Crisis in Crown Heights: How oppressed people are turned against each other

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Erik Larsen's parents-Johanna and Harold-demand release of their son.

NEW YORK-Last summer, the rage and despair of Black youth in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn boiled over. Thousands of young people rose up against the cops, city officials, and the privileges of the Hasidic Jews who live there.

No doubt, a mayoral blue-ribbon panel will be appointed to investigate the causes of the street rebellion-New York City's largest in 20 years.

But the underlying causes should be clear enough. Unemployment for Blacks is high, especially among youth. Police brutality is rampant. Federal, state, and city cutbacks have devastated schools, healthcare, and other social services— particularly in minority neighborhoods.

On Aug. 9, seven-year-old Gavin Cato was killed by an out-of-control car that had run a red light and landed on the sidewalk where Gavin and his cousin were playing. Both were pinned under the tire.

When neighborhood residents crowded around the car to help, they were roughed up and pushed away by the police. Gavin's father was among those beaten by the cops when he tried to save his son.

The driver of the car was 22-year-old Yosef Lifish, a Hasidic Jew. Lifish was bringing up the rear of a police-escorted three-car motorcade carrying Menachem Schneerson, the Grand Rebbe of the Lubavitcher sect, home from his weekly visit to his wife's grave. When an ambulance arrived at the scene, it took the white driver and passengers-who had only minor injuries—from the car and left the critically injured Black children pinned under the weight of the automobile.

As word spread that the Jews had received treatment before the children and Erik Larsen Photos by Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action The nation's most prominent and most persecuted antiwar Marine Corp reservist and conscientious objector, Erik Larsen, won another important legal victory on Sept.18.

A Marine Corps judge, Col. Richard Oullette, at Camp LeJeune, N.C., ruled that Larsen had been denied legal counsel when a preliminary hearing, required under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, was held without his civilian or military-assigned attorneys present. Oullette ordered the previous Article 32 hearing to be "redone."

This victory marked the second time Larsen's defense team, headed by Attorney Robert Rivkin, has turned back Marine Corps efforts to deny Larsen due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. The first victory was won in April 1991 when a federal district court judge in San Francisco ordered a hearing on Larsen's application for conscientious objector status.

Larsen is one of several Marines facing court martial for refusing activation to the Persian Gulf, where the U.S.-led slaughter of the Iraqi people reached 8 SOCIALIST ACTION that the cops had once again brutalized Black residents, youth took to the streets in protest. Fights broke out between Blacks and Jews. Yankel Rosenbaum, an Hasidic scholar visiting from Australia, was stabbed to death later that evening as he was walking home.

Protests spread

For over a week, 2500 police were dispatched to occupy Crown Heights. Torrents of youths hurled rocks and bottles at the police, shouting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" Another slogan expressed the struggle against the privileges of the Hasidic Jews living in the area: "This isn't Palestine!"

In a demonstration at the 71st police precinct, Black leader Sonny Carson outlined the demands of the rebellion. These included the jailing of Lifish on charges of murder and the suspension of those police who had beaten the victim's family at the scene. "This isn't against Jews, it's against the police," one Black youth told a New York Times reporter. (Aug. 25,1991.)

The street rebellion was a special embarrassment to Mayor Dinkins, who became New York City's first Black mayor in 1989 based on his supposed ability to engender racial harmony in just such strife-torn areas as Crown Heights.

In sharp contrast to his appearance at rallies around the lynching of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst in 1989, Dinkins was booed when he he visited Crown Heights, and bottles were thrown at him.

In the meantime, the Black youth who allegedly killed Rosenbaum is in jail facing felony charges. In September, a grand jury refused to indict Lifish on any charges whatsoever, and he has since left the country for Israel.

It is impossible to understand the outrage of Caribbean and African American genocidal proportions. Larsen's antiwar activities led him to participate in over 100 rallies in 20 states and in antiwar protests in Germany, Britain, and Italy.

Like his Hayward, Calif., Marine Corps reservist friend, Tahan Jones, Larsen was originally charged with "desertion in time of war." Following an outpouring of national and international support for these courageous youth, this death penalty-associated charge was replaced with "desertion to avoid hazardous duty and/or shirk important service."

Larsen and Jones now face maximum prison sentences of seven years. Jones's court martial begins on Sept. 30, and Larsen's in October.

Dramatic testimony in Larsen's pretrial hearing last month revealed that the Marines deliberately moved to deny Larsen his right to legal representation. Larsen's originally assigned military attorney, Capt. Wendall Arsi, testifying OCTOBER 1991 youth engendered by this incident without knowing more about Crown Heights. Out of the 300,000 residents of the district, 80 percent are Black (many of Caribbean origin), about 10 percent are white, 9 percent are Latin and 1 percent are Asian.

