From jdav@noc.orgTue Mar 21 17:07:20 1995 Date: Tue, 21 Mar 95 13:50 GMT From: Jim Davis To: pt.dist@noc.org Subject: People's Tribune (3-27-95) Online Edition ****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 22 No. 13 / March 27, 1995 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 Email: pt@noc.org ****************************************************************** INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 22 No. 13 / March 27, 1995 Page One 1. WHAT HYPOCRISY! WAREHOUSE WORKER TAKES PIZZA, GOES TO JAIL; CONGRESS ATTACKS SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS, GOES FREE ... Editorial 2. FLIP SIDE OF CUTS: MORE REPRESSION News 3. THE ANTI-POOR TAX SYSTEM AND CAPITALISM MUST GO 4. PROTEST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS! Focus on Midwest Conference on Technology, Jobs and Community: 5. WE DECIDE THE FUTURE 6. 'END OF WORK' AUTHOR KICKS OFF DEBATE 7. MIDWEST CONFERENCE BROADENS DEBATE ON TECHNOLOGY Focus on Health Care 8. STATEMENT OF THE NOC HEALTH CARE COMMITTEE: IF WE WANT HEALTH CARE, WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT! 9. NURSES Ñ THE ISSUE IS PATIENT CARE! 10. NURSES TO MARCH ON WASHINGTON MARCH 31 American Lockdown 11. HALT THE DOUBLE EXECUTION PLANNED IN ILLINOIS! 12. CONFERENCE ON PRISONS TO BE HELD IN ALABAMA 13. RETURN OF THE CHAIN GANG Culture Under Fire 14. POEM: PROLETARIAT P.O.V.: ON THE CLOSING OF AMERICAN BRIDGE CO., 1980 15. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE ****************************************************************** 1. PAGE 1: WHAT HYPOCRISY! WAREHOUSE WORKER TAKES PIZZA, GOES TO JAIL; CONGRESS ATTACKS SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS, GOES FREE ... It was an example of outrageous hypocrisy. A California court sentenced a man to a long prison term for allegedly stealing one piece of pizza. Just days before, the U.S. Congress had begun a massive assault on the federal school lunch program -- and none of its members went to jail! "We can at least think our children can sit down in peace, in broad daylight without a 6-foot-4 inch, 220-pound ex-con threatening them and taking food away from them." With these words, California State Attorney General Daniel E. Lungren endorsed a 25-years-to-life sentence handed to a Compton, California warehouse worker for the alleged theft of a slice of pepperoni pizza from a group of children. Yet days before 27-year-old Jerry Dewayne Williams got the maximum punishment, three committees in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed the end of federal child nutrition programs including school lunches served to some 30 million kids daily! It is simply incredible that under the "three strikes and you're out" law, a man could spend the rest of his life behind bars for something that the U.S. government is threatening to do on a massive scale. Disguised as "spending caps" and "shifting to state block grants," the net effect of the proposed cuts speeding though Congress will be to steal food from children, "in broad daylight," to the tune of $7 billion a year. We are outraged by this hypocrisy. We are outraged that farmers are paid to burn wheat and dump milk while the dairy industry fixes prices and gets away with it. We are outraged that food lies untouched in warehouses and underground caves (at taxpayer expense) while chronic hunger haunts our streets. And we will not be satisfied merely with hanging on to the existing food programs, the handful of crumbs we have now, which are completely inadequate to start with. Why should we? We live at a time when the high-tech agriculture industry of California alone could supply the entire world with its food needs. We live amid computer-driven greenhouses that can produce food 24 hours a day, rain or shine, summer or winter. A future of plenty, where no one need go hungry, is within our grasp, yet we remain under the heel of a social and economic system -- capitalism -- that denies food to millions of people and then has the audacity to impose a life sentence for taking a slice of pizza. When a social order has become so perverted, so stood on its head, it's time for that system to go. ****************************************************************** 2. EDITORIAL: FLIP SIDE OF CUTS: MORE REPRESSION There's no question that things are getting tougher for most of us. Congress and the state governments are getting ready to make or have made serious cuts in public aid programs, cuts that will hurt millions of people. While the official figures say unemployment is dropping, many of those who have found work are working at temporary, part-time or lower wage jobs. And another round of "downsizing" is bound to come sooner or later, and throw more people out of work. Not many people are doing well, and the polls show people have little confidence in the government or social institutions, and slim hopes for the future. All this means that the people who rule this country have a big problem: when they are taking actions guaranteed to increase human misery, how do they control people who will be angry and demanding justice? The answer: when you take away the carrot, you have to get out the stick. The stick will take the form of nothing less than a police state. The ruling class has been putting it in place for years now. It has many elements. The growing police state includes the Democrat- backed "crime bill" that Congress passed last year, and which the Republicans now want to make even tougher. That bill provides money for more prisons, and to put 100,000 more cops on the street. The governor of Alabama has said he plans to use some of the money to buy 500 pairs of leg irons and re-institute