The Clintons' 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited--Part 4

(The following article first appeared in the September 25, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian)

Near the end of the Wicker Park rally, the former New York City Panther Trial 21 Defendant Dhoruba Bin-Wahad—who was later wrongfully imprisoned on a trumped-up charge for 19 years in Upstate New York—argued that we now live under a system of “Democratic Fascism” in the United States:

“Power To The People! Power To The People!

“This is Chicago 1996. And everyone is acting like they’re totally intimidated. And the reason why people are acting like they’re intimidated today is because in the United States we have a new form of democracy. Let’s say we have a new form of direct democracy. And that form of direct democracy is called: `Democratic Fascism.’

“It’s called Democratic Fascism because it’s aligning the Corporate Interest to the Racist State. And the Racist State carries out the policies of the Corporations and the Rich White Males who control this society.

“These policies are translated into a vehement hatred of the poor, a criminalization and degradation of people of color, and an increased hysteria perpetrated by law enforcement agencies against drugs.

“Now we know in the African community in the United States that drugs is a problem. But we also know that, as reported just recently [in 1996] in the newspapers on the West Coast, that the U.S. government has always been heavily into importing drugs into the African community in the United States. They did this during the Vietnam War in order to cool Black people out. In order to divert the militancy of organizations such as the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika and SNCC.

“In those days in the African communities there was an increased awareness, an increased heightened consciousness of racism, of institutionalized racism and sexism. Lest we forget, African people have always led the greatest human rights struggle for civil rights in this country. It was the civil rights movement of Black people’s struggle for liberation that emancipated women, that led to the freedom of gays to stand up, and speak out, and come out. It was the struggle of Black people in the street from Selma to Chicago that galvanized and made the peace movement militant.

“Don’t let CNN re-write our history!

“Don’t let Channel 4 re-write our history!

“Fred Hampton was murdered in Chicago. By an administration headed by the father of the current mayor. Let’s not be blind to our history.

“The city of Chicago worked hand-in-hand with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Counter-Intelligence Program to destroy the Black Panther Party in this city. And what did we have in the wake of this destruction? We had people come forward to mislead the African community. Or had people come forward who ignore the repression that was visited on the African community by the police departments of the United States.

“All throughout this country, as I speak, a war on drugs is ravaging the African community. It’s not a `war on drugs.’ It’s a war on us.

“The street that these cops patrol in our community—harassing young Black males, locking them up, running them through the criminal justice system, creating a military state and jail cells by 30 billion dollars—is a crying shame. But it’s part and parcel of a new form of democracy: `Democratic Fascism.’

“I said `Democratic Fascism.’ Where you get to vote, but you can’t vote for anybody. Where you get to hoop and holler at the Republican or Democratic Convention, and then you got to go on to business as usual.

“You know Dole is attacking Clinton because he says `the war on drugs is not successful’ and Clinton is ‘soft on drugs.’ But Dole and the Republican Party know full well that 100,000 new cops in the street is not going to translate into safety for African people in their communities. When these cops are racist, when these cops don’t live in their community, when these cops don’t take care of business in our community.

“What we need is a National African Defense Network. We need to defend ourselves on every level in the Black community. What we need is decentralization…of police departments. What we need is community control of the police. And I’ll tell you how to get community control of the police: by using the ballot. By putting it on a referendum in every major city in this country. Community control and civilian control of the police department. And watch how quickly these cops turn rabbit on you. Because they don’t want to be accountable to the community. They don’t want to live in the community. They want to be outside the community and be the biggest gangs on the streets of Chicago, New York or L.A.

“The message that I’m trying to bring to you today is to understand that the `war on drugs’ is a war on us. And is an excuse to remove all the civil and legal rights of every citizen in the United States. And tomorrow, when you wake up, the cops will be kicking in your door and jackboot you upside the head. The way they did to us 25 years ago.

