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 14, 2007
Thursday, May 10, almost every gas station along a busy road in Detroit posted regular gasoline at $3.17 a gallon at 5 AM; $3.21 at 8 AM; and $3.32 at 11 AM. Los Angeles, Chicago and many other cities may be even higher, but give or take a day, give or take some dimes, it was the same story around the country. The gasoline thieves were on the move again.
They tell us it’s simply a problem of “supply and demand.” Too much demand, not enough supply. Too many motorists. Too little refinery capacity. Or so they say.
But guess who controls the supply, guess who decides how much refinery capacity there will be: those thieves, the five big oil trusts, ExxonMobil, BP-Amoco, Royal Dutch-Shell, Chevron, and Total. Together, they decide which oil fields will be worked and how much oil shipped. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria may own the oil fields, but the five big oil trusts are the ones who produce the oil, ship it, and refine it. They decide how much will come to market.
For 31 years, these five big oil trusts have not built a single refinery in this country. Not one. And neither have any of the smaller oil companies that trail along behind them. They are milking their old refineries for all they’re worth–and a lot more.
They don’t even put enough investment into maintaining the refineries. Just look at how often an oil company reports another serious accident, explosion or fire, often with deadly results. Two years ago, BP’s Texas City oil refinery killed 15 workers outright, and injured 500 more people in and around the plant.
No, the oil industry doesn’t invest in new refineries–they just run old ones into the ground, then close them. In 2004, there were 11 major refineries in this country, compared to 19 in 1993. And there were 103 fewer medium size refineries. So of course, capacity is tight. The big oil companies made it tight.
The oil companies aim to make more profit out of less production.
They’ve more than fulfilled their aim. In the five years running from 2002 through 2006, ExxonMobil itself admitted to making 143 billion dollars in profit–only to hand 85 billion dollars of that right over to wealthy investors in dividends and stock buy-backs.
This year, once again, as prices shot up, a proposal circulated for people not to buy gasoline on May 15. No matter who started it, and what role the internet played in spreading it, people in the workplaces began to pick it up and spread it on to each other.
It shows our anger with these prices. But it also shows our frustration. We can refuse to buy one day, but we still have to buy the next.
They have us by the throat. We have to get to work, to school, to the hospital, to the store. Most of us live in cities where it’s almost impossible to do those things without a car, that is, without gasoline.
We need something more than a symbolic, individualistic protest. We need to shake the oil companies until their teeth fall out.
The unions, which still represent many millions of workers, plus their families, could bring millions of people out in the streets. Organizations representing immigrants–whose lower wages make these gas prices even harder to deal with–could bring people out in the streets. Organizations representing the masses of the black population could do the same.
The oil companies won’t listen to pleading, or a one day protest. They understand only money and force. And working people have the forces to stop the oil companies’ money-making machine cold.
May 14, 2007
Since March, several Republican and Democratic Senators, along with representatives of the Bush administration, have been meeting almost every day behind closed doors to come up with a new immigration bill. Leaders of both parties are eager to pass a law as quickly as possible–they don’t want immigration to become an issue in the 2008 election campaign the way it was in 2006.
These politicians say they want to help honest, hard-working immigrants by giving them the opportunity to become citizens.
What a shameless lie! The proposed law is nothing but an attack on immigrant workers, and a quick glance at what has been leaked about the bill proves it.
To be able to work in the U.S. legally, undocumented immigrants would have to register and pay fines–which can amount to thousands of dollars. They would have to work in the U.S. for the following eight years to become eligible for permanent residency.
Eight years–that’s a long time, at the mercy of a boss, who at any time can fire an immigrant worker, ruining his or her chances of becoming a legal resident!
That would be a rotten enough deal already–but, that’s only the beginning.
For those who somehow have been able to overcome all the hurdles, here’s the last blow: they will have to go to the end of the line, behind the millions of people who have applied for U.S. citizenship in their countries, and will be granted citizenship based only on whatever quota the U.S. happens to have for their country!
In short, many, if not most of them, will end up working in the U.S. for their whole lives without full legal rights.
This is exactly why there is such a concerted, bipartisan effort behind this so-called “immigration reform.” Big Business wants “legal” immigration–that is, low-wage workers who are legal for bosses to hire, but who don’t have legal rights which they could use to try to improve their wages and working conditions.
This bill would treat today’s immigrant workers like those immigrants of three centuries ago: indentured slaves. Brought from Europe and forced to work for many years to pay off the huge sums they supposedly owed for the transport to the “New World,” most of them never saw the promised freedom because their indentures kept being extended under all kinds of pretenses.
