Power to the People

Strike Anywhere - To the World

2009-06-04T10:09:00.004-04:00

Strike Anywhere is a political band, with lyrics touching on such issues as police brutality, anti-capitalism, women's rights, animal rights, and globalization. They have also contributed tracks to political benefit albums, such as a live version of "Sunset on 32nd" for 1157 Wheeler Avenue: A Memorial for Amadou Diallo and "To the World" for the Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1 album. According to the liner notes for their album Change is a Sound, they support "the vegetarian lifestyle, the living wage movement and the fight against corporate globalization". With its 2006 release Dead FM, the band moved away from political slogans to address "more sociological ideas about why these (events) happen".

I got put on to them, even though, i'm not a punk fan, i bang with this song "To the World".

Look how the ruts cling to my footsteps
the fatal invisible tool
by which we define (we fight!) for our approval
and fear our removal from the safety of fools

From the tidal forces of our positions
not won (not one!) to take for granted
are our rebel hymns in canted
to sing in the mines of the fortunate sons?

Brothers in spirit, sisters in rage,
will we live out our lives in this concrete cage?
another heartbeat lost, another police murder
buried in the public eyes on the back page.
heartbeat lost in a new world order
hobbled and bound but still walking away

I pledge allegiance to the world
nothing more, nothing less than my humanity
I pledge allegiance to the world
searching for vision not invisibility
I pledge allegiance to the world
searching for vision not invisibility
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
none of us are free...

We fight to balance our minds
petty powers pushing profits over our lifetimes
world leaders mortgaging our lives with words
I don't need to be reminded of whom you really serve.

Brothers in spirit, sisters in rage,
will we live out our lives in this concrete cage?
another heartbeat lost, another police murder
buried in the public eyes on the back page.
{Too many} heartbeats lost in the new world order
{while we're} standing alone with our backs to the maze

I pledge allegiance to the world
nothing more, nothing less than my humanity
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
I pledge allegiance to the world
for nothing more, nothing less

In justice, in hunger united
searching for vision united
in justice, in hunger united
law and order {but} for whose order?

I pledge allegiance to the world
nothing more, nothing less than my humanity
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
I pledge allegiance to the world
under no nation will we ever be
I pledge allegiance to the world
for nothing more, nothing less
than my humanity, than my humanity, than my humanity (pledge allegiance!)
to our humanity, to our humanity, to our humanity (to the world!)

Mohawks march on border in protest of arming guards

2009-06-01T09:32:00.001-04:00

Mohawks march on border in protest of arming guards
Posted By Michael Peeling

Hundreds of Mohawks marched across the Seaway International Bridge into Canada from the U. S. on Saturday to protest a plan to arm border guards.

And things are taking a more ominous tone as the protesters claim they'll evict the federal government if necessary over the controversial issue.

The "unity rally," organized by the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, started with residents of the First Nation - which straddles the borders of Ontario, Quebec and New York State - being bused from a tent set up beside the Canada Customs and Immigration office on Cornwall Island (known in Mohawk as Kawehnoke) into the U. S.

The tent is the staging ground for a month-long protest, which began on May 1, of the arming of Canadian Border Services Agency officers across the country on June 1, but particularly at the Cornwall Island crossing.

The protesters returned on foot led by Grand Chief Tim Thompson. They walked over the southern span of the bridge to the island behind a large banner reading "No Guns!" and chanting, "End the occupation of Akwesasne."

Once the throng reached the yellow line indicating the border, they halted briefly before walking unchecked by CBSA officials into Canada. Many of the marchers made a circuit back around the customs and immigration building to stop by the checkpoint booths and office windows, where they chant, with signs reading: "The consequence of arming is eviction" against the windows and knock on the glass.

Photo Gallery

ZACF Analysis of the 2009 South African National and Provincial Elections

2009-05-16T22:52:00.000-04:00

The following analysis was presented by a member of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) at the Khanya College organised Seminar on the 2009 Election Results, held in Johannesburg on Sunday 10 May 2009. The topic of the seminar was “What do the 2009 Election results mean for the South African working class?”.

There were speakers from the following organisations present:

Bolshevik Study Circles & Che Guevara Film Club, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), Soweto Concerned Residents (S.C.R–A.P.F), NKUZI – Fieldworker of Farmworkers' Programme and Kathorus Concerned Residents (KCR)

It should be noted that - owing to the constraints of time allocated for this presentation - this is by no means a complete analysis of the 2009 elections, and what the ANC victory and Zuma administration means for the poor and working class of the region. It serves only to raise some of what we believe to be important issues for consideration going forward.

We've been hearing so much about Zuma. Zuma is great or Zuma is terrible. A hero or a criminal. A socialist or a 'moderate'. The election seems to have been all about Zuma, Zille and perhaps a few other dominant personalities.

What does it mean for the poor and working class that this election - supposed to be a key election - is discussed so much in terms of personalities? Not just in the media: this is how many many people have been thinking of it, since years before the election date.

Let's look at the role of Cosatu, the countries largest working class organisation. Cosatu’s support for Zuma clearly shows the ideological bankruptcy of its leadership. Since his victory at Polokwane Zuma has, time and again, assured the international capitalist class that economic policy will not change under his administration, and that the country - under the direction of a Zuma-led ANC government - will remain committed to the neoliberal capitalist policies of his predecessors. Despite suggestions from the capitalist media that Zuma is a socialist, and Cosatu’s and the SACP’s blind acceptance thereof, Zuma is a fully-fledged neoliberal capitalist. Since the ANC’s electoral victory the Rand has been getting stronger, and it strengthened when the charges against Zuma were dropped. This shows that Zuma’s efforts to ensure global capitalists that the economy would not change under his leadership were not in vein; the international ruling class does not see Zuma as a socialist, or as anything but a neoliberal. This only goes to show, once again, the ideological bankruptcy of the Cosatu and SACP leadership; that they do not even know what socialism, or a socialist, is.

It shows the idealistic and individualistic analysis of the ANC’s alliance partners that, with Thabo Mbeki having been replaced by the less autocratic Jacob Zuma, there will be more opportunity for the Cosatu and SACP leadership to influence decision-making and have a say on policy matters. As Zuma said during his inaugural speech, it was a “moment of renewal”. To the post-Polokwane victors, who are now lining up to loot state coffers, it is inconsequential that the bourgeois and capitalist aims of the ANC undoubtedly go back to the founding in 1912, and have never changed – except that it became neoliberal, because neoliberalism is the dominant form of capitalism today. Even this didn't just happen in 1996: the RDP was full of neoliberal elements. And the move to neoliberalism was supported by the entire ANC leadership, notably including Zuma.

So what does it mean that, firstly, these elections were fought on the grounds of personalities instead of policies and, secondly, that Jacob Zuma emerged the victor?

The fact that these elections were waged primarily between personalities shows us just how little the various parties contesting elections, and particularly the main parties, differ in their policies. All of the parties involved represent the same class interest of the ANC, and it is therefore futile to campaign on policy when the policies of one party are almost the same as those of the next. Each and every one of the major parties, and the majority of the smaller and insignificant parties - which are now starting to disappear - support GEAR and the neoliberal policies currently in place. Some, such as the DA, might like to fast-track privatisation and so on, but none are in and way whatsoever against capitalism.

And yet a large proportion of the working class have fallen for this idea that Zuma will change things. Because he is more approachable and down-to-earth than Mbeki, people want to think that he'll do things differently, in a way that matters. But we know he doesn't want to; and he probably couldn't do much even if he did want to.

The global economy is currently in its worst crisis since the 1930s. Millions of jobs have been lost worldwide, including hundreds of thousands in South Africa, and many many more retrenchments are expected, as well as short-timing and so on. The Zuma administration is unfortunate in that it is taking over the reigns of power at a time when, because of the crisis, it will be very hard to deliver. Banks and corporations are trying to recover money lost or maintain profits, which means more exploitation for workers. Likewise states are cutting back on social spending, which means even less service delivery. The economic crisis is therefore going to make it hard for Zuma to live up to his promises - if he really wanted to - but it also provides him with an excuse. At the end of his term, he can just turn around and say that it was the economic crisis, which is out of his administrations control, which prevented them from meeting their goals; and convince the electorate to give him another term in the presidency to try again. In the meantime it is the working class and poor who will be paying, some with their jobs or their lives, for the bosses’ crisis.

In this context, one of the first things we can expect from the Zuma administration is that they will start making a hype about 2010 like never before. They will make a fuss about all the jobs that are being created, and how good it will be for the economy. Workers will work around the clock in dangerous conditions to ensure that the stadiums are completed in time, and then what? Thousands of tourists will come from overseas to watch Bafana Bafana get knocked out in the first round; everyone will go home; and all the jobs that were created will be gone. The government will have, in the meantime, spent millions and millions of Rands on the short-lived World Cup instead of investing in sustainable job creation and service delivery. We need to work to expose this and, amongst other things, to campaign for the jobs created by 2010 to be permanent, which means we need to build working class militancy.

With Zuma as the figurehead of the anti-Mbeki campaign working class militancy has taken a backward step, the youth - amongst others - duped by the pseudo-militancy of the likes of Julius Malema, as many people who associated lack of service delivery with the Mbeki administration have taken up the campaign to oust him and get Zuma into power. Even the social movements have lost support to the Zuma cult, which has served to expropriate and tame working class militancy by drawing people into the battle between personalities instead of to the collective struggle, on a day-to-day basis, for a better life.

When it becomes clear for all to see that Zuma and his administration are not delivering, and that they are in fact both unable and unwilling to deliver, we hope that there will be a resurgence of working class militancy, and we hope that this will be a genuinely class conscious and revolutionary militancy.

But how many people’s lives will have been adversely effected by the neoliberal economic policies and chauvinistic attitude of the Zuma administration by the time it has shown itself incapable of and uninterested in providing a better life for all? How many more workers will have lost their jobs because of the economic crisis; how many more homosexuals and immigrants will have been killed; and how many more women raped?

