****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 20 No. 24 / June 14, 1993 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 Email: jdav@igc.org ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ MASSIVE PUBLIC OUTCRY SAVES GARY GRAHAM'S LIFE ... FOR NOW 30-DAY STAY IN SCHEDULED EXECUTION: HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- With less than 12 hours remaining before the scheduled lethal injection of Gary "T" Graham, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a 30-day stay of execution June 2. In the desperate days and hours before he was scheduled to die people across America became outraged that the courts ignored evidence that Graham is innocent. --> Country singer Kenny Rogers appeared on national television offering to personally bear the financial costs of giving Graham a new trial. --> Four hundred people staged a candlelight vigil well past midnight at the mansion of Texas Governor Ann Richards -- Houston Radio station KBXX began a "countdown to justice" which was flooded with calls on Graham's behalf. --> "The Geto Boys" released a song about Graham and staged a benefit rap concert in Houston that drew widespread attention. Included were supporters of Leonel Herrera, an innocent man who was executed May 12. Thus, no matter what legal explanation they give, it was the _people_ who saved Gary Graham's life -- for now. See story 1 for more info. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 20 No. 24 / June 14, 1993 Editorial 1. GARY GRAHAM CASE IS TIP OF ICEBERG News 2. 'WE CAN SHAPE EVENTS!' INTERVIEW WITH YUNUS COLLINS 3. CONFERENCE CALL: DETROIT REMEMBERS MALCOLM X AND THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS JULY 23, 24 and 25 4. REPORT FROM THE RUST BELT: FIGHTING MINISTERS BATTLE CROOKED DEVELOPERS (Homestead, PA) 5. QUAKER OATS: 'IT'S THE WRONG THING TO DO.' 6. DEATH AND DESPERATION IN SAN DIEGO 7. SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH: NO COMPROMISE Focus on police murder of Sergio Garcia in LA 8. 'THEY SHOT HIM IN THE BACK IN COLD BLOOD': COMMUNITY DEMANDS JUSTICE 9. NO DESK DUTY FOR COPS WHO KILL! 10. IN MEMORY OF SERGIO (POEM) Culture Under Fire 11. ARTIST TELLS WHY SHE PAINTED PICTURE 12. THIS IS THE BEGINNING (POEM) Columns and features 13. DEADLY FORCE: LOS ANGELES WINS VICTORY FOR THEIR CHILDREN 14. LETTER TO EDITOR: NEW SUBSCRIBER PRAISES PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE 15. NATIONAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: A PROGRAM OF ACTION AND EDUCATION 16. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE ****************************************************************** 1. EDITORIAL: GARY GRAHAM CASE IS TIP OF ICEBERG It's not just about one man, Gary "T" Graham. It's about whether the courts have the right to commit murder in the name of justice. It's about whether the police can frame a man all the way to Death Row and get away with it. It's about 2,700 people awaiting execution who most likely never got a fair trial, a jury of their peers or an attorney who knew what he was doing. This is what is behind the national outcry that won Graham a 30- day stay in his scheduled June 3 execution. But the decision of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wasn't based on the fact that there is evidence to show Graham is innocent, evidence that was never considered by the trial court. The stay of execution was based on a legal technicality that may or not be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. That means the executioner has only been slowed down, not stopped. When we appeal for an intensified struggle to win Gary Graham not only his life, but his _freedom_, we do so because he is both a man and a symbol. We say now is _not_ the time to relax and hope the courts will do right by Graham, now is the time to expand our efforts to secure justice for him and _all_ who have been victimized by a corrupt criminal _in_justice system: from the cops right up to the Supreme Court. We urge our readers to stand ready, do not be misled that the courts will dispense justice. Free Gary Graham, Now! Stop the slaughter on Death Row! Demand executive clemency: President Bill Clinton, Phone 202-456- 1414, Fax 202-456-2461 Demand the Governor of Texas intervene with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles: Governor Ann Richards, Phone 512-463-2000 Fax: 512-463-1849. ****************************************************************** 2. 'WE CAN SHAPE EVENTS!' Yunus Collins, freed, speaks out on Detroit police terror [Yunus Collins was released last week from prison where he was sent on an alleged parole violation. Active around police brutality and homeless issues, Collins spoke with the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE just before his release.] By Anthony D. Prince PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: We understand that the trial of the police officers indicted on various charges in connection with the death of Malice Green will begin very shortly. Is there a connection to that and your being transferred to an area nine hours away from Detroit? YUNUS COLLINS: The trial won't begin until June 2... I think that a critical thing leading up to that trial is trying to organize .... what type of position, what type of stance are we going to have. It cripples that a little bit. Particularly, it's real critical because there have been at least four deaths since Malice Green. In relation to the transfer of me this far away ... they can kind of isolate me or keep me silent or cut off some kind of communication with the people coming up visiting me concerning Malice Green. