Page 2 Portland Observer May 18, 1989
OPINION
C IV IL
RIGHTS JOURNAL
ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
NOW
by Benjamin F. Chavis
Amnesty International has been joined by hundreds of human rights
groups throughout the world in the recent launching of a new international
campaign against the death penalty. Here in the United States the issue of
capital punishment continues to be hotly debated. The NAACP Legal
Defense Fund, the Commission for Racial Justice and numerous other civil
rights and human rights organizations in the United States have long argued
against the death penalty.
John G. Healey , Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA
staled, “ the death penally is a human rights violation. It is cruel and
degrading. It is barbaric and should be stopped immediately.” In a 268-page
report that details how and why the death penalty is applied worldwide,
Amnesty International concluded that in many nations the death penalty is
used “ for blatant political reasons and/or disproportionately against the
poor or racial and ethnic minorities.” Since 1979 it is estimated that more
than 40,000 women, men and even in some cases children have been
officially executed in some 90 different nations as a result of the imposition
of the death penalty. In the United States the report cites statistics that
“ 86%of prisoners on death row in 1987 have been convicted of killing
whites. Forty-five of the ninety-eight prisoners executed between January,
1987 and May 1988 were Black or Hispanic and 98% of them have been
convicted of killing whites.” Capital punishment in the United States has
been rarely imposed when the victim was an African American or Hispanic.
Because of racism, the values of the lives of the victims of crime and
violence is socially determined by race and socio-economic circumstance.
The point here is, however, not the color or the race of the victim or of the
accused. The issue is that the imposition of the death penalty is immoral and
unjust in any situation. The state does not create life and the state does not
have the right to take life.
Although African Americans today are approximately 15% of this
nation’s population, African Americans comprise 41% of those on death
row. Hispanics, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic communities
also disproportionately are sentenced to death.
In those states where capital punishment has been made legal, the
argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime has failed. In fact,
there has been a gradual increase in the murder rate in those states where the
death penally is routinely imposed. We, in the United Slates, should join the
international campaign to abolish the death penalty by first taking this
action here. The Supreme Court of the United States needs to be petitioned,
and the death penalty should be outlawed. But, of course, the present
members of the Supreme Court would only take such a vote in the wake of
a national public outcry against this type of inhumane cruelty and barbarity.
The New Myth About The Black
Poor
Fighting Back Against Systematic
Child Abuse
Attorney holds press conference in desperate plea
to save the life of Adam Abdul-Hakeem (formerly
known as Larry Davis) sentenced to be executed
Attorneys Alvaader Frazier and
baseball bat, to having a group ol
corrections officers attempt to gouge
out his eyes with keys.
Last Sunday, in blatant disregard
for his lawyer’s presence, inmates
threw urine and feces on his face and
body, and hit him in the back of the
head with a hard object, causing him
to cough blood. Appeals for help
were met with laughter by correc
tions officers who had observed the
incident. He was subsequently de
nied medical attention.
Mr. Abdul-Hakeem’s attorneys had
already filed a plea of habeas corpus
on March 6th to have their client
moved to presumably safer quarters
at the federal Metropolitan Correc
tions Center, where he had been taken
after previous attempts on his life at
Rikers in 1987. But Judge Richard
Lowell has pushed the court date
Bac^ t0
Attorney Frazier of the Interna
tional People’s law Institution, said,
“ Each day my client sits in Rikers
Island his chances of being killed or
brutalized to the point of incapacita
tion multiply. Here is a man whose
only offense was to defend himself
with an unlicensed gun from being
assassinated by drug-running cops.
The Policeman’s Benevolent Asso
ciation made it clear that they not
only condone his death but are gun
ning for him. Where is Mayor Koch
and where is Corrections Commis
sioner Koehler? What does it mean
for them to remain silent when this
young Black man. An American citi
zen, has been stripped on his demo
cratic, civil and constitutional rights?
You can be sure that if he were a
young white man form the suburbs,
federal, state and local investigators
would be all over this case looking
into whether his allegations were true.
Yet no one has approached Adam
Abdul-Hakeem to hear how the po
lice came into his community and
used him and other kids to make
money off the addiction of our youth.
“ Right now in New York,” Ms.
Frazier continued, “ there is a coali
tion of community support, independ
ent leaders, and elected officials that
.
