From jdav@mcs.comMon Jan 30 10:57:29 1995 Date: Tue, 10 Jan 95 14:59 CST From: James Davis To: pt.dist@noc.org Subject: People's Tribune (1-16-95) Online Edition ****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 22 No. 3 / January 16, 1995 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 Email: pt@noc.org ****************************************************************** INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 22 No. 3 / January 16, 1995 Page One 1. FIGHTERS FOR A NEW AMERICA ARE KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE! Editorial 2. CONGRESS WORKS TO PROTECT THE WEALTHY News 3. ANTI-POVERTY GROUP TO REPORT U.S. TO U.N. 4. WELFARE FOR THE RICH: A TAXING PROBLEM 5. A NEW YEAR BRINGS NEW LAWS TO PROSECUTE AMERICA'S CHILDREN 6. SUPREME COURT CONDONES TEXAS EXECUTION OF INNOCENT MAN 7. S.F. ELDERLY WIN BATTLE FOR RENT CONTROL Focus on MARTIN LUTHER KING: The dream, the nightmare, the vision 8. MARTIN LUTHER KING -- MAN OF HISTORY 9. HONOR KING AND MALCOLM, FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE 10. MY VISION: AMERICA WITHOUT POVERTY 11. ROSA PARKS 'INSPIRED ME MOST' 12. AMERICA 1995: THE NIGHTMARE OF POVERTY CONTRADICTS DR. KING'S DREAM American Lockdown 13. GUILTY IN SPITE OF INNOCENCE Deadly Force Culture Under Fire 14. THROWAWAY KIDS: TURNING YOUTH GANGS AROUND Letters 15. LETTER: GRAFFITI MOM FACES JAIL 16. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE ****************************************************************** 1. FIGHTERS FOR A NEW AMERICA ARE KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE! Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968 'So we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.' -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 'I Have a Dream' speech, 1963 As we again mark the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his dream of a just America, articulated 32 years ago, has been pushed aside by the ruling class of this country. Instead, the people face a deepening national nightmare of joblessness, homelessness and hunger. But King's vision remains and could become a reality if the fruits of technology were freed from the grip of the billionaires and used to feed, house and heal. Those who are fighting for survival, who are fighting for a social system based not on profit but on the well-being of its people are the ones who today are keeping King's dream alive. ****************************************************************** 2. CONGRESS WORKS TO PROTECT THE WEALTHY The new year finds us with a new political landscape. Unable to find solutions to the unemployment confronting millions of Americans, the spokespersons of the ruling class -- Republicans and Democrats -- are stepping up their attacks on the new class of poor people in this country. Republicans declare that the results of the November 8 election have given them a mandate for a new social contract with America. This is a lie. During the election campaign, the representatives of the ruling class -- Republicans and Democrats -- could not and did not present any program to resolve the economic crisis. So, only a small percentage of Americans voted. Those who did vote voted against the Democratic Party because it was the ruling party. More than anything else, what the election results show is that the American people remain confused and disoriented about how to resolve this country's social and economic problems. For example, many Americans are joining the bandwagon, supporting the call to "change the welfare system" as we know it. The ruling class has achieved this victory through its propaganda painting the welfare mom as a "welfare queen" who cheats honest taxpayers out of their money. Yet, the attack on the welfare system is an attack against the very safety net that we Americans, generation after generation, have contributed our tax money to create. This attack comes at a time when more and more Americans are facing unemployment and a bleak future. Ironically, it comes at a time when our rulers, both Democrats and Republicans, are working to keep the flow of our tax money moving upward. So, what's the solution? It's certainly not to dismantle the safety net when we need it most. Instead, we need a society organized to care for all its members, not just a few billionaires. How can we help bring this about? First, by finding out and exposing who's really robbing whom. Only in this way will we refute the lies that the ruling class feeds us. Secondly, by fighting the ruling class and its spokepersons --Republicans and Democrats -- every step of the way. The first 100 days of Congress are going to be the key to this fight. Every time they propose budget cuts that will leave even one more child hungry, one more person homeless, or one more person jobless, we should say, "Hell no!" Beginning with this editorial, the People's Tribune commits itself to sound the alarm about the attacks coming from Congress against the new class of poor people in America. We commit ourselves to the fight of "we, the people." For the first 100 days of Congress, we will have coverage each week on what the federal government is up to. ****************************************************************** 