Any law that legalizes the existence of one class of workers with fewer rights than others goes against the interests of all workers, because it makes it easier for bosses to lower everyone’s wages. All workers have to fight for full legal rights for everyone who works in this country–whether they had the permission of the bosses’ government to cross the border or not.
May 14, 2007
After a 15-million-dollar fire at a public library in Washington D.C. on April 30, the finger-pointing began. When fire fighters tried the two hydrants closest to the fire, they didn’t work. The third one they tried was a few blocks away.
Washington D.C. has about 9,000 fire hydrants. The authority responsible for the fire hydrants, D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA), says only 53 are currently broken. But reporters on the story pointed out that a firehouse in downtown D.C. had several fire hydrants listed as broken that were not on WASA’s list. Even if the figure of broken fire hydrants is only one or two%, it’s far too many when fires break out.
The head of the D.C. Fire Fighters Association was quoted after the fire:“With no maintenance for the last 10 or 15 years, sometimes when you go in and unscrew [the cap], it breaks.”
Four months ago, the D.C. council authorized a 26-million-dollar upgrade to replace 3500 of the city’s fire hydrants. But the problem didn’t begin four months ago. And it won’t end even if these 3500 hydrants are replaced. They still have to be maintained.
WASA doesn’t even have a computerized listing of all the fire hydrants. And there are only two WASA crews working on fire hydrants at any time.
The D.C. story underlines the decline in every type of public service.
There is work that needs doing. At the same time, Washington D.C. has a high unemployment rate. It’s obvious that public services could be maintained and improved. All it would take is the will to divert subsidies that go now to the wealthy, and put them to use repairing public services.
May 14, 2007
After a tornado destroyed practically all buildings in Greensburg, Kansas on May 4, it took two days for heavy machinery to arrive for the rescue effort.
Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius blamed it on the deployment of Kansas National Guard troops and equipment in Iraq: “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”
These are the same kind of words we heard after the Katrina disaster also. Are Democratic politicians like Sebelius, and Louisiana governor Blanco before her, right to blame the Republican Bush administration for letting down the victims of these disasters? Absolutely. But to refer to the Iraq War–a war the Democrats have supported, with every action they have taken, to this day–is the worst kind of cynicism, not to mention a complete evasion of responsibility.
With or without the National Guard, there are certainly enough construction companies that own bulldozers, cranes, etc., not to mention companies that build such equipment. Why can’t the government, at the federal or state level, commandeer them to help its tax-paying citizens struck by disaster? Why can’t the government plan ahead for such disasters, warn residents ahead of time, evacuate them in orderly fashion in buses, trains, etc., before disaster strikes? Why can’t it set up decent accommodations for the victims after the disaster?
We know the government is perfectly capable of organizing any or all of these things, because it is capable of deploying hundreds of thousands of soldiers, along with all kinds of heavy equipment, anywhere in the world and accommodate them. But all that is for war–so that U.S. Big Business can dominate the world and make more profit.
To do the same thing here in the interests of the population would require a government that puts the population ahead of profit. Neither party does.
May 14, 2007
The Senate voted to block the importation of drugs from Canada. The vote was 49-40. Fifteen Democrats voted with 33 Republicans and one independent to block the imports, on the pretext they were protecting the public from “unsafe” foreign drugs.
Unsafe? If anything, drugs from Canada are safer than in the U.S. since Canada controls such things more. In reality, many people have turned to buying prescription drugs from Canada, where they are safe and much cheaper.
This bill would not have done anything about the real cause of high drug prices–the fact that drugs are produced essentially only to make a profit–but it would have made some drugs cheaper, cutting into those profits slightly.
But even that, the Democrats wouldn’t do.
When it’s important for Democrats to vote in line–when they want to embarrass Bush, for example–they do it. But when it comes even just to stepping on Big Business’s toes to help the population–forget it.
May 14, 2007
Poor General Motors (GM) made first quarter profits of “only” 62 million dollars. Wall Street was upset because last year’s first quarter profits were 602 million.
What was the difference? GM’s finance unit, GMAC, lost big bucks on its gamble in the high-risk residential mortgage game.
Wall Street immediately cried for workers to make up the loss. “Without substantial labor concessions, meaningful improvements in profitability are unlikely,” said a Lehman Bros. analyst.
What? GM gambles in mortgages–but when they lose, workers are supposed to pay?