We know that Zuma is a chauvinistic, neoliberal patriarch, and his ascendancy to power does not bode well for women, immigrants, homosexuals or the working class in general.

We need to make clear demands on the Zuma administration, especially in light of the current economic crisis. We must demand a halt to retrenchments, and support organisations such as Cosatu when they make such demands; although we can also advise that more militant strategies and tactics will be necessary to win such demands.
We need to continue to try to build the social movements by campaigning for service delivery, to hold the government accountable and to pressurise Zuma to make good on his promises. We must work to expose the homophobic, anti-women and anti-working class and poor character of the new administration.

The social movements, as with the class as a whole, have taken a knock because of the idea that any one individual in power, any leader, can change things for the better. Personality cults, such as that around Zuma, exist in the social movements too, and they must be resisted. It is the ideology of the ruling class, of opportunists and of authoritarians that any one individual leader - or a group of leaders - can improve the conditions of the working class and poor. Personality and leadership cults are built in order to keep people away from taking matters into their own hands, away from collective struggle and mass direct action. And this is exactly what this election, and all other elections, have been about: keeping people away from collective struggle by convincing them that, by marking an ‘x’ on a piece of paper every 5 years; by voting for a party or personality they are contributing to the political life of the country and the betterment of the class.

We anarchists have always rejected this ideology of the ruling class, because we know that working class emancipation does not come from voting for people to govern on our behalf, be it at national or local level. It comes from the self-management and democratic mass direct action of the class in struggle. Only the working class can free itself.

Nearly all the core social movements in South Africa took a boycott position in respect to the recent elections. We believe this to be the correct position, and we have consistently argued for it, and will continue to do so in the lead-up to the 2011 local elections.

Our job now is to consistently speak out against the anti-poor and anti-working class policies of the Zuma administration, push for direct action as opposed to electioneering and class collaboration, support all progressive demands and movements and consistently work towards building social movements and independent trade unionism.

Sooner or later people will see that Zuma deceived them. By exposing the contradictions between what Zuma says to the working class and poor, and what he says to and does for the ruling class, we can help this to happen sooner rather than later. We need to work now to strengthen the social movements and independent trade unions by means of direct action in order to provide a pole of attraction for working class militancy for when the Zuma honeymoon period eventually comes to an end, so that this militancy is not re-channeled into either the reformist direction of supporting another party-political or personality cult, nor into a more dangerous direction.

Neither Zuma, nor Zille, nor anyone else can deliver to the poor and working class. We must take.

“The Zimbabwean” hits home with worthless wallpaper

2009-05-04T10:16:00.002-04:00

An outdoor campaign for The Zimbabwean, a free newspaper for the Zimbabwean diaspora, makes a devastating (and need we say remarkably cost-effective) critique on the economic destruction Mugabe has wrought on Zimbabwe.

This is a fantastic, fresh-thinking ad. In these cash-strapped times it’s easy to forget that sometimes the communications with the most impact are the cheapest to produce.

The ad was featured on Creativity Online, a journal for creative branding communications.

To see more pictures, visit The Zimbabwean’s Flickr photostream.

from Afrodissident

Trafficking In Nigerian Girls - The Business Exposed

2009-04-29T13:18:00.001-04:00

Women trafficking from Nigeria is well organized. A Nigerian-based female called "Mama" or "Madam" plays a key role in recruiting and persuading young women to leave their Nigeria for Italy. Young women as young as 14 years are often enticed with the offer to work or study abroad, by physical threats or payments made to her family. Afterwards the deal is done. She is sold into slavery and forced to embark on a very long treacherous journey by land and sea to the ultimate destination, Italy. Before departing Nigeria they are made to swear oaths of secrecy to hold every information in confidentiality. However, on their way, the girls undergo many initiation rites including repeated gang-rapes, forced oral and anal sex, drug and sex orgies, etc to test their will to survive. Those who couldn't make it through the brutal rituals are sent back.

There are three levels of organization in the trafficking of Nigerian women and girls: A "Madam" living in Nigeria; the Nigerian "Madam" living in Italy; and the third, the "messengers," the persons transferring the money from Italy to Nigeria.

In another style of recruitment, prostitution is hidden by women claiming they are in well-paying jobs and need assistance to handle the volume of business. They make friends with unsuspecting young girls and shower them with lavish gifts. The girls are then gradually introduced into such business as hostesses, out-call prostitutes, club dancers, beauticians, masseuses, strippers, pornographic video actresses, entertainers, etc. Women in these positions are frequently trafficked. Since many of the girls are already in similar circumstances in Nigeria taking it abroad, for them, is not a problem. Some of them are aware of what they are going to do in Italy; some are intentionally deceived with prospects of an artistic career as dancers or actresses.

Nigerian girls are contracted in the suburbs of cities, such as Lagos or Benin City, and in the countryside in the south and east. Madams act as "go-betweens" for girls and women and the traffickers. Money is sent to the madam to pay the debt to the traffickers and to the girls’ families.

The trafficking of women to Europe is now a well-known phenomenon in Edo state. Many women therefore know they are likely to work as prostitutes if they agree to travel to Europe. However, they may have little understanding of the conditions under which they will work and of the size of the debt they will incur.

In anticipation of leaving Nigeria and helping one's family out of poverty, it is tempting for these women to believe in promises about good jobs. Whether this means being duped, or deceiving one's self, is not obvious. Importantly, the fact that the women may have known, or ought to have understood, that they would have to work as prostitutes does not excuse or legitimate subsequent abuse.

The women are particularly easily controlled because they and their families are forced to pay back huge debts to the trafficking organization for the cost of their trip and related expenses. It can take several years to pay off these debts.

Debts for travel are supposed to be paid off in 6 months, but in the majority of the cases after three or four years, the girls are still in prostitution to pay back the debt they owe.

A Nigerian madam, or "Mama," supervises and controls the women and girls. She organizes their activities and collects their profits in Italy. The women physically and psychologically fear the "Mama."

Very few of the women trafficked to Italy wish to return to their country of origin. Some say there are no opportunities there. Some fear reprisals from the traffickers, and others are ashamed to return without being able to show that they have been successful abroad. Unfortunately, some of them die in the process and never realize that goal.

http://www.imoonline.org/women.htm

Free Abdi Wali Muse: Free the real pirates!

2009-04-26T21:12:00.000-04:00

Free Abdi Wali Muse!

Jail the real pirates!

Nyabinga Dzimbahwe

Published Apr 23, 2009

The U.S. government is promoting lynch mob fervor against 15-year-old Abdi Wli Muse.

The stories about so-called “pirates” seizing ships off the coast of Somalia that have peppered the international imperialist media for at least the past year or two became center stage with the April 8 seizure of a ship filled with U.S. sailors called Maersk Alabama. Now with the determination of the U.S. government to try 15-year-old Abdi Wali Muse as an adult after having murdered his other three companions with sniper fire after they had apparently surrendered, a lynch mob fervor inside the U.S. is being mobilized.

However, the question that anyone who knows the history of the U.S. in the East Africa region — or anywhere else in the world, for that matter — has to ask is, “Who are the real pirates?”

The reality is that the Africans being characterized as pirates are mostly fisherman being starved by imperialism’s actions of real piracy. The waters in that region are being overfished by European and Asian companies who steal more than $300 million worth of fish from Somalia’s waters every year. On top of that, European companies have been using Somalia’s waters as a dumping ground for deadly toxic waste that they wouldn’t have anywhere near their own shores for the past two decades.

U.S. and European piracy in Somalia is longstanding

But the U.S. and Europe’s piracy in Somalia began long before the overfishing and toxic dumping became known. The reality is that the Somalia, which is also called the Horn of Africa, plays an important role for the U.S. and Europe’s looting of oil wealth in the region. They used to have a lot of problems stealing that oil so they cut a ditch called the Suez Canal to divide that area of Africa and facilitate ships carrying this stolen wealth getting to Europe.

However, large oil tankers can’t get through the Suez Canal, so they have to go around the Horn of Africa. This has made Somalia of serious geo-political significance for the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. was intervening in Somalia during its struggle with the Soviet Union for geo-political influence.

The Soviets then had a relationship with Said Barre who was in power in Somalia. However, when the Soviet Union developed a relationship with the government that went into power in Ethiopia in coup d’état in 1974, its relationship with Barre soured. This is because of conflicts between the Ethiopian and Somalian states as a result of the artificial borders carved into Africa by Europe for its own interests.

Said Barre then developed a relationship with the U.S. However, when Barre’s despotic regime was chased out of power in 1991, it created a problem for the U.S. The U.S. imperialists started manipulating the situation in Somalia. The forces who overthrew Barre were united by their opposition to Barre’s terrible regime, but with him out of power their basis of unity was gone. There began a struggle for power using U.S. arms and what was left of Soviet arms in the country.

During the time that the U.S.-supported Barre regime was in power the U.S. had him hand over two-thirds of Somalia to U.S. oil companies. So former U.S. president George Herbert Walker Bush initiated a military intervention in Somalia in the 1992 as a lame duck president to protect the U.S. control over what has been described as a “valley of oil” underneath Somalia. In fact, the Conoco oil corporation’s compound in Mogadishu was used as the U.S. government’s headquarters when U.S. Marines landed there.

It was during this vicious military operation to secure the U.S. piracy efforts in Somalia that the events falsely characterized in the Hollywood movie Black Hawk Down occurred. It was during this period that the U.S. was bombing hospitals and residential centers in Somalia in order to facilitate stealing the oil there.

Fisherman from Somalia demand end to imperialist piracy

So now Africans who have been victims of U.S. and European imposed poverty and starvation are now being characterized as pirates. The reality is that in the face of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, skin infections and abdominal hemorrhages resulting from Europe’s deadly toxic dumping — added to severely depleted food supply from the theft of about $300 million of fish per year from Somalia’s waters — African fisherman from Somalia began using speedboats to intercept the U.S., European and Asian pirates to convince them to stop dumping the toxic waste and stealing the food supply of the African people or charge them for compensation.

