happened here April 2. Aldo Vega, 14, narrowly escaped death after grocer Michael Kim shot him in the chest. True to form, the police did not file charges against Kim. They may still arrest the critically wounded Vega for strong-arm robbery. This outrage echoes the 1991 case of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year- old African American, shot in the head for allegedly stealing orange juice. The Harlins killing helped spark the Los Angeles Rebellion. During the rebellion, store owners had free reign to shoot and kill; not one was arrested. While Michael Kim pulled the trigger on April 2, it was the system that gave him the green light to do it. Behind Kim stand the police, the mass media and the ruling class of this country, all fueling an "anti-crime" hysteria. Whose child will be next? Is this country now going to declare juvenile mischief punishable by death? Do property rights -- in this case, a 49-cent bag of cookies -- take precedence over a human life? In a community where factories have closed and the future is bleak, young Aldo Vega represents an entire class of people considered expendable by the ruling class. Community residents, both black and Latino, have united to demand justice in the Vega shooting. On April 13, they gathered at the Compton Superior Courthouse to demand a full investigation into this matter. Across this country, wherever our children may be cut down in the name of property and greed, this same unity of poor people across ethnic lines must prevail. No justice, no peace! +----------------------------------------------------------------+ INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 21 No. 17 / April 25, 1994 Editorial 1. THE SUPREME COURT: TO WIN JUSTICE, WE'LL HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT! News 2. 14-YEAR-OLD SHOT -- FOR ALLEGEDLY STEALING A BAG OF COOKIES 3. SAN FRANCISCO WAR ON HOMELESS: WE OWN THE SIDEWALKS 4. WELFARE WARRIORS OF MILWAUKEE: WE NEED A GUARANTEED INCOME! 5. WINTER SHELTERS CLOSE: WHICH WAY FOR THE HOMELESS? 6. HOMELESS EXHIBIT AT CAL STATE LONG BEACH 7. EARTH WEEK 1994: SEED PROMOTES AWARENESS Columns and features 8. DEADLY FORCE: HELP US PUBLISH A SPECIAL PRISON EDITION OF PT Culture 9. KURT COBAIN 1967 - 1994: COBAIN'S MUSIC CREATED COMMON GROUND NOC News 10. THE NOC NEEDS A PERMANENT NAME, ETC. 11. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE ****************************************************************** 1. EDITORIAL: THE SUPREME COURT: TO WIN JUSTICE, WE'LL HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT! In early April, Justice Harry A. Blackmun announced he will resign soon from the U.S. Supreme Court. Blackmun, 85, wrote the Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion nationwide. At the very end of his political career, he decided that the death penalty was unconstitutional and admitted that innocent people have been executed in the United States. Much of the commentary following Blackmun's announcement has described him as an initially conservative judge transformed into a liberal by his experience on the nation's highest court. Those of us fighting to end poverty and injustice, to defend a woman's right to choose, those of us fighting to abolish the death penalty, have to look deeper than that. Why is Blackmun being hailed as one of the last liberals on the Supreme Court? What do we do to win justice in America now that he is resigning? Blackmun was selected for the Supreme Court at the very end of a period when capitalism was still expanding. During that period, U.S. corporations made super-profits by paying starvation wages to factory workers in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The capitalists of the United States used part of those super-profits to bribe U.S. workers with the highest standard of living in the world. As prosperity led to a class truce within the United States, the ruling class used the Supreme Court to expand democracy here. The Roe decision came at the end of this period but was part of that process. Today, computers and robots have replaced well-paid industrial workers in the factories of America. A new class of poor people has been created, thrown out of the factories by high technology. The days of class peace and good wages are over. To survive, the ruling class has to curtail the democratic rights of the great majority of people in this country before there is massive social upheaval. That's why, over the last 13 years, the Supreme Court has been stacked with justices even more conservative than Harry Blackmun was when this lifelong Republican from an elite Minnesota law firm was nominated by Richard Nixon in 1970. Some newspaper editorials have called on President Clinton to "rise above politics" and simply appoint a "good judge" to replace Blackmun. In fact, everything about the Supreme Court has always been political. When the ruling class needed slavery, the Supreme Court ruled slavery was constitutional. When the ruling class needed segregation, the Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional -- until the ruling class needed integration. Today, we, the new class of poor people in America, need justice. We won't get it just by quietly asking for it from the nine justices of the Supreme Court. Blackmun's resignation marks the end of an era. It shows that if we want justice, we now have to confront the system, in the courts and in the streets! ****************************************************************** 2. 