Hip Hop artists assail NYC mayor’s education cuts

Thousands gathered at city hall in New York City on June 4, 2002, to rally against education budget cuts.Photo courtesy of NYC Indymedia

By Herb  Boyd

June 7— It had all the makings of a Summer Jam rap concert, but rap mogul Russell Simmons and a roster of notable rap artists had another agenda on June 4: Education first.

With a crowd estimated somewhere between the 50,000 figure announced by moderator Minister Benjamin Chavis Muhammad of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network and the police’s 20,000, such rap artists as Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Doug E. Fresh, Alicia Keys, Chuck D, LL Cool J, Foxy Brown, Erykah Badu, Noriega, Rev. Run, and Common took turns blasting Mayor Bloomberg and his plan to cut $350 million from the schools budget.

“I’m here because I support education,” LL Cool J told an enthusiastic crowd of mainly school children who were scattered and contained all around City Hall. “Everyone has a right to learn. And we need to pay our teachers more to make them care more...so we can learn more and earn more...”

“We ain’t having it,” roared P. Diddy, formerly Sean “Puffy” Combs, challenging the budget cuts which he charged would seriously limit students educational opportunities.

Resounding outbursts of cheers greeted Common when he screamed: “We love you...you are our children...our sisters and brothers.”

Despite the prolonged demands from their fans, the rappers did a good job of restraining themselves and adhering to the prohibition against performing. Some music from Djs rocked the streets when Jay-Z commanded a show of hands.

Rap-reggae artist/activist Wyclef Jean, formerly of the Fugees, was arrested when he insisted on performing in violation of the permit. He knelt down and put his hands behind his back, and was taken away without incident. He got a summons for disorderly conduct. Twelve other demonstrators were also arrested on similar charges with assertions from bystanders that the police overreacted.

Joining the rappers were thousands of teachers, mostly members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), who are still working without a contract, and several elected officials, including Councilmen Charles Barron and Bill Perkins. “Tell the rich to pay the bills, not the poor,” Barron said to the crowd’s approval. He said the mayor should make a contract with the teachers. “The UFT is a great union, but his – your — being here is the mightiest union.”

“Our children count,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the UFT, and her remarks were echoed by her colleague Bertha Lewis and by former Public Advocate Mark Green.

“It’s time they acted like education is the number one issue,” Green yelled above the constant noise, “...we need smaller schoolrooms and the rich must sacrifice too with a tax hike.” Along with the UFT and Simmons’s Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, the Alliance for Quality Education helped coordinate and sponsor the event.

“There are rumors that Bloomberg is rethinking his budget cuts in education,” Simmons said prior to the rally. “And this rally will let him know how serious we are about this issue.”

According to some elected officials, the budget cuts proposed by Bloomberg will be restored through the state legislature.

“Four of my own children attend public schools,” said Minister Kevin Muhammad, New York representative of Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, “and I am concerned about the quality of education they receive. As Minister Farrakhan has said ‘Education is the life of civilization’ and we must fight to retain it.”

“Education first, education first,” were the words Rev. Herb Daughtry asked the crowd to repeat after him and they loudly obeyed. “I say education first because they are building more jails than schools.”

“It is absolutely deplorable that the mayor can talk about budget cuts in education, when our children need this more desperately than ever,” said a teacher, who asked to remain anonymous. “I’ve been working without a contract for more than a year and a half and something’s got to give.”

Source: The Black World Today

Officers acquitted after chasing, shooting at unarmed motorists

Chicago, June 8— On Saturday more than 150 people marched and picketed at the Daley Center Plaza in Chicago, angry that five Cook County sheriff’s police officers were acquitted of all charges after they admitted their role in a car chase through the south suburbs in which one off-duty officer shot at a black south suburban couple. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. James T. Meeks walked arm-in-arm with Cory Simmons and Dominique Mapp, the young couple who testified they were shot at by the officers. The officers claimed that the couple cut them off in traffic.