It’s doubly outrageous because workers paid the first time! Where did GM get the money it uses to wheel and deal in financial markets? Workers made cars and trucks, GM took them to sell and profit. GM then used some of the profits to gamble and speculate–after first taking good care of its executives and investors, of course–but never taking the same good care of the workers.
And yet GM’s entire empire, financial included, rests on the value of what it takes from the workers’ labor.
May 14, 2007
In Los Angeles, riot police attacked an immigrant rights May Day rally in MacArthur Park. Just as a couple of local television stations were setting up for a live report from the rally, in barreled the police, forcing reporters and their crew to flee at gun and club point. Several hundred cops from the elite Metro unit carried out a well coordinated and methodical attack, clubbing people and firing an estimated 200 rounds of “less than lethal” rubber bullets and bean bags.
The cops targeted anyone who happened to be in or around the park, demonstrators, terrified picnickers, families with children, elderly people, even people sitting in the restaurants on the edge of the park.
Immediately after the attack, the LAPD tried to deflect blame to a bunch of what they called “anarchists,” who, the LAPD said, had thrown rocks and bottles. But no one bought it, not with all those people who had been terrorized by the LAPD, suffered broken bones and nasty bruises and welts from police clubs and rubber bullets and bean bags.
So Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vowed to open up at least three investigations and punish those responsible. A few days later, Chief Bratton announced that he was demoting and reassigning Deputy Chief Cayler “Lee” Carter, the highest-ranking officer at the MacArthur Park cop riot, and reassigning the bureau’s No. 2, Commander Louis Gray. He also announced that many of the Metro unit cops would be taken off the streets for special “training.”
Thus, the LAPD and city officials went into their usual damage control mode, making a few token moves, while really stalling, buying time, trying to demobilize people.
Whether ordinary people let the LAPD and city officials get away with this is another question. A week after the May Day attack, the organizers of the May Day immigrant rights demonstrations announced a new demonstration for June 24.
The LAPD riot on May Day was an attack against all those who would demonstrate for their rights. It should end up provoking a much bigger outpouring on the streets on June 24.
May 14, 2007
On April 24, the Mexico City legislative assembly voted to permit women to have abortions up to the twelfth week of pregnancy, with it free at city health clinics, giving poor women access. At the same time, it decided to develop sex education and contraception. This only affects women living in the capital. The left wing parties predominate there, mainly the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) of Lopez Obrador, who last year strongly contested the conditions under which he was defeated by the right wing in the presidential election.
The other 31 Mexican states kept existing law, which permits abortion only in the case of rape, danger to the woman’s life or severe fetal defects. But, even in these very limited cases, abortion isn’t available for the poor, given the pressure of the Catholic church. So each year in Mexico there are almost a million underground abortions, which leads to tens of thousands of deaths. Well-off women can safely have an abortion either in a Mexican clinic or abroad.
A violent campaign was waged against the bill legalizing abortion in Mexico. Despite the existence of a sector of Catholics favorable to the liberalization of abortion, Mexican bishops brandished the threat of excommunication. Pope Benedict XVI, on the eve of his visit to a general conference of Latin American bishops in Mexico, backed them up. He railed against what he dared to call the “culture of death,” without any concern for the fate of all those women who die in horrible conditions due to underground abortions.
The right wing, in particular PAN (National Action Party) which controls the presidency of Mexico and numerous state governments, denounced “democracy in danger of death” and the “terrorism” of those who defend abortion, comparing them to Hitler. Reactionary organizations like Right to Life spread their lying views. They demand a nationwide referendum–what could appear more democratic?–which would permit them at the same time to isolate the capital, which is more advanced than the rest of the country, and to easily exercise their many means of pressure in local areas. They are now going to request that the Constitutional Court annul the law voted in Mexico City.
The Mexico City legislators had the courage to institute in their city what all women deserve: the right to decide whether or not to have a child. In the face of bigots and reactionaries of every stripe, let’s hope the law voted in Mexico City is extended to the entire country and to all of Latin America, where the influence of the Catholic Church remains strong and where the rights of women aren’t recognized at all, in particular that of freely choosing whether or not to have a child.
May 14, 2007
According to Save the Children, a U.S.-based humanitarian organization, Iraq has the fastest growing child mortality rate of any country in the world. In 2005, 122,000, or one in eight Iraqi children, died of disease or violence before age five. More than half these deaths were newborn babies in the first month of life.