One fisherman, Sugule Ali, stated, “We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas."

Obama uses Somalia situation as easy political target

The U.S. intervention in Somalia was clearly a political tactic used by neocolonial U.S. president Barack Obama to silence those who have called him too soft militarily. From the moment it was said in the media that U.S. sailors were on the Maersk Alabama ship, it became an opportunity to show his willingness to kill for U.S. imperialism to those who doubted him.

Unlike the quagmires the U.S. has been caught up in both in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Bush regime’s invasions, these four Africans on a lifeboat in the middle of the Indian Ocean served as easy targets wiping out with three quick sniper shots any question of Obama’s ability to kill colonized people for U.S. imperialist interests.

Hands off Abdi Wali Muse

U.S. courts have determined that it doesn’t matter that the young African who surrendered to the U.S. troops is only 15 years old. They will treat him as an adult.

The reality is that young Abdi Wali Muse is not unlike any other young African held in the U.S. prison system. He has no humanity in the eyes of his oppressor. If U.S. imperialism has its way, he will spend the rest of his young life joining the 1.5 million other African people held in U.S. prisons.

His imprisonment has nothing to do with any criminality. The fact is that the law is nothing but the opinion of the ruling class that has the ability to enforce its will by force. His only crime is that he dared to challenge U.S. imperialism’s ability to steal Africa’s resources.

We must demand that this process where the thieves put the victims on trial for piracy end. It is the U.S. and European governments that must be put on trial for theft of African resources and false imprisonment of not only Abdi Wali Muse, but the millions of Africans held in prisons or tied to prison systems in the U.S. and Europe.

Free Abdi Wali Muse! Jail the Real Pirates!

Uhuru!

The first independent union in Egypt?

2009-04-23T12:46:00.001-04:00

An Historical day for the Egyptian Workers' Movement More than 300 representatives of the Real Estate Tax Authority Union's (RETA) General Assembly, containing 270,068 (twenty seven thousands and sixty eight) members, have gathered today at the Ministry of Manpower in Cairo to submit their application for the first independent union in Egypt.

RETA employees decided after their successful strike in December 2007 to establish their independent union. In December 20th 2008, more than 3,000 employees had convened at the press syndicate in Cairo to announce their independent union.

All RETA members, over the last four months, were involved in direct and free elections to elect the members of the RETA general constituency and governorate constituencies, which turned out to be 27 constituencies representing 27 governorates.

The RETA Union has also laid the groundwork for the basic organizational statute, formulated in accordance with international standards.

CTUWS calls upon the international unions and labor organizations to support RETA employees for setting up their independent union, which is a basic granted right as stated in international treaties ratified by the Egyptian Government.

Zambian mine lays off 1,300 staff

2009-04-19T12:52:00.002-04:00

Zambia's biggest copper mining company, Konkola Copper Mines, has laid off 1,300 workers as it struggles with a fall in both demand and copper prices.

The redundancies represent about 10% of the company's entire workforce.

Konkola said it was embarking on a programme to streamline operations and increase labour productivity in response to falling copper prices.

Many of Zambia's mining companies have been forced to make dramatic job cuts during the global economic downturn.

Price slump

Last month, the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia said about 8,200 jobs had been lost in the sector since December last year.

Copper accounts for a large proportion of Zambia's exports.

The price of copper has fallen dramatically since the summer of last year, when it stood at almost $8,000 (£5,500) a tonne.

By the end of the year, it had dropped to just over $2,800 a tonne.

The price now stands at more than $4,500 a tonne after a major stimulus package in China, the world's biggest consumer of copper, raised hopes that demand for the metal would increase.

More recently, the price has jumped on reports that China is rebuilding its state reserves of the metal, according to Mark Elliot at Fairfax Investment Bank.

But Mr Elliot says the price if copper is notoriously volatile and could slip back if confidence in global demand takes another hit.

Zambia: Zulawu Urges Unions to Be Unanimous On Review of Act

2009-04-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

THE Zambia United Local Authorities Workers Union (ZULAWU) has called on all labour unions to unite in ensuring that the law relating to the minimum wage is reviewed to match the current trends.

ZULAWU general secretary Noah Kalangu said in an interview in Ndola yesterday that there was need to intensify efforts aimed at ensuring that the law governing the minimum wage was reviewed.

He said council workers, who played a vital role in country's development process, were the most affected because their salaries were very low.

"Some council workers are still being paid less than K260,000, which is the statutory stipulated minimum wage," he said.

Mr Kalangu said it was sad that the people still expected councils to be efficient in the service delivery when many workers were still being paid what he called peanuts.

"I have just completed a tour of North-Western province and I came across some workers in some rural councils such as Chavuma and Mwinilunga where some permanent employees still get as little as K150,000 and K250,000," he said.

He observed that the immediate review of the minimum wage would help to narrow the gap between the most affected workers in the councils and some chief officers who were getting as much as K5 million.

"As long as the council workers remain exploited as far as getting living wages is concerned it will remain difficult for the country to attain the much-needed development," he stated.

Zabalaza No. 10 Now Available Online

2009-04-12T20:45:00.001-04:00

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) is pleased to announce that issue number 10 of our organ Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism is now available online.

In this issue:

Southern Africa

Editorial by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)
Unite Against the Minority, Then Unite Against the Majority? (Zambia) by Malele D. Phirii, Zambia
The Jacob Zuma Cargo Cult and the “Implosion” of Alliance Politics (South Africa) by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
A Bitter Taste to the Sugarcane (Swaziland) by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
Four Tools for Community Control – Part I: “Mutual Aid” (Southern Africa) by Stefanie Knoll (ZACF)
Zimbabwe’s Party-Political Stitch-Up - How the Zanu-PF/MDC Deal Ignored Civil Society by Jonathan P. (ZACF)

Africa

The Anarchist Movement in North Africa: 1877 - 1951 by Michael Schmidt (ZACF) & Lucien van der Walt
Socialists and Gaullists Haunted by the Ghosts of Genocide (Rwanda) by Guillaume Davranche (Alternative Libertaire), France

International

Jalan Journal: A New Asian Anarchist Voice is Born with introduction by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
30th Congress of the National Confederation of Labour (France) by CNT-F
Hamas, the Left and Liberation in Palestine by Sevinc (Workers’ Solidarity Movement), Ireland
Interview with Ilan Shalif from Anarchists Against the Wall - Israel/Palestine
A Hot Winter in Greece by Stefanie Knoll (ZACF)
Something Smells Different in Cuba by Movimiento Libertario Cubano, with introduction by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
Imperialism, China and Russia by Pier Francesco Zarcone (Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici), Italy
Against Political Terror in Russia, We Mobilise! by the Internatioal Secretary, Alternative Libertaire, France/ Belgium
Change We Need: An Anarchist Perspective on the 2008 US Election by North-Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC), USA, with introduction by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)

Theory

Tangled Threads of Revolution: Reflections on Anarchist Communists: A Question of Class by James Pendlebury (ZACF)

The .pdf version of the journal can be downloaded here

The texts will appear online soon

The truth on the Somali 'pirates'

2009-04-10T15:49:00.002-04:00

All the media is reporting on how 'Pirates' have Struck a U.S. cargo ship, But Is the Media Telling the Whole Story?

First, I'm not here to paint the Somalis responsible as heroes or as vigilantes, but i'm not going to condemn them as well. The issue is very complicated and this story sheds alot of light on the situation.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/13571...y/?page=entire

According to Hari:

Quote:

As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
…

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia -- and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence."

Here is a youtube of the Somali hip hop artist K'naan speaking on this very issue.

+ YouTube Video
ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.

Because the is no Somali government, there is no State. There is no institution that police the water and enforce international or national laws,rules, regulations. Consider what one pirate told The New York Times after he and his men seized a Ukrainian freighter "loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition" last year. "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits," said Sugule Ali:. "We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard." Now, that "coast guard" analogy is a stretch, but his point is an important and widely omitted part of this story.

Soldiers assassinate Guinea-Bissau president

2009-03-02T14:57:00.000-05:00

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau – Soldiers assassinated the president of Guinea-Bissau in his palace Monday hours after a bomb blast killed the army chief who had been his political rival for decades.

A military statement broadcast on state radio attributed President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira's death to an "isolated" group of unidentified soldiers whom the armed forces said they were now hunting down. It said the military was not planning a coup in the West Africa nation, which has been a transit point for the cocaine trade to Europe.

The capital, Bissau, was calm despite the pre-dawn gunfight at the palace, which erupted hours after armed forces chief of staff Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie — a longtime rival of the president — was killed by a bomb blast at his headquarters.

The former Portuguese colony has suffered multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one.

Following an emergency Cabinet meeting on Monday, military spokesman Zamora Induta said top military brass told government officials "this was not a coup d'etat."

"We reaffirmed our intention to respect the democratically elected power and the constitution of the republic," Induta said. "The people who killed President Vieira have not been arrested, but we are pursuing them. They are an isolated group. The situation is under control."

The constitution calls for parliament chief Raimundo Pereira to succeed the president in the event of his death.

Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr. said the fact that the military did not go through with a coup deserves praise. "The military showed their patriotism by not seizing power," he said, adding that both Vieira and Waie will receive state funerals in the coming days.

Vieira had ruled the impoverished nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa for 23 of the past 29 years. He came to power in the 1980 coup, but was forced out 19 years later at the onset of the country's civil war. He later returned from exile in Portugal to run in the country's 2005 election and won the vote.

The armed forces' statement dismissed claims that the military killed Vieira in retaliation for Waie's assassination late Sunday. The two men were considered staunch political and ethnic rivals and both had survived recent assassination attempts.

Vieira, from the minority Papel ethnic group, once blamed majority ethnic Balanta officers for attempting a coup against him, condemning several to death and others to long prison sentences.