The officers’ acquittal, “sends the message that police officers have carte blanche to abuse their authority,” Jackson said, adding that had the victims been white and the officers black, they would have already been fired.  “This could explode our city,” Jackson warned.

Jackson promised that demonstrations by his organization would “escalate” and listed several local cases in which officers were acquitted of criminal charges or never charged at all. Shirley Ellis of Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood said, “It just made me so angry I had to come down.” Ellis and others agreed that if the officers had been civilians, they would have faced serious charges just for driving drunk and carrying weapons.

According to court testimony, the five had been drinking at a fundraiser for County Sheriff Sheahan when they became upset at being cut off in traffic, pulled up next to Simmons’ car and threw a half-full beer can in the window.  Simmons testified he threw a sealed pint-sized paint can at the officers’ car, and they began chasing him and later fired shots at the car. Simmons and Mapp were not drinking and were unarmed during the incident.

Thomas Lanigan and Anthony Bohling were acquitted of charges of attempted murder and aggravated discharge of a firearm.  Lanigan, Bohling, Robert Jones, Daniel Troike, and Andrew Remus were all acquitted of official misconduct and obstruction of justice. Cook County Judge Clayton Crane said he did not find enough evidence to convict the men on any criminal charges, even though they may have acted foolishly and violated departmental regulations when they chased the couple’s car for a half-hour and shot at it while it was moving.

The incident took place on an evening in 1999. The five officers attended the fund-raiser and then visited a bar. They claimed that the Chevy Suburban in which they were traveling was then cut off by a Ford Expedition driven by Cory Simmons, 25. The officers began chasing the sport-utility vehicle.  Simmons was circling the home of his father when he and Mapp heard gunfire, Mapp crouched on the floor and Simmons drove off.  Soon a bullet shattered the right rear window of Simmons’ car. Simmons turned off his lights, lost the pursuing vehicle and drove to the Robbins Police Department.

One of the officers admitted firing several shots at the couple’s Expedition after hearing and seeing shots come from the vehicle.  Investigators, however, never found a gun in the couple’s car.

Jackson took aim at the judge in the case, Clayton J. Crane, saying his decision was highly politically motivated. 

“It seems their political connections allowed [the officers] to circumvent the law,” Jackson said. “These deputies shot ... to intimidate and to kill and walked away free...These five terrorists must be addressed,’’ Jackson said. “This discredits and defames the morality of our democracy for such open ugliness to be allowed to take place. The struggle for racial justice and equal protection under the law is upon us today.’’ Crane could not be reached for comment.

Andre Grant, the attorney handling a civil suit against the officers, said he was outraged. “A jury will not stand for drunken officers going from one cocktail party to another shooting at unarmed civilians,” Grant said, noting a jury will sit in the civil trial. Simmons’ mother, Sharon Hinton, said: “Wrong is wrong. You have a badge, and you can get away with anything.”

The acquittals came two months after Criminal Court Judge Ronald Himel acquitted three other sheriff’s deputies of beating Louis Schmude in a holding cell. Schmude died days after the alleged beating.  Earlier last week, local and federal prosecutors said they would not pursue criminal charges against Chicago police officers accused of killing unarmed motorists LaTanya Haggerty and Robert Russ in June 1999.

Source: Oread Daily

Reporters balk at new fingerprint requirements

By Wendy Cole

June 5— In Chicago, some 3,000 journalists possess press credentials issued by the police department. Getting the card has always been a straightforward matter: fill out a form signed by your employer, provide a photo, and you’re done. But when the current laminated badges expired at the end of May, many reporters and photographers let the deadline slide.

For the first time, the police required members of local media to be fingerprinted and undergo criminal background checks to obtain a pass. Apparently, security concerns since Sept. 11 have prompted the heightened scrutiny, but many local journalists believe the measures are unacceptable invasions of privacy, as well as a First Amendment violation. They don’t like the police, in effect, deciding who can and cannot be a journalist.

“I think editors and news directors should make that decision,” says James Anderson, news director of the Illinois Radio Network. Credentials will be denied to applicants found to be registered sex offenders or who have an outstanding arrest warrant, the police say. The cops maintain that in these dangerous times, they’d be remiss if they didn’t make sure news-gatherers are who they say they are and are not wanted by the authorities.