The Lubavitcher sect The Lubavitchers are a large worldwide sect of Hasidic Jews. As many as 20,000 members are clustered in Crown Heights—which is the world headquarters of the sect.

The Lubavitchers are not without powerful connections. Spiritual leader Schneerson's power in Washington, D.C., was reflected in the fact that 90 senators and congresspeople attended his birthday last year. In New York, the Hasidics' links with the Democratic Party and the police enable them to obtain disproportionate amounts of funding for housing and other services.

Black residents have complained about acts of arson and other forms of harassment by Hasidic landlords who are trying to preserve their enclave. For years, Blacks have been terrorized by special vigilante "watch patrols" that Hasidics have organized to "fight crime."

Several major organizations which claim to speak in the interests of Jewish people have issued high-sounding condemnations of "anti-Semitism" in Crown Heights. They point to anti-Jewish grafitti and chants of "Heil Hitler!" heard at some rallies.

Nevertheless, how many of those pointing accusing fingers at Black people are willing to devote the same energy to examining and changing the distribution of power in Crown Heights? How many of those preaching brotherhood are willing to expose a system of "justice" (read "just us!") that refuses to punish cops who act as if Black people have no under oath, described a May 13 conversation with Capt. Eric Pfisterer, the former prosecutor in the case.

Arsi asked Pfisterer, "Why are we going on with the Article 32? I have no authority to act; civilian counsel [Robert Rivkin] is out of the country." Pfisterer responded, according to Arsi's notes made at the time, "Civilian counsel is a prick and has to be taught a lesson now or later.

Pfisterer, who had never spoken to Rivkin but who was present in San Francisco last April to observe Rivkin's successful defense of Larsen's due process rights during his conscientious objector hearing review, admitted that, "a lack of success on Larsen's conscientious objector case would have mooted our [court martial] proceedings at Camp LeJeune."

"This is the first direct evidence," according to Rivkin, that the government intentionally steamrolled Erik at rights they are bound to respect?

The revolt in Crown Heights has also led to discussion in the big-business media about the "death" of a progressive Jewish-Black alliance, best exemplified during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

But as Clinton Cox persuasively argued in a recent City Sun article (Sept. 11-17, 1991), this alliance was driven largely by the perceived self-interests of two outcast groups in American society, both seeking a way out of their pariah status. As more and more Jews have gained a stronger foothold in this coun try, they have come to share less and less common ground with Black people.

Nevertheless, the history of the Black liberation struggle in the 1970s and 1980s reveals that Black people continue to welcome concrete acts of solidarity by anti-racist whites, provided that the whites do not try to dictate the course of the struggle.

Nevertheless, Black leaders missed an important opportunity to initiate an antiracist coalition of a new kind in Crown Heights. These leaders, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, failed to speak out against the anti-Semitic slogans that had found an echo among some confused youth.

Also, while defending the right of Black youth to self-defense, they failed to distinguish between acts of self-defense and indiscriminate retaliation on innocent Jews like Rosenbaum.

Anti-Semitism, like racism, is an ideology the ruling class has used historically to prevent the united fightback of the working class in times of economic crisis. The anti-racist movement should have nothing to do with such poison.

The root causes of Black oppression lie not in the synagogues on Eastern Parkway but in the boardrooms of Wall Street and Washington. As the capitalist crisis deepens, more and more workers will come to see they have no material interest in the divide-and-conquer ideology of the ruling class.

Dawn Reel assisted in the research on this article.

the Article 32 hearing in retaliation for Larsen's federal court victory."

The "steamrolling," in fact, consisted of the Marines proceeding with the Article 32 hearing without Larsen's attorneys present and after denying Rivkin 38 of the 39 witnesses he had requested.

With "Catch 22" logic, however, Judge Oullette absolved the Marine Corp Hearing Officer of any wrongdoing. Instead, he ruled that Rivkin himself was responsible for his client's lack of legal representation because of Rivkin's alleged "refusal to participate" in the Article 32 hearing.

The Larsen/Jones Defense Committee has responded to each new attack on these young antiwar fighters with renewed efforts to win the broadest possible public support for the immediate release and for a general amnesty for all Gulf War resisters.

A San Francisco demonstration last month mobilized some 200 protesters at the Federal Building. Similar protests, according to the Larsen/Jones Committee, are in the planning stages for cities across the country.

Antiwar activists and supporters of democratic rights interested in the defense of Larsen and Jones should contact: The Larsen/Jones Defense Committee, Box 225, 1678 Shattuck Avenue., Berkeley, CA 94709. Telephone (415) 655-2101.

African-American Institute Speakers:

Erik Larsen & others

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BRING ERIK MAME

Free US Nostage at Camp Lejeunc FREE ERIK LARSEN

Boston Meeting in Defense of Erik Larsen & Tahan Jones Sat., Oct. 19, 7:30 pm

Northeast University, Boston, Mass.