the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 7, 2001
Where is the price of gasoline at the pump going to end up this summer? At $2.00? At $2.50? Or even $3.00? It’s clear the oil industry is pushing prices as high as they can go.
The Big Oil companies say they haven’t been able to build new refineries because "environmentalists" have prevented them from doing so. They also say they have to put in additives, which complicates production. As a result–or so they say–they have a problem of "supply and demand."
Even if there were a problem of "supply and demand," that doesn’t mean that prices have to be raised in this fashion. It costs no more–or very little more–to make gasoline just because demand catches up with supply.
In fact, all the talk about environmental restrictions and gasoline additives is nothing but a smokescreen to cover up what the oil companies themselves are doing–just like the talk of OPEC was a smokescreen last year. Big Oil is reducing output in order to drive up prices and produce a still bigger profit.
Even the Wall Street Journal, the bible of big business, admits that a "surprising number of refineries have been shut down for maintenance and repairs" right now–just at the point when the refineries usually run at top capacity to produce the gasoline needed for the summer driving months.
It’s the same con game, the same excuses given by the utilities and the electricity generating companies in California. They talked about "supply and demand" in California, too–in order to get higher rates from consumers and other handouts from the state of California. But when the last wave of blackouts rolled through California in March, almost one-third of all electricity generating facilities were shut down for "routine maintenance."
It was not "routine maintenance" in California electricity. It’s not routine maintenance of oil refineries. It is routine extortion, routine price gouging.
One thing is true: Big Oil has not been building new refineries despite all the profits they’ve amassed over these last few decades. Right now that doesn’t cause a problem of capacity. Why? Because they increased their capacity to refine oil by expanding their old refineries. It was their way to get around pollution requirements which apply only on their new ones.
But sooner or later, there can be a real problem of too little capacity. And that problem has consciously been created by Big Oil in order to maximize their profits at the expense of the population, which suffers increasingly high prices for gasoline and a polluted atmosphere.
Big Oil controls a resource which is absolutely necessary for life in any industrialized country. If it is not able to use that resource for the benefit of the population, then let that resource be taken away from them.
If they are not able to plan for the production which is needed, if they are not able to put in the few dozen additives without messing up production, if they are unwilling to limit pollution–then let them step aside.
"Supply and demand"? There is a big enough supply of resources to meet all the demands for energy: gasoline, electricity, fuel oil and natural gas. The problem is the big companies who control the "supply" in order to "demand" higher profits. So get rid of THEM!
May 7, 2001
Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on death row, are calling for activity to protest the possibility he could be executed. The following excerpts are from a leaflet signed by 17 union officers and activists in the Detroit area concerning his situation:
"We are appealing to you to take a stand against the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, for a new trial for Mumia, and to urge all leaders, members, and organizations to do the same.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former member of the Black Panther Party, a well-known speaker and writer against racist police violence, and an honorary member of UAW Local 1981, the National Writers Union (NWU). While Mumia had no prior criminal record, he was arrested for allegedly killing a policeman in Philadelphia in 1982. He has spent almost two decades on death row. Twice the governor of Pennsylvania signed a death warrant for Mumia and set a date for his execution; twice popular pressure forced a judge to issue a stay-of-execution and allow Mumia to appeal.
"The Fraternal Order of Police says Mumia confessed to killing the policeman, he’s a "cop-hater," a "convicted cop-killer," and should be executed immediately. But Mumia continues to insist he is innocent, calls the alleged confession a fabrication, and many questions have been raised about this alleged confession and whether or not Mumia was allowed a fair trial. For example, Mumia was not allowed to defend himself; he was forced to accept a court-appointed attorney who did not collect evidence, interview witnesses, or prepare a defense; this attorney was later disbarred; African-Americans were excluded from the jury; Mumia himself was excluded from much of his own trial; evidence was withheld from the defense and the jury; Mumia’s writings were presented as evidence he should be sentenced to death; the judge who presided over Mumia’s trial has sentenced more people to death (the majority of them Black) than any other sitting judge in the U.S.; the same judge presided over Mumia’s appeals...
"Labor organizations in Detroit have taken a stance against the execution and in favor of a new trial, including UAW Local 417, UAW Local 909, the Southeast Michigan Local of the National Writers Union, and Jobs with Justice."
May 7, 2001
On April 6, the electricity deregulation melodrama in California took another turn when the public utility that serves central and northern California, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), declared bankruptcy.