“What would the story be if a registered sex offender is covering a news story at a day care center and is there with all those children without a credential?” says Pat Camden, a spokesman for the police. “Nobody here is looking to end somebody’s career because you were arrested at a beer party in college.” But some reporters are unswayed by promises that other embarrassing information uncovered through the checks won’t be used against them.

Some news organizations, like the Illinois Radio Network, are waiting to see what competitors will do before deciding whether to undergo the investigation. But a number of journalists have already declared their intentions not to comply.

“Why should the onus be on us to prove we are innocent?” wondered Chicago Tribune reporter Christine Tatum, president of the Chicago Headline Club, the local chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

Media politics: the urge to merge and converge

By Jonathan Lawson

Seattle, Washington, June 6— Few observers of 2000’s protracted walkout by Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer workers could have imagined an issue that would bring together the union representing the papers’ employees, and Times owner Frank Blethen, as comrades in struggle. But the deregulatory fervor gripping DC policymakers has created just such a situation, as Blethen and the unions move to preserve an Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule prohibiting single companies owning both broadcast and print media in the same market.

The cross-ownership ban, dating from 1975, protects media diversity by ensuring that no single voice can control all media outlets in a single community. Big media owners have shown little affection for this rule, thirsting for megamergers which would allow single newsrooms to churn out local content for both broadcast and print—“convergence,” in industry lingo—or to eliminate local newsrooms altogether.

Accordingly, business-friendly FCC Chairman Michael Powell (pictured right) wants to deregulate the ban out of existence. On Sept. 13 last year, Powell announced his intention to “review” the rule. The issue may soon come to a head; on June 4, influential House Republican Billy Tauzer and Democrat Fred Upton publicly urged Powell to move ahead with a repeal.

Meanwhile, The Newspaper Guild (TNG) and its parent union, Communications Workers of America, are ready for the fight. This spring the union commissioned a study from the Economic Policy Institute detailing the likely effects of cross-ownership, and the AFL-CIO, prompted by several member unions, issued a strong condemnation of the proposed deregulation.

The unions appear to have good cause for alarm. Two years ago the government of Canada struck down its own ban on cross-ownership, and the resulting wave of megamergers provides a case study for US policymakers. Within a year of the change, television giant CanWest Global had gobbled up 80% of all daily newspapers across Canada. Even after selling off pieces to cover debts, CanWest had amassed what TNG-Canada president Arnold Amber called “a media empire unparalleled in the western world.”

The effects of such monopolization were quickly catalogued by union representatives in the affected workplaces, including layoffs, increased demands on existing staff and attacks on diversity and journalistic standards. One widely-criticized change has been CanWest’s introduction of conservative “national editorials” which all local papers are required to publish.

In his own strong support of the cross-ownership ban, Frank Blethen is swimming hard against corporate trends. In March, Blethen railed against the proposed deregulation, calling this “a dangerous moment for democracy” and underscoring that allowing cross-ownership would benefit financial bottom lines only at the expense of journalistic ideals and the public good.

Powell and corporate media lobbies claim that dropping the ban will lead to increased competition, even though the Canadian precedent demonstrates that deregulation will bring instead extreme consolidation. The fact that this piece of doublespeak (fewer competitors= greater competition) can be presented with a straight face shows not only the FCC’s condition of servitude to big business, but also the owners’ conviction that nobody -- not Congress, and certainly not the public -- is paying attention. Since the corporate beneficiaries of deregulation are also in a position to decide what policy issues make the news, advocates of press freedom and media diversity have their work cut out for them.

Source: Seattle Indymedia

Professors join call to divest in companies supplying Israel

By Dana Hull

June 6— More than 140 University of California professors have signed a petition urging the university to divest in American companies that sell arms to Israel, and similar faculty petitions are circulating at Harvard, MIT,
Princeton and Tufts.

