Black leaders slam Bush Presidency

New York, New York, Jan. 3(IPS)— A group of prominent African-Americans (including the Rev. Al Sharpton, pictured left.) has challenged the electoral victory of Republican President-elect George W. Bush after a ballot exercise marked by numerous charges of selective disenfranchisement of black voters.

Denouncing what they described as “massive voting irregularities’’ in the November polls, eight prominent black leaders have vowed to aggressively contest two of Bush’s cabinet nominations, to protest his inauguration on Jan. 20, and to pursue comprehensive electoral reform in the courts and in Congress.

A “national emergency summit’’ was announced for Thursday at Howard University in Washington, which will involve the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Nation of Islam, the National Urban League, and other leading African American groups.

“The Center for Constitutional Rights is committed to opposing the legitimacy of this regime, which was born of the disenfranchisement of millions of people in this country,’’ said Ron Daniels, the Center’s executive director, who organized a panel Tuesday at a forum titled “From Protest to Democracy” in Washington, DC.

“It is our duty to resist,’’ said Daniels, calling for a broad-based protest on Jan. 20 -- the date of President-elect Bush’s inauguration -- at “the scene of the crime, the Supreme Court of the United States.’’

Rev. Al Sharpton, whose National Action Network is also organizing a “shadow inauguration,’’ said the march would not solve the problem, but it would “dramatically show the world that we’re not suffering from amnesia.’’

“Some say that it’s over, that it’s time to move on,’’ he said, adding, “It’s not over.’’

At Tuesday’s event at the National Press Club, panelists cited mounting evidence that large numbers of African Americans had their ballots thrown out because of confusing instructions and faulty voting equipment -- or were discouraged from voting at all.

In Florida, nearly 10,000 ballots cast by heavily Democratic-leaning black voters were disqualified. These spoiled ballots had a crucial impact on the election since Bush won Florida by a mere 537 votes, and winning Florida gave him the presidency under the electoral college system, even though he lost the popular vote.

“We’re worried about Florida because the fulcrum ended up there, but what we really need to do is go state by state, precinct by precinct, and look at all the ways in which people were disenfranchised,’’ said Dr. Julianne Malveaux, a prominent African American journalist.

A partial analysis by the Washington Post recently found that the problems were not limited to Florida. Black areas of Alabama, for example, had one in every 16 ballots thrown out due to errors, while the invalidation rate for black neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois rose to one in six -- much, much higher than the rates in white precincts. Both places were using old-fashioned machines that require voters to punch holes in a card, which can produce marred ballots if the bits of paper stick -- the infamous “hanging chad’’ and “pregnant chad.’’

The discrepancy between votes cast and votes counted is called the “drop-off rate’’ by statisticians. Although the average national drop-off rate in 1996 was 2.08 percent, according to research by Scripps Howard News Service, it was more than twice that in areas with a majority of African American and Latino voters.

Other problems cited in the November election included confusion over voter registration rolls and polling places, police harassment, and the misclassification of thousands of people as convicted felons, who are barred from voting in many states.

Speakers at the meeting also expressed grave concern over the nomination of former Missouri Senator John Ashcroft for attorney-general, a key civil rights post.

In 1998, Ashcroft told an extremist publication called Southern Partisan that “your magazine also helps set the record straight. You’ve got a heritage of doing that, of defending southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and Jefferson [Davis].’’

“Traditionalists must do more. I’ve got to do more,’’ Ashcroft said in the interview. “We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda’’ -- meaning slavery.

Southern Partisan has described David Duke, a former Klansman who made a bid for the US Senate, as “a Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal.”

Ashcroft has yet to pass muster in the Senate, and Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition is leading the charge to block his appointment by aggressively lobbying Democratic lawmakers -- who currently make up half the Senate -- to vote against confirmation.

Another contested nomination is that of Christine Todd Whitman, the governor of New Jersey, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Whitman presided over a massive police racism scandal, prompting Al Sharpton to refer to her as the “queen of racial profiling.”

“At a time when we espouse the values of democracy around the world, we cannot tolerate the dishonesty and chicanery to suppress the vote of African American citizens,’’ said Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a former congressman for the District of Columbia and president of the National Black Leadership Roundtable.