Among them was Waie, who in the late 1980s was dropped off on a deserted island off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, according to Waie's chief of staff, Lt. Col. Bwam Namtcho. Waie was left there for years before he was allowed to return and officially pardoned by Vieira.

Namtcho said the bomb that killed Waie had been hidden underneath the staircase leading to his office.

Hours later, volleys of automatic gunfire rang out for at least two hours before dawn in Bissau and residents said soldiers had converged on Vieira's palace.

The Portuguese news agency LUSA reported that troops attacked the palace with rockets and rifles. The president's press chief, Barnabe Gomes, escaped but was struck by a bullet in his right shoulder, LUSA said.

It was the second attack on Vieira in recent months. In November, Vieira's residence was attacked by soldiers with automatic weapons who killed at least one of his guards. The president complained later that the army never intervened, leaving his presidential guard to fight off the attackers.

In January, Waie received a call from the presidency asking him to come at once, said Namtcho. But when Waie stepped outside to get into his car, unidentified gunmen opened fire on the car. Waie narrowly escaped and Namtcho says he assumed the attack had been ordered by the president.

Luis Sanca, security adviser to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., confirmed that the president had died but gave no details.

The African Union condemned the killings, calling them "cowardly and heinous attacks which have come at a time of renewed efforts by the international community to support peace-building efforts in Guinea-Bissau."

In Lisbon, the Portuguese Foreign Ministry lamented Vieira's death and said it was "fundamental that all political and military authorities in the country respect the constitutional order."

Portugal said it would call an emergency meeting of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, an eight-member organization based in Lisbon.

They steal elections! Don’t they? States Rights Rot Rides Again

2008-10-31T09:00:00.001-04:00

They steal elections! Don’t they? States Rights Rot Rides Again

By ‘bro.zayid’

They steal elections, don’t they…

They stole the2000 election in Florida for ‘Dubya by roadblocking Black and Latino voting districts, by using confusing ballots, the so-called ‘hanging chads’, by purging scores of eligible and duly registered voters, the overwhelming majority being Black, as being “convicted felons,” and by arbitrarily closing down polling sites while scores of people were still on line waiting to vote. (I’ll never forget Ted Koppel’s Nightline capturing that in living color.) And most importantly, they got away with it.

Al Gore did nothing. Bill Clinton did nothing. The Democratic Party as a body did nothing about it.

They stole the 2004 election in Ohio for ‘Dubya using a house negro secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, as an even more arrogant cover. (See the moving documentary American Blackout to catch this vile piece of overseer work in action.) They did it by using almost the same tactics that were previously used in Florida with the emphasis here on the voter rolls purge, or the socalled ‘felon list’ and with voter machine shortages in black voting districts. This was especially done in an in your face callousness in the Black community of the state’s capital of Columbus! And here again, they got away with it.

Before that election, John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, said that he was not going to stand for another Florida 2000. But when it was all over, he conceded the election the very next day! No fight. No investigation. No recount. No outrage. And, most importantly, no consequence for the perpetrators to be sure.

Fast forward to 2008.

According to NY Times reporter Ian Urbina, whose October 8th article States Purges of Voter Rolls Appear Illegal, is a must read, not only are Florida and Ohio again involved in the same purging process they employed in 2000 and 2004, they have a lot of company, including several so-called ‘swing’ states, or states whose electorial tally could swing an election either way in a close election, who are using the same practices, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and North Carolina. Not to mention Louisiana and Alabama.

Make no mistake about it, this paradigm could easily be responsible for several hundred thousand voters being made ineligible to vote and knocked out of the equation on election day…Several hundred thousand!....

Maybe more than enough to steal an election. To be sure, this is happening on this scale, happening in all these areas, as a concerted effort to undermine Obama’s wide popularity, a popularity that neither Gore nor Kerry had against ‘Dubya.

In my modest judgment, Barack Obama should win by a landslide given his enormous popularity and given his relative puny opposition in a ‘free and fair election.’ But an election, certainly a close one, can easily be stolen from him, just like it was in 2000 and 2004. If he is to have a real chance at a fair election, and give himself a real chance to win, he, as the new leader of the Democratic Party, and that’s what he is now, must call out the guard…He must be prepared to defend those voters rights now and on the day of the election!

“But bro.zayid, that’s means he going to have to talk about race! And he’s not going to do that now! It’s too risky!”

It’s too risky not to, given these set of circumstances.

Here’s what that talk means. It means at the very least demanding that the Justice Department be on full and visible alert at all polling sites in all of these contested areas. It means not standing alone when he makes the demand. He should have Bill and Hillary Clinton stand with him. He should have Al Gore and John Kerry stand with him. He should have New Mexico’s Latino Governor Bill Richardson, the man who set aside his own candidacy to clear the way for Obama’s ascendance and who, in my mind, should have been chosen as his running mate, -He should certainly have that man stand with him. He should have ‘Yahoo’ Howard Dean stand with him. He should have Senate majority Harry Reid and House majority leader Steny Hoyer stand with him. They should all stand with him in a united front for a ‘free and fair election’! And let the chips fall where they may!

Failure to do that, no matter how polite or strategic he and his machine mean to be could easily result in another heartbreaking debacle.

If he doesn’t, don’t be surprised to hear stories about immigration officers doing sweeps or otherwise detaining and harassing Latinos in states like California, New Mexico, Texas and McCain’s own Arizona. Don’t be surprised to hear about scores of Black people turned away from the polls because their address did not match up or that they’ve been purged because they were “convicted felons.” Don’t be surprised to hear about long lines and shorts on available voting machines. Don’t be surprised to hear about roadblocks near Black and Latino voting districts like they also did in Florida…Because they’ll do it. They’ve

done it with it success before and they’ll do it again unless somebody stops them.

So what do we do?

This election is a going to be a global event. Organizations that the NGO status at United Nations should take a page out of Malcolm’s book and call on the UN to have monitors in all those contested areas.

Individually, voters should consider the following: One, bring proper government accepted ID with you to the polls and bring proof of address and if you recently moved or reregistered because you moved if you have something with the previous address as well, bring that too. Nip identity and address issues in the bud if you can on the spot. One of the last things you want to happen is to be offered a ‘provisional ballot’. Provisional ballot are for the most part political placebos, because they are given to prospective voters contesting their right to vote, but the ballot they are given is counted as a matter of law “after the election,” which means it more than likely would not even count. See the Help America Vote Act if you don’t believe me; Two, if you receive a sample ballot in the mail before election with the designation of your polling site, bring that with you along with proper id to avoid being runaround about “where you can vote.’ That happened in Ohio too; Three, Go to the polls early. We tend to go late. After work. Scores of our people who got doors slammed in their face in Florida and Ohio ran into that at night. This also gives you time to address any identification issues should they emerge. Four, make your voting that day an event. It is. Bring your children with you! My longtime friend and comrade Larry Hamm of the Peoples Organization for Progress said he is going to bring his daughter with him to be apart of that historical moment one way or another. By the God of our ancestors, I wish I could bring mine. But seriously bring your children with you! If you run into difficulty, let them see how you stand up for your rights and defend your dignity. Let them see how democracy really works along racial lines, so they can be prepared to face whatever this racial landscape may have them face. Finally, go in groups. If you belong to an organization, set up groups to go together. Be witnesses for each other. Take pictures bring video cameras. Document your voting as long as the process will allow.

Dear Family,

Not talking about race, and not wanting to fight racism, is not going to make it go away. Only organized and well mobilized hell-raizin is what puts racism on its nasty flat behind. Nothing else.

Seize the time!

On Monday, November 3rd, Black Solidarity Day, we will be marching In Defense of the Black Vote from Broad and Market Streets, in Newark at 12 noon, to sound the drum.

Every shut ain’t sleep; every goodbye ain’t gone…

“And you stand there with a rope around your neck talking about ‘forgive them lord, they know not what they’re doing.’ As they’ve been doing it, they’re experts at it.”

-Malcolm X

©2008 all rights reserved

‘bro.zayid’

Bro.Zayid Muhammad is the national minister of culture for the New Black Panther Party. He can be reached at 201 602 0780 and babazayid@yahoo.com. This is essay is the first of several called ‘The Obama Essays.’

Ground Noise & Static

2008-10-07T20:27:00.001-04:00

Good evening comrades,
Hope everyone is well.

In case you haven't heard, SubMediaTV has teamed up with Pepperspray Productions to produce a 30 minute documentary chronicling the amazing resistance movement at the recent RNC and DNC. It has tons of never-before-seen footage and it shows definitively that the surveillance and policing efforts at each of the conventions went way over the line, but that also demonstrators and resistance members didn't back down for one second. It's truly a great film and shows that the resistance movement against State oppression is alive and well and gaining ground.

Check it out here: http://submedia.tv/stimulator/2008/10/06/ground-noise-and-static/

WSA Statement on the RNC Protest

2008-09-07T11:46:00.000-04:00

WSA Statement on the RNC Protest

In the opening days of September 2008 people from all over the country
came together in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St.
Paul to
protest the agenda of the Republican National Convention.
And in
response, police cracked down, hard.
And even before the events had
begun police responded to mere calls for protest through strong-arm
tactics reminiscent of a police state, including infiltration and
spying by state agents against protest organizations and preemptive
raids with guns drawn against private protest centers.
During the
event police responded with the indiscriminate arrest of hundreds of
protesters, and even journalists recording the event where arrested.

Decked out in full military garb masses of police indiscriminately
assaulted numerous protesters with batons, pepper spray and other
weapons, that though listed under the term "less then lethal"
nevertheless inflict great pain and suffering, and have been
implicated in
serious medical complications and even death.
Fortunately no one was
killed in the Twin Cities, but the use of tactics befitting a police
state should be a cause of grave concern for all people of good
conscience.

In response we at the Worker Solidarity Alliance (WSA) call upon all
poor and working people everywhere to reach out in support of the 284
protesters that have been jailed by the cops.