The divestment drive borrows a page from the popular anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s, when students and professors persuaded universities to sell millions of dollars worth of holdings in companies that did business with South Africa.

“Apartheid is one form of occupation and domination, and what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza is also occupation and domination,” said L. Ling-chi Wang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California-Berkeley.

But critics say that comparing Israel to South Africa under apartheid is deeply disturbing, and fear the “South Africanization” of the Palestinian cause will widen the already volatile gulf between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian student groups on many college campuses.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the petition, available at www.ucdivest.org, had been signed by 141 professors, many of whom teach at the Berkeley campus.

The UC system employs 7,599 tenure-track faculty members.

The campaign calls for US and UC divestment until the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the occupied territories, the end of the use of torture and the end of building new settlements, and it calls for Palestinian refugees to either return to their former lands or be compensated for their losses.

So far, the petition does not list companies that will be targeted. The UC Faculty Divestment Campaign was announced Tuesday afternoon at a news conference held at the Berkeley campus’s Faculty Club.

A Berkeley student group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) began organizing its own divestment campaign last year. On Apr. 9, SJP kicked off a national divestment movement, and demonstrations were held at 40 college campuses across the country. Faculty support has lent some credibility to the effort.

“The professors came to us after our Apr. 9 action,” said Hoang Phan, a doctoral student in the English department who is active in SJP. “We recognize that divestment doesn’t come quickly, but South African divestment didn’t come quickly either. It’s a big project.”

In Cambridge, Mass., about 400 people — including faculty members like MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, students and alumni — have signed a joint Harvard-MIT Petition for Divestment in Israel, at http://harvardmitdivest.org/.

By contrast, hundreds more have signed a counter-petition, which is also circulating on the Internet at http://harvardmitjustice. org/.

“The divestment petition does not support peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians — indeed, the word ‘peace’ does not even appear in it; it does not support the citizens of Israel in the face of an endless stream of suicide bombings,” says the counter-petition.

Investment analysts warn that while divestment campaigns can be politically popular on campus, they are hard to implement.

“You have a sizable group of students and professors who are very supportive of Israel,” said Simon Billenness, a senior analyst at Trillium Asset Management, an investment firm. “There was no faculty on the other side who supported South Africa [during the anti-apartheid divestment campaign] and, politically, that makes this very different.”

Source: San Jose Mercury News      

FBI files reveal covert activities at campus involved Reagan, CIA

By Seth Rosenfeld

San Francisco, California, June 9— Under the guise of protecting national security, the FBI conducted wide-ranging and unlawful intelligence operations concerning the University of California (UC) that at different points involved the head of the CIA and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, according to the San Francisco Chronicle has learned.

According to thousands of pages of FBI records obtained by The Chronicle after a 17-year legal fight, the FBI unlawfully schemed with the head of the CIA to harass students, faculty and members of the Board of Regents, and mounted a concerted campaign to destroy the career of UC President Clark Kerr, which included sending the White House derogatory allegations about him that the bureau knew were false.

The FBI, in contrast, developed a “close and cordial” relationship with Reagan, who made campus unrest a major issue and vowed to fire Kerr during his 1966 gubernatorial campaign.

And after he was elected, the FBI failed to report that Reagan falsely stated on a federal security clearance form that he never had been a member of any group officially deemed subversive, an omission that could have been prosecuted as a felony.

The FBI later secretly gave Gov. Reagan’s administration information it could use “against” protesters.

The disclosure of the FBI activities concerning the University of California during the 1950s and 1960s comes as the bureau has been granted wider authority and more resources to conduct domestic intelligence activities, and as President Bush seeks to create a new Department of Homeland Security.

Experts said the FBI and CIA’s past activities involving the University of California provide a cautionary tale about potential dangers to academic freedom and civil liberties.

“This . . . raises a topic that we should be concerned about today: the balance between security and liberty,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, who was general counsel to the CIA from 1990 to 1995 and now is dean of the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.

Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on the FBI files.

