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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 11, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Behind indictment of Mike Espy

Double standard for Black officials

By Monica Moorehead

Well, another one bites the dust--that is, another African American political figure.

On Aug. 27 a federal grand jury indicted Mike Espy, President Bill Clinton's first secretary of agriculture, on 39 felony charges. The counts include "taking illegal gratuities, mail and wire fraud, violations of the Meat Inspection Act of 1907, making false statements and tampering with a witness." (New York Times, Aug. 28)

Federal prosecutors said Espy accepted at least $35,000 in favors from large companies regulated under the Agriculture Department, most notably Sun-Diamond Growers and Tyson Foods. Espy allegedly took items ranging from tickets to professional sports events to lavish gifts to using both corporate and government jets for personal use. The indictment did not accuse Espy of giving any political favors to the corporations in return for the gifts.

Still, if convicted, he faces prison sentences of 10 years for witness tampering and five years or less for the other charges.

After the indictment was returned, Espy's lawyer, Reid H. Weingarten, said: "Never has so much been made of so little. In an effort to justify three years and countless millions spent on this investigation, the special prosecutor has stretched criminal statutes beyond recognition and taken trivial, personal and entirely benign activities and attempted to distort them into criminal acts. These efforts will ultimately prove unavailing and we look forward to going to court and restoring Mike Espy's good name."

How should revolutionary Marxists, progressives and workers view this indictment? Should the attitude be that Mike Espy was just another bourgeois politician who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and therefore he got what he deserved?

Absolutely not. Whether Mike Espy is guilty of the charges or not is insignificant. The racism behind the indictment is what's significant.

RACIST POWER STRUCTURE

What happened to Mike Espy is just another example in a long, tragic list of racist attacks on Black elected and appointed officials carried out by the overwhelmingly white capitalist power structure. This power structure is innately racist, sexist and anti-gay, as is every individual institution in the United States. And Espy is the latest victim.

He never had a ghost of a chance, because the process used to indict him was so undemocratic and biased to begin with.

Who made up the federal grand jury that indicted Espy? Was it a jury of his peers? Why was its work conducted in secret? Why weren't the Congressional Black Caucus and other Black politicians allowed to be part of the process?

As Espy's lawyer said, so much is being made of so little. Accepting complimentary tickets to football games or any kind of bribe is not the exception but the norm within the realm of the wheeling and dealing that takes place on a daily basis in U.S. politics.

With a huge majority of white politicians getting away with taking bribes in the millions of dollars every minute of every day, why single out Mike Espy, one of a handful of politicians of color who became a top official?

What Espy is accused of is small potatoes. No one knows that better than the U.S. government. This indictment was a vehicle for putting another Black politician in the back of a segregated bus politically.

Any Black, Latino or woman politician who sets out to break the color or sex barrier to gain long-denied political representation for the most oppressed is put under a microscope and viewed as fair game by the capitalist system. The last thing the racist power structure wants to see is an aspiring politician like Espy run for president and possibly win.

Look at Sen. Jesse Helms and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Helms, the ultra-right-wing senator from North Carolina and chair of the Senate Arms Appropriations Sub- Committee, has been in the back pocket of the powerful tobacco lobby for decades--and has become a millionaire in the process. Gingrich was found guilty of misusing tax- exempt funds for his own political gain by a House ethics committee--yet is being allowed to pay a $300,000 fine in installments through 1999.

The Clinton administration is accused of illegally raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the 1996 presidential campaign. While the Senate investigation into campaign finances is clearly politically motivated by a right-wing effort to hurt the Democrats, the Clintonites' sleaziness is equally clear.

Yet who is the first actual target of the investigation? The Senate has subpoenaed thousands of documents from the AFL-CIO, and is threatening to jail labor officials for contempt of court if they refuse to turn over internal information.

Another example of this double and even triple standard is the ongoing scrutiny of Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African American woman in history elected to the overwhelmingly white-rich-male Senate. Braun has been accused of failing to disclose her private financial practices and information about a trip to Africa. Some are predicting that she may lose her re-election bid next year.

The indictment of Mike Espy should be condemned by every progressive and activist as another racist setback in the historic struggle for bourgeois-democratic rights for the African American masses. That is why the entire capitalist system should be put on trial and brought up on charges of racism--with the masses as judge and jury.

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