“The issue of political prisoners…is very important. The use of the death penalty in a racist and calculating fashion is very important…

“But the murder of Black people, and especially now, the impending murder of Mumia Abu-Jamal, is something that we have to understand in the context of `Democratic Fascism.’ I said understand the context in which Mumia is going to be put to death if the State has its way. It’s the context of `Democratic Fascism.’

“The political prisoners are in prison because of the courts in this country. And we have to understand that we must mobilize not only today. But tomorrow and the next day and the next day.

“Power To the People! Power To The People! Free Mumia! Down With The Death Penalty! Death To The Death Penalty! Free All Political Prisoners!”
(end of part 4)

(Downtown/Aquarian 9/25/96)

Next: The Clintons’ 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited—Part 5

The Clintons' 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited--Part 3

(The following article first appeared in the September 25, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian)

The woman activist who played a major role organizing the demonstration and who acted as the rally moderator later introduced [the now-deceased] former Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial defendant Dave Dellinger and Dellinger’s grandson. After Dellinger’s grandson sang a song he had written while accompanying himself on a guitar, Dellinger spoke:

“Now I think that we should all understand that the organizers, all the various groups on the Not On The Guest List! Coalition, do not want a riot or expect a riot here today. Now before I say a few words about Leonard Peltier, I want to say—well, the Black Panthers used to say: all prisoners are political prisoners.

“The United States, you know, supported Hitler until the very last minute. And I actually went to Nazi Germany as an anti-Nazi and actually carried messages for the anti-Nazi movement. But, anyway, I didn’t register for the draft. And at that point, when I did three years in federal prison, they concluded `he’s yellow.’ So they always put me in with the most violent criminals, at least at the beginning. And like one time, I remember, I was in with 13 people in a cell for two people, where every one of them had committed murder.

“But what I found out was—if you treated each one of them with love and understanding, and tried to help them to believe in themselves—that there was a potential Buddha within them…

“Well, anyway, I want to say one other thing…We heard the name Geronimo today. Now there is another Geronimo, originally Geronimo Pratt…

“There was an FBI agent who resigned many years ago now, in protest over what the FBI was doing. And he came to me through the services of Charley Garry, the lawyer for the Black Panther Party. And we talked. And I wrote an article and included words in a magazine that I was editing at the time. And he told me then that he received death threats. And so did I.

“Well, he spoke at the University of Vermont this Spring. And he recounted one of the stories that I had known. And that was that Geronimo was the leader of one faction in the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles. And, as often happens, there were some rivals also who wanted to be leaders in the Black Panther Party.

“And one day, when Geronimo was in San Francisco for three days, somebody connected with the FBI killed his rivals. And then he was tried and railroaded. And he’s been in, if I remember correctly, 23 years now. [In the late 1990s, Geronimo Pratt was finally released from prison].

“And as this ex-FBI agent said to the University of Vermont people: `We knew that he couldn’t possibly have done it. Not just because one of our own people was implicated. But also because he was away for three days—the day before, the day of the murder, and the day after.’

“Now about Leonard Peltier. I think that Vernon [Bellecourt] has said enough about the case so I think I’m not going to talk about that: the injustice of it and the lies and so forth. But I’m going to say that, maybe by now at least 18 months ago, I decided, working with Ron McBride of the Peltier Defense Committee, that we would get together the kind of people that the White House would consider prestigious. And ask for an interview to discuss the case.

“And I’m sure I’m not going to remember them all. But we got Pete Seeger and Dick Clark and, if I remember correctly, Martin Sheen and Grace Paley and Buffy St. Marie and Gandhi’s grandson…and various others of that type. And then we wrote, made the formal applications…

“It took awhile. And then we got the answer. The answer was that…Clinton or nobody else in the White House—we mentioned his legal counsel, we mentioned Hillary, we mentioned Janet Reno—would discuss the case until the Justice Department has made its ruling on what the case deserves.

“And already it had been more than two years since the Appeals Court…demanded that the Justice Department make a ruling or an investigation and come up with some conclusions. So I decided than, and got together with a few other people, and we organized the Campaign For Non-Violent Civil Disobedience To Free Leonard Peltier.