The Office of Ronald Reagan referred questions to Edwin Meese III, who was Gov. Reagan’s chief of staff. Meese acknowledged that Reagan had had a long-standing relationship with the FBI, but said that as far as he knew, the bureau gave Reagan no special political help.

In the mid-1970s, Congress held hearings that revealed widespread FBI and CIA surveillance of law-abiding citizens, as well as FBI “Cointelpro” (counterintelligence operation) programs to “disrupt and neutralize” organizations and citizens who engaged in legitimate dissent, such as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The Chronicle obtained thousands of pages of previously undisclosed FBI records concerning the University of California as a result of three lawsuits brought under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents provide the most detailed account to date of the FBI’s activities at any American university during a turbulent, historic period and show that those covert operations spilled off campus and into state politics.

The FBI maintained in court that its activities regarding UC were proper and intended to protect civil order and national security. But a series of federal judges concluded that the FBI engaged in a range of unlawful activities that included investigating student protesters, interfering with academic freedom and intruding into internal university affairs.

The FBI’s campus files show that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took a special interest in UC, which was the nation’s largest university, operator of federal nuclear weapons labs and the scene of some of the nation’s first and largest campus protests over constitutional rights, academic freedom, and the Vietnam War.

Looking for dirt on UC

According to the documents, Hoover became outraged over an essay question on UC’s 1959 English aptitude test for high school applicants that asked: “What are the dangers to a democracy of a national police organization, like the FBI, which operates secretly and is unresponsive to public criticism?”

In response, Hoover ordered his aides to launch a covert public relations campaign to embarrass the university and pressure it to retract what he called a “viciously misleading” question.

The director also ordered his agents to search bureau files for derogatory information on UC’s 6,000 faculty members and top administrators.

The resulting 60-page report said 72 faculty members, students and employees were listed in the bureau’s “Security Index,” a secret nationwide list of people whom the FBI considered potentially dangerous to national security who would be detained without warrant during a crisis.

Congress was not told about the FBI detention plan, which failed to meet statutory requirements that there was “reasonable ground to believe” prospective detainees would engage in espionage or sabotage, said a 1976 report by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Operations.

The FBI records show that after the Free Speech Movement staged the nation’s first large campus sit-ins of the era, CIA Director John McCone met with Hoover at FBI headquarters in January 1965 and planned to leak FBI reports to conservative regent Edwin Pauley, who could then “use his influence to curtail, harass and at times eliminate” liberal faculty members.

Regents, Kerr also targets

The FBI also gave Pauley reports on the backgrounds of three liberal regents from San Francisco: lawyer William Coblentz, businessman William M. Roth and former Democratic National Committee member Elinor Haas Heller.

The FBI campaigned to get Kerr fired from the UC presidency, the bureau’s records show, because it disagreed with his policies and handling of the Free Speech Movement protests.

When President Lyndon Johnson was considering appointing Kerr to be his Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in December 1964, he asked the FBI to conduct a routine inquiry into Kerr’s background. But the bureau sent the White House allegations that Kerr was “pro-communist” — even though the bureau knew the claims were false.

Reagan’s “subversive” ties

The FBI’s background report on Kerr contrasts with the bureau’s background investigation of Reagan after he was elected governor in 1966 and became a regent ex officio, FBI records show.

That process began when Reagan filled out a federal form required to get a security clearance, and stated that he never belonged to any group deemed officially subversive, a copy of the form shows.

According to FBI records, the bureau knew Reagan had been in two such groups in the 1940s -- the Committee for a Democratic Far East Policy and the American Veterans Committee -- but the FBI background report failed to note that Reagan’s denial was untrue. Hundreds of people in the 1940s and 1950s had faced hearings and sometimes dismissals from federal employment for failing to disclose membership in groups deemed subversive.

Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, Hoover’s third-in-command, said that the FBI gave Reagan no special treatment. But two former FBI agents said it was routine procedure for the FBI to point out such discrepancies.

A “helpful” relationship

Following the violent 1969 People’s Park protests in Berkeley, Herbert Ellingwood, Reagan’s legal affairs secretary, met with DeLoach to discuss campus unrest. “Governor Reagan is dedicated to the destruction of disruptive elements on California campuses,” Ellingwood said, according to the records.