the chain gang (using prisoners in chains as slave labor). Other bits of writing on the wall: legislation in Congress that would allow the police to present illegally obtained evidence in court; the Omnibus Counterterrorism Bill, initiated by the FBI to give the government broad powers to attack any organization that the president labeled "terrorist"; legislation and court decisions limiting the right of Death Row prisoners to appeal their convictions; anti-gang "loitering" ordinances, such as the one in Chicago under which over 10,000 arrests were made last year; the rise in executions; states like New York reinstating the death penalty; a prison population over 1 million and rising; public housing "sweeps"; computerized fingerprinting of people on welfare; and worsening censorship. The specter of crime has been used to justify stripping the people of their rights, and a section of the people has supported this. But the fact is the ruling class is reaching for the stick to control those whose labor is no longer needed because of the electronic revolution. And the worst is yet to come. The only way the ruling class can keep its power and privilege is through a police state. They are united on this; we can't appeal to them to liberate us. The only way the vast majority of us can have freedom and prosperity is to get control of the power and the technology that the ruling class now controls. The American people can and will have a bright future. But we're going to have to fight for it. ****************************************************************** 3. THE ANTI-POOR TAX SYSTEM AND CAPITALISM MUST GO By Beth Gonzalez "No taxation without representation" was one of the rallying calls of the American revolutionaries who founded this country. "Taxation without representation is tyranny," they said, and they overthrew that tyranny. Back then, it was taxation by an English king. Today, it's taxation set by a Congress which represents the interests of the class of capitalists who rule this country, not the interests of the vast majority of the people of this country. It's still tyranny. How does it work? The tax system rests on the economic system of capitalism. Corporations, bankers and capitalists produce nothing and pay no taxes. Whatever tax money they send in to the federal government comes out of their profits. They profit from the labor of others who get only wages and salaries in return. The capitalists, bankers and investors own everything but produce nothing. But it's always been that way in this country. So why does it seem like we're paying more and more in taxes now and getting less and less? Let's look at two reasons. The first thing is because of the way the economy is going. Taxes today hurt the typical American more and more because of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The way the tax laws work, most middle-income people share the increasing tax load with those who get very low income. What it amounts to is that the taxes of the average person take a bigger and bigger share of smaller and smaller incomes. Meanwhile, the taxes of corporations and wealthy individuals take a smaller and smaller share of bigger and bigger profits and incomes. The second reason is that the capitalists use their political power to make tax laws that serve their needs. Congress continues to pass laws that lessen the tax load on corporations and wealthy individuals. Since the 1950s, corporations have been paying at lower and lower tax rates. In fact, if corporate taxes were restored to their 1950s levels, two-thirds of the national deficit would be eliminated overnight. But there are proposals coming before Congress that would lighten corporations' load even more. And the most unfair tax is sales tax. Sales tax takes a bigger percentage of poor people's income (whether they work or not) than it does of wealthy people's incomes. Who makes these tax laws anyway? Congress, with its numerous millionaires. They make them for the sake of the people who own and rule this country. They need specific tax laws for specific problems and investments. To get these special policies passed, corporations and filthy rich individuals spend about $20 billion every year on lobbying and influence peddling. An individual capitalist can even get Congress to pass a specific law that protects his individual investment from taxation. We're not going to get rid of this tax system without getting rid of the whole economic system. Until then, it's going to get worse and worse for more and more people because capitalism is getting worse for more people. The capitalists make their profit off the labor of others. New technology means they're using less labor, so their rate of profit tends to go down. To prop up their profits, they push Congress to decrease taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and to take a greater and greater toll from everyone else. People are hurting, and they're mad about the taxes they pay. That's why those who run this country would like people to take out their anger on welfare recipients who receive 1 percent of the federal budget and children who get lunches at school. Maybe those who run this country are worried about a serious tax revolt, one that challenges the profits of the investors and capitalists who rule this country and maybe even one that challenges whether they're fit to rule in the first place. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ THE GROWING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR * In 1951, it took the wages and salaries of 6 million people or families at the lower end of the income scale to match the combined incomes of the top 1 percent. In 1991, it took the combined incomes of 33 million at the bottom to match the incomes of the top 1 percent. * In 1951, the average income at the top was 16 times greater than the average at the bottom. In 1991, it was 34 times greater at the top than at the bottom. * In 1951, it took the combined income of 2 million middle-income families to match the combined income of the top 1 percent. In 1991, it took 6 million middle-income families' incomes to match the income of the top 1 percent. * The fastest growing group of tax-return filers is those reporting unemployment compensation. (In 1978, Congress started taxing unemployment compensation to "make it less attractive to stay unemployed.") That's a tax on those without a job. * The second fastest growing group of tax return filers is those who receive income from tax-exempt securities investments. That means no taxes on about $15 billion of income each year for people who are so wealthy they don't have to work. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 4. PROTEST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS! By the Human Rights Project Hunger Homelessness Lack of Health Care Slashing of Social Services The United States will be defending its human rights situation for the first time in front of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The United States, the richest country in the world, admitted to some poverty but made no commitment to do anything to end poverty and resulting deaths. On Wednesday, March 29 and Thursday, March 30 at the United Nations in New York City -- We, the people, demand: * That the U.S. government take notice and full responsibility for the deaths, suicides, hunger, homelessness, hopelessness, drugs, domestic violence and violence against children, non-existence of health care, malnutrition, etc. inside the United States. * That the U.S. government no longer line the pockets of the rich and support large corporations with the food, the housing, the health care, the clothes, the hopes, the lives, the futures of the rest of us, especially the children. Because: * Every night in this country, hundreds of thousands of children and adults go to bed hungry, yet millions of tons of food are bought by the U.S. government and stored to rot rather than be sold. * Every night, hundreds of thousands are homeless -- yet millions of housing units stand empty while the government does nothing to provide affordable housing, renovations or using eminent domain and other laws to reclaim unused units. * Malnutrition rates in inner cities and many other areas of the United States are as high as or higher than many Third World nations, -- yet the government does not provide nationalized health care, food or income to families with children. * Hundreds of thousands of Americans go without health care, suffering and often dying without proper treatment -- yet the U.S. government is unwilling to provide a health care program that sidesteps the entrenched interests of the insurance industry, some doctors and pharmaceutical companies. * In the last decade, the gap between rich and poor became wider than ever in our history except right before the Depression. Every kind of support for low-income people has been cut and continues to be cut -- yet the government transferred millions of tax dollars to the very rich and corporations through tax breaks, the savings and loan bailout, subsidies to Chrysler and the oil companies, to name just a few. We urge the United Nations and the international community to make the United States live up to the image it presents to the rest of the world. For further information on the march (transportation, housing), call Mary Sykes at 617-625-3481. From: The Human Rights Project (Co-founders: Grace Ross and Mel King), 49 Francesca Street, Somerville, Massachusetts 02144, phone: 617-625-3481. ****************************************************************** 5. _WE_ DECIDE THE FUTURE By the National High-Tech Committee of the NOC The Midwest Conference on Technology, Jobs, and Community, held March 2-4 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, brought together some 400 people to consider the critical issue of how the use of new technologies is destroying jobs and with it our communities, and what we do about it. The conference brought together people who need to be talking to each other. People fighting hunger met people researching the latest agriculture techniques. Trade unionists fighting cutbacks spoke with engineers who are "re-engineering" the workplace. People talked about the deep problems they face today, and envisioned what the future could be. Technology isn't the problem -- the way capitalism uses it is. The conference also highlighted ways that fighters against poverty and police repression could use new technologies. Conference attendees went to computer labs to learn about the Internet (one part of the so-called "information superhighway"), and heard about innovative efforts to get computer networks to poor communities. One project has connected students at Chicago's DuSable High School, near the massive Robert Taylor Homes, to the Internet, where they can communicate with other students around the world. The conference posed the question "who decides the future?" As scholars, community leaders, rank-and-file union leaders, welfare rights fighters and technology activists wrestled with this question in the five plenaries and 18 workshops, the answer became clear: We decide the future. The vast majority of Americans, as represented by the conference attendees, have the skills and the talent and the numbers to put the power of computers, biotechnology, robots and the Internet to work for everyone. Through