3. ANTI-POVERTY GROUP TO REPORT U.S. TO U.N. U.S. POVERTY VIOLATES THE HUMAN RIGHTS RECOGNIZED BY THE U.N. [Editor's note: The following is excerpted from a pamphlet issued by the Human Rights Project. Invitations to breakfast were hand-delivered in baby bottles to congressional representatives in Massachusetts by members of the Women's Alliance as part of an effort of the Human Rights Project. More than 50 people came to the breakfast on December 9, where a round-table discussion was held with aides from four representatives' offices. Welfare recipients, women union members and health care workers aired opinions and grievances.] SOMERVILLE, Massachusetts -- We are a group of low-income activists, outraged at living in the richest country in the world while millions of Americans suffer and die due to inadequate shelter, food, health care and social services. We are hoping that you will join us in our work to expose the U.S. government's mistreatment of its citizens. We are planning to gather anti- poverty activists from around the United States to gather, write and present a report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission on the United States' human rights violations of citizens' rights to housing, food, clothing, health care and necessary social services. According to the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as quoted in Article 25: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same protection. We demand that the United States live up to its own public relations line. This demands that we live the standards that have been set by both our government and the United Nations. The U.S. government points a spotlight on other countries' human rights violations by hyping it in the media and throwing kindling in the fire of public outrage. The United States is perfectly capable of providing amply "for the general welfare." Every other industrialized nation has enacted social policies and structured government transfers that help people escape poverty and provide an "adequate standard of living." [To find out how you can be come involved, contact the Human Rights Project, c/o Mary Sykes, 49 Francesca Ave., Somerville, Massachusetts 02144, or call 617-625-3481.] +---------------------------------------------------------------+ 'They are breaking the U.N. Charter' 'The United States is supposed to be a country that polices everybody else for human rights, but they don't police their own selves. There are millions and millions of people out in the streets with nothing, and yet they're throwing money away to foreign places instead of putting it inwards to us. They are breaking the U.N. Charter and they know it.' -- Alethia Ash, Framingham, Massachusetts Women's Alliance +---------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 4. WELFARE FOR THE RICH: A TAXING PROBLEM By Leslie Willis Two things are certain about taxes. As the rich dodge their taxes, the poor get hit between the eyes. This is how it works. The more money you have to invest, the more you can write off your taxes. In 1989, more than 1,000 Americans making over $200,000 a year paid no federal taxes. At the same time, those slaving away for $6 an hour paid 15 percent of their income in taxes. Time magazine (April 18, 1994) carried an article entitled "Helping the Rich Stay That Way" by Barbara Ehrenreich. She says if you are rich enough you can "incorporate yourself in the Cayman Islands and start racking up impressive business losses by issuing yourself big dividends. Maybe you'll even 'lose' so much that the IRS will give you refunds going back for years." For the past two decades, the majority of us have stood by helplessly as our taxes went up over 300 percent. Not so for corporations and the very rich -- this class of people has had one-third chopped off their tax bite. Were the rich so grateful for tax breaks and subsidies that they created jobs? Oh, very funny! They sunk their tax "savings" into the newest technology to replace workers. It's not a fun way to wake up in 1995 -- realizing that we pay for the wealth to stay wealthy. It's not too late to turn this scenario upside down. Our first duty must be to ourselves, not the rich who milk us dry. If we wiped out welfare for them and their corporations, the federal deficit would be history. Furthermore, think about this. The technology they have been replacing us with could take care of us if we had control over it. Why not? ****************************************************************** 5. A NEW YEAR BRINGS NEW LAWS TO PROSECUTE AMERICA'S CHILDREN On January 1, laws went into effect in the states of Minnesota, Florida, California and Illinois which make it easier to prosecute children as adults. Minnesota legislation also allows the courts and police to give school officials information from the criminal records of juveniles. Minnesota state Rep. Wes Skoglund said, "We're going to have a hammer over their heads." Some judges think that children should be eligible to receive the death penalty. Our children are not the cause of society's problems. They are the victims of a system that can no longer educate or employ them, let alone develop all their