14-YEAR-OLD SHOT -- FOR ALLEGEDLY STEALING A BAG OF COOKIES SHOOTING VICTIM'S FRIEND CALLS FOR UNITY, JUSTICE: 'WE WANT KIM TO DO TIME' By Dianne Flowers [Editor's note: Days after Aldo Vega was shot and critically wounded for the alleged theft of a bag of cookies, PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE correspondent Dianne Flowers spoke with Juan Carlos, one of Vega's friends who was with him that day. Excerpts from his comments appear below.] LYNNWOOD, California -- "I was with Aldo in the store the day [store owner Michael] Kim shot Aldo. We went inside the store. I was buying some Doritos. My friend Aldo said, "I'm going to get those cookies' and I said, 'OK, it's all together.' I had money to pay. Kim said something to his wife and got his gun. His wife said, 'Kill him!' "Then Kim said, 'Come here, motherfuckers!' "Aldo left the store first. He walked out of the store by himself. Kim goes after him and gets his car. He came out of the store with his gun. He went out and followed Aldo with his car. When he brought him back, he was pointing the gun at his head when Aldo was in the car. Then Kim put Aldo on the ground inside the door of the store and he was kicking and hitting Aldo after he was shot. "Then I went to the corner with another friend and the cops arrested us and told us our friend died. From there we went to the station and we were there for five hours, with questions and all that. They said if your friend dies, you're going to do 30 years. I said I don't care about that, I just care about my friend being all right. "Now the cops are out there, 24 hours a day, all day and all night. "We want Kim to do time. Because if he doesn't, he's going to do the same thing again. He can't be shooting people. People want him in jail so he could learn. "They don't listen to the Mexicans and blacks. That's not right. They should have had Kim arrested for attempted murder. That's why everyone's mad. They been coming from Norwalk, Compton, South Gate, Lynnwood, L.A. and everywhere. A lot of different people. Not just Mexicans. Black people too. To protest. The only way to change it is -- we have to come up. To come out together, talk to somebody so they change the laws. So everyone could be equal. So the laws treat everybody equal: black, Mexican like me, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or white folks, it's all the same thing. We're all the same from the inside, we all got the same blood, red. We want everyone to be equal." [When contacted by the People's Tribune, a spokesman for Michael Kim said that Kim would have no comment for the media.] +----------------------------------------------------------------+ NEIGHBOR: "HE DIDN'T HAVE TO SHOOT HIM" BY DIANNE FLOWERS [Editor's note: The April 2 shooting of 14-year-old Aldo Vega by Michael Kim, owner of Charles Market in Lynnwood, a Southern California city, is strikingly similar to the 1991 murder of Latasha Harlins by another store owner. In a community deeply divided along color lines, a united struggle for justice is emerging in the wake of what happened. Below, we print excerpts from comments by one of Vega's neighbors, an African American woman who wished to remain unidentified. She spoke with People's Tribune correspondent Dianne Flowers April 10.] LYNNWOOD, California -- "If he [store owner Kim] had time to take that gun, get in his car and follow that boy around the corner, [and] he had time to think about it, then it was wrong. That was premeditated. He said it was an accident. It wasn't no accident. "The Lynnwood press got off the subject, all about Korean store owners and their businesses instead of talking about what they should be talking about -- that he shot that kid. "That 50 cents [the cost of the cookies Vega is alleged to have stolen] wasn't going to make or break his business. Fifty cents wasn't worth that boy's life if he was going to die. He didn't have to shoot him." +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 3. WE OWN THE SIDEWALKS By Sarah Menefee SAN FRANCISCO -- Calling the idea "unconstitutional" and "excessive," the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted March 21 not to approve Mayor Frank Jordan's latest scapegoat-the-homeless plan: to create a 30-foot "beggar-free" zone around every automated teller machine (ATM) in the city of San Francisco. Within this area -- which could add up to several million square feet of public sidewalk -- anyone not actually using the bank machine could be rousted or arrested for simply being there. "The idea of a zone where homeless people aren't allowed is unconstitutional," stated Supervisor Terence Hallinan. "People have a right to be on public sidewalks; they do not belong to the banks." But Mayor Jordan doesn't agree. He will be putting the legislation on the June ballot as an initiative, hoping to whip up blame-the- victim fear and hate and continue -- ex-cop that he is -- to build the police state. "Fascism has taken a quantum leap forward, the most frightening one this past year," said Richard