Please make a donation to help cover the legal fees of our jailed
comrades, and to cover any medical fees that may arise among
protesters due to the brutal tactics utilized by police on behalf of
the Republican Party.
One place you can donate is the web site of the
Coldsnap Legal Collective: http://coldsnaplegal. wordpress. com/

Although the Workers Solidarity Alliance extends unconditional
solidarity and support to the victims of state repression during the
RNC, we also call for a critical evaluation of the approach taken by
anti-authoritarians and anarchists.
The repression of RNC activism
demonstrates that new organizing models will be needed if
anticapitalists are to mount a genuine challenge to the power of
capital and the state.
Specifically, we must avoid playing into the
hands of the state by using rhetoric, rituals, and tactics that
isolate us from the majority of the world's population that suffers
under capitalism.
We call for a resistance based not exclusively on
the advanced tactics of a jail-ready minority, but the
solidarity and militancy of a revolutionary social bloc, organized in
workplaces and neighborhoods, fighting for self-determination.
As the
raids on activists spaces have already shown, anything less is
political suicide.

The reasons people protested were varied, as was the political
background of the protesters.
Some of the protesters came seeking to
end the U.S.
military occupation of Iraq, some economic justice,
others out of criticism of the current Republican administration in
Washington.
Some protesters came to voice their dissent and in support
of Obama.
Some came to protest the havoc that the endless pursuit for
capitalist profits has wrecked upon the environment.
And yet others
still came to protest the political rule of the U.S.
government,
whether under the leadership of Republicans or Democrats, or other
would be contenders for the throne.

The "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent came to protest the war,
for economic justice, for a healthy environment, and against white
supremacy, nationalism, sexism and homophobia --- and to promote the
idea that simply changing office holders does not do away with
capitalism and the political state.
This contingent called for a new
world, a world without bosses, states and bureaucrats.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) seeks the self-empowerment of
ordinary poor and working class people through democratic
self-management of their workplaces and their communities without
mediation by elite's from above.
Those of the "Red & Black
Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and their supporters in the WSA and
elsewhere, are sick and tired of living in a society that is dominated
by the special interests of wealthy men and the political system that
these elites have set in motion to protect their interests at the
expense of the genuine interests, the aspirations and collective well
being of the vast majority of the population, the working class.
As
supporters of the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent we of the
WSA denounce both the Republican and Democratic parties, as we
understand that the true motivating cause of all political parties, in
every part of the globe, is that of keeping a small elite entrenched
firmly in political and economic power over, and to the detriment, of
the working class across the earth.

The WSA also denounces the Patriot Act, under which the state has
charged eight (RNC 8) prominent protest organizers with "Conspiracy to
Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism," this despite the fact that the RNC
8 were arrested days prior to the beginning of both the convention and
the actual protests and had not carried out any actual protest actions
whatsoever.
The provisions of the Patriot Act grants the state power
to charge people with "conspiracy" for simply planning a nonviolent
protest, and in turn to saddle them with a felony for making calls for
dissent to state policy.
Thus the true purpose of the Patriot Act is
to criminalize exercises of the right to free speech, peaceful
assembly and protest.
In light of the true intentions of the Patriot
Act the WSA calls for the working class to get together in solidarity
to put pressure upon the state to rescind and abolish the Patriot Act.

Yet despite all of the terror and mayhem unleashed by the police the
fact that ordinary people maintained their presence, their solidarity
and their dissent against the unjust policies of the political elite
for the duration of the convention is in the last analysis a
demonstration of the courage of the working class.
The protesters that
made up the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and others as
well, have a positive vision of a better society.
A society in which
ordinary folks come together in brotherly solidarity to create a new
system based upon the moral value of "Mutual aid" and free from the
rule of a lying, scheming and predatory elite.
For a society in which
"freedom and liberty for all" are not mere sentiments regulated to
paper, or simply buzz words to throw about by self-interested
politicians looking for your votes, but are instead the overwhelming
living reality of society, and not just in the United States but
throughout the entire earth.

Workers Solidarity Alliance
339 Lafayette Street - Room 202
New York, NY 10012 USA
www. workersolidarity. org.

Zabalaza No.9 Now Available Online

2008-09-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Class Struggle Anarchism
Issue No.
9, September 2008

Issue number nine of the theoretical journal of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front is now available online.

In this issue...

Southern Africa:

* Workers, Bosses and the 2008 Pogroms
* "Ba Sebetsi Ba Afrika": Manifesto of the Industrial Workers of Africa, 1917
* Ninety Years of Working Class Internationalism in South Africa
* Unyawo Alunampumulo: Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg
* Xenophobia, Nationalism and Greedy Bosses: An Interview with Alan Lipman
* Interview with Two Libertarian Socialist Activists from Zimbabwe

Africa:

* Kenya's Troubles are Far from Over
* Will EU troops stop the Central African cycle of violence?
* Brutal Repression in Sidi Ifni (Morroco)

International:

* Obama and Latin America: a Friendly Imperialism?

Theory:

* Anarchism & Immigration
* The Poison of Nationalism
* Nostalgic Tribalism or Revolutionary Transformation?: A Critique of Anarchism & Revolution in Black Africa

A .
PDF version of the journal can be downloaded here: http://www. zabalaza. net/pdfs/sapams/zab09. pdf

RNC protests

2008-09-02T09:12:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone,
Hope you all are doing well.

In case you haven't been following, the protests of the RNC have gotten started with a bang.

Yesterday (Monday), independent journalist Amy Goodman and two producers of acclaimed "Democracy Now" were arrested and detained simply for asking to speak with cops. They have since been released. This past Friday, St. Paul police raided the training headquarters for the RNC Welcoming Committee, the largest organizing group for the protest. At the time, occupants were eating dinner and watching films. Children and senior citizens were present, and cops busted down the doors with guns drawn.

Also over the weekend, police raided a couple of houses in the residential neighborhoods suspected of harboring information and supplies to create bombs, also with guns drawn. Who were occupying the houses? Members of Food Not Bombs - a group that prepares and serves free meals, and I-Witness Video, an independent media group. One of the houses actually were successful at deterring cops because the officials had the wrong address on their warrant - the address for the other side of the building. The building actually holds two addresses and two families.

If you haven't heard, Hurricane Gustav has stagnated many of the plans for the RNC. Bush and Cheney canceled their trips, and the convention itself has been drastically scaled down to just business. That hasn't stopped the protestors though. Video footage has captured many protestor groups in the streets using mail boxes as blockades and blocking traffic, as well as freeing their own people from police detainment.

Pepper spray and rubber bullets are already out in full force, according to participants.

Check out this site - SubMediaTv - for raw video. Check out the other features as well, such as the blog and shop - this is a great underground resource. By the way, SubMedia cameramen were also arrested and detained.

http://www.submedia.tv/

Here are a few more websites:

Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/

RNC Welcoming Committee
http://www.nornc.org/

I-Witness Video
http://iwitnessvideo.info/

Brave New Films (contains lots of other videos from the protests)
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/51152-police-bust-thru-attic-to-detain-democracy-now-journalist

Be sure to hit up the group discussion board to add your two cents on the rebellion in the Twin Cities. More news to come as it is made available.

Peace, Love and Freedom
Kourtney

"Anarchists" turn violent in march to GOP convention

2008-09-01T20:25:00.003-04:00

Self described anarchists turned violent at the Republican National Convention according to news websites. Is the black bloc a positive or negative aspect of the anarchist and anti-war movements?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080901/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_convention_protests

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Protesters attacked delegates, smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles Monday, a violent counterpoint to an otherwise peaceful anti-war march at the Republican National Convention. Police wielding pepper spray arrested at least 56 people.

The trouble happened not far from the Xcel Energy Center convention site, and many of those involved in the more violent protest were clad in black and identified themselves to reporters as anarchists. They wrought havoc by damaging property and setting at least one fire. Most of the trouble was in pockets of a neighborhood near downtown, several blocks from where the convention was taking place.

Police estimates of the crowd shifted several times during the event, ranging from 2,000 to 10,000. The crowd was clearly in the thousands. Late Monday afternoon, long after the antiwar marchers had dispersed, police requested and got 150 Minnesota National Guard soldiers to help control splinter groups near downtown.

Members of the Connecticut delegation said they were attacked by protesters when they got off their bus near the Xcel Center, KMSP-TV reported. Delegate Rob Simmons told the station that a group of protesters came toward his delegation and tried to rip the credentials off their necks and sprayed them with a toxic substance that burned their eyes and stained their clothes.

One 80-year-old member of the delegation had to be treated for injuries, and several other delegates had to rinse their eyes and clothing, the station reported.

Five people were arrested for lighting a trash bin on fire and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said. Authorities didn't have immediate details on the other arrests.

The antiwar march was organized by a group called the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, whose leaders said they hoped for a peaceful, family-friendly event. But police were on high alert after months of preparations by a self-described anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which wasn't among the organizers of the march.

About 20 people dressed in black tried to block a key intersection. Police quickly dispersed the group, then shot two tear gas canisters at them as the fled.

Pictures taken by Associated Press photographers showed officers using pepper spray on people who appeared to be trying to block streets.

Up to 200 people from a group called Funk the War noisily staged their own march. Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some of their members smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rearview mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.

One member of the group carried a yellow flag with the motto "Don't Tread on Me." The group chanted: "Whose streets? Our streets!"

At one point, people pushed a trash bin filled with trash and threw garbage in the streets and at cars. They also took down orange detour road signs. One of them used a screwdriver to puncture the back tire of a limousine waiting at an intersection and threw a wooden board at the vehicle, denting its side. Another hurled a glass bottle at a charter bus that had stopped at an intersection. The bottle smashed into pieces but didn't appear to damage the bus.

After the official march ended, police spent hours dispersing smaller groups of protesters, employing officers on horses, smoke bombs and tear gas.