“We have a challenge as people of conscience to move this nation toward the principles that we enunciate but failed to live up to on Nov. 7,’’ he said.

In addition to the “Day of Resistance” on Jan. 20, Fauntroy said that efforts would be made to get out the vote in upcoming legislative races. He also expected the public airing of voter complaints before the federal Civil Rights Commission headed by Mary Frances Berry, a push for uniform voting standards, and ongoing lawsuits.

In a discussion of alternatives to the current winner-take-all system, Columbia University Professor and syndicated columnist Manning Marable advocated “instant run-off voting,’’ in which voters indicate a second choice on the ballot. If no candidate receives 50 percent, the candidates with the least votes are knocked off and their votes reassigned to the two front-runners.

Other speakers included Laura Murphy, executive director of the legislative bureau of the American Civil Liberties Union, Dr. Ramona Edelin, executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and Benjamin Jealous, executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the nation’s only black wire service.

“We tend to take our own oppression for granted,’’ Jealous said. “Our commitment is to make sure that black young people understand that we won this election.’’

Colombian children poisoned by US “Drug War” herbicide

By Marjon van Royen

Aponte, Colombia, Dec. 28— Since the coca fields in the south of Colombia have been sprayed with poison as part of the war on drugs, a remarkably high number of children have fallen ill.

“I’m really at a loss,” said the young physician who on his own runs the health center of Aponte. His waiting room is full of crying children. They have ulcers all over their bodies.

A young boy is driven mad by itch. But physician Josi Tordecilla has to send him and his mother off. “I only have medicine for ten percent of the children. I can only treat the worst cases.”

A bit later, in his office, Tordecilla said: “This is an epidemic. Since the spraying of the fields of the Indian reservation of Aponte, 80 percent of the children of the community have fallen ill. He points out the patients in his register: “This is a medical drama.” Rash, fever, diarrhea and eye infections -- it started after the spraying. Because before that time about 10 percent of the children were ill: normal illnesses like the flu or the mumps.

On November 3 the spraying started of the 8,000 hectare Indian reservation Aponte in the south of Colombia. For ten successive days, planes sprayed the area with long blue-white clouds of herbicide. Three planes accompanied by three fighting helicopters suddenly appeared over the high Andes mountains.

Agricultural engineer Luis Camoes has made video recordings. “Look, there they spray the Paramo water spring,” he points out. The video shows how a plane suddenly emerges and in a low dive spreads its cargo over the green wood. It returns not once, but three times. Over and over again it dumps its poison over the water spring. And all three sources in the area were treated that way, states Camoes.

The US-financed and coordinated spraying program against the increasing coca and poppy-production in Colombia always uses the herbicide Roundup. For the last two years, indications exist that a new, more powerful chemical is being employed. A spokesperson of the US State Department confirmed -- for the first time -- to this newspaper, that in the Colombian spraying program use is now made of the chemical Roundup Ultra, an offshoot to which new supporting substances have been added. It concerns so-called ‘surfactants’, soap-like substances that allow for a quicker and better absorption by the plant of the herbicide. The US spokesperson also confirmed that the Colombian chemical Cosmoflux is added to Roundup Ultra. The supposition is that the addition of these new surfactants causes the symptoms of illness.

Washington denies the new chemicals are endangering health. Spraying illegal crops is controversial. Colombia is the only country in the world where it is done. According to the US authorities, spraying herbicides from the air is the only way to check the growing coca and poppy production. Critics point out that it does not curb the growth, and that the environment is being affected.

In Aponte’s community house, agricultural engineer Luis Camoes says, referring to the spraying of the water sources: “So this is the end of our project.” Reforestation of the area of the three springs was part of an official program.

Camoes and the villagers had hauled the trees with horses to the springs at almost 3,000 meters elevation. Money came from Plante, the Colombian government organization that finances alternative development projects. $170,000 has been invested by Plante in Aponte to stimulate the people to replace their illegal poppy with legal crops. The Plante project was an overwhelming success. “Virtually no poppy is left here,” says Camoes. “Now one branch of government is spraying away what has been achieved by the other.”