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: Can you provide us with any details about these four other police killings? YUNUS COLLINS: In January 1993, there was a 19-year-old, he was killed by a police officer. I think, they got a phone call saying it was a drug house, when it was really his home and his mothers home. Police climbed through his window and the young guy pulled a gun on the police and the police turned around and shot him in his chest. Also in the month of January, a 57-year-old mentally ill man ... unarmed, was gunned down by the police. March 24, 1993, 22-year-old, allegedly a drug dealer: he had swallowed a handful of crack cocaine and the police grabbed him around the neck and started choking him and beating him in the chest, trying to get him to throw up the drugs. He also died. On April 1993, a young Cuban brother: allegedly he was supposed to be in one of the street gangs in the city of Detroit. He put his hands in his pocket and he was taking his hands out of his pocket and the police shot him six times in the chest. As far as I know, I don't think any of these officers have been charged or anything. They are still under investigation for these killings, but they haven't been charged with any crimes or anything like that. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: And of course the cops that have been charged in the Malice Green case, they are free on bond and they have not spent any time in jail. The police walk free, but they are incarcerating (at record numbers) the poor in this country. Would you comment on this? YUNUS COLLINS: The capitalist class has moved to such a position that they don't have any use anymore for the ones that they rule. Since the electronic or the technological revolution has took place, we see that human labor is no longer needed. One of the responses is that since they can't employ us, they are either going to have to kill us off or lock us up. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: Yunus, when you get released, and we hope it will be soon, what do you intend to do? YUNUS COLLINS: I think that as the line of march is established, I think that our role, my role, is clear. There is no retreating. You have to continue to move forward. [A]ll these rebels that we are dealing with, regardless of whether they are incarcerated or out in the free society, I think that they must be recruited into the practical struggle. I wouldn't try to recruit them as friends, relatives or anything else other than as revolutionaries. I think that our fundamental understanding that this is the historical necessity that we must analyze as revolutionaries, but not on ideology or personality, but on the exercise and ability to shape events. ****************************************************************** 3. CONFERENCE CALL: DETROIT REMEMBERS MALCOLM X AND THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS JULY 23, 24 and 25 Malcolm X has been proclaimed the main political symbol of Black radicalism in the 1990's. We stand in unity with the revolutionary impact of Malcolm X and, on this basis, we call for unity to rebuild a strong movement for Black liberation. THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION! There is an economic revolution that is replacing us with new technology. The places where we used to work are now filled with computers and robots while we are thrown out to the streets forced to fight four our very survival. If not now, then we are all fearful of this happening in the near future. Our people are being brutalized by hunger and homelessness, an inadequate and declining welfare system, concentration camp public housing, a poor health care system, but an expanding police force and prison system. WE'RE CATCHING HELL! Therefore we are calling for a new movement, one that takes seriously the fighting spirit of our great revolutionary hero Malcolm X. We are calling this conference to commemorate the 25th anniversary of DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. This is how the Black workers of Detroit carried forward the legacy of Malcolm X! We intend to honor Malcolm X on the basis of his legacy, the experience of what actually happened. This includes many organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Black Student United Front, Motor City Labor League, Republic of New Africa, Congress of African People, the United Black Brothers of New Jersey, the CTA Black Caucus of Chicago and the many chapters of the ALSC (African Liberation Support Committee) from throughout the USA and Canada. This is a time to remember, to rethink, to recommit. Only if we dare to struggle can we win and build societies of peace and justice, respect and honor. The Conference is scheduled for July 23, 24 and 25, 1993 at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. For