Blacks forge new fight against racism in N.Y.C

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Jan. 18 Martin Luther King Day—drew over 3000 people to demonstrate 16 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1988 NEW YORK-"This is not the end of the movement against racism in New York; it is only the beginning." That is how one Black activist summed up the lessons of the trial of four white men charged with the lynching/murder of Black construction worker Michael Griffith in Howard Beach.

On Dec. 20, 1986, three Black men went to look for assistance after their car broke down in Howard Beach, a white working-class enclave. The defendants then chased the three with baseball bats, tire irons, and tree limbs, screaming racist epithets. Griffith was struck by a car while trying to escape across a highway.

Last month, one of the defendants was given a 30-year prison sentence. The other two defendants were sentenced to five years each. This brought to a close one of the most explosive trials involving race relations in recent American history.

The jury delivered its verdicts in Queens Supreme Court on Dec. 21, a year and a day after Michael Griffith's killing. Three of the four defendants were found guilty of manslaughter in the second degree and assault in the first degree. However, the top count of murder and the lesser charge of riot were dismissed.

That day, Dec. 21, was declared a "Day of Outrage" by Black activists. Some 1000 protesters blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and a major subway line while chanting "No justice, no peace."

The demonstrators heard the Rev. Timothy Mitchell proclaim the birth of a new civil-rights movement. "The movement has come North. The movement is in New York. The issue is Up South!" he said, repeating the term used by Malcolm X.

New coalition is formed On Jan. 18, Martin Luther King Day, an estimated 3000 to 4000 people demonstrated in a "March for Racial Justice." The winding three-mile march route took the marchers past numerous institutions guilty of abetting acts of racist violence in recent years—the banks of Wall Street, various courthouses, and City Hall.

The demonstration was called by New Yorkers for Racial Justice. The newly formed coalition of over 70 union, church, and community organizations is pledged to a "multi-racial struggle to create a climate in New York City that guarantees racial justice and equality."

Numerous speakers placed the action squarely in the tradition not only of the demonstrations led by the Rev. King in the TREEDOM ARE.

(UN 8ES against local increase in racist attacks.

South in the late 1960s but of the more recent marches and civil disobedience actions protesting the increasing acts of racist violence in the North.

Police Department records show that racially motivated incidents in New York City doubled last year compared with 1986. To these attacks must be added the racist violence carried out by the police themselves and abetted by city and state authorities.

The still-unfolding subway police scandal has been cited by protest leaders. It was recently revealed that subway police made as many as 225 unfounded racially motivated arrests between 1983 and 1987. Blacks and Latinos were charged with phony sexual crimes to fulfill a quota system of arrests.

The case of Tawan Brawley-the young Black woman raped and sodomized in Wappingers Fall, N.Y., in late November —has also come into focus. Abducted by two white men identifying themselves as police officers, she was held by Ku Klux Klansmen for four days. Lawyers and family have charged a police coverup.

The special prosecutor At a press conference soon after the Howard Beach verdict, Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo declared that the verdict showed that the criminal justice system, despite the need for a special prosecutor in the case, "worked very well."

On Jan. 15, over 30 peaple picketed the Haitian consulate in New York to protest the rigged prestdential election in that country. The protest was organized by the Concerned Latin American Students of Hunter Collegr (CLASH).

As expected, Leslie F.

Manigat, the choice of the Haitian army, was the winner of an election that was boycotted by over 90 percent of the electorate.

The Haitian junta and its U.S. backers will be unable to base a stable government on the electoral charade performed before the eyes of the world on Jan. 17, 1988. -HAYDEN PERRY UNne on It is testimony to the racist nature of the criminal justice system that any guilty verdict on even a lesser charge is presented as a victory. The Amsterdam News reported (Jan. 3, 1987) that no white man has ever been convicted of murder involving a Black during the present Queens district attorney's tenure.

Queens D.A. John Santucci, under investigation himself for connections to organized crime figures, failed to indict anyone other than the three who were originally booked-and then only for assault!

The police, the D.A.'s office, and the big-business media all treated the victims as defendants. The two attorneys for the victims quite reasonably concluded their clients could not get a fair trial. In January 1987, they demanded a special prosecutor in the case.

For this demand, they were subjected to a witchhunt and a stream of racist attacks in the big-business press. A high-ranking aide to Governor Cuomo dismissed the defense attorneys at that time as having "zero credibility."

But as a series of articles in the Black weekly The City Sun in January 1987 revealed, it was the fear of an independent mass movement which ultimately drove Cuomo to accede to the demand after having used every opportunity to play off one group of Black officials against another and against community organizers.

Further evidence of how deeply the ruling class fears a mass movement against racism in New York was provided by news articles which appeared in Newsday and the Daily News in July 1987.

The Special Services Bureau of the New York Police Department, it was revealed, had established a clandestine "Black Desk," assigned the job of snooping on the new generation of Black activists organizing against racist violence since the Howard Beach lynching. The Special Services Bureau has a history of spying on left, labor, and Black organizations extending back to 1920.

Anti-racist meetings and rallies were secretly videotaped. Talk shows on the Black-owned WLIB radio station were tape recorded. Secret riot-training sessions of police officers included briefings on Black leaders "most likely to be involved in civil disturbances."

A class-action suit has been brought by many of the leaders of the Howard Beach protests against the N.Y.P.D. for its "Black Desk" activities, involving as they do both From R0x.7 Butters/Soci violations against democratic rights ruling class's own laws.

Building a new leadership A whole layer of Black youth passionately desiring freedom, equality, and dignity have been brought into political life for the first time. They attended the demonstrations, chanted the slogans, and did much of the work.

For these young people, "Howard Beach!" became a symbol not just of racism in America, but of the dawning fightback. "No Justice, No Peace!" became their rallying cry.

As in all great struggles, the question of program began to be debated, whether informally in groups of twos and threes at demonstrations, or among callers on WLIB radio call-in programs. Demands were put forward and debated.

Of course, the demand for a special prosecutor was played up in the big-business media, since this was a demand that could most easily be granted by the capitalist state, involving as it does no fundamental structural change.

But a host of other demands and projects were also raised. The question of the right and duty to organize self-defense units to protect Black neighborhoods and organizations independently of the police was debated in a way it hadn't been since the 1960s.

Some people spoke of the need for a Black political party, one that would be completely independent of Governor Cuomo's Democratic Party. The idea took on renewed force and urgency, given a movement that at times stood in danger of becoming subordinated to the tactics of lawyers-some of whom were also its leaders.

The need for Black people to link up their demands against racist violence with demands against the economic violence (cutbacks in social services, layoffs, evictions, plant closings) which affect all working people was also posed.

The week after the "Day of Outrage," Mayor Koch, whose pontifications and policies have done as much as anything to divide the races, came out for a blue-ribbon commission to "study" race relations in New York.

But Black people don't need to be "studied." What they want and need is very simple. They want jobs at union wages. They want housing, decent education, and health care. They want freedom from racist attacks.

Above all, they need a society where the material foundations for racism—production for profit instead of for human needs— is eradicated forever.

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TRIUM Glen Martin New York City "March for Racial Justice"

SAY NO TO RACIST

MEW YORK Souls A