...-------------- -----
: \ \"or/t1 .Yal ion
oi
Bu , "fore
cri B
Wh n C il R c
cart I in 1 7, no matt r what
h hammer blo of circum­
tance-wars, financial cris ,
r ial tr ife, ho til gov rn-
ments-De rs h managed
to outlast or get a way around
them.
For example, late in World
War 11, Presiden Franklin D.
Roo evelt demand d that De
B rs give 6.5 million carats of
industrial diamonds for aircraft
factories. And despite threa of
Wadiya Jamal at
o
y . hi? For 0
mo h enterpri , . th prof­
i of 373 million in th fi
h If of 1 93 alone. There is much
han that. While even com­
with the same product
h ad-to-h d, De Beers
h no al competition It con­
trol it product, finite re­
much as OPEC controls
is no disagreement in
o ration because
it n trictly ruled by its
own f mily the Oppenheimers,
h 1920's.
or d th company sit and
k prid in i position. For
d d I it has spent millio to
promote the romance of dia­
mond and the promoting pays
off well. After a never-ending
campaign by De Beers, 8 out of
10 brides wear sparklers on
their way to altar. In the United
State nd Europe, the company
is rapidly invading a market
much richer than newlyweds.-­
couples married 10 years or
more.
only ho up in
to wh n B IS an th
diamond to appear. Waiting for
th current ion to end, th
cartel n holding back mil-
lions of ex carats, storing
them in company vaults.
In simil r e, during th
Dep ion, De Beers actually
ran out of pace to keep un­
w nted diamonds, and stuffed
th on in butter churns.
Time d n't m to m n
much to De Beers, neither do
politi . For years the fonnerSo­
viet Union was denouncing capi­
talism in general and South
Africa in particular, but all the
while it was dealing Siberian
diamonds under the table-to
DeB
ALSO TAKE THE emerging
Black nations. They weren't ex­
pected to trade with an apart­
heid state. So they dealt their
jewels to companies licensed in
Switzerland and Luxembourg.
It wasn't their fault that the dia-
Some 150 trade unionis ,
students, leftists and death pen­
alty abolitionists came out for a
Partisan Defense Committee fo­
rum "Save Mumia Abu-Jamal."
The rally featured Jamal's wife
Wadiya Jamal, who quietly and
movingly told the crowd,
"Twelve years is long enough for
an innocent man to be sitting on
death row, separated from his
family, se:-, rated from his chil­
dren, that h cannot physically
touch."
-Jamal spoke to his supporters
in a taped statement from death
row-for some the first time they
had heard the aw rd-winning
journalist known as the "voice of
the voiceless."
"I come to you from the land
of the dead, with the vibration of
life. This place is a place wher
the living ar entombed by law
a law with an accent on force, a
-law wit h an absence of justice, a
law that protects the outlaws of
wealth and power, yet which
spi on the poor and powerl "
A former Black Panth r
Party spok man, presid nt of
the Philadelphia chapter of th
Association of Black Journalis
at the time of hi arrest, and'
supporter of the M VE organi­
zation, J mal was fram d in
July 1982 on char of killing a
Philadelphia police om r, nd
sentenced to die for h' liti 1
beliefs.
TH ROW HJL:..OClLJI. .. aJ
from Dan Williams, Jam l's co­
coun el with Leon rd We­
inglass. Williams d cri d th
legal team' efforts to win n w
trial for Jamal, who has x­
hausted hi automatic appeals
and could, under law, b ex­
cuted at any mom nt.
William pointed out th gro­
tesque di tin ion w n "le­
gality" and "illegality" in this
racist coun ry. "We xt rrni­
nated nativ American -and
that was lawful. We imported
human b ings from 'Afric - nd
tha was lawful. W ubj ed
them to lav ry-and tha w
lawful," he id, adding that h
U. goy rnmen' dropping of
th a omic bomb and rav gin
Vi nam, icaragua nd Cu
were all "1 wful d "
Ray M rtinez, Jr., n offici
for P innsylv ni ial ervi
Union EI Loc I 66 ,
Rally
African labor r climbing out of th Big Hole, the 0 Be � diamond mine In Kimberley, South Africa.
monds were then quietly distrib­
uted- to De Beers.
Take for instance South M­
rica. After the elections next
April, the country will empower'
its first Black government. Ter­
rible events are being predicted:
civil strife, nationalization,
white flight.
But all bets still remain on De
Beers. When Nelson Mandala
was released from jail, one of the
first white industrialists he
wanted to see was Harty Oppen­
heimer, the top executive of De
Beers. As Mr. Mandela knows,
diamonds are sometimes, but De
Beers may just last forever.
The story of the De B ers
Consolidated Mines is found in
The Last Empire By Stephan.
Illustrated 409 pp. New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.
92 year-old Black
woman jailed for Uttering
STOKES COUN'IY, NC - Police
in Stokes County, North Carolina
recently jailed a 92 year-old Black
woman, who a wheel chair,
for littering. She was charged
with failing to remove a tree
which had fallen onto a neighbor'
property.
Kathleen Pratt served three
days of a 30-day sentence. Pratt
said going to jail did not bother
her, but was angey because she
felt the judge did not give her
enough time to arrange to remove
the tree.
Political pri oner Mumla Abu-Jamal.
scheduled to peak, but was de­
tained in Philadelphia for a un­
ion organizing drive. Martinez
s nt a statement recalling,
"fr h out of Brooklyn 22 years
go, and f ling very much out
of pl in new city, Mumia's
voi uickly ttracted me. His
words.just quickly, convinced
me th t th re was wisdom be
hind th t voice. He spoke from
xperien nd his words were
in pi r tional to all of us."
Ma in z urged the audience to
"spr d h word-an innocent
m n i. on death row. Only
through our combined efforts­
and definit ly with labor' up­
port- an Mumia nd a chance
to hi ve hi rightfully de-
rved fr om."
"Jam 1'. ca i what the
d th I y i all bout," said
Paul oop in ofth Partisan
Defense Committee. "The de­
mand for th abolition of the
death penalty is part of the tra­
dition of struggle for Black
equality in America. The death
penalty is part and parcel of the
extra-legal terror of the KKK
and ummary executions by the
cops on the street to k p Black
people in their place."
J CAUSE I win-
ning national and international
attention, including a recent
Harlem "literary evening" of
r adings from Jamal's work by
actor Danny Glover and others.
Jam l' taped. tatement id,
" pite the darkening clouds
on he horizon, I can till nd
you 11 h rt-f; It thanks for sup­
porting a campaign th tis blaz-
Se FIGHT, A8
Calli ·GNE to ord r or for
information on fundrai ing po ibilities,
Or r turn the coupon below.
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