Chandler, who was outside City Hall protesting the Matrix sweeps and arrests of street musicians and free food servers. After nearly a year of the brutal homeless-bashing Matrix program, with its many thousands of "nuisance" arrests and the bulldozing of homeless encampments, this is just another blow to basic human and civil rights. The mayor and the powerful big and downtown interests he represents have made it clear: if you aren't rich, you have no rights. If you're jobless or homeless, we're gonna make your life an unlivable hell and kill you doing it. This was what Jordan's Propositions J and V [ballot initiatives] the past two years were about: genocide! But history shows us that people don't lay down and die that easily. The San Francisco Organizing Committee will be joining many other groups to resist this latest attack and build a movement of people fighting back. Vote NO on Proposition J! ****************************************************************** 4. WELFARE WARRIORS OF MILWAUKEE SAY: WE NEED A GUARANTEED ANNUAL INCOME! BY Welfare Warriors of Milwaukee MILWAUKEE -- On April 15 at the Reuss Federal Building in Milwaukee, mother warriors, low-income workers, injured workers, people with disabilities, temporary and unemployed workers will hold a press conference and rally to demand a guaranteed annual family income for all. State Senator Gwen Moore will address the rally. Press conferences to announce a demand for a guaranteed annual family income have been scheduled in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Oakland, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Baltimore. The press conference and rally are sponsored nationally by the National Welfare Rights Union in Detroit and the National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C. Local sponsors include the Welfare Warriors, Casa Maria, Wisconsin Injured Workers, Latino Community News, Sisters By Choice, Harambee ASHA Women of Color Project, Community Advocates, Welfare Advocacy, A Job is Right Campaign, and Milwaukee Organizing Committee for National March for Jobs. This is a time when 2,500 Americans are losing their jobs each day; when 50 percent of American workers are facing a future of only part-time, temporary, seasonal or free-lance employment; when too many workers are injured and disposed of by their employers and the government; when people with disabilities have to fight for less than enough to survive on; when most of our tax dollars are spent on direct subsidies to business ($51 billion) and tax breaks for corporations ($53.3 billion); when the average American is distracted into judging single mothers in poverty while corporations go wild with tax money. This is the time that our political "leaders" have decided to eliminate one of the few family support systems in the country -- AFDC. Concerned people will come together on April 15 to demand that our tax money reach all the people through a guaranteed annual family income. By eliminating the expensive welfare bureaucracies (AFDC, GA, SSI, UC, Food Stamps) that use up two- thirds of all poverty dollars, and eliminating most direct welfare to businesses, the American people will be able to share in the wealth of this country which is now disproportionately spent on the wealthy and the Pentagon. We must demand a guaranteed annual family income. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ GUARANTEED INCOME [sung to the tune of 'This Land is Your Land'. Lyrics by Linda Ray. The following are just some of the verses] Guar-an-teed Income's What we're demanding The work of families Needs Understanding Good-paying jobs are Not what we're landing The government's ignoring you and me. Chorus: This land is your land This land is my land >From California to the New York Islands >From the Red Wood Forest To the Gulf Stream Waters This land was made for you and me. They use our labor Til we're disabled And unemployable Is what we're labeled We all have some things In which we're able We fight for support and dignity They watch our youth die They hate us mothers Then take away the Real jobs for fathers Sisters and brothers, All come together To fight for an Income Guaranteed Some talk of values And yet they have none They try to keep us Under their greed gun But we will not quit Until support is won Let's guarantee support for everyone [Thanks to Woody Guthrie for the original song and chorus.] +----------------------------------------------------------------+ MILWAUKEE MOTHER SPEAKS OUT Dear People's Tribune: Pat Gowens from the Welfare Warriors just gave me your paper. I was happy to see that you had articles by, not about, welfare mas. I am 53, was an AFDC ma, organizer and social worker -- temporary, part-time worker. I am now unemployed (college-educated) with no income and the mother of an AFDC mom. (She just went on six months ago. Her youngest is six.) I am in contact with two mothers who got put on $100,000 bail by judges in Milwaukee County -- more bail than the infamous [Jeffrey] Dahmer -- because they were poor and the judges were grandstanding to the rich, white man's misogynistic media. I truly understand your page: 'Women in poverty resist judicial attacks' [People's Tribune, April 4, 1994]. I thank you for letting wimmin tell