potential as human beings. Millions of people are losing their jobs, homes and future. They are also losing faith in a system that provided for them in the past. The anger that is bound be expressed will be met with the desperate measures of a ruling class willing to do anything to hold onto its wealth and privilege. Democracy is steadily being replaced by a police state. That is why these laws are being passed. America's children are not criminals -- they are victims of a criminal system. Let's hold the hammer over the head of the ruling class responsible for the misery which we see today. Get the truth out -- distribute the People's Tribune to every part of America. Join the National Organizing Committee and become a part of the fight for a new America! ****************************************************************** 6. SUPREME COURT CONDONES TEXAS EXECUTION OF INNOCENT MAN By Allen Harris Jesse Dewayne Jacobs on January 4 became the first person executed in the state of Texas in 1995. Fourteen were executed there in 1994. He was the 86th person executed in Texas since 1982. In his final statement, Jacobs declared his innocence and called his execution an act of premeditated murder by the state of Texas. Jacobs was absolutely right. Jesse Jacobs originally confessed to killing a woman in 1986. A jury convicted him. He was put on Death Row. Then he recanted. He said his sister did it. The prosecutor agreed and said Jacobs didn't do it. The sister then was convicted of manslaughter and given 10 years. Still, Jesse Jacobs stayed on Death Row. Evidently, the state of Texas doesn't execute people to enforce its laws against "capital murder." What was the point of killing a man the state itself admitted did not violate the law? It must be this: Texas, along with the U.S. Supreme Court, wants us to see that the "rule of law" is a farce. Texas is going out of its way to show that there is no rule under capitalism but class rule. Power in Texas and across America is in the hands of a tiny class of millionaires and billionaires. This class doesn't share its power with any other class. This is a class that lives above the laws they make the rest of us live under. The millionaires and billionaires have the power; they have the prison keys; they have the injection machine and they will use it with no regard to anyone but themselves and with no regard anything but their interests. The millionaires and billionaires stay rich with every means at their disposal, including premeditated murder. That's Jesse Jacobs' last message to the rest of us. Are we listening? Jesse Jacobs was murdered on the same day that the new 104th Congress convened in Washington. The millionaires and billionaires intend to use this Congress as a lethal injection machine upon what's left of the social safety-net programs that millions of Americans need for their survival under this decaying economic system. We can't let the ruling class turn this entire society into one big Death Row. We must unite our class -- millions of us in all colors and nationalities -- and organize to gain complete political power so can we save our lives, break the rule of the rich and end poverty. ****************************************************************** 7. S.F. ELDERLY WIN BATTLE FOR RENT CONTROL By Jack Hirschman SAN FRANCISCO -- The Casa Costanza Tenants Association, a fighting bunch of this city's North Beach elderly, won a major victory for the people (as opposed to profits) on December 12. In a unanimous vote, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to amend the housing code which had previously kept Casa Costanza residents from enjoying rent control. The Casa had been lumped together with nursing homes, which do not have rent control because they have 24-hour, in-house medical service. Casa Costanza is a residence hotel without in-house medical care. The victory is not simply one for the Casa. It is more far- reaching. In effect, the changing of the code provides for rent control to be administered to some 14 other residential homes for the elderly throughout the city. In effect, the elderly will be protected against eviction. The victory did not come without a fight. The tenants at Casa Costanza were threatened with eviction in October. They formed a Tenants Association within the hotel itself, made up of a majority Italian-American population, but including Mexican and other poor people as well. When the eviction notice was withdrawn by the owners, the Association moved to make sure their rights were guaranteed in perpetuity. They were helped by the San Francisco Tenants Union, as well as by the outgoing president of the Board of Supervisors, Angela Alioto. Alioto took personal interest in the Casa not only because she is Italian-American, but also because she is aiming to run for mayor. The people's victory on December 12 is a step in the fight to overthrow the draconian Matrix regime of Mayor Frank Jordan. ****************************************************************** 8. MARTIN LUTHER KING -- MAN OF HISTORY By Nelson Peery A person becomes a historical figure by bringing to a crisis the personal qualities needed for its successful resolution. What was the