information call: 313- 868-1540 or 312-538-2188. ****************************************************************** 4. UP FROM THE RUST BELT: FIGHTING MINISTERS BATTLE CROOKED DEVELOPERS By Anthony D. Prince HOMESTEAD, Pennsylvania -- Reverend Jim Von Dreele is not well- liked by the big money around here. He's been called a "religious thug" by developer-dominated newspapers, amongst other things. But that's nothing new. Ten years ago his Denominational Ministerial Strategies (DMS) made headlines fighting for Pittsburgh's unemployed workers. "Our philosophy for the last ten years has been to agitate and raise the consciousness of the community," says the Lutheran minister. "And we do it at great cost and at great risk." In 1983 the cost included police violence when massive protests hit Pittsburgh's Mellon Bank. Angered that Mellon was investing millions overseas while thousands were losing their jobs in area steel mills, the ministers and the unemployed attempted to close a branch office and were brutally arrested. "We decided the only kind of war that we could win was an image war," says Von Dreele. Ten years later, the Confessing Synod Ministries and the DMS battles a new breed of economic vultures. "We've seen these developers come in with their sweetheart deals. They promise the world, but they run roughshod over the community." "We've lost 100,000 jobs in the valley, the long-term effect is pretty devastating," says Von Dreele, describing how mob-connected developers prey on people in desperate economic straits. "In Frazier Township [in nearby Johnstown] they put 40,000 liens on 200 homes. The Transportation Development District effectively blocked people from selling," he says. "So we put our paper together and hand-delivered it to every home in Frazier Township, 6000 homes." "The DMX NEWS", packed with research into developers' ties to organized crime, politicians and big money, is the main "weapon" in the ministers' arsenal. And it's effective. Von Dreele is proud of the controversial record of the DMS' here, one that includes "invading" Shadyside Presbyterian Church back in 1983. That's where Pittsburgh's wealthy elite -- Mellon Bank people, U.S. Steel executives, etc. -- would pretend to be Christians on Sunday after throwing thousands of workers into the streets on Friday. "We had no illusions about saving the steel industry. They had run it into the ground and it was dead. We were not romantic about that. We were for the unemployed -- for food, for job training. We used tactics to teach them a lesson, about what it's like to be unemployed and hungry, like we were." Von Dreele is disgusted at the wastefulness of a system that hands over millions in tax breaks to developers, and builds malls and other projects that employ almost no one. "The shortsightedness of business is appalling," he says, pointing to the destruction of jobs in his Valley. "You take 100,000 people who are well-trained, it's just appalling." Meanwhile, he and the DMS continue to fight for the people here in the rust belt. Today it may be against a mob-connected developer, tomorrow, to keep open the doors of Club Alternative, a Homestead substance abuse recovery center of which Von Dreele is board president. Says Von Dreele, "Someone has to be the agitator. We're giving the little people the power." To contact the DMS, and obtain a copy of their paper, write c/o Christ Lutheran Church, 405 Kennedy Ave., Duquesne, PA 15110. ****************************************************************** 5. QUAKER OATS: 'IT'S THE WRONG THING TO DO.' By Leslie Willis [Sandra Smith is an African-American mother of five, presently serving a lab technician internship at Technical Health Careers.] LOS ANGELES -- Most mornings, Sandra Smith fixes hot cereal for her five children. So a giant box of Quaker Oats used to be a familiar sight in this single mother's kitchen. Now she says, "We won't touch it!" One year ago, Smith bought Quaker Oats from the now-closed La Fiesta grocery store on 103rd and Avalon. A few days later, her two pre-school age children developed a flu-like illness. "They had fever, vomiting and diarrhea," Smith said. Soon the older children and Smith herself began to experience the same symptoms. "I didn't put the sickness together with the Quaker Oats until about five days later, when about halfway down, I saw some nasty stuff along the sides of the box." Smith poured all the oatmeal out into a bag. She saw "a thing" several inches long, smashed and yellowed, covered with oatmeal. "It looked like a dead mouse!" This horrible discovery started Sandra Smith on a year-long struggle to find out if her children were all right and to make Quaker Oats take responsibility for poisoning them. One year later, she has no answers to her questions and no compensation from Quaker Oats. Legal sources said she didn't have a case to take the cereal back to the store for a refund. Smith obtained a lawyer, Richard Anthony. "He wouldn't answer my calls," Smith said. More than two months later, Anthony claimed there was still no report back from the lab on what was at the bottom of the oatmeal box. The Quaker Oats company added one final insult by offering Smith $200! "Quaker Oats owes me an apology! To them, the value of our life, me and my children, is less than a dog!" ****************************************************************** 6. DEATH AND DESPERATION IN SAN DIEGO By Michael B. SAN DIEGO, California -- In early May, an unemployed black woman who was a mother of two was given the death sentence by county marshals serving an eviction notice for late rent. Denise B. Burnett, 38, was gunned down outside her third-floor single-room downtown apartment during a confrontation with marshals. One child was home at the time. The marshals say they shot Burnett when she charged them with a knife. But what alternative did they give her? No job, no money, and now they were about to throw her and her children into the streets. She fought back with what she had. The ranks of the unemployed, the hungry, the sick, the homeless -- the desperate -- are growing in San Diego and across the nation. Millions are a paycheck or two away from being homeless. Denise Burnett could be me or you. The message this system is sending is either quietly starve and suffer or be shot down. To them there is no other option. We can't accept this fascist solution. Just a few blocks away from Burnett's room stands the state-of- the-art, high-rise, high-tech, San Diego Police Department Headquarters. In the middle of a budget crunch they found money to build this. While city workers are forced to take pay cuts or layoffs, the city spent close to a half-million dollars in overtime preparing to crush any uprising after the Rodney King verdicts. It's clear their priorities are not ours. But we can make this system do right or change it to one that will. ****************************************************************** 7. SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH: NO COMPROMISE By Jeff Gittelman, RN, New Mexico Health Committee and the New Mexico Organizing Committee CHICAGO -- Single-payer health activists from 24 states gathered here on May 15 and 16 at the Universal Health Care Access Network (UHCAN!) meeting, reaffirming the need for a single-payer, universal health care plan that will guarantee comprehensive health care for all. Groups like UHCAN!, the Physicians for a National Health Program, Consumers Union, Nurses for National Health Care, and other grassroots organizations are mobilizing the public to pressure government to enact single-payer health. This comes at a time when President Clinton is preparing to release his health insurance industry-dominated "managed competition" plan. "Managed competition" -- an insurance, drug company and hospital- devised plan never tried before -- will be responsible for providing health care for 250 million people. At this point, it appears "managed competition" will be an expensive, bare-bones health plan funded by a 9 percent payroll tax, co-payments and deductibles. In other words, workers will be paying more for less care, while the insurance industry, with assets of $2.2 trillion, will be laughing all the way to the bank. There has been a national news blackout on single-payer health care. The New York Times editorial board, a strong force for "managed competition," will not publish single-payer news. This comes as no surprise, since six of the 12 Times board members serve on insurance and drug company boards. Recently, 150 health activists marched at the Times demanding single-payer news coverage. The most oppressed and exploited workers have received the worst care while billions of dollars of profit accumulate. The statistics reflect the misery of a system that does not need its people for production and profit. In 1987, 40 percent of Harlem's pregnant women did not receive adequate prenatal care. The United States ranks 24th in infant mortality. Twenty-five percent of New Mexico's children lack any health insurance, thus limiting access to care. On May 14, some 4,500 African-Americans and Latinos marched in Chicago to say "no" to Mayor Richard M. Daley's plan to privatize public health clinics. Health activists at the UHCAN! meeting resolved to keep fighting for single-payer and nothing less. Activate phone trees and networks and call your congressional representative and tell them to support H.R. 1200/S.491 -- the McDermott-Conyers-Wellstone "American Health Security Act" now. Expose any media connection to health insurers and demand that single-payer receive equal coverage. Hammer at the inequities of "managed competition" and continue to introduce single-payer state initiatives. Connect universal health care to other social struggles like homelessness, clinic closings and the 30th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington in August. Call Hillary Clinton at 202-456- 1111 and tell her to get it right -- we want health care now and no health insurance industry bailout! ****************************************************************** 8. 