our own story. No reporter, writer could do it better. Carol Feeney Milwaukee, Wisconsin +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 5. WINTER SHELTERS CLOSE: WHICH WAY FOR THE HOMELESS? By Leslie Willis April, 1994 -- With spring comes the sweeping of homeless people from emergency winter shelters across the country. "Tomorrow, 160 men are going to go out on the streets!" said a resident of the Emergency Winter Shelter in Charlotte, North Carolina. The city fathers were concerned about Charlotte's image as the NCAA basketball championship got underway, so they put the police on guard. Police Sergeant T.R. Moore said his officers in Uptown would be "on the look-out for panhandlers and people who are drinking where they shouldn't be." That's as far as their concern for the homeless can stretch. Like most American cities, Charlotte's shelters have been overflowing throughout the winter. Another 2,000 people live on the city's streets and in nearby wooded areas, reports the Charlotte Observer. Multiply that number by every city and town and you can see why our government has to admit a staggering rise in homelessness, now in the millions. The amount in the Clinton budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and for homelessness is higher than last year. However, as Fred Karnas, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, told the People's Tribune, this amount is "not even nearly enough." Karnas estimated that the winter shelter cutbacks mean a loss of from 40 to 50 percent of the beds and that about one-fourth of the homeless population is ejected into the streets during this time of year. "Jobs are the key to maintaining housing," said Karnas. Bill Ellis of the Uplift organization in Kansas City, Kansas, agrees. His organization goes out on the streets, listens and talks to the homeless and brings blankets, clothing and hot food. Ellis said that Kansas has "huge numbers of people traveling through, especially in the summertime. On any given night, 3,000 to 3,500 individuals come through. They are living under bridges, in abandoned cars and buildings." He says that "eighty percent of these people are looking for work, many looking for work in agriculture." A temporary growth in poorly paying jobs on farms or in the service sector is not enough to stop the rise in homelessness. Bill Ellis came across a young couple with two small children living in an abandoned car. He said they both had minimum-wage jobs but couldn't afford housing. Isn't it time we face the truth about why we have homelessness? Factory jobs are disappearing. "[M]anufacturing employment is falling because companies are replacing workers with machines." (Scientific American, April 1994). But, strangely enough, the cause of our problems is the answer to our problems. Computers, not people, are making goods. These amazing changes in our technology now make it possible to produce tons of goods and provide more than enough for everyone. Of course, that would require that these goods be passed out based on human need, not based on who has the almighty dollar. This vision of the future is not a dream -- it's possible. To make it real requires organization and strategy. At this moment, a poor people's organizing drive is afoot! Joining in this drive can begin to weld all the shattered efforts together into a mighty force. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ JOIN THE POOR PEOPLE'S ORGANIZING DRIVE! In the land of plenty, we are denied our basic needs for survival. We are under attack and we are forced to fight back. We call on all those concerned with the direction of this nation to join us in accelerating this mass organizing drive in an effort to be heard, break the blackout, and to bring everyone Up and Out of Poverty Now! For more information you can contact leaders of the National Union of the Homeless, one of the participating organizations. Call Ronald Casanova at 816-924-4408 or Leona Smith at 215-923-1694. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 6. HOMELESS EXHIBIT AT CAL STATE LONG BEACH By Marshall Blesofsky LONG BEACH, California -- Howard Schatz, a physician and photographer, has made a great contribution to bridging the gap between homeless people and the public. His portraits and narrative graphically illustrate the profound tragedy of homelessness in America. The care taken in composing these portraits allows the nobility, dignity and humanity of our brothers and sisters who have fallen on hard times to shine through. Howard Schatz declared: "Homelessness rarely happens by choice. I know there are people in the street who say they choose not to work, who say they would rather panhandle or steal, whom some people call bums ...