Protesters put eye drops in each other's eyes after police used chemical irritants such as pepper spray and tear gas. Some wore bandanas and masks to protect themselves.

Protesters were seen lying on an interstate exit ramp to block traffic in downtown St. Paul and linking arms to block other roads.

Terry Butts, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice who is a convention delegate, was on a bus taking delegates to the arena when a brick through the window sprayed glass on him and two others. Butts said he wasn't hurt.

"It just left us a little shaken," he said. "It was sort of a frightening moment because it could have been a bomb or a Molotov cocktail."

Small Arkansas Town becomes Police State

2008-08-13T09:57:00.002-04:00

Police State? A glimpse of Martial Law to come? Unconstitutional? Weigh in.

Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 13, 6:41 AM ET

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. - Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that's been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.

On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.

Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.

"Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I'm fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here," Mayor James Valley said. "The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution."

The area under curfew, in what used to be a West Helena neighborhood, sits among abandoned homes and occupied residences in disrepair.

White signs on large blue barrels warn those passing by that the area remains under curfew by order of Mayor James Valley. The order was scheduled to end at 3 p.m. Tuesday, but Valley said the city council's vote would allow police to have the same powers across Helena-West Helena.

Among the curfew operation's arrests, 10 came from felony charges, including the arrest of two people carrying both drugs and weapons, Fielder said. The police chief said the officers in the field carry military-style M-16 or M-4 rifles, some equipped with laser sights. Other officers carry short-barrel shotguns. Many dealing crack cocaine and marijuana in the city carry pistols and AK-47 assault rifles, he said.

"We've had people call us, expressing concern for their children," Fielder said. "They had to sleep on the floor, because of stray bullets."

Fielder said officers had not arrested anyone for violating the curfew, only questioned people about why they were outside. Those without good answers or acting nervously get additional attention, Fielder said.

However, such stops likely violate residents' constitutional rights to freely assemble and protections against unreasonable police searches, said Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its packed Tuesday meeting. Because of that, Dickson said any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned.

"The residents of these high-crime areas are already victims," she said. "They're victims of what are happening in the neighborhoods, they're victims of fear. But for them to be subject to unlawful stops and questioning ... that is not going to ultimately going to help this situation."

The council rejected Dickson's claims, at one point questioning the Little Rock-based attorney if she'd live in a neighborhood they described as under siege by wild gunfire and gangs.

"As far as I'm concerned, at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at 3 o'clock shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."

The curfew is the second under the mayor's watch since the rival cities of Helena and West Helena merged in 2006. That year, Valley set a nightly citywide curfew after a rash of burglaries and other thefts.

Police in Hartford, Conn., began enforcing a nightly curfew for youths after recent violence, including a weekend shooting that killed a man and wounded six young people.

Helena-West Helena, with 15,000 residents at the edge of Arkansas' eastern rice fields and farmland, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

APOC Northeast Gathering: Aug 8-9

2008-07-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

(from illvox.org)

APOC Northeast Gathering

August 8th-9th in Philadelphia, PA

“La gente fuerte no necesita un lider, ellos por si mismos son lideres” - Emiliano Zapata

Autonomous/ Anti-Authoritarian/ Anarchist People Of Color from across the Northeast (and beyond) are gathering in Philly this summer to build a new vision for the future, and a new plan of action for today. We want to expand our understanding of race, class, gender, autonomy, and freedom - while attacking white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and ALL borders, boundaries, and barriers.

Please join us Friday and Saturday, August 8th-9th for the APOC Northeast Regional Conference in Philadelphia!

WHAT: APOC Northeast Regional Conference

WHEN: Friday and Saturday, August 8th-9th

WHERE: The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA

Friday evening will feature films related to APOC movement.

Saturday will feature a full day of talks, panels, and workshops.

Saturday night will culminate with an APOC Rocks! hip hop, punk rock, and poetry concert.

There will also be free (and cheap) food available as well as APOC ‘zines, books, t-Shirts y mas for the masses.

NAACP calls for probe of shootings

2008-06-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

NAACP calls for probe of shootings

The group wants CMPD to make outside investigations a standard procedure when police use deadly force.

The state chapter of the NAACP is calling on Charlotte-Mecklenburg police to require outside investigations after a spate of shootings involving officers this year.

Last month, 21-year-old Aaron Winchester died from gunshot wounds to the back as he was being pursued by a police officer who had stopped him for questioning just north of uptown.

The Winchester shooting was the third time in seven months a suspect has died in a confrontation with CMPD. Of the 36 shootings by Charlotte police in the past decade, 31 were ruled justified in the department's investigations. The most recent five, all in 2008, remain under investigation by the department, which reviews its own deadly force cases.

“We are asking not only that they address the immediacy of the current incident but also this recent pattern of events,” said the Rev. William Barber II, state president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The NAACP Wednesday called the state attorney general's office and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory to stress the importance of the Winchester shooting being investigated properly, Barber said.

The group is calling for broad policy changes – including asking CMPD to make it standard for an outside agency to investigate all police shootings, Barber said. The NAACP also wants CMPD to use an officer's history of use of force in promotion decisions and recommends the department keep detailed records of use of force by race and gender.

For the first time in more than 30 years as Charlotte-Mecklenburg district attorney, Peter Gilchrist asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look at the Winchester shooting. The incident involved a white police officer shooting a black man and raised questions among relatives and eyewitnesses in the Lockwood neighborhood.

Gilchrist declined to give his reason. The request came on the heels of a meeting with interim police Chief David Graham, officials said Wednesday.

The NAACP said it will begin working today with a coalition of Charlotte ministers to study the shootings.

The organization's statement followed a meeting Wednesday between Charlotte City Manager Curt Walton and members of the N.C. State Conference of National Action Network, an advocacy group formed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. He is expected to visit Charlotte in the next couple of weeks.

“This isn't about race,” said Tanya Wiley, executive director of the organization. “Anytime someone gets shot in the back, it sends up a red flag.”

After the incident, Charlotte City Councilman Anthony Foxx said he also asked the city manager if the Police Department would seek an outside investigation. He did so after receiving many calls from concerned residents.

“It is very important to and for the Police Department to be perceived as protecting our citizens and not crossing over the line,” Foxx said Wednesday. “There are some issues of trust here that we have to pay attention to.”

Death in the Amazon: Uncontacted Tribes

2008-06-13T09:06:00.002-04:00

Photographs published two weeks ago of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil near the Peruvian border have provoked public outrage, with over 1,300 people writing letters to Peru’s government to demand an end to illegal logging. The logging is threatening uncontacted Indians in the area.

The unique pictures of the Brazilian tribe hit the world’s headlines last week. At least one other tribe in the area is thought to have fled over the border from Peru into Brazil, fleeing illegal loggers who are razing their forest home.

Since the pictures were published, the Peruvian government has said it will investigate the issue. Peru’s President Alan Garcia had previously questioned the tribes’ existence.

Survival International is campaigning to support the rights of Peru’s estimated fifteen uncontacted tribes, who are threatened by oil exploration as well as logging.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘These pictures have really struck a chord with people. The uncontacted tribe’s message, with their arrows pointed up at the aeroplane, could not be clearer – they want to be left alone. People understand this, and want to make sure their wishes are respected.’

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Amazon Indians from one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been photographed from the air, with striking images released on Thursday showing them painted bright red and brandishing bows and arrows.

The photographs of the tribe near the border between Brazil and Peru are rare evidence that such groups exist. A Brazilian official involved in the expedition said many of them are in increasing danger from illegal logging.
"What is happening in this region is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the 'civilized' ones, treat the world," Jose Carlos Meirelles was quoted as saying in a statement by the Survival International group.
One of the pictures, which can be seen on Survival International's Web site (http://www.survival-international.org), shows two Indian men covered in bright red pigment poised to fire arrows at the aircraft while another Indian looks on.
Another photo shows about 15 Indians near thatched huts, some of them also preparing to fire arrows at the aircraft.
"The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct," said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which supports tribal people around the world.
Of more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, more than half live in either Brazil or Peru, Survival International says. It says all are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and ravaged by new diseases.

Jay Griffiths wrote an article in the Guardian on the issue of the forced invasion and unwarrented contact of the tribes; how it is racist and potentially dangerous.

The message could hardly be clearer: leave us alone. In photographs taken from a low-flying plane, men from an uncontacted group deep in the Amazon forests, body-painted in red and black, draw their bows and arrows to shoot at the intruders in anger and fear. Another tribe living in voluntary isolation is being hunted out of existence.
There was massive public interest when these images were released by the Brazilian government last week, revealing an enormous curiosity about tribal people. And many indigenous people want non-indigenous people to listen to their ecological warnings and their philosophies. But, in sharp contrast, those living in voluntary isolation, the so-called uncontacted tribes, wish no such thing. They want nothing to do with the dominant culture, and they communicate this clearly to "contacted" tribes nearby, begging their help to be left alone.
The risks are well known: uncontacted people have died in their millions from diseases brought by outsiders, whole tribes wiped out. In the Amazon, indigenous campaigners vigorously oppose people going into the territories of the voluntarily isolated. But now, as well as the loggers and miners, there will be dozens of missionaries, television companies and adventurers determined to ignore their message.
Go and talk to Tarzan, I was told, when I was in the Peruvian Amazon, at the invitation of indigenous activists there. (They had asked me to go with them as a witness when they were throwing illegal gold-miners off their lands.) Tarzan, I was told, has a tale to tell about forced contact. A Harakmbut man in his nineties, he is old enough to remember the day in 1952 when his world ended. He is gentle and thoughtful, but still angry.
Missionaries came in a plane which, said Tarzan, "we thought was a huge and frightening eagle. We fled to the hills". The missionaries set up a mission station and a school. "No one wanted to go to school, and anyway after the missionaries came, our children died." After the missionaries' arrival, an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people died of the illnesses they had brought. The missionaries said they wanted people to know their God, but Tarzan didn't see it that way: "Now we know money." Further, thanks to the missionaries, he says: "Now we know we lack money, which we hadn't known we lacked before."
Astonishingly, this is still happening. Earlier this year a British film crew went to the Peruvian Amazon to find tribal people for a reality TV programme. The crew were accused of visiting an isolated community, bringing a disease that left four people dead.
In the Peruvian Amazon, I met an evangelical missionary who was hunting out uncontacted tribes, claiming he would ease the way for oil workers. The links between missionaries and the other extractive industries are well documented. He spoke of making a "responsible contact", but was risking bringing death. Which of the 10 commandments encourages that?
Anthropologists, activists and many in the media know how to report on indigenous issues with respect; but there is still a profound racism against indigenous people in our culture. The forced invasion of uncontacted peoples is the arrowhead of this racism, and it extends far beyond the irresponsibility of individuals, into whole institutions.
The publishing industry promotes the adventurer, the churches fund the missionary, the corporations send the loggers and miners, the TV company commissions the film crew. In a just world, all should be liable for attempted murder.

