From Texas to California
Communities organize against death penalty
By Bob
McCubbin
San Diego, Calif.
Njeri Shakur and Gloria Rubac were featured speakers at two
recent southern California meetings called by the International
Action Center. Both are leaders of the Texas Death Penalty
Abolition Movement and are eminently qualified to speak about
the repressive mechanisms the state uses against people of
color and the poor in general.
At public meetings in San Diego and Los Angeles, Shakur and
Rubac described the new super-maximum security prisons.
Prisoners there are subjected to extreme sensory
deprivation.
Shakur, who visits Texas death-row prisoners weekly,
denounced the guards for their cruelty and racism.
Rubac called the sentencing of prisoners to death
"modern-day lynchings." Three thousand people are now on death
row. She said that African American and Latino prisoners are
particularly targeted for capital punishment. Death-row
prisoners include people who are mentally ill and mentally
disabled and individuals who were juveniles when arrested.
Rubac pointed out that many people on death row maintain
their innocence. But, she added, 90 percent of death row
inmates cannot afford lawyers.
Both speakers urged everyone to speak out against police
brutality, prison repression and the death penalty. Shakur
quoted Kwame Toure-- one of the founders of the Black Power
movement--who urged oppressed people to "Organize! Organize!
Organize!"
Rubac said it was no accident that there were almost no
executions in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s. "The state
was afraid to use the death penalty during those years because
the oppressed communities were politically active."
During the discussions, area community militants made
important contributions to the meetings.
Each week in San Diego there are picket lines demanding
punishment for the police who killed Demetrius DuBose. Many of
the African American activists from this movement were in
attendance at the meeting. Ron Rush, whose 18-year-old son was
killed by the police in 1993, spoke for the Demetrius DuBose
Coalition.
Tukufu Kalonji reported on the status of Mumia Abu-Jamal's
life-and-death struggle for a fair trial. Kalonji is an
advocate of the US organization, member of the Local Organizing
Committee for the Million Man March and leader of the Mumia
Coalition.
A former prisoner spoke movingly of the crimes committed by
the guards where he was incarcerated.
A supporter of the Zapatista movement in Tijuana, Mexico,
told how his disabled partner was attacked by the San Diego
police. Another Latino activist urged the formation of an
independent grassroots review board to expose police
crimes.
In Los Angeles, Corinne Mposi of the Shaka Sankofa/Gary
Graham Defense Committee urged support for this brother facing
execution in Texas. Aryana Giladney read a statement from the
Black Riders Liberation Party, a militant youth group that
monitors police activities in the community with its "Watch a
Pig" progam.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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