[b]ut it has been my experience that this is rare. The vast majority of homeless people are poor and vulnerable, struggling desperately and suffering. ... "Since the sight of homeless people in the streets has become so common, we have stopped noticing. We don't want to be caught looking. It is easier to keep on walking, to ignore them and to imagine that they are not there. I made these photographs because I had to look." Through April 24 a photographic exhibit "Homeless -- Portraits of Americans in Hard Times" can be viewed at Cal State Long Beach's new art museum at the North Campus Library. For more information, call 310-985-5761. ****************************************************************** 7. EARTH WEEK 1994: SEED PROMOTES AWARENESS EVANSTON, Illinois -- Earth Week festivities will be held at Northwestern University here from April 17-April 23, sponsored by Students for Environmental and Ecological Development (SEED). SEED's goal is to promote environmental awareness and activism on campus. All of the events of Earth Week '94 are open to the general public. Here is a partial list: On Monday, April 18, at 5:30 p.m., in Tech Auditorium at Northwestern, Edward Benton-Banai, a traditional Anishnaabe teacher and spiritual leader, will speak. Benton-Banai is the director of the Heart of the Earth School in Minneapolis, Minnesota and an advocate for Native American culture based on education, spirituality, and the healing of the body, mind, and spirit through the Anishnaabe way. On Thursday, April 21, there will be an Earth Pledge Ceremony sponsored by the World Federalist Association at noon in front of Tech. The United Nations flag and a flag with a picture of the Earth on it will be raised and people will say a pledge to the Earth. Then a Brazilian drummer will get a drum circle/improvisational jam session going in remembrance and celebration of the Rio Earth Summit. People are encouraged to bring an instrument. For more information about Northwestern Earth Week, call Cathy Hudzik at 708-869-0354. ****************************************************************** 8. HELP US PUBLISH A SPECIAL PRISON EDITION OF THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE +----------------------------------------------------------------+ "Deadly Force" is a weekly column dedicated to exposing the scope of police terror in the United States. We open our pages to you, the front line fighters against brutality and deadly force. Send us eyewitness accounts, clippings, press releases, appeals for support, letters, photos, opinions and all other information relating to this life and death fight. Send them to People's Tribune, P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, Ill. 60654, or call (312) 486- 3551. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Dear sisters and brothers: There are now more than one million people in prison in the United States. This is the largest number of people in prison in any industrialized nation. Another four million people are on probation, parole, intensive supervision or some other form of judicial oversight. Hundreds of thousands more, especially of our youth, are confined in detention centers, mental hospitals and the like. If the ruling class continues the present rate of incarceration, one-half of the population of this country will be behind bars in less than 60 years! This is why the People's Tribune receives more correspondence from prisoners and prisoners' organizations than any other category of correspondence. From California's infamous Pelican Bay State Prison to Sing Sing prison in New York, from Death Row in Huntsville, Texas to the locked-down Marion prison in Illinois, inmates are sending us their stories, appeals, protests and publications. To help break the isolation of the prisoners' struggle, we have tried to print as much of this material as we can as soon as we can. However, our resources are limited. We now have a backlog of dozens of letters. To resolve this, we want to publish a one-time special edition of the People's Tribune on the prison struggle. We need your help. We need to raise $1,000 to make this special edition a reality. With your help, we can do it. No contribution is too large or too small. Please send your check, cash or money order to: Special Prison Edition People's Tribune P.O. Box 3524 Chicago, Illinois 60654. (Please write "Prison Edition" on your check or money order. Include your name, address and phone number if you want us to contact you or if you would like to order extra bundles of this special edition.) Thank you in advance for your commitment and contribution. In struggle, Laura Garcia, Editor, People's Tribune +----------------------------------------------------------------+ I am writing again to say thanks to the People's Tribune. All charges against inmate [Lonzell] Green and myself have been dropped. I am Floyd Paige. I wrote to your office before concerning a frame-up of myself and Lonzell Green. Floyd Paige, inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison in California +----------------------------------------------------------------+ I encourage others who have been tortured and degraded as I have to tell your stories, so people can see it's not just a few of us -- it's thousands. When someone mentions confession, it does not mean guilt. We are your brothers and sisters, calling to you from the inside. Stand beside us! Harold Hall, inmate at Los Angeles County Jail +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 9. KURT COBAIN 1967 - 1994: COBAIN'S MUSIC CREATED COMMON GROUND By Scott Pfeiffer CHICAGO -- I'm 23 years old. For many rock fans around my age, the news on April 8 that Nirvana lead vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain, 27, had shot himself was hard to believe. That Nirvana is no