From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: NEWS:Death-Penalty Protests in Calif
Date: 17 Apr 92 19:31:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: mont.1992Apr17.193135.27107
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: University of Missouri
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit


               STRUGGLE HEATS UP OVER DEATH PENALTY

                          By Jane Cutter
                          San Francisco

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited.)

The state of California plans to execute Robert Alton Harris on
April 21. It will be the first California execution in 25 years.
Widespread opposition to the death penalty had held the state back
for all that time.  Round-the-clock vigils against the death
penalty have been taking place in front of San Quentin Prison. And
a major demonstration is planned for April 18 at Marina Green in
San Francisco.

The pending execution here is very significant.  The federal
"anti-crime" bill would impose the racist death penalty for more
than 50 federal crimes. An execution in California would serve as
a green light for state-sponsored killing around the country.

That's why the government and media are whipping up pro-death
penalty public opinion here leading up to Harris' execution.
Robert Alton Harris is a poor white man who was severely abused
and eventually abandoned as a child. He suffers from Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome and organic brain damage, and has been diagnosed as
schizophrenic.

Gov. Pete Wilson has said he will not stop the execution. Yet
Wilson is cutting social services that would prevent children from
being abused the way Harris was.  In the U.S., the death penalty
amounts to an attack on the poorest and most oppressed people. It
is above all a racist policy with which to terrorize and suppress
Third World people, who rarely get justice.  Black and Latino
people disproportonately populate Death Rows across the country.
African Americans constitute 40 percent of Death Row inmates
nationally and 36 percent in California--far disproportionate to
the Black population.

Meanwhile members of the ruling class who are responsible for
massive death and suffering--like George Bush, the butcher of
Panama and Iraq--go free.  Corporations that have poisoned
thousands, like Chevron and Union Carbide, continue to profit
while their victims suffer and die long, painful deaths. And the
owners of the Hamlet, N.C., poultry processing plant, whose
conscious and premeditated decision to seal emergency exits
resulted in 25 workers' deaths, have not even served any prison
time.

That is the nature of capitalist justice. The most oppressed
workers are kept poor and unemployed, and/or locked in the
concentration camps known as prisons to prevent organized
rebellion.  The death penalty is the ultimate weapon against the
working class and oppressed.

For more information on demonstrations against the upcoming
execution in California, call Death Penalty Focus at (510)
452-9505.


                               ***

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World, and
send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212) 255-0352. You
may contact Workers World editors on NY Transfer or PeaceNet at
"workers."

from the RACE & CLASS Newsfeed - NY Transfer News Service
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