follow-on conferences in Gary, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, the strategizing will continue around the country. The process of educating and organizing will continue on computer networks. And in Chicago, the work will continue in follow-on meetings of groups like the Chicago Coalition for Information Access, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and in the chapter meetings of the National Organizing Committee. If you have access to the World Wide Web, you can see reports from the conference by tuning your browser to http://cs- www.uchicago.edu:80/discussions/cpsr/jobtech/job-tech.html. Or contact the National High-Tech Committee of the NOC at 312-486- 0028 or hightech@noc.org for more information on future work on technology, jobs, and the new world that is possible. ****************************************************************** 6. 'END OF WORK' AUTHOR KICKS OFF DEBATE By Allen Harris CHICAGO -- More than 300 people came to hear author Jeremy Rifkin address the opening of the Midwest Conference on Technology, Employment and Community which was held at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Rifkin never showed his face, but he was a big hit nevertheless. Thanks to quick action by conference organizers, the author of the best-seller The End of Work, was able to address the gathering by telephone from his Washington home, where he was recovering from a back injury. This wasn't the only instance during the conference where you didn't have to be there in person to be there. Session reports and participant comments were immediately entered and readable on the Internet, the worldwide computer network. In his speech, Rifkin pointed out that the familiar industrial and service jobs in our economy will be totally taken over by high- tech in a generation. His book The End of Work calls for a new social contract to fit the new economy. "We are seeing the emergence of a two-tier society in every country of the world," said Rifkin. "The top 20 percent is producing and consuming for each other, while the other 80 percent are on the outside trying to get in and will never make it." This was a conference about recognizing the role that the emerging technology has played -- so far -- in enriching a few and impoverishing many. But also recognizing that technology is not the enemy of the impoverished. In fact, it is the tool which can end poverty itself. Creating a vision of a new kind of society and taking the first small steps toward making that vision real was at the heart of this gathering. ****************************************************************** 7. MIDWEST CONFERENCE BROADENS DEBATE ON TECHNOLOGY [Below are extended captions which appear in the centerfold alongside photos of the conference - Ed.] +----------------------------------------------------------------+ "The scientific and technical capacity exists now to identify precisely the cancer-causing agents that people are exposed to in their various occupations and communities, and therefore not only to cure the disease but to prevent it, at least in our children. This will require training hundreds of thousands of young scientists, and this is one of the things we need to do. This means spending $10 billion a year on laboratories, not on prisons." Microbiologist and M.I.T. professor Jonathan King, who helped launch the first Technology and Jobs conference last year, responded to Jeremy Rifkin's remarks delivered over a telephone broadcast. Conference organizers arranged the broadcast within 24 hours of Rifkin's back injury. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ No democratic society is sustainable that refuses to face and deal with the basic needs of its citizens, according to Sally Lerner, professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She told the conference that if wage work isn't available for all, then work and income must be redefined to allow people to find identity, self-esteem, recognition and satisfaction in other activities, and grassroots efforts to solve these problems are underway regardless of governmental disregard or marginalization. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Nelson Peery, longtime revolutionary, told the conference, "Today, in the robot, we have an efficient and willing producer capable of freeing up the totality of humanity so they may fully commit themselves to the age-old struggle for a cultured, orderly and peaceful life. Can we, who understand today, visualize tomorrow with enough clarity to accept the historic responsibilities of visionaries and revolutionaries? I think so. Humanity has never failed to make reality from the possibilities created by each great advance in the means of production. This time there is no alternative to stepping across that nodal line and seizing tomorrow." +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Dan Lane, from the Decatur, Illinois, Staley strike: "The whole issue that we have to look at is: Who is going to benefit from this technology? I think it's a conscientious decision of a society that as a union member, as a local, as a community of people, that we have to make a decision of whether we are going to ... continue with the jungle ethics of the survival of the fittest or that we're going to be our brother's keeper." +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Daria Ilunga of Chicago, a member of the City Year youth service organization, who is working with young people in the city's Cabrini-Green housing development: "I came to the conference on my own. I was concerned about the fate of youth on the information superhighway. ... We are becoming a society of knowledge workers. We