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<font size=3>CALL TO PROTEST ASHCROFT’S APPEARANCE ON CAMPUS<br>
By Aaron Shuman<br>
<br>
On November 29th, at 7:30pm, former Attorney General John Ashcroft will
be speaking on "The Politics of National Security" at Statler
Auditorium in a talk sponsored by the Cornell College Republicans. His
biography states, "As Attorney General in the Bush administration
from 2001-2005... [Mr. Ashcroft] led the Department in initiating a tough
anti-terrorism campaign that has been instrumental in disrupting numerous
terrorist plots worldwide and dismantling terrorist cells in many cities
across America." <br>
<br>
As part of that campaign, Ashcroft did the following:<br>
<br>
*punished U.S. political prisoners by moving them into solitary
confinement after the 9/11 attacks;<br>
*implemented a policy of special registration for people of Muslim, Arab,
and South Asian descent that recalls the racism of the internment of
Japanese-Americans during World War II;<br>
*presided over such extralegal maneuvers as the classification of
"enemy combatants", internment at Guantanamo, the USA Patriot
Act, and the Bybee memo attempting to redefine torture, all of which have
come under attack and rollback;<br>
*reopened every unsolved case of so-called domestic terrorism, and in at
least one casethe case of the San Francisco 8rehired the very officers
who had been implicated in using torture to extract confessions in the
early 1970s; <br>
*presided over the continued racist expansion of the prison-industrial
complex under the “war on drugs”, the “war on gangs”, and “the war on
immigrants”, as well as the expansion of the Department of Justice-owned
and –operated corporation UNICOR (aka Federal Prison Industries), which
has come under attack for fraud, labor abuses, and worker injuries up to
and including death. <br>
<br>
Exactly what have been the results of John Ashcroft’s “war on terror”how
many cases opened, how many convictions obtained, at what costis an
interesting question. <br>
<br>
In the case of the San Francisco 8, for instance, according to their
website <a href="http://www.freethesf8.org/">www.freethesf8.org</a>,
“eight former Black Panthers were arrested January 23rd in California,
New York and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San
Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was
revealed that police used torture to extract confessions.” Announced with
great fanfare and bail figures of $2-$3 million each, those figures have
since been dropped by 90%; six of the eight are currently out on bail;
the government has been unable to produce key documents and accused of
withholding them; the integrity of its informant has been called into
question, and defense attorney Stuart Hanlon has vowed to put the
government on trial. A revolution in recent Panther scholarshipincluding
such recent products as the four-DVD set “What We Want, What We Believe:
The Black Panther Party Library” and the book “Up Against the Wall:
Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party”details
the exact roles FBI informants played in sowing dissension, setting up
leaders, and destroying the Party, as well as the work of movement
lawyers who struggled against this government attack and won. <br>
<br>
The documentary on the SF8 case, “Legacy of Torture: The War Against the
Black Liberation Movement”, states that "No federal, state or city
agent or police officer nor government agency has ever been held
accountable for the illegal acts, violence, imprisonment, and murders
conducted in the name of [the FBI program] COINTELPRO."<br>
<br>
However, news such as the recent trial in Detroit of former federal
prosecutor Richard Convertino for withholding evidence and the
overturning of guilty verdicts in what the Associated Press called “the
nation's first major terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks” suggest
that the foundations of the war on terrorism are under attack and
possible to overturn or crumble. The upcoming appeal of the conviction of
Eric McDavid on “eco-terrorism” charges offers another window into
misconduct by an FBI informant. With people in Washington DC protesting
outside the Department of Justice virtually every week against racist and
homophobic prosecutions such as the Jena 6 and the New Jersey 4, and the
call for a week of actions beginning November 21st called “Ceasefire:
Stop Police Terrorism” against everyday police terror tactics, the very
question of what justice means to the Department of Justice is being
asked in the streets. Keeping in mind that famous revolutionaries such as
Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, and Huey Newton all studied law, what is
your responsibility and role to challenge the police state at this time?
<br>
<br>
A group of students has called for people to protest Ashcroft’s
appearance on campus November 29th. They are holding a planning meeting
Saturday November 20th at 1pm at the Watermargin Co-op, 103 McGraw Place.
For more information on “Ceasefire: Stop Police Terrorism”, see
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/freeallpoliticalprisoners">
http://www.myspace.com/freeallpoliticalprisoners</a> . For more
information on the San Francisco 8, see
<a href="http://www.freethesf8.org/">http://www.freethesf8.org/</a>. Four
of the eight are expected to appear in New York City on November 30th.
<br><br>
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