'THEY SHOT HIM IN THE BACK IN COLD BLOOD': COMMUNITY DEMANDS JUSTICE By Dianne Flowers SAN PEDRO, California -- They killed him on his birthday. It should have been his mother's day of greatest joy. Instead, four cops roughed her up and held her back when she fought to go to him as he lay bleeding and dying on the ground. Sergio Garcia was not armed. The police claim that he picked up a flashlight and threatened officer Mark Griego's life. Griego, from the Los Angeles Police Department's Harbor Division, shot Sergio in the parking lot across from his mother's home in the Rancho San Pedro housing project. Sergio's sister, Marisol Garcia, spoke to the People's Tribune. She said, "What they did to my brother was in cold blood. He didn't deserve to die like an animal. He was running. He feared the officer because he had harassed him before. "The thing that doesn't make sense to the community is if somebody's running away, why would they stop running and stoop to pick up a flashlight? And when my family and neighbors saw his body in the hospital, they saw the bullet holes in his back, not in his chest. But the police said they shot him in the front. It's a lie. I want people to know that they're lying. "We're all together as a community. It ain't no color or race thing. We're together to fight back because we all feel that we get harassed and treated like animals. "Put my number in the paper and tell people to call me so we can come together and fight this. Call me at 310-831-2102 or call Diane Middleton, the lawyer who is helping organize our committee, at 310-519-7535. "Don't be afraid. We can start to change the laws. It will do us good to come forward and not give up. It will give a message to the police that we are going to fight for our rights and justice." ****************************************************************** 9. NO DESK DUTY FOR COPS WHO KILL! By Dianne Flowers LOS ANGELES -- "Aguirre! Pack! Griego! Vanilla Ice! Start with them! Get these officers out of the community!" Members of the Rancho community shouted the names at Commander Art Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department Harbor Division. "I can't tell an officer he can't be somewhere because someone says he shouldn't. I need some specifics," was Lopez's response to the crowd. The jam-packed community center went into an uproar. They had already lost one of their loved ones. Now the police were trying to talk them into accepting it. The meeting was held May 26 by the LAPD two days after officer Mark Griego killed Sergio Garcia, 27, who was unarmed. Norma Flores demanded, "How many specifics do you need? It's time to take your hands out of your pockets. All you can say is "Here's my phone number." How many more people have to be killed?" "You've got a whole room full of people telling you. What more do you need? What you see is a room full of people who love each other because we grew up with each other from knee high to a grasshopper. All this stuff you say you're going to do is the same story we heard 10 years ago over other brothers who were killed. We need a change. Quick, fast and in a hurry. Like yesterday.," said Keith Logan. One after another, they spoke their anger and pain from the floor and spoke from the microphone. Commander Lopez was offended that some people were yelling. He kept talking about proper procedures regarding the rights of Officer Griego. Who can be quiet when a loved one is killed in cold blood? How can Sergio's life be reduced to proper procedures? What about _Sergio's_ rights? The message from this community is loud and clear: We will fight for our rights! We are demanding them, not asking! You will treat us with respect! We will not be divided, we are black and brown together. ****************************************************************** 10. IN MEMORY OF SERGIO By Rosa Rodriguez "We feel so angry, and very sad," We've just lost a friend that we had He was up one morning, starting the day Not knowing at all, his life would slip away There is no wrong a man can do... to lose his life, for what's so untrue The lies the rumors the cops made up... all they are doing is covering up. All that anger, all that pain... The cops caused his family, with no shame He had just turned twenty-seven Unknowing he would be on the stairs to heaven to meet up, with all our friends up there God bless them all, and heaven they may share The pain and anger will be long while, but we will never forget his smile. This is dedicated to him you see... In the loving memory of Lil Kiwi ****************************************************************** 11. ARTIST TELLS WHY SHE PAINTED PICTURE By Diana Berek [A phot of a painting accompanies the print version of this article. Sorry -- no .GIF available. See address in last story for getting a hard copy of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE.] CHICAGO -- I began painting this picture after the Los Angeles uprising. I wanted to express the power of the L.A. uprising as well as my perception that this was the beginning of a new stage of social transformation. A group of distorted, anguished faces and figures appear to be emerging from a dark bottom edge of the canvas. A large wasted figure lies prone in the foreground. This wasted skeletal figure is intended to echo a figure of a mural of Jose Clemente Orozco. Orozco was one of a group of Mexico's post-Revolution muralist painters. His mural cycle for the University of Guadalajara, _Victims_, includes a prone wasted figure of a child. The mural was intended to portray