crisis and what were the qualities that propelled Martin Luther King Jr. to the level of a historic figure? Following the Civil War, industry's need for cheap cotton turned the South into an agricultural reserve of the North. The totality of Southern legal and extra-legal force was brought to bear to force the freed slaves back onto the plantations to work as tenant farmers. There they lived on the level of the peasants of India. Under those conditions, no amount of struggle by the African Americans could break the iron grip of segregation which kept them in poverty and semi-slavery. The late 1940s and the early 1950s were years marked by a critical crisis in race relations in this country. The simultaneous move of industry to the South and the mechanization of Southern agriculture were an economic revolution. That economic revolution attacked the base of the nation's race relations and created a social revolution. Replaced by more efficient means of production, the blacks were driven into the segregated sections of towns and cities. There they formed a cohesive mass and gained a sense of strength and common purpose. Struggles against segregation began breaking out across the country. The Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott of 1955-56 was the most advanced, determined and united effort of this period. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was brought into the leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott to stabilize the right wing of the leadership. These leaders believed they had to conduct the boycott in a manner acceptable to the liberal whites who, up to that time, had always dominated the African American struggle for freedom. King's potential for political growth was shown from the start. By the time of his untimely death on April 4, 1968, before his 40th birthday, King had risen to the point of endorsing the reconstruction of America on a co-operative basis. He had come out in opposition to the Vietnam war. He had spoken out strongly in defense of colonial and oppressed peoples everywhere. King brought the necessary qualities of humility, bravery, self- sacrifice and vision to the movement. He entered the struggle when it was disunited and organizationally and politically impotent. By the time of King's death, the movement held the political balance of power in the country and was united in its vision and its purpose. Thus, King rose above his fellow leaders and became a man of history. [Nelson Peery is the author of Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary and the chair of the Political Committee of the National Organizing Committee.] +---------------------------------------------------------------+ The People's Tribune Speakers Bureau presents AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH: WHICH WAY FOR AMERICA? Will America become a police state or a country where everyone has a job, a home and equality? For a thought-provoking debate on strategies for winning this new America, call or write to book a speaker: P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654, 312-486-3551, or speakers@noc.org +---------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 9. HONOR KING AND MALCOLM, FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE By Abdul Alkalimat The history of the United States cannot be written without being based on the democratic struggles of its poor and oppressed people. The dreams and associated aspirations of these people were captured in the life and sermons of Martin Luther King. He was the main minister of one of the greatest democratic movements of all time. On the other hand, Malcolm X was the sober critic of America as an evil empire. He was unrelenting in his counterattack on the nightmare which poor and oppressed people have had to suffer. To some extent, all of us have dreams and those dreaded nighmares. But now, more is required. King called on us to be "drum majors for justice" and Malcolm X challenged us to fight for freedom "by any means necessary." We can already see the basis for a movement that will surpass the 1960s, and in that movement leaders will arise who will go way past the great heights of King and Malcolm. Poor people are being forced to fight to survive. As their millions grow and get poorer, the fight will intensify into open rebellion. We acknowledge special days of commemoration to honor the heroes of the past and to establish standards to judge the future. It is time to challenge each pulpit to go further. It is time to challenge everyone to overcome their fear. It is time for everyone to wake up from all dreams and nightmares, and begin marching into the future with clarity of vision and the moral passion to fight on till victory. [Abdul Alkalimat is an author and professor. He was the organizer of the U.S. delegation to the Seventh Pan-African Congress held in Uganda.] ****************************************************************** 10. MY VISION: AMERICA WITHOUT POVERTY By John Slaughter ATLANTA -- My vision of a new America necessarily begins with a vision of a new American South. I love this land, and I love its rainbow of people, but have you ever looked into the eyes of a hungry child, seen