“On March 20 [1996], there were nonviolent protests in three places in the country. I happened to be one of the ones who were arrested in Washington, D.C. for blocking the Justice Department door. And I wish that was the form of civil disobedience that we were doing here. That it would be clear that it was the federal government and the Justice Department and the FBI. But circumstances are such that it will be some other form of civil disobedience which will probably give the message.

“Now before I read a poem by Leonard Peltier. Well, maybe I’ll say this before I do it…

“But I will say that Gandhi once said `that if you are concerned with acting violently, then you must be trained in the art of killing.’ And then he said: `But if you plan to act nonviolently, then you should deal with the art of dying for the cause.’

“I thought of that because I was thinking about Martin Luther King. And there were references to him today. And I know, from working with him, in the very last six to eight months of his life he became an over-all radical in the way he had never been before…

“Black people like SNCC were way ahead of him in coming out against the Vietnam War. But when he did, then there was the death threat. And I want to quote this from the last few months of his life…And after you hear this, if you think that some single white anti-Black person in the South was the one who killed him, then you’ll understand, if you read this, that wasn’t it. And there’s a lot of other evidence I won’t go into, that the government, itself, was involved.

“So here are the statements by King. I’ve got to put on my glasses. Now that I’m over 40, I have to do that.

“`For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconversion of the entire society, a revolution of values. We can’t have a system where some people live in superfluous, inordinate wealth, while others live in abject, deadening poverty. From now on, our movement must take on basic class issues between the privileged and the underprivileged.’

And then one final sentence: `The evils of capitalism’—what they now call the `free market’--`The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism.’…” (end of part 3)

(Downtown/Aquarian 9/25/96)

Next: The Clintons’ 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited—Part 4

The Clintons' 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited--Part 2

(The following article first appeared in the September 25, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian)

Grant Park is somewhat isolated from Downtown Chicago’s commercial district, but is still within walking distance of the streets that are filled with office workers during commuting hours and lunchtime. The site of the 1996 Democratic National Convention, the United Center, however, is not within walking distance of Downtown Chicago. It’s usually used as the basketball arena where the Chicago Bulls play before fans who drive in from the suburbs, and park their cars in the huge parking lot that surrounds the Center. During Convention Week, the parking lot, as well as the streets surrounding the Center, was part of a fenced-in security zone; and Chicago cops prevented pedestrians and local residents from walking closer than a third of a mile from the bussed-in Dem delegates and media people.

At Wicker Park, a few miles north of the convention hall, around 4,000 Not On The Guest List! Coalition demonstrators gathered for a late afternoon rally. Chicago cops on horses and foot watched from a street near the park, but only a few media people were there to report on what the speakers said. One of the speakers was a Puerto Rican nationalist activist:

“There are people today, political prisoners and P.O.W.s, who are in prison. Many for more than 25 years. Many from the Black Liberation struggle. Many anti-imperialists. Many from the Native American struggle…

“If you look at U.S. prisons and jails…You can look at the fact that there are 1.5 million people in prison and jails [in 1996]. And 70 percent of them are people of color. And then, on the other side, you can see that there are about 1.5 million people in higher education and 80 percent happen to be white. There’s something wrong in that set-up also.

“So when you look at the fact that we have Puerto Rican political prisoners. And we have 15 of them who have been in prison for more than 16 years already. For the `crime’ of wanting to put an end to one of the most heinous crimes against humanity: colonialism and racism. Because the two go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other.

