SAN DIEGO
Angry anti-Bush protest takes to the streets
By Workers World San Diego bureau
San Diego saw an angry, multinational outpouring of hundreds
of youths on Jan. 20 to protest the inauguration of President
George W. Bush.
Demonstrators occupied the four corners of a major
intersection in the heart of the Black community. They chanted
slogans denouncing Bush and held signs and banners raising all
the issues ignored by the big-business candidates during last
year's presidential election campaign.
Passing motorists honked their car horns, waved and raised
their fists in solidarity.
Two large International Action Center banners and a huge
canvas portrait of Mumia Abu-Jamal made clear the focus of this
demonstration. The banners read, "Free the Black vote! End the
racist death penalty! Shut down the prison-industrial complex"
and "Stop police terror! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Free all
political prisoners!"
After about an hour the protest became a march. Turning onto
the major Euclid Avenue thoroughfare, protesters seized half of
the street and continued in a loud procession to the Malcolm X
Library.
It was standing room only in the library auditorium as
speaker after speaker vowed that the inauguration would not
signal the beginning of a period of more intense reaction, but
rather the birth of a new movement of resistance to racism and
war and for social justice.
Bob McCubbin of Workers World Party read a statement written
by Abu-Jamal for the Jan. 20 protests.
Tim Helsley of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee spoke
on the failure of President Bill Clinton to sign a pardon for
Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Peltier was
convicted of killing to FBI agents in 1975 after a
government-engineered trial.
Craig Mace, a participant in the second Iraq Sanctions
Challenge, spoke on the need to continue fighting for an end to
the sanctions that have killed so many Iraqis.
Janice Jordan of the Peace & Freedom Party spoke about
the prison-industrial complex.
Cherry Mason, whose unarmed daughter was killed by the
Border Patrol a year ago, spoke, and so did Ben Rivera for the
Committee Against Police Brutality.
Following the rally, some youths marched back to the
assembly site to continue outreach to the community.
Earlier in the day forces aligned with the Democratic Party
held a march and rally in Balboa Park. Gloria Verdieu, a leader
of the Mumia Coalition and the International Action Center, had
been promised an opportunity to speak at this rally. But later
rally organizers told her she would only be permitted to speak
if she didn't mention Abu-Jamal. Verdieu refused this
outrageous, racist demand that she censor herself.
Instead she spoke at and co-chaired the Malcolm X Library
rally. IAC organizers saturated the crowd at the Democratic
Party rally with leaflets explaining the case of Abu-Jamal.
This article is copyright under a Creative
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