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By Mum.ia Abu-Jamal
There· Something partieu­
Iydishearteningabout the sen·
teDcing ,of the two LAPO brutes
convicted of beating African·
American motorist, Rodney King
recently.
When U.S. District Court
Judge Davi ntenoed Officers
Koon and Powell to 2-1fl years in
prison, he went to great pains to
justify the bulk of the beating of
King, citing King's oft..ciOOd fail­
ure to ·stand still" while enduring
bat Do being should be asked to
endure.
He decried, not the violence
visited upon King, but the paten.
tial violence facing "police offi·
• in prison, proving Malcolm
)C old maxim, that the system
will make ·the criminal look like
victim, and the victim look
like the criminal. •
Ho often do you read that
judges tenoe people to harsh
terms -to nd am· that
certain crimes are "unaceept­
ab-'!
The extremely lenient sen­
teDcing of the two LAPD brutes
• ndsa ·-it tells the
lei, as did Judge Davies in .
"iemar at ntencing, that e
vtMnllG, brutal, unprovoked bone­
breaking beating of King was ut­
terly • aooeptable,· and perfectly
legal, as long as King tried to dare
protect himself from the deadly,
raverious onsla�t of uniformed
ONLY WHEN someone is a
police officer is he not a "criminal"
in the ey of the so-called • law, •
Only when someone is a victim
ofpolioe savagery are they no long
"victims," but "criminals,"
The extremely lenient sen­
tencing of Koon and Powell, to
2-1/2 years.co ituted, via judi'.
cial remar , the nd u1t
of Rodney King by the state,
which used t �pon of words
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"
,
Thirty year ago when
250,000 people converged on the
nation's Capital, they re com­
ing to VI: hington h off the
The on W hington
gathered up this D81'&Y, t an·
ger and out and channeled
it in di . on which 1
threatening and more eeept­
ab to the bite power stzuo.
ture. In that regard, the March
on Washington proved to be a
kind of fsty valve that may
have helped to postpon the
more violent eruptions that ful­
lowed.
o
THE 19 RCH on
Washington not about com-
memoration, it about libera-
tion.
We cannot afford to uccumb
to commemoration for com­
memoratio . But this is
precisely what has beenbappen­
ing over the last decade or 90.
, In the face of a ·State ofEmer­
gency· mong the' me,ses of
Black people in terms of unem­
ployment, underemployment,
poverty, homel inferior
Lester's World
People who respect the dig.
rl!ty and sensitivity of Blac
Americans rejoiced on July 22,
when Carol Moseley-Braun,
first Black woman elected to the
U.S. Senate, persuaded her sen­
ate colleagues not to renew a
patent design featuring the Con­
federate flag.
In an emotional plea that won
reversal of a prior vote approv­
ing the design, she told the sena­
tors that • On this issue there can
be' no consensus. It is an out­
rage," she shouted through her
tears. "It is an insult. •
The standard 14-year re­
newal of the design patent had
been requested by the Daugh­
ters of the Confederacy and was
sponsored by Sen. J Helms
of North Carolina.
Sen. Moseley-Braun said,
"Thia is the real flag of the Con­
federaey" and threatened to fili­
buster "until this house freezes
over" if the Senate tended to ap­
prove the objectionable patent
renewal. She prevailed by a vote
of 75 to 25, with only two Demo­
crats opposing - Byrd of West
Virginia and Nunn of Georgia.
Moseley·Braun Vl elected to
t Senate last year hen the
Democratic primary he de­
feated tormer Senator Alan
Dixon ho voted to seat
rather than that of blackjacks.
Rarely has the judicial fabric of
suppoeed impartiality worn 90
thin as in this reluctant sentenc­
ing ofKoon and Powell.
Many in South Central and
Chicano LA took the news of the
sentencing with grim resignation,
quiet acknowledgment that the
system is their system-not the
people's. Both ex·LAPD stor­
mtroopei's will wait a full 2
months before seeing the inside of
a prison cell, and Doth will no
doubt be shipped to "Club Fed,"
the weetest, softest, least repree­
sivejoints in America, where they
can wor on their tans and their
tennis games.
Such plush. conditions flow
from the judicial concern that "po­
lice officers" face "dangers" in
prisons-as if "criminals" (which
they are not, in the judge's opin­
ion) do not!
