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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb.8, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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"One nation, with liberty and justice for all." The Pledge of Allegiance, which every school child must learn how to mumble, says these words describe the United States.
No mention of different classes, of course. But also no mention of what has been proven by government commission after commission: that people of color in the U.S. are treated like a subject nation and systematically denied both liberty and justice.
Look at Philadelphia. Home of the Liberty Bell. Calls itself the City of Brotherly Love.
Also the city where the police in 1985 burned down a whole block trying to evict the African American group MOVE. A police helicopter dropped an incendiary bomb on the roof of a building, killing 11 women, men and children.
Also the city that convicted Mumia Abu-Jamal, an African American journalist who dared to defend the MOVE people on his weekly radio show. Abu-Jamal has been on Death Row for 14 years. He was almost executed last summer until an international campaign convinced the judge to put off the execution date.
Now the state of Pennsylvania has another case on its hands. This time the person is not Black, not a worker, not a progressive. The person behind bars is a white multi- millionaire, a member of one of the richest families in the United States.
John du Pont, say both police and eyewitnesses, shot and killed David Schultz, a champion wrestler who lived and trained on du Pont's 800-acre estate on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The police surrounded his mansion, then waited more than two days until cold and hunger forced him out.
No bombs on the roof. No armed assaults by SWAT teams. No attempts to wear du Pont down by blaring the screams of dying baby rabbits over loudspeakers (a macabre tactic the state used in Waco).
The police just waited. The civilized way. The way it should be.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge campaigned for the death penalty. But no one's talking about the chair for du Pont. Or lethal injection. Or hanging. Or firing squad. There's a 100-percent certainty that du Pont will never be executed-- and a good chance he will never even stand trial.
But thousands of people are on Death Row in U.S. prisons. Some are doubtless mentally or emotionally impaired, as du Pont seems to be. Some--like Mumia Abu-Jamal--are undoubtedly innocent. Others are there for little reason other than that they are poor and oppressed.
None is rich and well-connected. No multi-millionaire ever winds up on Death Row. Because this is not "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Capitalism has created a divided society, based on class exploitation, national oppression, sexism and lesbian/gay oppression. John du Pont and Mumia Abu-Jamal are from two different nations and two different classes. Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal can only come through the struggle.
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