PG&E spokespersons said that the company had no choice but to make that drastic move, and seek protection from its creditors, having already run up over nine billion dollars in bills that it could not pay. According to corporate executives, PG&E is caught in the middle of deregulation of electricity. While the utility is being charged the full exorbitant cost of the deregulated price of wholesale electricity, they said that PG&E was not allowed by state regulators to pass that cost on to its customers. As if utility customers should be expected to pay electricity bills that are three or four times higher than the previous year!
But if PG&E really was out of money, how did it manage, only hours before filing for bankruptcy, to "scrape" together 30 million dollars to pay bonuses to 6,000 management personnel? How did it, only a few weeks after filing for bankruptcy, continue to make quarterly dividend payments of 110 million dollars to its stockholders, and still have enough money to grant salary increases of up to $300,000 to each of its top executives?
The law that deregulated electricity in California was passed in 1996. Since then, PG&E went from being a regulated utility functioning only in California collecting a "modest" 11% profit year in and year out, to an owner of 30 electric generating plants in 21 states, a supplier of electricity and gas to one out of every 20 people in the United States, one of the largest U.S. transporters of Canadian natural gas, and a marketer of energy services and products throughout North America.
How did PG&E do this in such a short time? First, the deregulation law that PG&E executives helped write in 1996 allowed the parent company, PG&E Corp., to use the old utility, PG&E, still supposedly under state regulation, as a cash cow. PG&E Corp. stripped the utility of its most profitable assets, funneling billions of dollars out of the utility into new businesses. In other words, while ratepayers thought they were paying for electricity and gas, upkeep of the infrastructure and construction of new plants, in fact, PG&E was taking this money and using it to greatly expand its business empire.
PG&E says it’s caught in a squeeze because it was forced to sell off all of its electric generating capacity. It’s not true. PG&E kept almost half of its electric generating capacity, including its network of hydroelectric dams, its nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon and many of its coal-fired plants. These also happen to be its most profitable electric generating plants. But it didn’t hold those plants under the management of the old utility. Instead it placed them in a new PG&E subsidiary, which it calls National Energy Group. This subsidiary is not regulated by the government and, as of 1998, was free to charge the going rate, the same exorbitant prices as the other companies are charging for providing electricity to the utilities.
This is why, by the way, about half the money that PG&E owes today is not to other companies, but only to National Energy Group, the other subsidiary of its parent company. In other words, half of its debt is to itself.
In the same 1996 deregulation law, PG&E and the other private utilities were given the right to add a large rate surcharge to everyone’s electric bill. This rate surcharge was supposed to allow the companies to pay off large debts on their electric generating plants so that they could be more "competitive" in a newly deregulated market. That surcharge has netted PG&E close to nine billion dollars in just four years.
Once PG&E got its hands on this money, they were free to do with it what they wanted. The first thing they did was take several billion dollars to buy back the company’s own stock and to pay dividends. That is, the corporate executives made sure that stockholders pocketed a big chunk of this money. They then funneled the rest of the money into the new subsidiary, National Energy Group, which went on a buying spree all over the country. The new subsidiary started by buying New England Electricity System for 1.6 billion dollars. This became the cornerstone for becoming one of the largest power generators in the Northeast. In fact, ratepayers in Massachusetts are currently suing the power company owned by PG&E for price gouging on their bills!
This left the old utility, PG&E, that still serves over five million people in northern and central California, looking like it was going broke. And no wonder! The parent company had stripped it of its most valuable assets and drained it of its money!
The parent company, PG&E Corp., wanted to make sure that the losses that were building up in the old PG&E, did not drain away the profits building up in its new subsidiary, National Energy Group. So, they asked the federal government for permission to wall off the profits and losses between the two subsidiaries. On January 12, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled in PG&E’s favor. It issued an order that in effect shielded PG&E’s profitable National Energy Group from the debts faced by its utility subsidiary, PG&E.
Once PG&E Corp. did that, it was free to go ahead with the bankruptcy of its utility, without having to worry about endangering the profits that its other subsidiary was producing.
For PG&E, the bankruptcy filing is merely a political maneuver. By claiming that the utility is broke, they hope to force the government to okay another huge state bailout financed by taxpayers and ratepayers.
Of course, if a big state bailout proceeds, as PG&E wants, it could create quite an uproar. After all, electric rates in California are already skyrocketing, the state treasury is already being drained to the tune of billions of dollars every month just to keep the electricity on, and... the state is facing a summer of power blackouts.