the neglect etched into the faces of the old, been sick at heart at the sight of so much humanity wasted for so long? No wonder the ancient biblical dream of freedom, of a Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, is ere the Southern song! We have dreamed of freedom from a slavery in which sheer muscle- power defined its form, yet when the machines came and freed us from the land and from the back-breaking manual labor, we soon became slaves to the machines themselves. Now the robots and the computers are displacing the industrial behemoth, and are we now free? We literally built this country, and yet we remain a nation of haves and have-nots. All our labor has gone to create tremendous wealth, a cornucopia that is designated the private property of a tiny minority. Property has become the false god of this land, and every resource of government is utilized to protect property from "we, the people." Every day, America becomes more and more like the South, a nation of haves and have-nots. Even the Southern version of government is holding sway: allowing unbridled pursuit of profit while holding the have-nots in check with brute force. So my vision of a new America is one in which the concept of private property is as alien as it was 500 years ago, when the land and all it contained was held in common for the common benefit of all its people. Of course, there was privation then because resources were limited. But today the resources available to us are virtually unlimited. An episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," set hundreds of years in the future, described a society in which poverty and a value system based upon the acquisition of property had long been eliminated. This is possible to do today. The robots are not the enemy. The new technology provides the basis for a new America, free not only from all the manifestations of poverty, but from the drudgery of work. Once freed from the constraints of an obsolete system based upon the alien notion of private property, we can envision a flowering of the human spirit, the likes of which this earth has never known. The new frontier will be the exploration of the limits of our common humanity. We stand upon the threshold of a new century. It ushers in a new era, a new epoch of revolution, a time of the transformation of the American experiment. We have a lot of work to do. It is an exciting time to be alive! [John Slaughter is the author of New Battles Over Dixie: The Campaign for a New South. He has been active in the labor and civil rights movements in the South.] ****************************************************************** 11. ROSA PARKS 'INSPIRED ME MOST' By Sylvia C. Dellinger BESSEMER CITY, North Carolina -- I've read the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. I've read Malcolm X. I've read the poetry and books of Maya Angelou and all of them are inspiring, full of hope for the future which they were able to achieve. But the person who inspired me most is Rosa Parks. She had a dream, a dream of reality. She knew what was wrong for her. Despite her lowly position, her lack of any political clout or backing, she took it upon herself to help change a whole system and nothing could stop her. I have so often seen my school children get into fights over the words "yo mama." One day, I asked a black lady in our school why these children fight over meaningless words. She told me, "In our community, daddies come and daddies go, but your mama will always be there for you." Of course, she's of an older generation, where there was still a community of family and caring for each other. Your neighbor was your family and could be counted on in time of need. But now I see the mamas leaving; either taken down by drugs, being shot, stabbed, beat up or leaving for another man who may help her economically with her pittance from the government. A dream is nebulous, but actions cause changes in society that are irreversible. And if I can't teach my children to read, how will they know the difference? ****************************************************************** 12. AMERICA 1995: THE NIGHTMARE OF POVERTY CONTRADICTS DR. KING'S DREAM As America celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 16: -> Eighty million people live below the poverty line; -> Twenty-seven million people have been forced onto food stamps; -> Six million people are homeless; -> Three thousand eight hundred jobs are permanently eliminated every day; -> Thirty-three million disabled Americans are being threatened with the loss of SSI disability benefits; -> One million four hundred thousand people are in prison and another five million people are subject to some form of criminal "justice" supervision; -> Five million children face hunger as an immediate prospect if Congress guts the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. ****************************************************************** 13. GUILTY IN SPITE OF INNOCENCE By David Dow [Editor's note: Stacie Ben Hunt, falsely convicted of a narcotics charge in 1986, has drawn widespread support in Michigan where he is currently incarcerated. In April 1994, a group of current and former prisoners formed