"And so today, we have gathered here to not only tell people that we demand justice for everyone and that there can be no peace without justice. At the same time there are very particular elements of justice and that includes, obviously, an end to colonialism. An end to racism. And that is why all of us here must demand the immediate release of all political prisoners. And, in particular, on behalf, obviously, of the Puerto Rican political prisoners and P.O.W.s…”

(Downtown/Aquarian 9/25/96)

Next: The Clintons’ 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited—Part 3

The Clintons' 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the September 25, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian)

“I think Bob Dole and Bill Clinton both stink. I think they both don’t give a damn about AIDS. And I think the reality that we are told, vote for the lesser of two evils, is unacceptable,” the ACT-UP New York Prison Caucus Chairperson said. The ACT-UP spokesperson, David, was talking to a pack of media people around noon on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 1996, on the sidewalk in front of the press center that the Dems had set-up in Chicago’s Loop.

“There are many of us out here who have 10, 12, 15 T-cells left. And we cannot negotiate with these animals who have decided that we don’t have a strong enough caucus. We don’t have a strong enough voice. And we haven’t been recognized as having to deal with the epidemic in our daily lives.

“This is not cancer. This is not heart disease. This is a pandemic. Zaire is almost gone from it. There are other countries which have been wiped out. And it’s going to start here.

“Brooklyn has more people with AIDS in it. By year 2010 it will have more than people in it who don’t have AIDS. This is a pandemic and it is being created by social conditions. Clinton is deadlier than the virus at this point.”

Downtown/Aquarian asked David how he’d respond to those who say, like Barney Frank, that “Clinton is the lesser evil?”

“That’s bullshit! So let’s have Hitler instead of Mussolini? That’s a total bullshit response,” answered the ACT-UP New York spokesperson. “Anybody who comes out and says that, that `Clinton has done well with people with AIDS,’ is a liar or ignorant. Anybody who says that we should take Dole over Clinton is not recognizing that he’s killing us just as well. He just signed the worst Republican welfare cut in the history of this country! We don’t want Dole. We don’t want Clinton. I personally need to see a revolution come now. And that’s what it takes.”

On the sidewalk behind David, about 20 ACT-UP demonstrators held signs and were chanting “Welfare Reform Equals Death! Hillary Is A Fraud!” and “Clinton Equals Dole! Fight Back! Fight AIDS!" According to the ACT-UP New York Prison Caucus Chairperson:

“Clinton made 66 promises in 1992 to reform the AIDS crisis and try to bring substantial change to keep people with AIDS alive. He has kept none of those promises. His own presidential AIDS Advisory Council has condemned him over and over again for taking no stance on the drug industry’s enormous profiteering off AIDS. He has done nothing, by executive action, to bring about clean needle exchange, which saves the lives of millions of people. He has done nothing to try to bring about actions right now that would save lives of people with AIDS, by bringing about immediate release of drugs that are sitting in the FDA without any type of testing going on.”

ACT-UP was out in Chicago “as a diverse, non-partisan coalition” that represented “angered action to end the AIDS crisis in order to bring about immediate action by the president, by his staff, to recognize that the AIDS crisis is still going on,” said David. He also warned “that more people will die from AIDS in the next four years” if Clinton waits to take the proposed actions “than died in World War II, Korea and the Vietnam War.”

A uniformed security guard interrupted ACT-UP’s impromptu sidewalk press conference by ordering the press to “clear the sidewalk” in front of the Democratic Party's press center. Prior to ACT-UP’s picket, a homeless African-American man could be seen sitting on a ledge at the corner of Downtown Chicago’s Wells Street. A handful of homeless African-Americans were also later observed sitting in Grant Park, at the same time about 30 counter-cultural folks were hanging out around the park bandshell, early in the afternoon. One of the young women hanging out was standing and doing some stretching exercises under the hot sun. (end of part 1)

(Downtown/Aquarian 9/25/96)

Next: The Clintons’ 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited—Part 2

Torture In The Holy Land?