Power to the People.

POCC CALLING FOR CONTINGENT TO U.N. IN LA

2008-05-22T22:27:00.001-04:00

THE UNITED NATIONS IS COMING TO LOS ANGELES TO INVESTIGATE RACISM IN THE U.S.. LA IS ONE OF 8 CITIES WHICH INCLUDE NEW ORLEANS, NEW YORK, CHICAGO, AND SAN JUAN AMONG OTHER PLACES, WHERE THE UN IS CONDUCTING ITS INVESTIGATION. WE ARE ASKING FOR PEOPLE TO JOIN UP WITH THE POCC IN ADDRESSING THE RACISM THAT EXIST TODAY, AND THAT OUR PEOPLE HAVE SUFFERED FOR OVER 400 YEARS. WE ARE AWARE THAT THE UN IN MOST CASES ARE SUBORDINATE TO US INTEREST IN MOST CASES LIKE WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CONGO WITH PATRICE LAMUMBA, LIKE WHAT HAPPENED IN HAITI WITH THE UN SHOOTING INNOCENT PEOPLE AFTER THE OVERTHROW OF PRES. ARISTIDE, AS WELL AS LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, AND CUBA RIGHT NOW. AT THE SAME TIME, THIS IS OUR CHANCE TO DOCUMENT GOVERNMENT TERRORISM IN AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM, AND WE NEED TO LET THE WORLD KNOW WHAT HAPPENS ON THESE SHORES WITH OUR PEOPLE.

THE UN WILL BE IN LA ON MAY 27TH,28TH, AND 29TH.

ON THE 27TH - 2:30PM THEY WILL BE AT LA COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK WITH UCLA PROFESSOR GARY BLASI, THEN THEY WILL GO TO THE MENS CENTRAL JAIL.

AT 3:30PM THEY WILL GO TO SKID ROW AND NEW IMAGE HOMELESS SHELTER. THE TOPICS WILL BE HOMELESSNESS, OVERCROWDIN, AND RACISM AMONG OTHERS.

ON THE 28TH - AT 4PM THEY WILL BE AT UCLA

ON THE 29TH - UCLA

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT KATHERINE LELAND - 213-977-9500
FREE'EM ALL!

The Death of Boubacar Bah in the Hands of ICE

2008-05-09T11:03:00.002-04:00

Originally Posted by Mike Ely of Kasama, when suggested by Kalash Prolet that he'd report it on his website. Power to the People reproduces this article here to spread awareness on the death and coverup of an African Immigrant in US custody.

See the VIDEO on this horrific death of an African immigrant and shameful coverup that followed.

Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in Custody

By NINA BERNSTEIN NYT, May 5, 2008

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

The list, compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, is the fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration.

The list has few details, and they are often unreliable, but it serves as a rough road map to previously unreported cases like Mr. Bah’s. And it reflects a reality that haunts grieving families like his: the difficulty of getting information about the fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die.

Mr. Bah’s relatives never saw the internal records labeled “proprietary information — not for distribution” by the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the New Jersey detention center for the federal government. The documents detail how he was treated by guards and government employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the mouth.

Mr. Bah had lived in New York for a decade, surrounded by a large circle of friends and relatives. The extravagant gowns he sewed to support his wife and children in West Africa were on display in a Manhattan boutique.

But he died in a sequestered system where questions about what had happened to him, or even his whereabouts, were met with silence.

As the country debates stricter enforcement of immigration laws, thousands of people who are not American citizens are being locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them. Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution.

Death is a reality in any jail, and the medical neglect of inmates is a perennial issue. But far more than in the criminal justice system, immigration detainees and their families lack basic ways to get answers when things go wrong.

No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.

Federal officials say deaths are reviewed internally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which reports them to its inspector general and decides which ones warrant investigation. Officials say they notify the detainee’s next of kin or consulate, and report the deaths to local medical authorities, who may conduct autopsies. In Mr. Bah’s case, a review before his death found no evidence of foul play, an immigration spokesman said, though after later inquiries from The Times, he said a full review of the death was under way.

But critics, including many in Congress, say this piecemeal process leaves too much to the agency’s discretion, allowing some deaths to be swept under the rug while potential witnesses are transferred or deported. They say it also obscures underlying complaints about medical care, abusive conditions or inadequate suicide prevention.

In January, the House passed a bill that would require states that receive certain federal money to report deaths in custody to their attorneys general. But the bill is stalled in the Senate, and it does not cover federal facilities.

The only tangible result of Congressional concern has been the list of 66 deaths, which names Mr. Bah and many other detainees for the first time, but raises as many questions as it answers.

For Mr. Bah’s survivors, the mystery of his death is hard to bear. In Guinea, his first wife, Dalanda, wept as she spoke about the contradictory accounts that had reached her and her two teenage sons through other detainees, including some who speculated that Mr. Bah had been beaten.

In New York, a cousin who is an American citizen, Khadidiatou Bah, 38, said she was unable to bring a lawsuit, in part because other relatives were afraid of antagonizing the authorities.

“They don’t want to push the case, or maybe they will be sent home,” she said. “This guy was killed, and we don’t know what happened.”

Lingering Questions

The list of deaths where Mr. Bah’s name surfaced is often cryptic. Along with 13 deaths cited as suicides and 14 as the result of cardiac ailments, it offers such causes as “undetermined” and “unwitnessed arrest, epilepsy.” No one’s nationality is given, some places of detention are omitted, and some names and birth dates seem garbled. As a result, many families could not be tracked down for this article.

But when they could be, they posed more disturbing questions.

In California, relatives of Walter Rodriguez-Castro, 28, said they were rebuffed when they tried to find out why his calls had stopped coming from the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield in April 2006. Then in June, his wife went to his scheduled hearing in San Francisco’s immigration court and learned that he had been dead for many weeks, his body unclaimed in the county morgue.

The coroner found that Mr. Rodriguez-Castro, a mover from El Salvador in the country illegally, had died of undiagnosed meningitis and H.I.V., after days complaining of fever, stiff neck and vomiting. The cause of death on the government’s list: “unresponsive.”

Immigration authorities said on Friday that the case was now under review, but would not answer questions about it or other deaths on the list. Sgt. Ed Komin, a spokesman for the jail, said the death had been promptly reported to immigration officials, who were responsible for notifying families.

Four sons in another family, in Sacramento, described trying for days to get medical care for their father, Maya Nand, a 56-year-old legal immigrant from Fiji, at a detention center run by the Corrections Corporation in Eloy, Ariz. Mr. Nand, an architectural draftsman, had been ailing when he was taken into custody on Jan. 13, 2005, apparently because his application for citizenship had been rejected, based on an earlier conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence. In collect calls, the sons said, he told them that despite his chest pains and breathing problems, doctors at the detention center did not take his condition seriously.

The Corrections Corporation said he had been seen and treated “multiple times.” But a letter to the family from an immigration official said his treatment was for a respiratory infection. The letter said that Mr. Nand was taken to an emergency room on Jan. 25, where congestive heart failure was diagnosed, and that he “suffered an apparent heart attack while at the hospital.” He died on Feb. 2, 2005, shackled to a hospital bed in Tucson.

Boubacar Bah had more going for him than many detainees. He had a lawyer and many friends and relatives in the United States, and his detention center in New Jersey was one of the few frequented by immigrant advocates.

But three days after he suffered a head injury in detention last year, no one in his New York circle knew that he was lying comatose in a Newark hospital, where he had already been identified as a possible organ donor.

“Thank you for the referral,” an organ-sharing network wrote on Feb. 3, 2007, according to hospital records. “This patient is a potential candidate for organ donation once brain death criteria is met.”

Four days after the fall, tipped off by a detainee who called Mr. Bah’s roommate in Brooklyn, relatives rushed to the detention center to ask Corrections Corporation employees where he was.

“They wouldn’t give us any information,” said Lamine Dieng, an American citizen who teaches physics at Bronx Community College and is married to Mr. Bah’s cousin Khadidiatou.

On the fifth day, they said, a detention official called them with the name of the hospital. There they found Mr. Bah on life support, still in custody, with a detention guard around the clock.

“There was one guard who knew Boubacar,” Ms. Bah said. “He told me on the down-low: ‘This guy, you have to fight for him. This guy was neglected.’ ”

Within the week, word of the case reached a reporter at The Times, through an immigration lawyer who had received separate calls from two detainees; they were upset about a badly injured man — named “something like Aboubakar” — left in an isolation cell and later found near death.

But advocacy groups said they were unaware of the case. And Michael Gilhooly, the spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that without the man’s full name and eight-digit alien registration number, he could not check the information.

For those who knew Mr. Bah, it was hard to understand how such a man could lie dying without explanations.

“Everybody liked Boubacar,” said Sadio Diallo, 48, who has a tailor shop in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he and Mr. Bah had shared an apartment with fellow immigrants since arriving in 1998. “He’s a very, very, very good man.”