>s demanding a federal investigation
of P01« * corruption and the role of
th eP °h c c *n a b u s e ’
Lcnor*
Fman, is leading that coal.uon, and
J e s taking the story of Adam Ab-
dul-Hakecm aka Larry Davis out
51 Attacks on Mr. Abdul-Hakeem in across the cminay. Every decent and
Harry Kresky of the International
Peoples Law Institution and Michael
Warren, Esq. held a press conference
on Friday, May 5, on the steps of City
Hall at 11:00 am. They announced
plans to file a motion in Federal
Court to save the life of their client
Adam Abdul-Hakeem (formerly Larry
Davis) by asking for his removal
from the Rikers Island corrections
facility. Abdul-Hakecm’s attorneys
requested that he be placed in federal
custody in order to stop the brutal
physical and emotional attacks he
suffered since his placement at Rik-
ers island in January of 1989. Dr.
Lenora Fulani, national chairperson
of the New Alliance Party and leader
of
Coalition To Free Adam Ab-
dui-Hakcem, issued a statement that
was rcatj hy Barbara Taylor, princi-
paj
founder of the independent
3 ^ 5 ^ Taylor School in Harlem,
His incarceration has been marked
by continued attacks and threats on
his life that began almost three years
ago after he exposed the 44th Pre
cinct’s police drug-running opera
tion in the Bronx as well as the 34th
Precinct in upper Manhattan, in which
he was forced to participate at the
age of 15. Formal demands to Com
missioner of Corrections Richard
J. Koehler and Mayor Koch to re
move Mr. Abdul-Hakeem from Rik
ers have fallen on deaf ears.
Acquitted in two separate trails
accusing him of the quadruple mur
ders of drug dealers and the attempted
murder of six police officers, Mr.
Abdul-Hakeem was subsequently con
victed on the minor charge of weap
ons possession. Unlike subway gun
man, Bernhard Goetz who received
only one year for a possession of
weapons felony charge, Mr. Abdul-
Hakeem received a five to fifteen
year sentence for his weapons con
viction. He is appealing that verdict
and sentence through his prior coun
sel William Kuntsler.
On the day of his sentencing, one
thousand or more members of the
Policeman’s Benevolent Association
demonstrated outside the Bronx
courthouse calling for “ Death to Larry
Davis” and demanding that he re-
ceive the severest penalty under the
law. Some proudly said they would
get even with him in any way pos-
Under a new California law which holds parents responsible for the
criminal activity of their children, Los Angeles police have arrested the
mother of a 17 year old suspect in a rape case on the grounds that she
condoned his membership in a gang. The mother and her son are Black.
A New York City parochial school teacher whose students are mostly
Black and Latino recently told an interviewer that the school curriculum
places primary emphasis on language skills. The reason? “ Many of our
children come from single parent families, he explained, and their
mothers don’t take the time to talk to them.
Sue Simmonds, a Black educator and community leader who holds a
master’s’s degree in elementary education from New York’s prestigious
Columbia University, is locked in a court battle with the city s Special Serv
ices for children department; her kids were taken away from her months ago
by SSC, which falsely accused this sister of child abuse.
The nightmare started when cops armed with shotguns and wearing
bulletproof vests staged a midnight raid on Sue Simmonds independent
school in Brooklyn early last fall.
The invasion was part of a harassment campaign which the city, siding
with her landlord in a dispute over the school property, has been waging
against her. Sue was thrown into a Rikers Island jail for five days. When
she came out, her kids were gone-iaken into SSC custody for their own
protection.”
Sue Simmonds is not the only mother whose children have been taken
away by the authorities—family courts, so-called child protection agencies
and “ special services” for children—under the pretext that they were in
danger at home. All over the country tens of thousands of our children arc
being plucked from their families on the say so of judges whose court
proceedings are closed to the public, shunted from foster home to public
shelter and back again, transferred from one school to another-alw ays new,
rarely wanted or welcome, never ‘ ‘ at home. Neglected, brutalized
physically and emotionally, with no one to watch out for them or care about
them, these children are systematically abused by the very institutions that
are supposed to protect them.
It’s no coincidence that most of their mothers are poor women ol color.
Poor families, and poor women in particular, come in for a big share of the
blame from those who cry crocodile tears over the breakdown of the
American family. It’s the pious politicians, the professional experts, the
self-serving sermonizers and salcs-hungry sensationalizers who, by blam
ing u s , condone and help to perpetuate systematic child abuse.