But just incidentally, by claiming bankruptcy, the entire matter is put before a federal judge who is appointed for life, and who therefore can rule more easily in the utility’s favor without fear of facing voters in an election. California politicians, facing voters, can now blame it all on the courts.
PG&E’s bankruptcy is just one more link in the great electricity ripoff chain going forward in California.
But California is not alone. It simply is a snapshot of the future awaiting every state now undergoing deregulation.
May 7, 2001
Former Governor and former Senator of Nebraska Bob Kerrey has been featured recently in the New York Times magazine and on 60 Minutes Two. He was interviewed this time, not about his presidential aspirations, but about his past role in Viet Nam as the leader of the Navy Seals commando squad which carried out a raid in 1969 in Thanh Phong, a village in the Mekong Delta. Kerrey was later awarded a Bronze Medal for this operation.
Another Seal who participated in this mission–in fact, a friend of Kerrey’s–has recently spoken publicly about what took place in Thanh Phong. His version was corroborated by independent statements made by people interviewed in Viet Nam. Kerrey disputes some of what comes out. But everyone agrees that at least 20 unarmed women, elderly men, children and even a baby were killed in brutal fashion during the raid on this tiny village.
Kerrey, who kept silent about Thanh Phong for many years, now states candidly that he has had continual nightmares of this mission, wondering what happened, was it a panic, inexperience or a real military necessity. He knows he has blocked things out, he says, and perhaps distorted his own memory of what took place as a mode of survival. Kerrey wrote recently, " ... the greatest danger of war is not losing your life but the taking of others’, and that human savagery is a very slippery slope." Kerrey knows, what millions of other soldiers, in too many generations, also know.
But when asked whether he considered what he did as a war crime, Kerrey says no. He accepts the reasoning made by the Pentagon about Viet Nam–that it was necessary to kill civilians.
In a war, the invader is often considered the enemy by the civilians of that country which is invaded. This was the situation in Viet Nam, where the U.S. invader was the enemy of the population. This is why the U.S. army not only condoned the killing of civilians, but even awarded medals, like the bronze given to Kerrey, to those who killed civilians. Civilians had to be terrorized. Villages had to be destroyed "in order to save them," as was often said. And potential survivors of a raid had to be killed before they could expose what had happened.
Undoubtedly, a number of Vietnamese women and children did kill U.S. soldiers when they could. And why shouldn’t they have? It was their country, their villages and their homes which were being invaded by the U.S. forces. That is why opposition to the U.S. imperialist invasion was massive in Viet Nam. That is why the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army had the overwhelming support of the population–even as the U.S. military continued to destroy the country, "in order to save it from communism." Fifty thousand U.S. soldiers died in this war, but over two million Vietnamese were killed, decimating the population of 20 million.
What Kerrey did himself is a secondary issue. The real criminal act was imperialism’s war, which set the framework for the massacre in Thanh Phong and so many other places.
Kerrey eventually joined others of his generation, including many other future politicians, in turning against this war when military victory seemed out of reach and its unpopularity grew at home.
But this didn’t stop Kerrey, a presidential hopeful, any more than it stopped President Clinton, from supporting other wars and other massacres in the so-called "good wars"–whether it be the massive and deadly fire bombing of Tokyo, Dresden, Darmstadt or Italian cities in World War II; or the slaughter of Iraqi civilians both during and after Desert Storm. Those slaughters they justify, meaning that for Kerrey, Clinton and others, war crimes are judged by the popularity of the war and not by what actually takes place.
Kerrey and many others who fought in Viet Nam were undoubtedly affected by the individual actions they took, differently perhaps than the bomber pilot who drops laser-guided missiles into populated neighborhoods below. But for the men, women and children who are murdered wholesale, the consequence of U.S. imperialism’s military actions are the same as in Thanh Phong, Viet Nam.
May 7, 2001
President Bush recently made a point to announce that his administration will not ratify the Kyoto treaty which was an agreement to reduce carbon dioxide gas emissions. The pollution from this gas is one of the chief causes of the greenhouse effect and of global warming.
Bush had the nerve to explain that he could not accept the plan because "it would be harmful to our economy and to American workers," as if he worried about such matters. The U.S. decision provoked an outcry from China and Canada, and a bit by Japan and Europe. Not wanting to be outdone, French president Jacques Chirac claimed that putting aside the carbon dioxide question was "disquieting and not acceptable."
In fact, the treaty, which was adopted at the end of 1997, puts few limits on the countries who sign it. They have to reduce this pollution about by only five to seven% by the year 2012. So they had 15 years in which they could leave their pollution levels at where they were!