more feels unfathomable, like learning that there's no longer a Soviet Union. When Nirvana's great single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit in 1991, I was a junior in college who, rightly or wrongly, had given up on "college music." I had become convinced that rock 'n' roll was the medium of America's disenfranchised and oppressed, the voice of poor people. "College music" -- as I perceived it -- was white and middle-class (like me) and spoke to those who viewed with sardonic contempt such culture and its audience. Plus, it just didn't rock. Rap, heartland rock, and metal had a much more direct connection to the working-class world. Then a new sort of "college" music, labeled grunge, came blasting out of Seattle. Influenced by metal as well as punk, it was both energetic and melodic. It rocked. The movement was spearheaded by Kurt Cobain's band Nirvana, who dropped Nevermind, one of the great rock albums. His music struck many as declaiming, "I hate everybody and everything, including myself." It did reflect a rife mood and spirit. As the record reached a genuine mass audience, however, it had effects that belied its seeming misanthropy. Surely angst like Cobain's had never touched the self-confident fraternity guys tossing the frisbee, blasting Nirvana as I walked past their house on a sunny afternoon. Had it? Those liberal "college music" snobs had never been visited by anything like the inchoate frustration expressed in Cobain's soulful, cathartic screams. Or had they? Soon everyone from Dr. Dre to rock critics to everyday rock fans enumerated Nirvana as a favorite. Suddenly, conversation became easier; instead of seeing each other as incomprehensible, we found that we had something in common. Cobain's music had a way of forcing his diverse audience to confront their preconceptions, making life for many a little less lonely and isolated. So Cobain's songs meant something to me, but they meant more to people even a few years younger. For 16- or 17-year-olds, Cobain really was what John Lennon and Elvis Presley had been to previous generations of rockers. He symbolized an audience and sparked them to action, articulating their visions, dreams, fears and anger. When I caught Nirvana's incredible show at the Aragon Ballroom here in Chicago at the end of 1993 on their last tour, his flailing and stumbling tapped the emotions of this abandoned group. Cobain grew up during the '80s, when the possibility of connection between human beings often seemed remote; in a land of economic crisis in which young people were given deadening and inadequate "educations"; a world suffused with hunger, unemployment, and rampant police brutality. A world in which, when a troubled kid did pack himself away, adults were quick to blame his music. Much of the pain of the "whatever generation" has a socioeconomic base. Once that's understood, we can point to a way of resolving our problems that is better than death: a revolution. So, if we are to overturn the system that helped create the world Cobain exited, we'll have to continue focusing on what we have in common: the need for homes and jobs, the need to feel worthy to ourselves and others. And that's why the best response we have to Cobain's suicide is to follow his advice in "Lithium": "I miss you/I love you/I'm not gonna cry," and get to organizing. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ CULTURE UNDER FIRE Culture jumps barriers of geography and color. Millions of Americans create with music, writing, film and video, graffiti, painting, theatre and much more. We need it all, because culture can link together and expand the growing battles for food, housing, and jobs. In turn, these battles provide new audiences and inspiration for artists. Use the "Culture Under Fire" column to plug in, to express yourself. Write: Culture Under Fire, c/o People's Tribune, P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 10. THE NOC NEEDS A PERMANENT NAME! We need a name for our organization. "The National Organizing Committee" is a temporary name for our organization. We carried this into our founding convention and we have been using it for the past year. We need to choose a permanent name as soon as possible. This is a call for all NOC committees and members to submit written proposals to the Steering Committee by July 1, 1994. We need your help in getting the following: 1. a new name for our organization; 2. a symbol for our organization. We also need suggestions for organizational slogans, songs and a uniform (one or more articles of clothing). You should use the following as guidelines for your political thinking and creative imagination: 1. The NOC program for action and education is what we agreed to at our convention and therefore on that basis we need a name that represents what we stand for. 2. We have a revolutionary history: the resistance of the Red Nations, the African Americans, the Mexican people, Puerto Ricans and the general working class movement and therefore we need a name based on our history that expresses our revolutionary striving. 3. We are people thrown into battle as revolutionary fighters from all aspects of the society and therefore we need a name that loudly proclaims our revolutionary outlook in a bold and militant way, especially to young fighters. 