need knowledge to work in any sector. It's important to know how to work with diverse people. You're going to be working with people you can't see. We're going to need to know how to communicate through various mediums." +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Richard G. Hatcher, former mayor of Gary, Indiana, now a professor of law at Valparaiso (Indiana) University: "The day came [when Hatcher was mayor] when the general superintendent of [U.S. Steel's Gary Works] and I met and I raised the question with him. Mr. Superintendent, what is the city of Gary to do about these people who are on the streets, have no jobs, have no prospects? His response was, Mr. Mayor, that's not my problem, that's your problem. My job is to make steel as efficiently as possible." +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Our vision of the future must stand on the truth that every single young person has value, Luis Rodriguez told the conferees. Yet, he pointed out, today there are 38 prisons in California and 20 more planned, against only 13 prisons 20 years ago. Rodriguez, author of Always Running, a memoir of his and his son's gang experiences, speaks frequently about and for youth and the future. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ General Baker, a Detroit autoworker and chair of the National Organizing Committee: "In 1994, the U.S. auto industry turned out nearly as many cars as it did in the banner year of 1978, but with half the work force we had back in 1978. That shows the productive might that technology has brought to us. We can look forward to the productive might we have and the struggle to figure out how we can control this and use the productive might to help ourselves." ****************************************************************** 8. STATEMENT OF THE NOC HEALTH CARE COMMITTEE: IF WE WANT HEALTH CARE, WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT! [Editor's note: Below we reprint excerpts from a statement by the National Health Care Committee of the NOC.] We are told that there is not enough money to provide health care for all and that this is why health care reform failed in Washington. Yet we live in an age of technological marvels. Human insulin is produced by genetically altered bacteria, a scientific feat unheard of in previous times. We appear to stand at the threshold of a new era when old scourges (such as tuberculosis, cancer and heart disease) and new ones (such as AIDS) appear conquerable once and for all. What is wrong? Have budgetary restraints really made the goal of quality health care for all unreachable? Is sharing in the marvels of new technology too much to expect for everybody, so that it has to be restricted to just a few? This is the policy being pursued in Washington, D.C. and at local levels as managed care, the rationing of health care, and the denial of services become widespread. As most Americans dig deeper into their pockets to pay for deductibles, co-payments and uncovered services, the best care still goes to the highest bidder. Yet 39 million people go without health care for at least part of the year and this number is growing. For much of the 40 years since the Second World War, it seemed that the American Dream of a better and healthier life included everybody. But then something happened. New machinery (in the form of computers and robots) was introduced into the economy in the 1970s. This new technology permanently replaced workers. Now, the old adage "What is good for GM is good for America" is no longer true. GM and other capitalists do not need healthy workers or a healthy reserve army of unemployed people because they have robots to replace them. Our health was secure only as long as the capitalist made his profits. The failure of health care reform in Washington, D.C. last year, and the continued layoffs of workers (with loss of health benefits) show that the capitalist class will sacrifice our health care to stay competitive (and make profits) in the world marketplace. "Work" and "health" do not need to be defined by the profits of the exploiters; they can be defined by what it takes to provide for the health and culture of our society. The billions of dollars which go toward paying back the savings and loan bailout; the billions which go to the defense industry, the police and the prison industry; the $53.3 billion in tax breaks for corporations in general; the $51 billion in direct subsidies to business -- all this money could be used to implement a real jobs program and to guarantee health care, regardless of people's ability to pay! The government should be forced to put people to work (at a livable wage) immediately and to guarantee health coverage for all. It's about time that the government served society's needs rather than the pocketbooks of billionaires who haven't worked a day in their lives. The fat-cat politicians in Washington should not have better health coverage than the Americans they blocked health care reform for. WHAT CAN WE DO? 1. Public health measures need to be implemented immediately. Whether they are universal immunizations, universal free prenatal care or needle exchange programs, they are all necessary -- and cost-effective. 2. In order to get decent health care, we have to fight for it. We must take the moral high ground. No one is secure when even brain surgeons can be replaced by precise laser-guided robots. Yet all can benefit from the bountiful production of modern technology if we make sure meeting social needs supersedes individual profits. Health care workers need to learn how to work as partners with those struggling to survive -- the unemployed autoworker, the welfare mother, the immigrant worker. 