It is true that other countries have not signed the treaty, including France and 30 poorer countries. But the U.S. is the world’s biggest polluter. With four% of the world’s population, it produces 25% of the world’s pollution from such gases. The U.S. by itself is responsible for an important part of the greenhouse effect which will drastically worsen the conditions under which we live.
It’s obvious that the environment is growing more polluted, but that hardly worries the heads of the big powers, whether American or European. Each government is interested only in defending its own industries, its own capitalists. None of them gives a damn what happens to the planet in the future.
Bush takes a cavalier attitude about the future, but the decisions made today will seriously impair the health and well-being of future generations–starting with the children of today.
May 7, 2001
After fifteen days of sailing back and forth in the Gulf of Guinea, the freighter Etireno arrived April 17 in the port of Cotonou. On board were 147 passengers including some 40 children and teenagers, 210 fewer than the number of youngsters on board when the ship left Cameroon. Had they been unloaded, transferred to another ship or even thrown overboard as several humanitarian organizations feared?
The publicity about this freighter and its cargo–children destined to be sold as slaves–turned the spotlight on the reality of a generalized slave trade along the coast of all west Africa. According to UNICEF more than 200,000 children are sold into slavery just in the area running from Gabon to the Ivory Coast.
The majority of the child slaves come from the poorest villages of Togo, Benin, Mali and neighboring countries devastated by a decade of civil war. Some of them have been sold by their families who had been stricken by famine. Others were forced into slavery. The traffickers buy them for a few dollars and then later resell them for ten times more to their new owners. The 5-to-6 year old girls become domestic servants, and the boys become laborers in cotton or chocolate plantations, or carriers of loads in the mines. They are housed in locked barracks, fed boiled corn, beaten, and threatened with having their feet slashed if they attempt to escape. They are true slaves until they pay back their purchase price and food with bitter labor, without the least wage.
Those who share responsibility and the profits of this ferocious exploitation are the slave traffickers, the governments that go along with it (the African countries and still more the rich countries), and especially the great international capitalist companies. Even when they aren’t the direct owners of the plantations, mines and factories where these child slaves are exploited, these companies buy up at a tiny price the slaves’ products, which have made the fortunes of companies like Nestle and Hershey and the riches of their owners today.
May 7, 2001
The Russian space program is really in a financial pinch these days, and it’s selling rides. Dennis Tito, who called himself just an "ordinary guy," went up with two Russian cosmonauts in the Soyuz to the International Space Station on April 28. The price of his ticket–a mere 20 million dollars.
What a great idea! Here’s a better one: Please, NASA and Soyuz, blast all the millionaires and billionaires into outer space. And leave them there!
May 7, 2001
Once again, the small island of Vieques, seven miles off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, has become the scene of large protests against the U.S. military. During the last week of April, federal troops and agents arrested about 200 people who were protesting the Navy’s practice bombing of the island.
For the past 60 years, the U.S. Navy has been using this 52squaremile island for target practice, ignoring the fact that there are actually people living on the island. The Navy started to expropriate parts of Vieques during World War II in 1941. People who lived in the expropriated areas were told to either accept the price offered for their land or prepare to be forcefully evicted. In this way, the Navy took over 75% of the island, including some of the most arable land. Almost the entire eastern half of the island, now dubbed "Camp Garcia," was turned into a firing range for the U.S. military. On the western end of Vieques, the Navy set up an ammunition facility. What remained to the residents was a quarter of the island’s land area, squeezed between the two military zones.
The continuous bombing of Vieques for six decades has had all the harmful effects that one would expect from such a practice. The land, sea and air are contaminated with highly toxic chemicals. Studies have shown an unusually high rate of cancer and a rare heart ailment called vibroacoustic disease, which is linked to high levels of noise, among the island’s 9400 residents. In May, 1999, after information about the use of depleted uranium on Vieques became public, the Navy admitted firing 273 depleted uranium projectiles at the Vieques test site in 1998, during training for the bombing of Yugoslavia. Depleted uranium is linked to many officially "unexplained" illnesses, such as cancer, stillbirths, birth defects, memory loss, chronic pain, leukemia and more, seen among the veterans of the Gulf War in 1991. Similar ailments have been seen among soldiers from European countries sent to the former Yugoslavia.
The island is also littered with thousands of pieces of unexploded bombs, which occasionally cause accidents. One such accident happened in 1952, killing a child and wounding three others. Once in a while bombs or bullets miss their targets and come too close to people. In such an incident in April 1999, David Sanes, a civilian security guard, was killed by two 500pound bombs exploding near his post.