the suffering masses. In August, I attended the National Survival Summit in Detroit. This conference was an awakening because, like the L.A. Rebellion, it was a powerful, compelling testament to the new quality of today's struggle. We, the people, are beginning to understand that the basis of our poverty and oppression lies in the economic system that permanently separates us from employment and a political system that uses violence and injustice to victimize us. I realized that I was seeing the strength and empowerment of our growing class consciousness. I was in the midst of 400 awakening seedlings asserting the right to survive and the right to create a society for all of us. Mila Aguilar, the Filipina poet, wrote "Every comrade is as precious as a seedling." We are a new people. No longer a silent, suffering mass, we are organizing. My experience transformed my vision. I tried to incorporate these realizations into the painting by changing it from a portrait of victimization, from skeletal figures trying to climb out of their grave, to an affirmation of the struggle to resist victimization: a seedling grows from the bony hand of the victim-figure; scattered bones reassemble into an upraised fist; a boy's defiant face emerges from a burning city. In a further effort to express this, I wrote the poem, "This is the Beginning" [see next story - ed.], which I hang alongside the painting. ****************************************************************** 12. THIS IS THE BEGINNING By Diana Berek This is the beginning. This is the movement of the present, the future of the movement. Dry bones rise up and form fists. Rejointed, rebound with the sinews of the tortured, the ligaments of the disappeared. Murdered flesh of massacred and dispossessed flex into muscles. Form around sinew and bone held taut in a rainbow of skin from our famine-starved and street-frozen brothers and sons, sisters and daughters. Scars of the enslaved, the whipped, the raped, and the beaten these scars are our armor plates. Our once-toothless jaws form into a fanged scream demanding to eat. Our fist, formed from many broken bones, is raised in rebellion. We are a new people. This is a new time. This is the beginning. ****************************************************************** 13. DEADLY FORCE: LOS ANGELES WINS VICTORY FOR THEIR CHILDREN +----------------------------------------------------------------+ "Deadly Force" is a weekly column dedicated to exposing the scope of police terror in the United States. We open our pages to you, the front line fighters against brutality and deadly force. Send us eyewitness accounts, clippings, press releases, appeals for support, letters, photos, opinions and all other information relating to this life and death fight. Send them to People's Tribune, P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, Ill. 60654, or call (312) 486- 3551. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ LOS ANGELES -- On May 5, Cinco de Mayo, a day that is supposed to be in celebration against oppressive governments, some members of the City Council showed their true colors. They tried to pass a law banning "gang" members from Los Angeles parks, beaches and playgrounds. The community moved quickly into action and stopped this law from passing! Council Member Ernani Bernardi's proposal would have kept out gang members who committed two or more serious crimes, such as homicide, assault or auto theft. The City Council has sent this issue to committee. They are trying to revise the law so that the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) will accept it. The community will continue to fight any and all versions of this ordinance. At a press conference held on May 11, one opponent of the proposed ordinance, "Little Man," had this to say: "If they dare to pass something like this, the homies are going to have giant barbecues everywhere!" Meanwhile, a big meeting of a number of East L.A. gangs has taken place and a cease-fire is currently in effect. A number of residents have commented on how quiet the communities are. "We agreed to no more drive-bys, and no more shooting into houses. If you have a _pleito_ (a fight) with someone, you have to deal with it one-on-one, face-to-face, so that no innocent people get hurt." ****************************************************************** 14. LETTER TO EDITOR: NEW SUBSCRIBER PRAISES PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE Dear People's Tribune Enclosed is my trial subscription. I will reorder as soon as it's up. My son found a copy of the People's Tribune in Athens, Ohio at Ohio University. I thought I was all alone in my feelings about the ignorant government, but how wrong. Just as the man from Sears said in your May 17 issue, we need a revolution and right now. A judge said this back in 1830: "When government becomes incompetent to fulfill its purpose or destructive to the essential ends for which it was instituted, it is the right of the people to throw off such government." (Judge James Kent, 1830.) If you can, print this for the people to read. This wonderful paper is the tool that could help all America unite against its real enemy, the governments of the federal, state and