4. We need to base ourselves on the insurgent popular culture of those forced into poverty and victimized by police and prisons, especially when we transform the original language of rap poetry as well as the songs of the church, the trade union movement and the civil rights movement into forms of collective expression. (We need to sing at our meetings and find ways to renew our spirits). 5. We need to point to greater struggle and final victory in such a way that people grasp our name, symbol, slogans and songs as their own, deep in their bosom, with great emotional attachment, and with such fervor that they will go against great odds, holding high our banners with great optimism. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ AUTHOR TO SPEAK IN CHICAGO AND MINNEAPOLIS Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary by Nelson Peery Nelson Peery, one of the founders of the National Organizing Committee, has been a revolutionary since the days of the Scottsboro Boys case. He has written a memoir called Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary. It describes growing up in the only black family in a town in rural Minnesota and life in the all-black 93rd Infantry Division during World War II. On April 28, at noon, Peery will be interviewed live on radio station WVON (1450 AM) in Chicago. Call 312-247-6200. On May 2, at 8 p.m., Peery will appear at the Hungry Mind Bookstore, 1648 Grand Ave., Saint Paul, Minnesota. Call 612-699- 0587. On May 5, at 7:30 p.m., Peery will read from Black Fire and sign books at Barbara's Bookstore, 3130 N. Broadway, Chicago. Call 312- 477-0411. On May 6, at 7 p.m., Peery will read from Black Fire and discuss his life and work at 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th Street, Chicago. Call 312-684-1300. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ JOIN THE NOC The National Organizing Committee (NOC) is a fighting organization. When homeless activists seize empty buildings, look for us. The NOC will be there. When the unemployed fight for jobs, look for us. The NOC will be there. When the victims of police state brutality speak out to expose injustice, listen for us. The NOC will be part of the chorus. We are revolutionary fighters from every battlefront. Our mission is to forge the revolutionary force necessary to destroy this capitalist system, a system of poverty and injustice. We are an organization that believes the poor and exploited people can be educated, organized and inspired to rise up in our millions. We want to create a new system based on justice and economic prosperity for everyone. Write or call NOC., P.O. Box 477113, Chicago, IL 60647, (312) 486- 0028, or e-mail c/o jdav@igc.apc.org. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 11. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, published weekly in Chicago, is devoted to the proposition that an economic system which can't or won't feed, clothe and house its people ought to be and will be changed. To that end, this paper is a tribune of the people. It is the voice of the millions struggling for survival. It strives to educate politically those millions on the basis of their own experience. It is a tribune to bring them together, to create a vision of a better world, and a strategy to achieve it. Join us! Editor: Laura Garcia Publisher: National Organizing Committee, P.O. Box 477113, Chicago, IL 60647 (312) 486-0028 To help support the production and distribution of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, please send donations, letters, articles, photos, graphics and requests for information, subscriptions and requests for bundles of papers to: PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE P.O. Box 3524 Chicago, IL 60654 Respond via e-mail to jdav@igc.org Reach us by phone: Chicago: (312) 486-3551 Atlanta: (404) 242-2380 Baltimore: (410) 467-4769 Detroit: (313) 839-7600 Los Angeles: (310) 428-2618 Washington, D.C.: (202) 529-6250 Oakland, CA: (510) 464-4554 GETTING THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE IN PRINT The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE is available at many locations nationwide. One year subscriptions $25 ($35 institutions), bulk orders of 5 or more 15 cents each, single copies 25 cents. Contact PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, P. O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654, tel. (312) 486- 3551. WRITING FOR THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE We want your story in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. Send it in! Articles should be shorter than 300 words, written to be easily understood, and signed. (Use a pen name if you prefer.) Include a phone number for questions. Contact PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, P. O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, tel. (312) 486-3551. ****************************************************************** We encourage reproduction and use of all articles except those copyrighted. Please credit the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE depends on donations from its readers -- your generosity is appreciated. ******************************************************************