A journey through the area gives rise to a gloomy mood. Despite his crippled leg, the chief climbs like a mountain goat. Since five o’ clock this morning, the Indian chief has led us over narrow paths up hill and down dale. “And then came the airplanes and the helicopters, and after that everything I had was gone,” said peasant farmer Carlos. He keeps a kind of dried bouquet in his hands. Shriveled little bean plants, withered yucca and dried up corn cobs. That is what is left of his sprayed land. He is the seventh peasant we visited. But the story is always the same. “Doctora, they sprayed away all our harvests. How should we make a living now?”

In addition to corn and yucca, Carlos grew a small lot of poppy. “I don’t like it. But it is the only thing we can sell,” he says. He sits down next to his wife on the loam floor of the his hut. A couple of marmots potter about. In addition the furniture consists of a plank to sleep, and a cooking pot above a fire in the ground. Just like the 700 other peasant families in Aponte, Carlos grows his little lot of poppy only to buy textbooks, medicine, or clothes. “We grow our food ourselves, but for some things one needs money.”

By the way, the early November spraying was not the first one for the Indian peasants of Aponte. In June their crops were also destroyed. Carlos had just contracted a loan with Plante, and his poppy was replaced by barley. “Even before the barley came out, it had been sprayed to death,” he relates. (Therefore he had again kept a little poppy field.) Plante wanted him to pay back with one percent interest the loan for his sprayed barley. “How should I do that, madam? Now we don’t even have anything to eat. How can we pay back a loan?”

Again, we climb on with the chief. Again a little hut, again dead crops. The young peasant woman shows her baby: the genitals of the child are covered with ulcers. “Since the spraying,” says the woman and shakes her black plaits. She herself has the rash around her mouth. She has a head ache, she said, and her eyes prickle. She thinks it is because of the poisoned water. “It is inhuman what they do to my people,” says the chief when we finally arrive high at the springs that he has been wanting to show us all day long. The trees are withered. The spring had dried up. (Yet in a wide area around, no poppy field can be found.) “Why do you think they want to poison our water?”, he asks, as if anybody knows the answer.

Back in the village the physician has not progressed much with his patients. “I am just an ordinary village doctor.” He sent a request to the provincial authorities for more medicine. That was turned down. He was told illness because of spraying is a ‘lie’. “It looks as if everybody is obliged to remain silent,” the physician says while pressing his stethoscope on an other child’s ulcerating breast.

Later on, in Bogota, it becomes clear what he means. “Lies,” snorts the military head of the anti-narcotics police when we ask him for comment to what we have seen in Aponte.

“You have not seen what you have seen. We have never sprayed there.” He does not want to see the video. Let alone pictures of ill children. “It is false! The proof you want to hand me over is false,” rages general Socha before he finally expels us from his office. “Don’t come here to bring me up for discussion. I don’t allow you to question me.”

His unit is decorated with a human-size illuminated advertisement of spraying airplanes. “Drug traffickers,” he calls the small peasants who grow a little lot of coca or poppy besides their ordinary crops. And whenever a banana tree or corn cob is being sprayed away, according to the general it has been planted there especially by the narcoguerrilla to mislead naive journalists. “But do you never make mistakes?”, we want to know. Does he never spray legal crops, a wood or a water spring? “No. Never. Absolutely impossible that we make mistakes,” says the general. For at first aerial pictures are taken of the fields to be sprayed. After that, the coordinates are taken. And then everything is observed with the help of the Americans. “They have tried to denounce us for these things,” says Socha. “But a conviction has never occurred.” When we object that the Colombian judicial system is very slow, the general is swamped by emotions:

“I don’t know who you are or who sent you to throw doubt on our authorities. You undermine our rule of law.” According to Colombian scientist and spraying expert Ricardo Vargas the general is correct on one point: the construction of the Colombian spraying program makes the chance of a ‘mistake’ very low. “That makes very grim the scenario,” ponders Vargas.

“Spraying as a strategy to consciously affect the survival of communities? I’d rather not think about it.”

Source: Colombian Labor Monitor: xx738@prairienet.org