W e’re so dumb, they say, that we let overselves get talked into sleeping
with men who won’t marry oreven support us; we’re promiscuous sluts who
don’t care if we get pregnant because “ the welfare” will pay; w e’re lazy,
irresponsible, unloving and unfit mothers who don t look after our children
or discipline them or teach them the right values, just as our own mothers
didn’t teach us (we’re third and fourth generation welfare recipients, which
proves it); we are the carriers and perpetuators of a ‘ ‘culture of poverty ’ ’ that
turns children into anti-social monsters. We don’t have the moral right to
be mothers, they say, nodding their heads in approval when the authorities
come into our homes and walk out with our kids.
Last November Sue Simmonds’ legal defense committee transformed it
self into Communities Organized lo Stop Systematic Child Abuse. I am an
active member of COSSC A. As a developmental psychologist, as a political
activist, and as the mother of two Black children, I am deeply, deeply
concerned about the systematic abuse of children in our society.
COSSCA is taking on a case of systematic child abuse that involves
I’m increasingly annoyed by the acceptance of a new myth about the
Native American Children who attend the Diamond Valley School in
poor. You’ve probably heard it, too.
Alpine County, California in the mountains just across the border with
It goes like this: “ The success of the new immigrants to these shores
Nevada. All of the teachers at the school are white; more than half the
proves that we don’t need new government programs to end poverty.”
children who attend are Indian. It’s common for the teachers to call these
Baloney. Our home-grown poor, and especially the African American
kids” stupid,” and hit them. Diamond Valley, which goes from kindergar
poor, face a lack of economic and educational opportunities, as well as
ten to the eighth grade, is the only school in the counly-so parents have little
persistent racial discrimination, that makes such comparisons and conclu
choice but to send their children there. Desiree and Terrance Cruz,Washoe
sions odious.
Indians who have two children in the school, have been leading a commu
jail have ranged from being poshed Progressive cozen in New York must
Instead of dealing with the very real problems faced by America’s poor
nity protest against the abuse that goes on at the school. In retaliation, local
a come forward and join with Dr. Fu-
people we’re romanticizing an immigrant experience that has little relation
down a staircase handcutted to
police officers have begun harassing them, and Mr. Cruz is in danger of
wheelchair, lo being »lacked with a 1“" 1 Io save the life of Adam Abdul-
ship with reality.
being driven out of business. On June 1 COSSCA will issue a human rights
Hakeem..
A look at the facts suggested that many new immigrants are not riding
report for Alpine County, exposing the abuse; a lawsuit is being prepared
rockets to success, and that those who do have certain advantages.
against the county by COSSCa attorneys and founding members Alvaader
. . .
.
. ,
,u- v a ■ „ fr things we know not of; for no one can determine what they will or will net
Thenewim m igrantsaren tm akingittotheextentthatm any think. Asian 3 uimgs we ili j
,
„
,
______ .
°
3 do until that situation actually faces him or her.
J Frazier and Harry Kresky.
American groups are rightly protesting the stereotype that all Asian immi- g
AMERICA IS MULTICULTURAL. AFRO-AMERICANS, EURO-J
Thanks to COSSA the Indian parents of Alpine County don’t have to
grants are affluent professionals.
3
fight
alone anymore to put a slop to systematic ch ild abuse. None of us docs.
AMERICANS, ASIAN-AMER1C ANS and many more geo-cultural groups.
In fact, a recent study of Asian Americans in the New York metropolitan 3
If you want to stand up with us, call Alvaader Frazier at (212) 956-5550.
area - over half a million people - found that thirty percent live in poverty. 2 And as we proceed through our past, there is truly no other human being on
Dr. Lenora Fulani is the national chairperson of the New Alliance Party
earth that can claim these lands as heritable burial grounds except the
That’s a higher poverty rate than the non-Asian population.
and a practicing Social Therapist in Harlem. She can be contacted at the
Ofcourse, many of the new immigrants are making it. But that shouldn’t 3 AMERICAN INDIAN.
New Alliance Party, 2032 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10027 and at (212)
So if, we are going to save our children, if we are going to save a society,
surprise anyone, since immigrants are a self-selected group - only the most g
996-4700.
we are going to need to change the way we think, we must work on
ambitious, driven people leave their families and countries to start life in 3
ourselves. We need to show mutual respect for mankind. For how can we
another land.