The death of Sanes sparked off a wave of protests two years ago, including massive demonstrations in Puerto Rico which drew tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of Vieques residents occupied the firing range and set up camps. The Navy and FBI eventually arrested the campers and cleared the range. Nevertheless, under the pressure of increased publicity, the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments signed an agreement in January 2000. The Clinton administration promised to abide by the outcome of a referendum, to be held in November this year, and close the bombing site by 2003 if the people of Vieques so decide.
In the meantime, however, the U.S. government has already reneged on one of its promises, that is, to stop the use of live ammunition on Vieques. And on April 27, a federal judge in Washington rejected the request of the Puerto Rican government to postpone the bombing until health study results from Vieques are evaluated by the Department of Health and Human Services. The judge said that there was not "enough evidence" yet that people on Vieques were being "irreparably harmed" by the bombing.
In other words, first people have to be "irreparably harmed" before anything is done. What good would stopping the bombing do then?
This is exactly the logic of a big, reckless, brutal military power which not only "tests" all these deadly bombs and harmful chemicals, but readily uses them on civilians around the globe, as it did on a large scale in Iraq and in Yugoslavia, just to name two of the more recent examples.
May 7, 2001
The Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) has taken 20 MILLION dollars from Baltimore City because the Housing Authority cannot come up with an acceptable, legal plan for low income housing.
In April, the THIRD plan the city submitted for developing senior housing was rejected. The site had been cleared last July when a deteriorating high-rise public housing project was blown up to make way for 450 units of low-income housing.
Baltimore has tossed away millions MORE dollars in federal housing funds as well. Just this March, HUD issued a scathing report on Baltimore’s Section 8 housing program, which subsidizes rents for poor families. Over a two-year period, from 1998 to 2000, the city was awarded 167 million dollars to subsidize low-income housing. It used only 42 million dollars. Yet the waiting list has 16,000 people on it!
HUD found the Housing Authority kept such poor records that it didn’t even know how many rental units it was subsidizing. It didn’t know the size of their own payroll. It didn’t know when it had paid a landlord twice for the same bill. It couldn’t keep track of the people on their waiting lists. And HUD inspections of 37 units showed that 35 of them had unsanitary, unsafe or unsound conditions!
The Housing Authority’s excuse was that its computer wasn’t Y2K compliant so it had to keep records by hand. Any small business in the country could go to a computer store and buy a system that would keep track of this data for only a few thousand dollars. Yet this agency with MILLIONS of dollars could not bother to buy the machines it needed? Cynical! That’s the only word for a Housing Authority which dares say such nonsense while thousands of poor families are in desperate need of housing.
A third HUD report this past January showed another Housing Authority problem. Five years after a lawsuit was brought to house low-income families in affordable homes throughout the city or surrounding county, only 51 families out of 1,342 in the lawsuit had been moved. So in five years, the Baltimore’s Housing Authority could manage to serve only four% of those it agreed to assist in the lawsuit of 1996!
The Housing Authority could not make it more clear: the poor can sleep on the street, for all it or the rest of Baltimore’s political structure cares.
May 7, 2001
The Bush administration has made a unilateral announcement that it will deploy a new antimissile shield "as soon as possible." This system of new radar detection systems, land, sea and air intercept missiles, Bush says, will make the U.S. safer in this nuclear age.
Never mind the fact that this new system openly violates the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which was agreed to by countries around the world to "make the planet safer in this nuclear age."
Never mind that the administration, in this post Cold War period, has a hard time defining who "the enemy" is that this antimissile shield is supposed to protect us from.
Never mind that the Bush administration itself admits that all tests on this missile intercept system have been miserable failures up to now.
Apparently, the only thing which is certain about this new antimissile shield is that it will raise the federal government’s military spending by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years! Money, of course, which will come by cutting back social program expenditures. The writing is on the wall...
A safer world in this nuclear age? Not hardly. But no military contractors or Wall Street financiers will take their hands off their wallets long enough to raise such a question about this new "profit shield."
May 7, 2001
Boeing announced it would move its headquarters out of Seattle and would relocate in either Denver, Dallas or Chicago–and then it opened the bidding war. To make his point really crystal clear, Philip Condit, Boeing CEO, proclaimed: "It is absolutely critical that the business climate in Washington state be improved if we are to be successful here."