Some of the deaths have come directly, from the shooting and the bombings in the war. But pneumonia, and diarrhea from the worsening health conditions, have been the major killers of children, especially infants. Since the beginning of the second Iraq war, conditions which were already bad have been getting progressively worse: electricity shortages, lack of water and insufficient clean water, deteriorating health services and lack of food have all contributed to the huge increase in deaths in children.
A study by Johns Hopkins University had already verified the unspeakable horrors that have rained on the Iraqi population, documenting the loss of more than 655,000 Iraqi lives resulting directly or indirectly from this war. This latest report only makes it clear how many of the victims in this war are babies and children, and it stands as another indictment of the U.S.
End this war now!
May 14, 2007
The following article is translated from an editorial in the newspaper Lutte Ouvri re (Workers Struggle), written by the French Trotskyist revolutionary group of the same name. It deals with the situation facing workers there after the recent French presidential elections.
The election of Nicolas Sarkozy means a government with social policies just like those of the previous government. For five years, the laboring people have faced some of the most reactionary and anti-worker policies in a long time.
The program of Segolene Royal would not have changed the fundamental problems, like the decline in purchasing power, unemployment and the disappearance of low-cost housing. Segolene Royal, if elected, might not have openly expressed the same arrogant attitude toward workers. Perhaps she would have been cautious about measures favoring the privileged in forms that were too provocative. But Royal had no desire to put the slightest limit on the absolute power of the big bosses. So, she would not have been able to respond to the most serious problems that today weigh upon the popular classes and a large part of society.
Sarkozy certainly will not change anything concerning these problems. And he may well further expand the problems affecting daily life. He has not hidden his intentions to do so.
For those needing a raise, he has responded by saying they will have to get up earlier and work more. To the homeless and inadequately housed, he will offer nothing, not even in words. The gutters will be just fine for them! Any economic growth he talks about is not for these people; instead it will be at their expense.
He wants to limit the right to strike, even forbid it if he is allowed to do so, beginning with workers in public services.
He has no plan to reduce unemployment. But he says he will go after those he calls the phony unemployed and the phony sick. By eliminating the social taxes on overtime hours, a measure he already announced, he will incite the bosses to work their personnel to death rather than to hire others.
Sarkozy announced he wants to reduce the number of public service workers, by replacing only one out of every two that retire. That will further disorganize these public services, worsen the situation in the hospitals, in national education and in public transportation.
He will continue the attacks on workers’ retirement, begun by his predecessors. In previous governments, the number of years required to work before retirement was increased to 37.5 years for workers in the private sector and to 40 years for those in public service. Sarkozy now wants to go after the last sectors of workers who have not yet been attacked, namely those with special retirement plans.
His whole policy is aimed at aiding the bourgeoisie, in particular the biggest ones, at the expense of the popular classes. He has programmed an additional five% reduction in corporate taxes, a ceiling of 50% tax on the richest people and a reduction in inheritance tax.
But working people don’t need to feel upset, because this election is not a catastrophe. Even if Segolene Royal had been elected, we would have had to struggle, to begin serious and determined struggles, if thing were going to change a little for us. With Sarkozy, the fights will have to be the same, just as determined, that’s all.
Everything depends on working people, on our consciousness that a ballot box is just a piece of paper and that only struggles can bring results. The main struggles that have taken place over the last dozen years have been during times when the right was in power.
So, do not let ourselves be beaten down. The future of society and of social progress depends on the workers. It is in our hands. Everything depends on all of us!
May 14, 2007
On May 1, the leader of Venezuela announced he was breaking with the IMF and the World Bank. He said the oil fields would be re-nationalized in the Orinoco region. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez showed his desire to take control of what his predecessors sold off cheaply to foreign oil companies.
Chavez described the IMF and the World Bank as “mechanisms of imperialism designed to exploit the poor countries.” Yes, they certainly are. IMF loans, usually accompanied by austerity plans for the population of the recipient countries, generate huge interest payments, forcing recipients to pay back several times what they were loaned. This break with the IMF has its limits, however. First Chavez paid back the entire 3.3 billion dollars that Venezuela owed the IMF. The countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador just did the same thing.
And why did these countries pay back their loans? They propose to set up their own regional lending bank, the Bank of the South, this coming June. Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil could very well play on a regional level the role that the IMF plays with respect to them. These countries have 200 billion dollars in financial reserves, half invested in U.S. treasury bonds. But they have their differences. Brazil says a Bank of the South should imitate the World Bank by supporting development projects, while Argentina and Venezuela prefer that it be like the IMF, a lender in the region.