3. Oppose coercive measures in health care. No involuntary sterilization! No immigration police duties for health care workers! We don't need to be Nazi doctors in a modern police state. 4. Hold the government responsible for free, comprehensive health care for everyone. 5. We need to come together in an organization. The National Organizing Committee is just the organization for this purpose. It is an organization of revolutionaries dedicated to insuring the transformation of society to meet human needs. ****************************************************************** 9. NURSES Ñ THE ISSUE IS PATIENT CARE! By a CCRN [Editor's note: The article below was written by a critical care registered nurse helping to build support for the Nurses March on Washington March 31.] Hospital profit levels are stagnating. This is a reflection of the growing pressure to reduce costs. Large urban hospitals get at least 40 percent of their revenue from federal, state and local governments. This portends major financial problems as the fever to attack Medicaid and Medicare dollars is fueled in Washington and across the country by governments eager to get out of the delivery of any service to those who cannot pay for it. Why? Human labor is no longer needed in this advanced economy. The market forces of technology produce an absolute devaluation of the value of labor. Between 1987 and 1992, the nation's manufacturing industries registered a $530 billion increase in shipments. This resulted in the elimination of 696,000 jobs. Today, there are 3.2 million fewer manufacturing jobs in the United States than in 1979. The driving forces in this economy will destroy the profession of nursing to increase the profit margins in the industry. As they destroy this profession, they will destroy the patient. Is it the nurse tech or the medical assistant struggling to feed a family who spells the doom of this profession? No. To save the profession of nursing, you must develop the political education to understand that the movement against poverty is the movement for a national health care system that utilizes the professional nurse for what we are here for -- patient-centered care, education, teaching, outreach and empowerment. It is you -- the healer, the teacher, the provider of insight into the disease process -- who must come forward and engage with new forces of power, forces that we have never in the past united with: the destitute, the Medicaid recipient, the teen-age mother who had no prenatal care and delivered a preterm infant. These are the forces who the administrators of the health care industry have all but forsaken. It is these forces who will fight to the death for the profession of nursing, for it is the R.N. who takes the time -- and has the knowledge -- to empower who can help liberate this earth from the basis for these conditions. ****************************************************************** 10. NURSES TO MARCH ON WASHINGTON MARCH 31 [Editor's note: Below we reprint the text of a flyer issued by the publication REVOLUTION, which describes itself as 'the journal of nurse empowerment.' The March 31 march on Washington will be the first march of nurses on Washington ever to take place.] REVOLUTION, the journal of nurse empowerment, calls for a Nurses' March on Washington, D.C.! Friday, March 31, 1995 at 12 noon U.S. Capitol (West Front) to the White House Now is the time to let the American Public know what is going on in hospital settings! Together we can get the exposure we need in order to prevent the death of nursing. There will be several Congressmen, Congresswomen and powerful nursing advocates as speakers. We will be heard! If you're interested in promoting this march, tell your colleagues! Call 718-948-4398, the office of REVOLUTION, (9-5 EST) for information. ****************************************************************** 11. HALT THE DOUBLE EXECUTION PLANNED IN ILLINOIS! [The following statement is excerpted from a press release from the Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers regarding the scheduled March 22 double execution of two Illinois prisoners, Hernando Williams and James Free.] Hernando Williams was sentenced to death in Cook County by an all- white jury after the prosecution systematically eliminated 26 African American candidates from serving on the jury. Though this practice is unconstitutional, a technicality in the timing of his appeals prevents Williams from challenging this discrimination in the courts. As a result, he stands to be executed on the basis of a verdict reached by a jury that was unconstitutionally selected. If the state of Illinois proceeds to execute him, it will send a message to society that racism is justified in the administration of law and order. James Free [who is white] was sentenced to death in DuPage County despite the absence of a background of serious, violent crime. In fact, Free had a strong military record prior to the commission of his capital offense and he has had a model prison record ever since. He was on PCP when he committed his crime. If carried out, this will be the first double execution in Illinois since 1952. With approximately 155 men and women under sentence of death, Illinois has one of the largest death rows in the United States. The only other states that have carried out multiple executions on the same day since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States are Texas and Arkansas. For more information, contact: Standish Willis, chair, Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers, at 312-554-0005. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ [Editor's note: The following is the text of the petition statement issued by the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty to oppose the double execution scheduled for March 22.] Dear Governor Edgar: As citizens of Illinois, we stand in total opposition to the state's plan to carry out a double execution of James Free and Hernando Williams on March 22 in the name of the "people of Illinois." Illinois has not carried out a multiple execution for over 40 years. We call upon you to commute the death sentences of James Free and Hernando Williams and to halt this backslide toward the assembly-line taking of human life. We recognize that: * The death penalty is a quick-fix election-time symbol that preys on people's fears and frustrations while disguising the absence of any real program to improve society. * The death penalty does nothing to lower the rate of murder in society. States carrying out numerous executions continue to suffer from high murder rates. By consuming millions of dollars that otherwise could have fed effective crime-reduction programs, the death penalty makes society more dangerous. * The death penalty senselessly imperils the lives of innocent people. Since 1900, at least 349 innocent people are known to have been wrongfully convicted of capital crimes. Twenty-three people were executed who were later proven innocent. * The death penalty perpetuates the evils of racism and economic injustice. In Illinois, even though the majority of murder victims are African Americans, the majority of victims in cases resulting in death sentences are whites. African Americans, as a group, are approximately 10 times more likely to be sentenced to death than white people, as a group, in Illinois. With few exceptions, only poor people get the death sentence. The death penalty is tool of economic discrimination. For more information, call 312-849-2279. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 12. CONFERENCE ON PRISONS TO BE HELD IN ALABAMA As the state of Alabama announces the reinstitution of chain gangs in leg irons, Alabama grassroots groups are initiating a national conference to organize against the inhuman and counterproductive buildup of the "prison industrial complex." On April 8, the Committee for Prisoner Support in Birmingham and the Mafundi Lake Defense Committee are convening an important gathering to strategize around the growing prison struggle in America. The theme of the conference is "The Imprisonment of America: A Human Catastrophe." Spearheaded by outstanding leaders such as inmate Richard Mafundi Lake, whose struggle was instrumental in the first federal takeover of a state prison system in history, the conference has been endorsed by a wide range of organizations including the Adults for a Positive Youth Movement of Mobile, Alabama, California's Pelican Bay Information Project, the St. Catherine's Prison Project of Ohio, the Native American Cultural and Spiritual Council of Tejas in Beaumont, Texas and the People's Tribune. We urge our readers to support this critical effort. For further information, contact the Committee for Prisoner Support in Birmingham, P.O. Box 12152, Birmingham, Alabama 35202- 2152 or call Makeda at 205-322-0219 or Weyni at 205-925-9927. ****************************************************************** 13. RETURN OF THE CHAIN GANG By John Slaughter At about the same time that the state of Mississippi was finally getting around to abolishing slavery, Alabama Gov. Fob James announced his intention to re-introduce a brutal reminder of the Old South to the thoroughfares of Alabama: the chain gang. Gov. James said that in order to fulfill a campaign promise to put more prisoners to work, he has placed a $17,000 order for 500 sets of leg irons so that inmates could help pick up trash along state highways. They would be chained leg-to-leg in groups of five, with eight feet of chain separating each prisoner. How can any people who cherish freedom tolerate so barbaric a practice? In the words of Frederick Douglass, "No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at least finding the other end fastened around his neck." ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 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. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 14. POEM: PROLETARIAT P.O.V. On the Closing of American Bridge Co., 1980 I am one of many gray rats, pacing caged faces, treading rusted wheels. Living leftovers of BIG BOSS STEELS godlike glorious corrosion. Drinking sulphered air, left to rust, before Hades' darkened gates. Fading lives walk in shadows of ghosted industry. Forged Machined to worship that which made the region GREAT incised icons of those who lived died for the bloodsweated aching buck -- lint from well-lined pockets. Millrats and -- their wives silent tongued in their knowing drawn taut in their smiles waiting tables selling lotto to make shortening ends meet. Children delighting in minutes given in the rushing pumping thrust of their parents industrial lives two day daddies two day mommas. Children knowing old before years bouyed on oil-skimmed water rooted in gritty soil. Boxed in blocked streets dead jobs locked schools. What sort of rat am I? The same kind of rat as you. We burn together scatter our own ashes. -- Cheryl Watkins ****************************************************************** 15. 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 For free electronic subscription, email: pt.dist-request@noc.org 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 pt@noc.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. For free electronic subscription, email: pt.dist- request@noc.org ******************************************************************