Ashcroft dirty tricks?
FBI bugs office of Black mayor
By Betsey Piette
Philadelphia
With just weeks to go before the mayoral
election, it has been revealed that the FBI planted an
electronic "bug" in the office of John Street, the incumbent
mayor of Philadelphia.
Many residents are voicing suspicion that the FBI's sudden
surveillance of Street, who is African American, is but the
latest in the Bush administration's bag of dirty tricks to
disenfranchise the Black community and ensure the election of
Street's white Republican opponent.
Over half the population of Philadel phia, the country's
fifth-biggest city, is people of color. The election pits
Street, a Democrat, against Republican challenger Sam Katz, who
has strong corporate backing but has never been elected to
office. Katz's campaign has been fraught with racist innuendo.
His main theme is that the Street administration "has been rife
with corruption and cronyism."
In September Katz claimed that a Street supporter attempted
to firebomb a Katz campaign office in an African American
community in North Philadelphia. However, the supposed evidence
that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown through a window was
"discarded"before police arrived.
The Republican City Committee has sent a mailing to white
households urging voters to "Take Back the City."
Recently, Katz filed a complaint with the Philadelphia
district attorney's office alleging that Street had received
$125,000 in illegal corporate contributions to his campaign.
The Katz campaign has been falling behind, according to a poll
released in early October that showed Street leading Katz by 8
percentage points. Katz has no concrete program for improving
conditions for city residents.
The sophisticated electronic listening device was discovered
in Street's office in a sweep conducted by Police Com missioner
Sylvester Johnson. Johnson, also an African American, says he
routinely sweeps the mayor's office for bugs, the last time in
June.
Three police officers were part of the debugging team when
the FBI device was found. Johnson said he fielded his first
call from the media about the bug 20 minutes after he
discovered it on Oct. 7.
The FBI claims Street is not a target of its investigation.
However, it admits that bugging Street's office was part of a
two-year inquiry into possible corruption in city contracts,
including a $13.6-million contract to maintain airport
facilities made to a company owned by the mayor's brother,
Milton Street. FBI investigators also searched the offices of
Imam Shamsud-din Ali, the influential leader of Philadelphia's
biggest mosque.
Ironically, on Oct. 12, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported
on a 1998 study that found that minority- and female-owned
firms had lost millions of dollars in local contracts because
of white male patronage and cronyism under Street's
predecessors. City officials had never made the study public.
It assessed the way the city and nine quasi-city agencies, such
as the school district, awarded municipal contracts. It
reported "a labyrinth based on discrimination, ethnic
favoritism and governmental inefficiencies that could well
require [minority and women business enterprises] to
participate in a corrupted process in order to gain any access
at all to local government."
The Justice Department, which controls the FBI, has not
called for investigations of previous city administrations for
this blatant discrimination.
Critics of the FBI probe say it appears timed to inflict the
maximum political damage on the re-election campaign of an
African American mayor. They point to a pattern of racial and
partisan bias in federal political corruption prosecutions in
the early 1990s under the first Bush administration, and the
attacks on African American mayors of other big cities,
including Marion Barry of the District of Columbia, Sharpe
James of Newark, Coleman Young of Detroit and Wellington Webb
of Denver.
Ed Rendell, now governor of Pennsyl vania, openly bragged
about giving city contracts to his supporters when he was mayor
of Philadelphia. Yet he has never been the target of a federal
probe.
Race has always been an issue in elections in the United
States, where there is a long history of disenfranchising
people of color. The 2000 presidential election scandal in
Florida was just the tip of the iceberg.
Callers to an African American community radio talk show on
WHAT-AM are asking how Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has no
experience addressing issues affecting the working class and
ethnically diverse communities, immediately became a "major
candidate" for governor of California, while Al Sharpton's
campaign for president is never treated seriously, despite his
long-time involvement with community affairs.
Reprinted from the Oct. 23, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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