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THERE IS grim certainty
that had not Brown, Black and
Yellow LA not erupted in flam­
ing outrage, there would'Ve been
no prosecution after the Simi Val-
ley white h. '
So, let this "m • be sent:
Without popular resistance to the
. racist, police state, there will be
not even the slightest semblance
. of "justice. "
-. ' .
edu . on, dru crim viol
and eocial and eoommic diai
gration, commemorat-
ing n and oelebra�
ancient victories i ofusmg
, the oocasion of t nta
launching points for rene ed
mobilization, organization, and
militant truggl
Of course the tim hav
changed. Themo cannot
imply nnnvent the 60's.
BLAC WARRIORS,
wom n and men, did tt r
down the walls of 1
tion. The strugle fur the ballot
did produce a "Voting Rights Act
which resulted in thousands of
new Black elected officials as.
uming po ition of power.
There are no more aftluent
Blacks and Blacks in the middle
class than there was thirty years
ago. But, "the more things
change, the more things stay the
same."
Institutional racism still frus-
, trates the aspirations of huge
numbers of Black people, and
the right wingoonservatism that
came to ascendancylpower with
the election of Ronald Reagan
generated a resurgence of overt
racism and racist violence. .
So Black people do not need
another cnmmemoration that of­
fers only a oosmeticoommitment
to the liberation of the Black
..
We should be gathering to an­
nounce a new self-help economic
agenda; a list of major corpora­
tions to be targeted for boycotts
unless they reinvest in Black
America; a public policy agenda
that includes a Domestic Mar­
shall Plan; and above all, our
absolute resolve to take to the
streets in a massive civil disobe­
dience campaign if America
does not need our call for equity,
parity, fundamental human
rights and dignity iri this society.
It's time out for commemora­
tion. It's time to renew the strug­
gle for th� liberation of the Black
masses!
By Jam.es E. AI brook
.Clarenee Thomas on the Su­
preme Court and trounced a Re­
publican in November.
THOMAS HAS BEEN eriti­
clzed for years for displaying the
Confederate flag in his office.
Records show that Carol
Elizabeth Moseley-Braun was
born August 16, 1�47, into a
middle-class Uunily in a segre­
gated neighborhood on the
South Side of Chicago. She was
the daughter of a police 'offi�
and a one-time hospital teehni­
clan. She and three younger sib­
lings attended parochial schools,
planning to go to college.
She majored in Political Sci­
ence at the Uni ity ofDlinois
and got her Law degree from the
University of Chicago Law
School. There she met Michael
Braun, hom he married. She
divorced Braun, also a lawyer, in
1986, and I rearing their 14-
year-old son, tthew.
She entered politics cam- ,
paign orker for Harold Wash­
ington, then a tate
representative, and he later
or an assistant United
States Attorney .
AT THE UllGING of anti­
machine liberals, he ran for
seat in the Illinois State Legisla­
ture in 1987, and soon she be­
came assistant majority leader.
Since 1988, she had been
Coo County Recorder of Deeds,
the highest-ranking Black offi­
cial in the county, supervising
300 employees and an 8 million
annual budget.
She won high praises for
"good and clean" policies, for
treamlining the agency
through computerization, and
� establishing a 'COde of ethics
that eliminated political patron­
age.
A second show of backbone,
race pride and alertness as
demonstrated on the same day
by Moseley-Braun. '
In a Judiciary Committee
meeting on the Ginsburg Su­
p.reme Court nomination case,
Sen. Orrin Hatch, Utah Repub­
lican conservative; compared
the Roe v. Wade decision to the
1857 Dred Soott decision that
implicitly approved slavery.
like an apology.
Moseley-Braun's perform­
ance won high praises from vari­
ous Northern senators who said
they had learned from her dis.
cussions. The 75·t,o.25 vote sup­
porting her opposition to Senate
reapproval of using the Confed­
erate flag in a nationally mean­
ingful patent was widely
reported. The white Sen. Heflin
of Alabama spoke emotionally of
his family as an integral part of
the Confederacy, but saying it
was a new time he voted with
Moseley-Braun.
The Chicago Tribune noted
months ago that her first speech
as a senator was a thoughtful
tribute to Thurgood Marshall,
And just as women of all col-
01'8 rallied around Black Anita
Hill last year and shoo up doz­
ens of hite male politicians in
the 1992 elections, so today
could women of all colors rally
around Black Carol Moseley­
Braun and shake up more white
male politicians with complaints
OSELEY-BRAUN SAID about disrespect and racism.
that t only d ndent of a Perhap news of changing
la on that committee, he conditio will reach Black Alica'
could quietly listen to 'a de- Walker, Black Oprah \ Wmfrey
bate liJmning la ry to Roe v. and others who theatrically
Wad Hatch backed down and stereotype and degrade Black
. d something that sounded m
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