city. Thanks, have a good day every day and keep the People's Tribune coming. America needs it more than anything. Sincerely James F. Kranyck ****************************************************************** 15. NATIONAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: A PROGRAM OF ACTION AND EDUCATION This is an era of revolutionary change. Electronic technology is replacing human labor with computers and robots. Human labor is becoming worthless to a system that values only what it can exploit. The economic revolution is turning millions of people in this country into economic refugees. This system answers our cries of need with blows of terror. It offers unemployment, hunger, homelessness, welfare cuts, the AIDS epidemic and the plague of drugs. The government is turning from neglect to attack -- police murder and imprisonment of the youth, immigration raids, forced sterilization, executions and other forms of terror. The millions this system has thrown out face two choices -- either accept destruction and murder or set out to overturn this system. Technology is powerful enough to end hunger, homelessness and all want -- but only if it is seized from the exploiters and organized in the interests of those this system has discarded. We are an organization based on the people this system doesn't need. Those this system has discarded have begun a revolution -- an all-out struggle for food, homes, jobs, education, health care, freedom from police terror and drugs. Now is the time to organize and politicize this revolution that is shaking up the country. We will get only what we are organized to take. Our program is based on the revolutionary potential of those who have to fight this system in order to live. The decisive step today is to broaden and intensify the activities and influence of that movement. Based on this movement for survival, we will educate and organize revolutionary fighters from all sectors of society to wage war on the capitalist system. We call on you to join us in carrying out this program of action and education. Our program is to end poverty by seizing abandoned housing and fighting to secure food, health care and whatever else we need to survive. Our program is to put an end to the state terror by confronting the government through mass mobilization -- in the courts and in the streets. This organized action makes it possible for the millions who are being displaced, discarded and attacked by capitalism to be prepared, organized and trained to lead in overturning the whole system. Our program is to educate the millions of fighters with a blueprint of what we are all fighting for and how society can be reorganized to put an end to poverty and injustice once and for all. Contact the National Organizing Committee at P.O. Box 477113, Chicago Illinois or call 312-486-0028. ****************************************************************** 16. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, published weekly in Chicago, is devoted to the proposition that an economic system which can't or won't feed, clothe and house its people ought to be and will be changed. To that end, this paper is a tribune of the people. It is the voice of the millions struggling for survival. It strives to educate politically those millions on the basis of their own experience. It is a tribune to bring them together, to create a vision of a better world, and a strategy to achieve it. Join us! Editor: Laura Garcia Publisher: Lenny Brody To help support the production and distribution of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, please send donations, letters, articles, photos, graphics and requests for information, subscriptions and bundles of papers to: PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE P.O. Box 3524 Chicago, IL 60654 Respond via e-mail to jdav@igc.org Reach us by phone: Chicago: (312) 486-3551 Atlanta: (404) 242-2380 Detroit: (313) 839-7600 Los Angeles: (310) 428-2618 Washington, D.C.: (202) 529-6250 GETTING THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE IN PRINT The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE is available at many locations nationwide. One year subscriptions $25 ($35 institutions), bulk orders of 5 or more 15 cents each, single copies 25 cents. Contact PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, P. O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654, tel. (312) 486- 3551. WRITING FOR THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE We want your story in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. Send it in! Articles should be shorter than 300 words, written to be easily understood, and signed. (Use a pen name if you prefer.) Include a phone number for questions. Contact PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, P. O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, tel. (312) 486-3551. ****************************************************************** We encourage reproduction and use of all articles except those copyrighted. Please credit the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE depends on donations from its readers -- your generosity is appreciated. ******************************************************************