4 teach our children to show respect for one another, respect for the adult, if I
Those successful people arc similar to the many black Americans who
we are not showing respect to each other?
1
fight their way out of poverty. Those who crow about how well the
The bottom line is that our society is failing. We are far too short-sighted.
immigrants are doing forget that in just one generation, significant numbers
Children did not make drugs. Children do not buy homes and allow them to
of blacks moved out of poverty and into the middle class.
deteriorate. Children did not make up the word ‘ ‘gang’ ’. For this is from Old
The African American drive to succeed is every bit as strong as that of 3
. . .
,
.. .
,
, . . .
1 «r
*
„ .
M English. And from our national history we know the term to mean a gro u p f
other peonies, and when disadvantaged African Americans get opportune U
&
uinei pvupics, anu w.tvii uiaou
5
. . . .
%.
. 3 of people organized or associated together for illegal or disreputable W
ties such as education and training, they do as well as others. They succeed g
" "
°
R
for the same reasons so many immigrants have been able to make it -
3 purposes.
3
The bottom line is that we need to focus on saving our children. We need
education.
We should’! forget that many of the current immigrants to America are ? to focus on what society can do^ o^ " ^ hborbood" ? order l° ™ E
Bv John E. Jacob
CALL
PORTLAND OBSERVER
FAX #
503)288-0015
drawn from the educated middle class of their countries, so they come with 3 them. For it is AN AMERICAN DOCTRINE, a political belief that all men |
advantages yesterday’s immigrants and many of today’s American poor 3 arc created equal .
.
p
“
1
3
b
3
The bottom line is that we need help as a group of people living in a L
don t have.
3
.
. »• r j .
44
O f course, a lot of immigrants have backgrounds that are not middle 3 sociely heading for destruction.
iu.wA.fNti.in r
. r . • j
u
n
The bottom line is that many people arc not satisfied with the leadership l
class. Many, including large numbers from south o f the border, come here 4
1 nc 00 lom *mc ’
d y p p
. .
r
____________ _________________________ a ________________ 2 we have elected or those whom have elected their own person to lead.
To allow freedom of speech as it pertains to the press is within our j.
But young African Americans are products of our own system and rightly 3
Constitutional limits. For the First amendment ensures us that Congress L
expect the economic opportunities other Americans have.
“ makes no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the C
Finally, too many of our kids are ground down by discrimination and 3
free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or £
grow up in crime and drug-ridden ghettocs, racially isolated, consigned to 3
the right of the people pcacebly to assemble and to petition the government L
schools that don’t educate them.
j
for redress of grievances.
«
Half of all black youngsters grow up poor. In middle class neighbor- 3
Secondly Amendment IV says “ the right of the people to be secure in j.
hoods, adults go to the office every day. In poor neighborhoods, unemploy- 1
their persons, houses, papers; and effects...shall not be violated .
ment and marginal jobs are the norm, so many of our kids lack role models, g
And finally Amendment V says “ no person shall be held to L
W e’re not going to solve our problems by glibly romanticizing the 3
answer...infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand
experiences of some of the newcomers. And we can’t allow that fictional- 3
«
izing of the immigrant experience turn us away from doing wha. is -j jury...”
We must begin to lead our society into a productive homefront. Tarnish- I
necessary to bring our own disadvantaged into the mainstream.
ing the name of people can only backfire and leave our communities in the
degradated state they have sat in for so long.
It is time for old leaders to train the new. It is time for new leaders lo lead
the way...for change is inevitable. We can do it peacefully. We have came
too far to go back. There will always be two schools of thought.
Innocent people are being hurt...In Portland, the Church and State no
longer separate. Racism and insensitivity now one. Let us get back on the {
right track. For the City should remain in the business of caring for our city. I
The church for its congregation; and racism is and always will be “ a
If we arc going to save our children in this city, state and world, the adults
doctrine or belief that inherent differences makes one race, especially one’s
in this society arc going to need to show a change. Prevailing incidents
own, superior to another” As far as insensitivity, well, w e’ve all had our
relating to human degradation must cease.
Sabin/Irvington Heights Neighbor
hood Chairperson request a
peaceful new leadership
If we arc going to save our children of this world, we must begin to respet
others who have difference of opinions and not blatantly accuse them of
share.”
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