The Reagan administration planned on “hounding” protest groups as much as possible by “bringing any form of violation available against them.” Reagan officials might bring tax cases against them, Ellingwood added, and would also mount a “psychological warfare campaign” against protesters.

Ellingwood asked if the FBI would give Reagan more intelligence reports, and Hoover agreed.

“This has been done in the past,” the director noted, “and has worked quite successfully.”

Meese stated, “I have no recollection at all of us planning to do these things . . . There was never any concentrated strategy to do these things.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle            

NATION BRIEFS

Connecticut Gov signs gay partner bill
Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland has signed into law a bill that extends limited partner rights to gay and lesbian couples.

The bill, which does not mention same-sex relationships, was hailed by activists as a small step in the right direction.

Under the new law a person may legally designate another to make medical decisions and end-of-life choices, such as organ donation and life support. It also allows for private visits in hospitals and nursing homes, and requires employers to allow emergency phone calls to their workers from legally designated people.

The law also orders the legislature’s Judiciary Committee to study the policy issues of gay marriage and civil unions before next year’s legislative session. (365Gay.com)

Air force officer suspended for
criticizing Bush
A US Air Force officer has been suspended from duty after he wrote a letter to a California newspaper accusing President Bush of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen “because he needed this war on terrorism,” a military official said on June 4.

Lt. Colonel Steve Butler was relieved of his duties as vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute pending an investigation into his letter, which was published in the Monterey County Herald on May 26.

Butler’s letter said in part: “Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people…He wasn’t elected by the American people, but placed in office by the conservative Supreme Court.”

Butler is a 24-year Air Force veteran who served as a combat pilot during the Gulf War.

Butler’s suspension is based on Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says that any commissioned officer who uses “contemptuous words” against the president or other senior officials may be punished. The last such court martial was in 1965. (Reuters)

CIA creates anti-terror force abroad
The CIA has created a paramilitary unit to deal specifically with terrorists overseas, US officials said June 3. The unit is drawing personnel from the CIA’s existing paramilitary force, which is part of the agency’s Special Activities Division, which conducts covert operations.

In recent decades, the paramilitary force has seen heavy use in Central America, Angola and Afghanistan. In Nicaragua, they mined the harbors and armed the Contra rebels during the Reagan administration. In Afghanistan, now a target once again, they helped the mujahedeen fight the Soviets. During the Vietnam War they ran “Air America”-- the CIA’s covert effort in Laos.

The unit can only be put into operation under secret authorization by the president, although certain congressional officials must be informed. (AP)

US to track visitors
The Justice Department announced plans on June 5 to fingerprint and photograph more than 100,000 visa holders who pose “national security concerns,” taking another major step in its efforts to keep track of foreign visitors to the US.

Officials said they would initially focus on visitors from five countries where terrorists allegedly operate -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria -- prompting immediate complaints that the system amounted to racial profiling of Middle Eastern visitors.

But Attorney General John Ashcroft said the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System would eventually cover any of the 35 million people who visit the US each year if they pose a security concern, however, the criteria of determining such a threat will be largely kept secret.

The initiative, which will take effect in the fall after a public comment period, will require visitors over age 14 who hold non-immigrant visas and are deemed security risks to be fingerprinted and photographed before they are allowed in the US, Ashcroft said. (Washington Post)

Wal-Mart loses discrimination case
The Kentucky state human rights commission ordered Wal-Mart to pay $40,000 to two people who claimed the discount chain fired them because they were an interracial couple.

The commission on June 6 found Wal-Mart guilty of discriminating against Lottie Burden and Johnnie Hines on the basis of race. In 1989, store officials fired the then-couple for violating company policy on fraternization and nepotism. The store first denied Burden’s request that she and Hines be allowed to date. The commission said in its decision that other couples had violated Wal-Mart’s nepotism policy but had not been fired.

Wal-Mart had no comment. (AP)