a committee to demand his freedom and the return of his property seized without due process in an asset forfeiture. Despite being a successful businessman before his arrest, Mr. Hunt could barely read and write before he began his long struggle to unearth the truth about his imprisonment. Below, we reprint excerpts from a story on Mr. Hunt that appeared in FACTOR, the prison newspaper of the Muskegon Correctional Facility.] MUSKEGON, Michigan -- It comes as no surprise to residents of the prison community when a fellow inmate declares his innocence. National Department of Corrections experts estimate that anywhere from three to five percent of this country's prison inmates at any given time are innocent of the crimes of which they have been sentenced. Their lack of education or the inaccessibility of finances for attorneys to prove their innocence creates the unfortunate circumstances that these victims of the criminal justice system find themselves in. Some, like Mr. Hunt, refuse to submit to such an injustice. After enrolling in the school program at Jackson Prison Facility shortly after arriving there, he diligently worked to learn all the rudimentary skills that most second and third graders in school nowadays take for granted, then in his leisure time spending countless hours poring over the case documents, trial transcripts and voluminous amounts of other paper work that his case and lengthy trial has generated. It was a tiresome, often grueling, and almost Herculean undertaking. In effect, Stacie Hunt was dissecting his case bit by bit and piece by piece, working adamantly to get his 20 to 30 year sentence reversed via the appeals process. On what grounds did Mr. Hunt believe he would base his appeal for justice? Unbelievably, he had several: falsification of documents, perjured prosecutorial testimony, suppression of key evidence favorable to his defense, and blatant misconduct on the part of various individuals associated with the prosecution of his case. "It all fits under 'miscarriage of justice,' " Mr. Hunt explains. "Their entire objective in my case hasn't been a search for justice -- it's been a scramble to cover their own dirty tracks." +---------------------------------------------------------------+ "I appeal to the good conscience of the people ... of the People's Tribune to help expose this travesty of justice. In this way, maybe the wall will begin to crack and other illegally held Michigan prisoners can find justice, freedom and retribution for the violations thrust upon us." -- Ali K. Abdullah, fellow inmate and supporter of Stacie Ben Hunt. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 14. THROWAWAY KIDS: TURNING YOUTH GANGS AROUND Part THREE By Luis J. Rodriguez [Editor's note: Below we reprint the third and final part of an article which originally appeared in the November 21, 1994 edition of The Nation.] For the past two years, I've talked to young people, parents, teachers and concerned officials in cities as far-flung as Hartford, Brooklyn, Phoenix, Seattle, Lansing, Denver, Boston, El Paso, Washington, Oakland, San Antonio and Compton. I've seen them grope with similar crises, similar pains, similar confusions. Sometimes I feel the immensity of what we're facing -- talking to Teens on Target in Los Angeles, a group made up of youths who have been shot, some in wheelchairs; or to teen-age mothers in Tucson, one child caring for another; or to incarcerated young men at the maximum security Illinois Youth Center at Joliet. I felt it when a couple of young women cried in Holyoke, Massachusetts, after I read a poem about a friend who had been murdered by the police, and when I addressed a gym full of students at Jefferson High School in Fort Worth and several young people lined up to hug me, as if they had never been hugged before. Because I have to deal with people [caught up in the violence] every day, I decided this summer to do something more than just talk. With the help of Patricia Zamora from the Casa Aztlan Community Center in Chicago's Mexican community of Pilsen, I worked with a core of young people, gang and nongang, toward finding their own solutions, their own organizations, their own empowerment. In the backyard of my Chicago home, some 30 people, mostly from the predominantly Puerto Rican area of Humboldt Park (my son's friends, and [his best friend's] homeys) and Pilsen, were present. They agreed to reach out to other youths and hold retreats, weekly meetings and a major conference. All summer they worked, without money, without resources, but with a lot of enthusiasm and energy. They hooked up with the National Organizing Committee, founded in 1993 by revolutionary fighters including gang members, welfare recipients, trade unionists, teachers and parents from throughout the United States. The NOC offered them technical and educational assistance. The young people's efforts culminated in the Youth '94 Struggling for Survival Conference, held in August at the University of Illinois, Chicago. More than a hundred young people from the city and surrounding communities attended. They held workshops on police brutality, jobs and education, and peace in the neighborhoods. A few gang members