Amnesty International charged the Israeli government in the 1990s with torturing its Palestinian political opponents. In its 1993 report, the London-based human rights organization stated the following:

“About 25,000 Palestinians were arrested in 1992 on security grounds, with more than 10,000 imprisoned at any one time. Most were serving sentences passed by military courts or were awaiting trial. Several hundred were administratively detained without charge or trial; over 500 of them were still held at the end of the year. There were Palestinian and Israeli prisoners of conscience, including conscientious objectors to military service. Palestinians under interrogation were systematically tortured or ill-treated. Four died in circumstances related to their treatment under interrogation. At least 120 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces, often in circumstances suggesting extrajudicial executions or other unjustifiable killings…”

According to Amnesty International, the methods of torture used by the Israeli government “mostly during interrogation,” included “beatings, hooding with dirty sacks, sleep deprivation, and confinement in small, dark cells known as `closets’ or, when cold, `refrigerators’” and “a police unit operating in the West Bank was said to have specialized in interrogating detainees at night with methods including severe beatings with wooden sticks and electric shocks.”

(Downtown 12/22/93)

The Israeli government was accused by Israeli human rights organizations of torturing some of the 400 Palestinian activists it locked up without trial in 1994, on charges of being members of the outlawed radical Hamas organization.

A 1992 Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights Report, Making Women Talk: The Interrogation of Palestinian Women Detainees by Teresa Thornhill, also described how the Israeli government’s General Security Services [GSS]—Shin Beth—apparently tortured Palestinian women during the early 1990s:

“Most interrogation work is carried out by the General Security Services [GSS], Israel’s internal intelligence agency…

“The GSS feel no taboo against using physical violence against Palestinian women…

“Male detainees are regularly subjected to most of the same forms of physical abuse as women. However, it is important to remember that, throughout her time in the hands of the GSS, the female detainee is made to feel sexually threatened. Many women detainees report having been threatened with rape…

“Women are routinely slapped, and kicked during interrogation sessions if they do not readily answer questions. Sometimes an interrogator will bang the woman’s head against the wall…”

The same report concluded that “the stories quoted in the report, although they represent the experiences of a relatively small number of women, suggest that the Israeli practice of torturing female security detainees is widespread” and observed that “the torture of male Palestinian detainees has been widely documented elsewhere by…Amnesty International…”

A Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, Mahmond al-Zahar, in 1994 told a New York Times correspondent: “Is there anyone in Gaza who does not realize that Israel still occupies 40 percent of the Gaza Strip with settlements and troops to protect the settlements [in 1994], that it controls our shorelines, that its surveillance planes patrol the skies, as you can see them now…and that we are locked up in here periodically under curfew [in 1994] whenever Israel feels like it?” (NY Times 12/3/94)

(Downtown 12/3/94)

Next: The Clintons’ 1996 Chicago Democratic National Convention Revisited—Part 1

`Palestine Lives!'

(chorus)
Palestine lives
Palestine will not die
You can pretend it no longer exists
But Palestine will always survive.

(verses)
There’s a people scattered
By a heavily-financed foe
There’s a nation which was shattered
By an army backed by gold
There’s a people now resisting
The years of forced exile
There’s a people who cry out:
That Palestine is still alive. (chorus)

There’s a people with a cause
Which missiles cannot defeat
There’s a nation which was wronged
By oppressors who self-righteously preach
There’s a people now fighting
Experts in international crime
There’s a people who shout out:
That Palestine is still alive. (chorus)

There’s a people with a vision
Of a new society
There’s a nation with a dream
Of a land in which all people will be free
There’s a people now defying
The Western drive to colonize
There’s a people who cry out:
That Palestine is still alive. (chorus)

There’s a people who fight on
From the ruins of Gaza and Beirut
There’s a nation which stands firm
Against tanks, cluster bombs and armed brutes
There’s a people, all alone,
Who resist those who seek genocide
There’s a people who, with blood, say:
That Palestine is still alive. (chorus)

Palestine Lives! was written during the 1970s when the Israeli establishment was then unwilling to even sit down at the negotiating table with the representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] that was recognized as a legitimate political organization by most members of the United Nations. But the folks who control the U.S. media conglomerates still don’t appear very eager to provide much airplay for U.S. folk songs that support the right of all Palestinians to return to their homeland and exercise their democratic right of national self-determination.

