Against the Current, No. 81, July/August 1999

WHILE MORE THAN 100 countries have abolished the death penalty by law or practice, after a decade-long banishment, the United States resurrected it in the 1970s.  Its restoration is part of the "get tough on crime" campaign-despite the fact that no study has ever found the death penalty a "deterrent" to crime.

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THE APRIL 24 "Millions for Mumia" demonstrations in Philadelphia and San Francisco represented, by far, the largest public outpouring around the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Crowd estimates varied, naturally.  The Philadelphia Inquirer reported 10,000, with many observers also saying 10-15,000.  But others, including march organizers, were citing figures in the 25-30,000 range.  All who attended both this year's demonstration in Philadelphia and the 1995 national action-after the first death warrant was signed, previously the biggest mobilization-declared that there were more participants this time./p>

SINCE JUNE OF 1997 Geronimo Pratt has been free from prison, but not free from its threat. No longer!

Even Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti concedes that the former Black Panther, whose 1972 murder conviction was overturned, is now beyond his reach. This past February an appeals court, in a 3-0 ruling, upheld the decision of the judge who threw out Pratt's conviction in June 1997.

IT'S HAPPENED TO most Blacks at least once in our lifetime.  Driving towards home or heading from work on the freeway a cop decides to pull you over for no reason.  You wait in your car (you never get out first), hoping it's nothing.  As you wait, the tension increases throughout your body. You keep your hands visible and crack no smile.  Is it just a ticket?  Or worse?  (You wonder why African Americans have high blood pressure.)

ON JUNE 11 the U.S. government agreed to a longstanding Italian request to allow political prisoner Silvia Baraldini to serve the rest of her term in her native country. The move, announced by U.S. Ambassador to Italy Thomas Foglietta, appeared to be an attempt to appease Italian public opinion about the U.S. army plane that sliced a gondola cable when flying too low and too fast in the Italian Alps on February 3, 1998, killing twenty people. The pilot, Marine Captain Richard Asby, was recently acquitted by a U.S. military tribunal. In that case Italy returned the pilots involved in the Cermis tragedy and allowed them to be tried in their country of origin.

On FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1999, a new name was added to the list of fifteen Puerto Rican political prisoners currently held in American jails: José Solís Jordán. That day, a federal jury in Chicago found Solís, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico and father of five, guilty of bombing a U.S. Army recruitment office in that city in 1992. No one was killed or hurt in the bombing.

ON APRIL 19, American F-18 fighter planes, on a routine bombing maneuver over the island of Vieques (a small island of approximately 8,000 inhabitants seven miles off the southeast coast of Puerto Rico belonging to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico), dropped “by mistake” two 500-pound bombs on a guard-post on Camp Garcia, US Navy.

AS ALWAYS, WHEN I come back to Nicaragua I am acutely aware of the contrasts: breathtakingly beautiful landscapes in a crumbling country, the wealth of her natural resources and the poverty of her people. I keep coming back to visit Nicaraguan friends and family and work with a woman's health project that I have been involved with for eight years.

NIKE MADE A mistake when it aggressively entered the college market through lucrative licensing contracts and exclusive promotions deals.  In hindsight, it amazes me that the company never considered the potential for scandal when it linked itself to institutions that purport to be moral leaders.