In any case, this regional bank would, like other institutions such as Mercosur, the regional common market, create a counterweight to the economic pressures these countries face from the United States.
The Latin American states have found a perfect moment for this move, since the U.S. is mainly preoccupied with the war in Iraq. The U.S. has failed in its attempt to establish a common market of the Americas, reaching from Canada to the southern tip of South America, a market in which the U.S. would be the main beneficiary.
After his declaration against the IMF, Chavez sent in the army and industry workers to occupy the oil fields of the Orinoco region. Symbolically, the flag of the Venezuela oil company PDVSA was raised. Since 2005, PDVSA has owned 51% of the stock of the different oil companies throughout Venezuela. The Orinoco is the last oil sector where foreign companies are still dominant, because they alone have the technical means to refine oil from the especially heavy crude of the region. The Orinoco is important because, according to experts, it may contain the largest reserve of oil and gas in the world, more even than Saudi Arabia.
The media circus in Orinoco is meant to aid Venezuela’s renegotiation of oil contracts in effect with the foreign companies. Two oil companies say they will abandon the Orinoco. But eleven others, particularly Chevron and Total, have accepted a reduction in their share of ownership in order to maintain a foothold in this very promising region. In this way, Chavez gains their technical assistance to continue to extract oil from the Orinoco region. The U.S. oil companies are quite conciliatory since Venezuela remains one of the main oil suppliers to the U.S.
Chavez showed he intends to hold his course, putting forth the rights of the Venezuela state, that is, of the Venezuela bourgeoisie, to control the resources of the country. This attitude permits him to reinvest a part of the oil windfall in social programs that benefit the poor population. In Latin America, this is rather an exception to the rule. But it hasn’t changed the underlying exploitation of the laboring population in Venezuela.
May 14, 2007
In 2006, top UAW leaders signed a secret agreement with Chrysler for the Belvidere Assembly Plant. To start a new shift to produce its new Caliber auto, Chrysler would be allowed to use up to 2000 temporary workers for up to two years. These workers would never be allowed to gain the rights of permanent workers. They could be fired at any time for any reason, without recourse.
It was bad enough that the auto workers’ union leaders agreed that the company could have a large force of unprotected workers to use to undermine established job standards and conditions. But this deal was kept secret from everyone–even from the temporary workers who were hired!
New workers were put through orientation as if they were becoming regular full-timers. Many left other regular jobs to be able to have a “good job” at Chrysler. Only on the day they were to start–or in some cases, after they had already gone to work–did Chrysler’s personnel department bring out the employment contract for them to sign. Surprise! You’re only temporary!
The newly hired workers cried “Fraud!” loud and long. Only then were they shown the 2006 local contract–“Yes, we agreed Chrysler could do this.”
Some of the temps organized, went to talk to other UAW workers, tried to find out what they could do. Eventually the workers decided to sue Chrysler for fraud.
The courts have never been known to take the workers’ side. But the legal documents being filed are very revealing.
As the workers’ lawyer states in one brief: “The UAW ... in combination with Chrysler, tricked them into taking worthless and demeaning temporary jobs ... (they are) victims of a deceptive “bait and switch” scheme.”
The last three decades of UAW history is loaded with unethical conduct by top leaders toward the workers. Rushed votes under phony deadlines. Contracts that are broken in the middle to degrade pensions and reduce wages. Secret deals to reduce medical coverage and available medical plans. “Shelf agreements” that sell out the next generation of workers, introducing two-tier and three-tier wages and benefits. Secret letters that commit local units to worsening work rules and on-the-job conditions without the consent of those locals. Contracts which have “to be resolved later by committee” clauses–a way to impose, for example, much stricter attendance policies without allowing workers to vote on the issue!
All this and more. It’s a direct outcome of the policy of “cooperation” that union leaders have pushed for, from 1980 on. UAW leaders say that the company has to do well before the workers can do well. If a company claims to be broke, the union’s policy is to help the company increase the profits it takes from the workers’ labor.
Belvidere shows where this leads–to a union acting 100% in the company’s interest, zero% in the workers’ interests.
Now that some Belvidere workers have stood up and challenged this fraud and exposed it in court, the leaders of both union and company will of course be more careful in the future. But if their attitude remains one of “cooperation,” of helping the company become ever wealthier before workers can have even the smallest crumb, then their carefulness will only be that of a thief, better covering his tracks.
Auto workers have a new contract coming up in September. The Belvidere case and the others like it stand as an enormous warning. No contract can be approved unless the membership has full details–every word–in their hands, and time enough to study it carefully and discuss it thoroughly.