set aside deadly rivalries to attend this gathering. Although there were a number of mishaps, including a power failure, the youths voted to keep meeting. They held their workshops in the dark, raising issues, voicing concerns, coming up with ideas. I was the only adult they let address their meeting. The others, including parents, teachers, counselors, resource people and a video crew from the Center for New Television, were there to help with what the young people had organized. Then the building personnel told us we had to leave because it was unsafe to be in a building without power. We got Casa Aztlan to agree to let us move to several of their rooms to continue the workshops; I felt we would probably lose about half the young people in the 15-minute ride between sites. Not only did we hang on to most of the youths, we picked up a few more along the way. In a flooded basement with crumbling walls in Casa Atzlan we held the final plenary session. The youths set up a roundtable, at which it was agreed that only proposed solutions would be entertained. A few read poetry. It was a success, but then the young people wouldn't let it be anything else. Youth Struggling for Survival is but one example of young people tackling the issues head-on. There are hundreds more across America. In the weeks before the November 8 elections in California, thousands of junior high and high school students, mostly Latino, walked out of schools in the Los Angeles area. Their target: Proposition 187, intended to deny undocumented immigrants access to education, social services and non-emergency health care. These young people need guidance and support; they don't need adults to tell them what to do and how to do it; to corral, crush or dissuade their efforts. We must reverse their sense of hopelessness. The first step is to invest them with more authority to run their own lives, their communities, even their schools. The aim is to help them stop being instruments of their own death and to choose a revolutionary service to life. We don't need a country in which the National Guard walks our children to school, or pizza-delivery people carry sidearms, or prisons outnumber colleges. We can be more enlightened. More inclusive. More imaginative. And, I'm convinced, this is how we can be more safe. [Luis J. Rodriguez, formerly of Los Angeles, now writes from Chicago, where he directs Tia Chucha Press. His most recent book is Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (Touchstone).] ****************************************************************** 15. LETTER: GRAFFITI MOM FACES JAIL [Editor's note: The following letter concerns a community youth worker who became "house mother" to a group of Houston-area teens. When the youths later became involved with creating a graffiti mural, she was arrested.] Dear People's Tribune: I thought you might feel as outraged as I was by the felony criminal prosecution of Pamela Lockridge, a registered nurse, for encouraging the painting of graffiti. Lockridge explained, when talking about the frustration she and her husband experienced when launching a ministry to help youth, that graffiti was "a way of talking about our cause ... of telling the community about our pain." Lockridge is scheduled for arraignment in the 351st Harris County District Court located at 1302 Preston in Houston, Texas, on January 25, 1995 at 9 a.m. I have been contacting youth organizers, ministers, parents and other youth advocates in the area to be present at her January 25 court appearance, to show support for Mrs. Lockridge and for all young people whose culture and First Amendment rights to freedom of expression are under fire. After all, what constitutional right to freedom of expression exists if a person has no access to either private or public forums of expression? Only the very rich can buy billboard space, or mass media access, in order to "express" their "profit-colored" garbage. And just as a green blade of grass will push itself up out of tiny crannies in the suffocating pavement, so too will our budding youth unleash their life-colored expressions despite the suffocation of city ordinances and "private property rights." Perhaps the most heart-rending thing about this situation is Mrs. Lockridge's sense of isolation as she faces possible imprisonment in the state penitentiary, along with a fine and the stigma of being branded a felon. Please ask your readers and anti-censorship groups to fax letters of support for Mrs. Lockridge to the Houston office of the National Organizing Committee. These can be sent to the attention of M. E. Castellanos at fax number 713-650-9620, or by sending them to the post office box of the People's Tribune in Houston. Mrs. Lockridge and her lawyer would find these letters useful in perhaps mitigating the harsh punishment that now awaits her. More importantly, she would then know that she is not alone. Gracias, Maria Elena Castellanos, a reader of the People's Tribune and Tribuno del Pueblo and the mother of two children. i ****************************************************************** 16. 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. 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