CRONICA I

FIRST IMPRESSIONS FROM NEW YORK, PASSING BY LONDON.



2005-08-05

The truth is hat things went much better than I thought, after seen the show of last days from Scotland Yards police.

When I arrived at Gatwick airport there was no police at all, perhaps some patrol unit once in a while. The main inconvenient where wait two hours for the bus to Heathrow airport, where the plain was leaving the day after to New York.

And, while we were waiting, the harassment from the pirate taxis, trying to full their taxis and make the same way than the bus for the same price, but of course without waiting, 17,50 £ per person (around 30 euros!) for an hour and a halve trip!

When we arrive at Heathrow, around four a.m., there was again no police anywhere, then I just remembered that I didn’t took my super big photo from Marshall Eddie Conway ( Afro-American political prisoner, ex-Black Panther) cause I was afraid of the searching. The photo was forgotten by two friends from Baltimore who came on April to Osona ( Catalonia ) to explain the case of this guy, who’s longer than thirty years in prison.

When we arrive to New York there was military police, in camouflage uniforms, with machine guns, (sometimes even two of them). I saw them in the first metro station, Jamaica Centre, really near by from Kennedy Airport. There, in the platform, they even have an air-conditioned mini office to combine the garding shifts…

Julian, reporter of Radio Bronka in New York, is receving me at his house (Lower East Side, Manhattan), and he tell me about the atmosphere of last days. He talks about the Labour fight of the Starbucks Coffee trade unionists. Everybody talks about them and their fight. “New York” Magazine, redden by yuppies, published reportage, last may, where Daniel Gross, a syndicalist, said: “ we are talking about misery salaries, slavery. And we would never use these terms if we wouldn’t thought that, in fact, theres some similitudes between our work conditions and the old slavers plantations…”

“Vanity Fair” magazine, even more proper of yuppies than the first one, it have also been interested for this syndic trouble, but it have provoke a debate in the Starbucks fighters: some of them think this kind of magazine don’t deserve publish about serious workers fights, others think the diffusion of their fight is good everywhere…

In this Starbucks movement there’s participants of all kinds, like an activist called Reverend Billy: he dress like a reverend and goes to Starbucks cafes and presents himself like a member of the “Stop Shopping” church, his objective is stop peoples consumism rhythm.

While we have these conversation with Julian, the telephone haven’t stop ringing, I have been called and calling with my friends from Philadelphia, we are trying to confirm that the Director of SCI Green, (west corner of Pennsylvania state, twelve hours driving from New York), let us in to visit Mumia Abu-Jamal, Afro-American journalist, in prison since 1981 and sentenced to death penalty since 1982, everything on a base of a police invention or arrengement…. We see….





CRONICA II. FROM PHILADELPHIA.

2005-08-09

“HEY YOU! MOTHERFUCKER COP!”

Yesterday I understood I little bit more what means freedom of speech in the United States of North America. We were in the middle of the street, the one where’s the office of the District Prosecutor, Lynne Abraham, because twenty-seven years ago, she was a judge and she sentenced prison to nine persons of the revolutionary organization MOVE. The reason? A police officer was killed by a bullet at his nape, at exact moment taht dozens of policemen were surrounding the organization house and shooting all at once like crazy…and the people from the house found shelter in the basement with the children trying to keep alive. In these circumstances the condemnatory sentence considered prove that the nine persons in prison killed that policeman.

Yesterday was like all the accumulated hate of twenty-seven years of injustice exploit at once. We were around fifty people in front of the stairs (fifty between activists and curious people) was the laugh of one of the ten undercover policeman who where watching us from the top of the stairs was the detonate. It’s really easy to laugh about the people, when you are carrying a weapon so big as that one. He was looking a woman of the group and start laughing. But he wasn’t expecting the MOVE reaction: “Hey you! Motherfucker cop! What are you laughing about?”

After, the MOVE were talking through a megaphone one after each other, insulting and criticizing the policeman who once laugh about one of them. A girl, an organization sympathizer, even for her white skin, start to scream really loud when one policeman carrying weapons till his top ,was dare to walk between a sitting group of seven or eight children between four and eight years old, also down the stairs. The policeman went running ashamed to his car after everybody shout at him.

So what it could be a really calm press declaration, with a political analysis of the situation, became another demonstration against police brutality and power abuse, just after we started the declarations to the press, represented by a journalists group of all kinds of media, who still keep attention to the case, years through, and where there half an hour before the meeting time.

In the other hand, the New York Times from today, and the Philadelphia Inquirer keep explaining who where the last dead soldiers in Iraq: young ones around nineteen to twenty five, in a general description about playing baseball and driving motorbike hobbies, there’s some comment about their origins: United states areas with extreme poverty where the young ones inscribes themselves at the army escaping the misery.

The Director of SCI Green, where Mumia Abu-Jamal is at the Death Row, is still playing with us and doesn’t want to insure I can visit if I go till there. Mumia says saturday is a good day but nothing is certain so he leaves me with the final decision cause if it doesn’t work is going to be me the one driving ten hours to go and ten hours coming back for nothing…seems a lot, but not too much for me, cause I met a man, David, in a wheelchair, who just travel a distance like these to be at the press declaration from yesterday and the demonstration of the day before, in solidarity to the MOVE.





CRONICA III FROM PHILADELPHIA

2005-08-10



Today the New York Times published the news that all other alternative contra information medias published yesterday: five Cuban citizens – sentenced in 2001, the reason was spy the United States for the Cubans Republic government- have the right of a new trail.

From the contra information medias there were especial manifests to inform everybody, comments full of hope, this is exactly what’s been asked for Mumia, from major sectors of the political conscienced public opinion.

In the other hand, it’s not the same the accusation of Cuban spy to the States, even being a Fidel’s spy) than the accusation of killing a white policeman being black, Mumia’s case.

But, of course, the New York Times publish the news at the thirteen page, down at the corner between a giant computer material publicity and another, smaller, Caribbean travels publicity…in a way of a bad news from the perspective of somebody quite anticommunist, somebody with the same eyes than the ones of the officialist statements of the north American society, even the declaration of the end of the Cold War was so many years ago…

An Atlanta Appeal Tribunal, Georgia State, integrated by three judges, who decide by unanimity repeat the trail. The new trail must be done out of Miami, where the prejudices against the Cuban regime, did negative influence in the first sentence, the one who sentence three of the five persons to live sentence.

There’s people who say that this is a distraction strategy of the government, that wants the public opinion points his attention somewhere else than Posada Carriles, international terrorist, who pretends political asylum at Miami, after a long bloody professional career, including to explode a Compania Cubana de Aviacion plane in 1976, when 80 people died (a team of athletes included).

The information was known not too long ago, there was a big scandal and is still going on cause Venezuela government (that have jurisdictional rights because the route of the plane) is demanding the extradition to Bush Government who’s denying it for the moment.



With the friends of MOVE, the arrangements to be able to visit at different prisons keep going on; also the public acts demanding the freedom of the prisoners. Yesterday there was a film projection. A historical documental that combines the images of the assaults and bombings to the organization houses, the years 1978 and 1985, with actual interviews to testimonies and victims, like Ramona Africa or other neighbours from the affected neighbourhoods from Philadelphia. While the years pass by, the confirmation of the real dimension of the power abuse committed against these fighters gets stronger and clear