As they say: Vote no until you know–and when you know, you will vote No!
May 14, 2007
On May 17, Mumia Abu-Jamal once again comes into court petitioning for a new trial from the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
Abu-Jamal has been on death row ever since he was arrested and framed-up for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. The signs that he was being framed-up have been well-known since Abu-Jamal was first arrested. A Black Panther member in his youth, Abu-Jamal was a radio personality at the time of his arrest. He was, as the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, “an eloquent activist not afraid to raise his voice.” He was known as the “voice of the voiceless” for his radio program where he regularly exposed police brutality and other misconduct against the black population.
It is undisputed that Abu-Jamal tried to intervene on the night the police stopped his brother’s car and beat his brother on the street, but there was no physical evidence introduced at his trial that showed Abu-Jamal was involved in the shooting. As a part-time cab driver he carried a legally registered gun–but there was no evidence his gun delivered the bullets that left police officer Daniel Faulkner dead and Abu-Jamal himself wounded.
Abu-Jamal was denied the right to represent himself in court. The reluctant, incompetent lawyer who was assigned to represent him was allowed only $150 to interview witnesses. He was later disbarred, and has since filed a affidavit in support of Abu-Jamal, detailing his own errors in representing him.
Abu-Jamal was prosecuted by a District Attorney who was later reprimanded for withholding evidence in another trial.
Judge Sabo, who presided at Abu-Jamal’s trial, was a life member of the Fraternal Order of Police. He removed all black jurors but one from Abu-Jamal’s jury. By 1995, he had sentenced more men to death (31) than any other sitting judge in the country. All but two of these men were black. At the time of a post-conviction hearing for Abu-Jamal, Sabo was heard to comment that he was “going to help ‘em fry the nigger.”
Abu-Jamal was legally lynched for his uncompromising opposition to racism and police brutality. The only reason his death sentence has not been carried out is because his lynching has been opposed and protested by millions of people all over the world. He has written several books while in prison, the latest of which is “We Want Freedom,” a tribute to the Black Panther Party. In asking for a new trial on May 17, Abu-Jamal and his lawyers will be supported in briefs filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Free Abu-Jamal!
May 14, 2007
The Innocence Project announced that the 200th person falsely imprisoned has been exonerated because of DNA evidence. He is Jerry Miller, who spent 25 years in prison for rape, robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated battery. Now 48, he spent more than half his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He was home watching TV when the attack occurred. A spokesman for the Cook County, Illinois state’s attorney had the nerve to say it was “a good example of what the DNA unit was intended to do.” But the first exoneration for DNA occurred in 1989. He was kept in prison an additional 18 years when the evidence existed all along to free him!
His case is very much like all those others finally released. The average time spent in prison of those acquitted from the work of this project was 12 years. Sixty% had spent at least a third of their lives in prison. Yet none of the district attorneys, politicians and judges have gone to prison for stealing all these years of innocent life.
In this racist society, it’s not a surprise that 62% of those freed as innocent are black. And 88% of those freed were convicted of sexual assault, exactly the crime that this society has consistently falsely accused black men of since the days of slavery.
We are told no one can be convicted unless they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But the evidence used against 77% of those convicted was at least in part due to wrong eye-witness identification. And despite the wizardry of CSI on television, 65% were convicted due to fraudulent, unreliable or limited forensic science. But the science is no better than the system in which it is carried out. When state-employed scientists and technicians are so often willing to engage in fraud to convict the innocent, even so-called scientific evidence can’t be trusted.
A quarter of those convicted were in prison due to forced untrue confessions. A third of these were 18 or younger or were mentally handicapped. It isn’t known how many of these men confessed due to torture, but obviously all were put under a great deal of pressure to make them confess to something they didn’t do.
Further, 15% were convicted at least in part on the basis of paid “informers.” The courts continue to falsely convict people on the basis of manipulation by the police and jailers, who pay and offer rewards for what they often know is false information.
Some 2.2 million people languish in U.S. prisons and jails, most condemned because of poverty, lack of prospects and the absence of jobs. There are more people behind bars in the U.S. than in any other country. China, which has four times the U.S. population, imprisons 1.5 million, less than are imprisoned here. Russia has 870,000 in prison.
In the U.S., not only are people imprisoned for the crime of growing up poor and being shunted aside by the system, but an undetermined–and large–number didn’t even do the crime they were accused of.
Justice? Is that what they call it?