FOURTH CRONICA FROM PHILADELPHIA 12-08-2005



‘WE ARE GOING TO BURN BUSH!”



Philadelphia 12- A North American citizen say to an other: Do you know that Al Qaeda has kidnapped President Bush? – “Noo, really!?”-- “Yes man, and they say if we don’t pay the ransom, they are going to shower him with petrol and light him on fire, and everybody is going to be able to see it on television…!” -- “and how much is the ransom?” – “they want we pay, at least, they same amount of dollars than the Iraq’s war military budget of this year.” – “This is going to be difficult…” – “ No , on the other way around, it’s really easy. And looks like its going to be arranged soon, because the collecting campaign have already start and everybody is really into it” – “oh, yaw? And how much is the average amount they give” – “ ouch… it depends… you know… it depends on the economical possibilities of each one… and … the petrol stock in the service stations… there’s people who donate one litre there’s other people who gives ten!!!!” -- “We are going to burn Bush!” ( This is a joke that a listen in a bar on the West side of Philadelphia, near by Drexel University.)



While there’s people joking around here, there’s other people moving, moving a lot. For instance, Mrs. Cindy Sheehan, is staying in a camping tent next to Crawford’s house, Texas, where Bush is on holydays, she is not going to move till the president is going to receive her or is going to order arrest her. She wants explanations about the death of his son, in Iraq. Actually, there is lot of other people who is also camping there supporting her.



At Manhattan there are some people who start summing a manifestation, next Monday, Union Square, in solidarity with Mrs. Sheehan. Looks like is getting something big…we see…



At the moment, the New York Times from today gives emphasis about the double denial of Bush: He doesn’t want tom withdraw the troops, even his advisers advertise him to do it, and he doesn’t want to receive Mrs. Sheehan, that she has already been an example to continuing by other mothers also affected for a missing son. The public manifests don’t stop, the mothers ones are followed by the president ones, who barricade himself in his house that only leaves to photograph with Donald Rumsfeld an Condolezza Rice, as you can see at the front page or New York Times today. The same newspaper talk about the news at the Washington Post and the declarations of a high military officer in Baghdad, who prefer to keep anonymous and describes the impossibilities of the pro American authorities to handle the situation and pacific ate the area in front of the insurgence and the resistance to the American occupation till next summer at least.



Here, a lot of people or my age remembers Viet-name war and how the American government on the sixties - seventies, last century, takes longer than nine years to realize the need to withdraw the troops, in 1975. And also remembers how the Viet-Cong guerrilla and his fight, “help” them to be convinced about it .



And now is almost everybody who is complaining about this war. The military officers on charge to find new future soldiers, have serious problems to arrive to the minimum amount for every year. So they are using really dirty methods that became a big scandal in the public opinion. For an example they abuse the facilities they have to access to the students lists of some public schools and send massive military propaganda confusing and unclear pretending the more needed young ones and the less cautious ones sign in the military force. There’s a magazine describing this facts “The Weekly Press”, written by neighbours from the west neighbourhoods from Philadelphia, that mention as precedents of this dirty methods, the COINTELPRO program ( Counter Intelligence Program) , started by the FBI halve century ago to finish with the dissidents from that moment ( Black Panthers, etc…) Looks like some all times are coming back and it shouldn’t…





FIFTH CRONICA FROM PHILADELPHIA

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, DALLAS PRISON, PENNSYLVANIA.



Philadelphia 15.- I was thinking, sitting in the waiting hall of Dallas Prison , in a while we are going to have the opportunity to tell to the prisoners the treatment we get from the guards in the parking place: “What I like the most is searching the cars of the visitors who protest…” was the comment of the policeman , looking the face of my friends while he was touching everything, and doing so just to disturb us. Since more than twenty five years the family and friends of Phil and Delbert Africa go to visit them, and in all this time nobody could accuse them of try to smuggle something dangerous in the prison. Doesn’t matter , from the moment our car step in the penitentiary area they have been watching us all the time. When we stop the car three policeman came closer, treating us : “Let all your personal belongings inside the car and go out of the car with your identity cards!”

Delbert says that we can be happy that we have arrive till the visit room and they haven’t bring the dogs inside the car to smell everything… like that afro-american family who where accuse of carrying marihuana in a corner of the car, the car was rented an nobody of the family smokes marihuana. They didn’t know it was there and it was a really small quantity … but any explanation stop the punishment of no visit that day neither all next year. They are never going to know if the stuff was there or the police put it there, for the police is a good tactic to make up examples to scare the rest of the people inside and outside the prison.