No one could say that politicians in Washington state haven’t faithfully served Boeing for years. But, in this day and age when the corporations feel free to walk over anyone and everyone, that wasn’t enough. Boeing wants still more–and is fully confident that the politicians in all these states, not to mention Washington state, will dance to any tune Boeing whistles.
Governor George Ryan of Illinois has already broken out into a wild tap dance, offering 50 million dollars in subsidies and tax breaks.
May 7, 2001
Several thousand workers at government offices in Washington state participated in a series of one day strikes between April 18 and April 21.
As is often the case with public employees, it is "illegal" for Washington state workers to strike. But facing a government offer of two% pay raises, increased health care costs, and cuts to social programs for their clients, unionized workers decided to ignore "legality."
The Washington Federation of State Employees (AFSCME) and the SEIU (registered nurses) led "hit-and-run" walkouts.
During the four days of strikes, three dozen different locations organized walk-outs and picketing to send their bosses a message.
The unloading of ships at ports in Tacoma, Vancouver, and Kalama was disrupted when longshoremen honored the picket line of striking state grain inspectors.
During the four days of activity, picket lines were organized to show the public what state workers do. "It raises the attention of the public and the Legislature that we’re serious," said one picketer.
Walk-outs occurred at state mental hospitals, schools for the disabled, developmental social-services offices and protective services offices.
A supervisor at a family service office told the media that she backed the strike. At a school for the developmentally disabled, family members of patients walked the picket line with staff.
Walk-outs occurred at juvenile detention homes, veterans’ homes, parole offices, community colleges and at the state university.
The strikes concluded with a rally at the State Capitol, with a crowd estimated between 1,500 and 4,000 to send the legislature a message.
Were they listening?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
On May 2, 5000 public school teachers in Seattle, Washington and in four other districts organized their own one-day walk-out. Parents generally spoke in support of the protest.
Last fall, voters in Washington passed a referendum to reduce class size and give teachers automatic cost-of-living raises. Lawmakers in the state are refusing to pass a budget that could fund what the voters requested.
May 7, 2001
On May 1, 38 years after he helped carry out the Sunday morning bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Thomas Blanton, Jr. was convicted of murdering the four girls who died in that blast. One of these girls was 11 at the time. The three others were 14 years old.
Blanton is only the second of the four prime suspects in the bombing to be prosecuted. Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and died in jail 8 years later. Herman Cash died never having been charged. Bobby Frank Cherry is alive, but unlikely to be prosecuted, because he has been judged mentally incompetent to stand trial.
Douglas Jones, the prosecutor in Blanton’s trial, told reporters, "They say that justice delayed is justice denied, and folks I don’t believe that for a minute. Justice delayed is still justice, and we’ve got it here in Birmingham, Alabama."
Of course, the criminals who killed four young girls should have been tried and convicted.
But that’s not the whole story. Because justice was delayed–and thus denied–for almost four decades by the very same federal government which always pretended to be the defenders of the black population against KKK-style violence. The most critical pieces of evidence were the two tape recordings made of Blanton on which he effectively admitted to the bombings. Bill Baxley, the former attorney general of Alabama who prosecuted Bob Chambliss in 1977, revealed that in 1977 the FBI denied the existence of any such evidence.
Baxley says that if the FBI hadn’t hidden these recordings from him during his investigation in 1977, he would have succeeded in putting both Blanton and Cherry in jail along with Chambliss back at that time–24 years ago.
In fact it goes further back than 1977. The FBI had these tapes ever since they were made in 1964. In all these years since 1964, there were hundreds of other victims of KKK violence in the South.
If there had been a government prosecution in 1964–how many of those other victims might never have been killed? If the cowards who made up the KKK knew at the time that they would have to pay the price for their violence, would they have been so ready to kill, maim and terrorize?
The FBI may try to pretend it was simply protecting its informants so as to gather more information. For what? Not to prosecute when it would have made a difference.
Decades later proof surfaced that the FBI was aware in advance, not just afterwards, of many of the killings that took place. It did nothing to warn the intended victims of these plans. Nothing to offer them protection. Nothing to foil the plans.
Yes, the FBI and federal government finally did move to a prosecution in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968–but not until cities were burning, not until the black population went into the streets to put an end to the violence and indignities which they had suffered. (But even here there’s a big question whether the real killers were prosecuted. The family of Martin Luther King says no.) It was not the FBI which offered the black population protection. It was the black population themselves.
Long before the courts and prosecutors, federal and state, moved to pretend they would do something–the black population had beaten back the cowards of the KKK and taken justice for themselves.