NYC MEETING
Clark, La Riva report from Yugoslavia
By John
Catalinotto
New York
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and anti-war
activist Gloria La Riva reported on the situation in Yugoslavia
here April 3, just two days after their return from that
country.
Some 500 people who jammed the PS 41 auditorium in New
York's Greenwich Village had just seen the latest NATO assaults
on downtown Belgrade on television. They raised their voices in
angry chants of "Stop the bombing" and "Yugoslavia."
Like the New York anti-war demonstrations, which have
numbered as many as 7,000, the meeting was made up largely of
people from the Balkans. Besides Yugoslavs, there were many
people from Greece, including veterans of the Greek
anti-fascist resistance during World War II.
It also attracted North Americans who have been active in
previous anti-war movements, as well as young people who only
recently became politically aware.
Its thrust, as chairperson Sara Flounders of the
International Action Center made clear, was to "build
resistance to the war right here in the United States."
Flounders announced that the IAC was calling for "coordinated
anti-NATO demonstrations on April 17 in cities all over the
United States and all around the world."
Novelist, playwright and filmmaker Nadja Tesich, who is
originally from Yugoslavia, got the audience cheering and
yelling as she expressed the Yugoslav peoples' determination to
resist NATO aggression. The reaction of the crowd reflected the
mood in Yugoslavia, where the entire people are now up in arms
against NATO and U.S. imperialism.
Solidarity among all oppressed
Continually interrupted by applause and cheers, Monica
Moorehead of the Millions for Mumia Mobilization expressed her
solidarity with the defense of Yugoslavia against NATO bombs
and invited people from the Yugoslav community to participate
in the anti-racist struggle here--under their own banners.
"We know it's a lie that the U.S. is carrying out these
horrific bombing campaigns along with its NATO allies over
concern about the Albanian minority in Kosovo," she said. "As
an African American woman who grew up in the segregated South,
I personally know this is a lie.
"When in the history of this country has the U.S. government
ever given a damn about any oppressed people," she asked,
"unless it was to help keep the racist status quo in power by
pitting one nationality against another. It certainly didn't
give a damn about the former slaves in the South when the Union
Army left them to endure a terror campaign conducted by the Ku
Klux Klan.
"We can't allow another Vietnam War to happen without mass
opposition," she said. "Then over two million Vietnamese lives
were lost along with the lives of almost 60,000 U.S. GIs. It is
not the lives of rich youth on the line but the lives of
working-class and poor youth, especially those of color, that
will be sacrificed by the Pentagon generals."
Moorehead summarized political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal's
case and the deadly incident in 1985 when the police dropped a
bomb on the MOVE organization house in a Philadelphia Black
community. She then called on the audience to "join us on April
24" at the "Millions for Mumia" demonstration to free this
journalist and former Black Panther who has been on
Pennsylvania's death row since 1982.
"Free Mumia and all political prisoners," she concluded.
"U.S./NATO out of Yugoslavia!"
This message was repeated in a different form later when
Chicana activist Teresa Gutierrez discussed the Yugoslav
militia's capture of the three U.S. soldiers. "You know two of
the three were Chicanos. And the Chicano community feels like a
family. But I feel closer to my sisters and brothers in
Yugoslavia standing up to U.S. bombs than I do to those
soldiers."
Gutierrez suggested that to win the solidarity of people in
North America against NATO, the Yugoslav community should reach
out especially to the most oppressed segments of society--the
Black, Latino and Native people and the working class--to win
the fight against the war.
Video--work in progress
IAC organizer and video-maker Gloria La Riva from San
Francisco had filmed the Yugoslav people's mobilizations
against the NATO-imposed war and scenes of the suffering they
are enduring.
La Riva, who described some of her experiences in an article
in the April 8 Workers World, told of thousands of youths
wearing T-shirts with targets painted on them who gathered in
Republika Square in central Belgrade to protest the bombing at
daily rock concerts.
La Riva showed rough cuts from the video she's producing to
bring to the U.S. public the truth about the U.S.-led bombing
of Yugoslavia. While these scenes conveyed some of the
determination of the population, they also showed that even the
early bombing raids had inflicted pain, suffering and death on
the civilian population. The IAC plans to distribute the
finished video in the thousands.
Along with distributing the video, the IAC plans to continue
demonstrating against the war. Brian Becker announced plans for
a May 22 demonstration in Washington starting at the Vietnam
War Memorial and marching to the Pentagon. He also asked for a
show of hands for volunteers to come to the IAC office during
the week. Dozens offered to come in both daytime hours and
during the evenings.
Clark reviews 50 years of U.S. wars
The audience greeted Ramsey Clark with a standing ovation in
gratitude for his solidarity with Yugoslavia.
But before Clark spoke about the current situation in the
Balkans, he reviewed for the audience the past 50 years of U.S.
military aggression and subversion. His list of nations and
peoples included Korea, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Haiti, Sudan,
Grenada, Cuba, Panama, Palestine and Iraq.
Clark opened by saying, "I have always considered the Cold
War to be the greatest crime against humanity." It squandered
trillions of dollars of wealth on weapons that could have been
spent on human beings.
He pointed out that after the Vietnamese defeated France and
the U.S. and drove them out, Washington imposed 20 years of
economic sanctions that did even more damage than the 10 years
of war. The same is true in Iraq, where murderous sanctions
have killed 1.5 million people. Clark concluded that the U.S.
has "committed genocide without a question."
As he declared his solidarity with Yugoslavia against the
NATO air strikes, Clark made it clear that Washington's policy
was no temporary aberration but a continuation of over 50 years
of aggression.
Kingsborough Community College history teacher Barry Lituchy
ended the meeting, saying he could hardly believe that those in
the Clinton administration who planned the war were so ignorant
and stupid as to think that the Yugoslav people would roll over
and die because they were bombed.
"We must mobilize millions of people around the world to
fight against this war," he said.
This article is copyright under a Creative
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