In the visitors room there is no more place than fifty people sitting, there is not enough chairs an tables for everybody, and there is 2000 people prisoners here. Sundays afternoon is impossible. After sit a little time they kick us out to the prison courtyard so other groups can go in and sit down. Outside the sun is really hard and we all don’t fit under a small roof… the shadow is really wanted.

Phil and Delbert are explaining and never ending. They also ask how the things go outside. We talk about the bombings in London last month. And the Madrid ones on 2004. We also talk about that prisoner who died ( or was killed) in the Model Prison in Barcelona, Jose Antonio Cano Verdejo. They also knew about it and they are happy the Lawyers College stop teasing me and stop accusing me of losing respect to the penitentiary authorities because my critics against that prison’s director.

They let us feel how the prisons squash the people, their backs. All the prisoners we had around us and we saw action and behaviour with their families and friends, later on , inside they look like automatons , most of them. The ones who have no visits are already automatons. Theres are exceptions but strength is needed to resist the penitentiary system. Phil and Delbert are an exception. Everybody knows. For this reason other prisoners ask them for help, to them not to any other spiritual leader of any religion present in the prison and serving the system.

On 2008 is going to be thirty years that the members of the revolutionary organization MOVE are in prison. It’s the minimum of his penalty, but that doesn’t mean they are going to free them. They can keep them in prison for a maximum of …seventy years more. Total hundred, absurdity but legal here.

So we cross all the controls again, and we are again in the parking area. Raymond Africa is 28 years old. He starts our car. Since he was born he listen to talk about this men and women of his family who where unjust sentenced to prison. But before we go in the car he checks under the car, he cheeks the four wheels, the petrol tank the oil… an this time there’s no danger, so we come back.



SIXTH CRONICA FROM PHILADELPHIA

“SORRY, DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE WAR IS?”

Philadelphia 17_ When that girl with a bike, stop next to us and ask “sorry: do you know where the demonstration against the war is” nobody from our group could help her. We didn’t know. We were not there for it, anyway, but two crossings ahead we could see the girl stopping and join a group who look like it was building up some information table or so. Carlos Africa, from MOVE organization, tell us there’s a lot of these spontaneous demonstrations , almost everyday, around the country, but the mass media don’t talk or inform about it then feels like there was nothing going on. But this afternoon at the crossing of South Street with street eleven – a chick corner of the city – were the high and middle class mixes a bit – somebody have take conscience that the war is not only what the power nucleus of the system sell us.

After a while Carlos and Ramona Africa where telling us how to behaviour when next Saturday we go to the Pennsylvania prison where’s Mumia Abu-Jamal. They were saying if the driver of our car gets lost in the highways, we don’t must to ask for directions to the prison to anybody, we must put attention because the prison it’s in an area mostly of white people, racists and could be they give us wrong directions on porpoise , it happen other times.

For this reason, I was thinking that girl of the bike asking about the demo, came to us because we were standing and talking and also because we were a group mixed of people: white Hispanic and black. Sometimes here the things are like this clear, the same way you find a policeman out of service time insulting you because you are demonstrating, the same way you can be discussing with an university people in a dinner, who in a case like Mumia with a police set up version of the facts, they give straight away credibility to the police.

The other day I had one of these discussions with somebody who could perfectly show a big sensibility to collaborate in a urban development campaign – right know there an strong one around Rittenhouse Square – but with Mumia case we can not agree. When I question the credibility of the police officers like a testimony of the District attorney the answer is: “The policemen don’t have eyes or what?



But anyway, is clear that the injustice and lie, these “Dark Age”—the one John’s talk about—must to have an end. I guess this end in the liturgy they bury their dead soldiers back from Iraq. We can guess the end in the faces of this soldiers, in the post mortem photography the newspapers publishes. . Faces that make me think about the one I always imagine would be the one of the main actor in a Ernest Hemingway book, 1925, titled “Soldiers home”. The one where the main character manages to return alive, after battled on the front line in Europe , first world war , and he comes back to a small village in Oklahoma, long time after the end of the war, when there’s no welcome celebrations anymore neither flowers. With the time he realize he has became a human being not able to get his live back, the one before the war, he is not able to love anybody because he haven’t overcome the bad experiences, the things that happened to him and the things they force him to do.



This system can not have a good ending…