Yet according to Jerusalem: Arab Origin and Heritage by M.A. Aamiry, “the period of uncontested Arab habitation and rule in and around Jerusalem and Palestine covers at least 800 years” and “In 1948, the population of Jerusalem was about 160,000, half of them Arabs, half Jews.” The same book also observed:

“After the war of June 1967, the Zionists proclaimed the annexation of Old Jerusalem to add to the sectors of the city which they had occupied from 1948. In spite of resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, Israel has persisted in its arbitrary measures and has lost no time in converting the city to its own purposes, bulldozing Arab houses, driving out their owners and rendering them homeless, expropriating Arab land and erecting tall new skyscrapers, `match-boxes six stories high,’ thus disfiguring the Holy City and destroying its unique character…”

The New York Times (11/18/94) also reported that “the Palestinians” in 1994 accused Israel of violating the 1993 peace agreement “by building blocks of new housing in East Jerusalem.”

(Downtown 12/7/94)

Amnesty International also observed in its 1990 Report:

“About 25,000 Palestinians…were arrested in connection with the Intifada (uprising) in the Occupied Territories. Over 4,000 served periods in administrative detention without charge or trial…Thousands of Palestinians were beaten while in the hands of Israeli forces or were tortured or ill-treated in detention centres. At least eight were reported to have died as a result. Over 260 unarmed Palestinian civilians—including children—were shot dead by Israeli forces, often in circumstances suggesting excessive use of force or deliberate killing. Others died in incidents where tear-gas was possibly deliberately misused…”

Despite its policy of continuing to violate human rights in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the Israeli Establishment still got “$3 billion a year in aid” in 1996 during the Clintons’ first White House term because “no American Administration wants to pick a fight with Israel during an election year,” according to the New York Times (9/28/96).

(Downtown/Aquarian 10/9/96)

Next: Torture In The Holy Land?

Columbia University-Linked Kresge Foundation Owned $2 Million Worth of Halliburton Stock In 2005

Most U.S. anti-war activists don’t think it was moral for U.S. corporations like Halliburton (whose CEO during the 1990’s was U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney) to make windfall profits following the Bush Administration’s military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq after October 2001. Yet as the http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/ site notes:

“Halliburton saw its revenues increase 30 percent to $16 billion in 2003, largely because of its military contracts in the Middle East. Halliburton was the number one U.S. Army contractor in 2003 with the total value of its Army contracts valued at $3,731,725,648. Dan Briody, in his book The Halliburton Agenda, described Halliburton’s relationship with Cheney as `the embodiment of the Iron Triangle, the nexus of the government, military, and big business that President Eisenhower warned America about in his farewell speech.”

Most U.S. anti-war activists also don’t think it’s moral for a university president to also sit on the board of a foundation that invests in Halliburton. Yet in 2005 Columbia University President Lee Bollinger (http://youtube.com/watch?v=g0JpF07SOo4 ) was paid $48,000 to sit on the board of trustees of a foundation, the Kresge Foundation, which owned 32,500 shares of Halliburton stock, worth over $2 million, according to the Kresge Foundation’s Form 990-PF financial filing for 2005.

The total value of the Columbia University-linked Kresge Foundation’s marketable securities on Dec. 31, 2005 exceeded $1.4 billion, including $802 million in hedge fund investments and $191 million in oil and gas corporation investments. The Kresge Foundation also owned over $4.6 million (99,100 shares) worth of Wal-Mart Stores stock and over $2.7 million (68,500 shares) worth of Coca-Cola Company stock in 2005. That same year, the tax-exempt Kresge Foundation also gave a $500,000 grant to the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and a grant of $1.5 million to the University of Michigan, for UM’s renovation and expansion of Alumni Memorial Hall.

Coincidentally, Kresge Foundation board member Bollinger used to be the president of the University of Michigan before he relocated to Low Library to become Columbia University’s current president.

Next: Palestine Lives! protest folk song lyrics