For six years, Mr. Bah had worked for L’Impasse, a clothing store in the West Village, sewing dresses that sold for up to $2,000 with what a former manager, Abdul Sall, called his “magic hands.” Mr. Bah often spent Sundays at the Bronx townhouse his cousins had inherited from the family’s first American citizen, a seaman who arrived in 1943.

In Africa, Mr. Bah’s earnings not only supported his first wife, sons and ailing mother, but in Guinean tradition, allowed him to wed a second wife, long distance. It was his longing to see them all again after eight years that landed him in detention. When he returned from a three-month visit to Guinea in May 2006, immigration authorities at Kennedy Airport told him that his green card application had been denied while he was away, automatically revoking his permission to re-enter the United States. An immigration lawyer hired by his friends was unable to reopen the application while Mr. Bah waited for nine months in detention, records showed.

Mr. Bah died on May 30, 2007, after four months in a coma. His lawyer, Theodore Vialet, requested detention reports and hospital records under the Freedom of Information Act. But by the time the records arrived last autumn, the idea of a lawsuit had been dropped.

So Mr. Vialet just filed the records away — until a reporter’s call about a name on the list of dead detainees prompted him to dig them out.

After the Fall

There are 57 pages of documents, some neatly typed by medics, some scrawled by guards. Some quote detainees who said Mr. Bah was ailing for two days before his fall on Feb. 1, and asked in vain to see a doctor.

The records leave unclear exactly when or how Mr. Bah was injured in detention. But they leave no doubt that guards, supervisors, government medical employees and federal immigration officers played a role in leaving him untreated, hour after hour, as he lapsed into a stupor.

It began about 8 a.m., according to the earliest report. Guards called a medical emergency after a detainee saw Mr. Bah collapse near a toilet, hitting the back of his head on the floor.

When he regained consciousness, Mr. Bah was taken to the medical unit, which is run by the federal Public Health Service. He became incoherent and agitated, reports said, pulling away from the doctor and grabbing at the unit staff. Physicians consulted later by The Times called this a textbook symptom of intracranial bleeding, but apparently no one recognized that at the time.

He was handcuffed and placed in leg restraints on the floor with medical approval, “to prevent injury,” a guard reported. “While on the floor the detainee began to yell in a foreign language and turn from side to side,” the guard wrote, and the medical staff deemed that “the screaming and resisting is behavior problems.”

Mr. Bah was ordered to calm down. Instead, he kept crying out, then “began to regurgitate on the floor of medical,” the report said. So Mr. Bah was written up for disobeying orders. And with the approval of a physician assistant, Michael Chuley, who wrote that Mr. Bah’s fall was unwitnessed and “questionable,” the tailor was taken in shackles to a solitary confinement cell with instructions that he be monitored.

Under detention protocols, an officer videotaped Mr. Bah as he lay vomiting in the medical unit, but the camera’s battery failed, guards wrote, when they tried to tape his trip to cell No. 7.

Inside the cell, a supervisor removed Mr. Bah’s restraints. He was unresponsive to questions asked by the Public Health Service officer on duty, a report said, adding: “The detainee set up in his bed and moan and he fell to his left side and hit his head on the bed rail.”

About 9 a.m., with the approval of the health officer and a federal immigration agent, the cell was locked.

The watching began. As guards checked hourly, Mr. Bah appeared to be asleep on the concrete floor, snoring. But he could not be roused to eat lunch or dinner, and at 7:10 p.m., “he began to breathe heavily and started foaming slightly at the mouth,” a guard wrote. “I notified medical at this time.”

However, the nurse on duty rejected the guard’s request to come check, according to reports. And at 8 p.m., when the warden went to the medical unit to describe Mr. Bah’s condition, the nurse, Raymund Dela Pena, was not alarmed. “Detainee is likely exhibiting the same behavior as earlier in the day,” he wrote, adding that Mr. Bah would get a mental health exam in the morning.

About 10:30 p.m., more than 14 hours after Mr. Bah’s fall, the same nurse, on rounds, recognized the gravity of his condition: “unresponsive on the floor incontinent with foamy brown vomitus noted around mouth.” Smelling salts were tried. Mr. Bah was carried back to the medical unit on a stretcher.

Just before 11, someone at the jail called 911.

When an ambulance left Mr. Bah at the hospital, brain scans showed he had a fractured skull and hemorrhages at all sides of his swelling brain. He was rushed to surgery, and the detention center was informed of the findings.

But in a report to their supervisors the next day, immigration officials at the center described Mr. Bah’s ailment as “brain aneurysms” — a diagnosis they corrected a week later to “hemorrhages,” without mentioning the skull fracture. After Mr. Bah’s death, they wrote that his hospitalization was “subsequent to a fall in the shower.”

The nurse, Mr. Dela Pena, and the physician assistant, Mr. Chuley, said that only their superiors could discuss the case. The Public Health Service did not respond to questions, and the Corrections Corporation said medical decisions were the responsibility of the Public Health Service.

Mr. Bah’s cousins demanded an autopsy, but the Union County medical examiner’s confidential report was not completed until Dec. 6. It was sent to the county prosecutor’s office only as a matter of routine, because the matter had been classified as an “unattended accident resulting in death.”

Prosecutors said they did not investigate. “According to the report, Bah suffered a fall in the shower,” Eileen Walsh, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors, said in an e-mail message. “We are not privy to any other bits of information.”

In the home movies Mr. Bah made of his last journey home, he is only a fleeting presence: a slim man with a shy smile. But without his support, relatives in Africa say they have little money for food and none for his sons’ schooling.

His body went back to Guinea in a sealed coffin.

“I stayed here seven years, waiting for him,” his second wife, Mariama, said in French, recalling their long separation and the brief reunion that led to the birth of their son, now a toddler, while Mr. Bah was in detention.

“I wanted them to open the casket,” she added, “to know if it was him inside. Until today, I cry for him.”

Margot Williams contributed reporting.

From Haymarket to Sebokeng: the Struggle Continues

2008-05-05T11:10:00.001-04:00

A comrade fighting for water and housing in Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg, was murdered by police on the night of April 30. The ZACF condemns the latest outrage in a long tale of repression of working class movements, and calls on the oppressed to stand firm in struggle.

On 1 May 1886, the workers of the United States went on strike for the eight-hour day. It was not long before they faced the wrath of the police, the repressive forces of the state, the defenders of capital. The cops murdered four workers at a picket in Chicago on 3 May. A peaceful gathering was held the following day in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest; the cops ordered the workers to disperse; an unknown person threw a bomb at the forces of repression; the defenders of capital opened fire; at least 50 people were killed, including several cops who shot at each other. Eight anarchists were charged with the bombing. There was never any evidence that any of them had anything to do with it; but in a farcical trial, all were convicted, for no other reason than their commitment to the liberation of the workers. Four were executed.

Every May Day, the workers of the world remember the martyrs of the struggle for the eight-hour day. But the struggle continues. And to this day, the cops, far from defending justice and the rule of law, remain ready to murder working class militants in defence of capital.

On 29 April 2008, the people of Sebokeng Ward 2 (south of Johannesburg) blockaded the Golden Highway to campaign against the introduction of prepaid water meters; to protest against houses that had been built on a landfill and were sinking into the earth; and to demand the resignation of the municipal councillor who had lied to them and refused to respond to their complaints. Once again, the police opened fire with live ammunition. This time no one was injured; but that night the cops went from door to door in Sebokeng, and arrested more than 10 working class militants. As is usual with social movement militants in South Africa today, those arrested were charged with public violence. As usual, the cops knew the charges would not stand up. The comrades were released the following day, and the charges have been dropped.

But this is not the end of the story.

One comrade, Mathaseni, a militant of the Sebokeng Ward 2 Concerned Residents and the Coalition Against Water Privatisation (CAWP), was severely beaten in custody, and hospitalised. He was released from hospital on 30 April. He was arrested again that evening. Today, 1 May 2008, 122 years after the Haymarket strike, he was found dead. (The ZACF has not yet been able to learn comrade Mathaseni's surname.)

As at Haymarket, the cops are determined to crush the working class struggle. As at Haymarket, if they cannot suppress us legally, they turn to lies, violence and murder. It may be that they seek those who they see as "leaders" of the resistance, or it may be that they wish to throw the whole movement of the working class into fear and terror, but their aim is clear: to keep us in poverty and slavery by force.

But we will not be cowed. The struggle continues.

The CAWP and the Concerned Residents have called for an investigation of Mathaseni's murder, and for the disbanding of the local Community Policing Forum, which has been heavily involved in the repression of the working class movement. The ZACF supports these demands.

At the same time, we go further, seeing Mathaseni's murder as part of the repression of the working class that has been going on since Haymarket and long before.

Yesterday, 30 April, the Johannesburg high court ruled that the forced installation of prepaid water meters was illegal, violating the constitutional right to water. This was a victory for the working class, organised in the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and the Anti-Privatisation Forum. But against the armed force of the state, legal decisions alone will not secure the needs of the workers and the poor. The Johannesburg metro council is proposing to increase water tariffs, and to cut down even the paltry "free basic water" they have promised to deliver. Why should they be deterred by a mere court decision, when they have the cops to crack down on us? The people of Sebokeng demanded nothing other than their rights to water and housing, recognised even under South Africa's capitalist constitution. But their demands were met with denial, with bullets, with arrest, with torture, with murder.

The police force exists for no other purpose than to keep the workers and the poor in slavery, the capitalists and the politicians in power. We cannot call on the cops to protect us from crime, when they are the armed force of the biggest criminals of all. It is only by self-organisation, self-defence and direct action that we can win water, houses, electricity or decent working conditions – and ultimately build a great global movement of the workers, the poor and the peasants, to free ourselves of the cancers of greedy capitalists, lying politicians and murderous cops.

THE WORKING CLASS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

Issued by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
and Anarchist Black Cross South Africa,
1 May 2008