Protesters lay siege to EPA headquarters

By Brian Hansen

Washington, DC, Oct. 25, (ENS)— The stately Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was blocked for several hours this morning by a group of protesters who locked themselves under, inside, and on top of a big, yellow school bus fashioned to resemble a hazardous waste incinerator.

Fifteen people were arrested during the nonviolent but animated demonstration, which was staged to protest the EPA’s refusal to close down the Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio.

The WTI incinerator, which is permitted to burn more than 60,000 tons of hazardous waste each year, is located just 400 yards from East Liverpool’s elementary school. Among those arrested at the demonstration Wednesday was East Liverpool Board of Education president Dick Wolf, who said he was putting his body on the line “for the sake of the kids.”

“This is an ongoing battle, and we’re not going away,” said Wolf, whose right arm was shackled deep inside of a concrete and steel lock box built into the wall of the 40 foot long school bus. “We’re not prepared to accept any more empty words from [Vice President] Al Gore - we want action.”

The controversial WTI hazardous waste incinerator has been making headlines since 1992, when then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and Tennessee Senator Al Gore pledged to keep it from operating if they were elected President and Vice President.

But much to the dismay of Wolf, other East Liverpool residents and a large section of the environmental community, Clinton and Gore failed to prevent the WTI incinerator from operating after being elected to office.

Gore has stated publicly that his hands were tied from blocking WTI’s incineration permit, which was issued during the administration of then outgoing President George Bush. Gore has been the target of much criticism for his handling of the WTI issue.

That explanation has not satisfied WTI’s opponents, who have waged an eight year campaign to shut the incinerator down.

That campaign received a huge boost last week, when EPA Ombudsman Robert Martin released a long awaited report that recommended that the WTI incinerator be shut down immediately for at least six months, on the grounds that it is “neither protective of public health and the environment nor of public safety.”

Martin’s investigation found that WTI’s original operating permit was based on faulty test burn data, unreliable air monitoring and a flawed public health risk assessment.

Gore, now the Democratic nominee for President in the election slated for November 7, immediately heralded Martin’s recommendation.

But the EPA declined to shut down the facility as Martin recommended, announcing instead that it would allow the plant to keep operating while it studies the matter further.

That EPA decision was the catalyst for today’s demonstration outside EPA headquarters, which snarled traffic for hours along the main thoroughfare between the US Capitol and the White House.

The East Liverpool residents were joined at the demonstration by activists from Greenpeace, an international, non-profit organization that employs creative direct action tactics to highlight environmental problems.

Greenpeace volunteers distributed informational flyers on the WTI incinerator to the hundreds of people who stopped to gawk at the unorthodox scene along Washington’s most famous avenue.

The bus that the group fashioned to block the EPA’s entrance was no easy nut to crack, said Washington, DC assistant police chief Bill McManus.

“I’ve never seen anything like the bus before - it’s an ingenious contraption,” McManus said.

Officials toiled for hours with heavy duty bolt cutters, saws and pneumatic jackhammers to extricate the protesters, who fastened themselves to the bus with handcuffs and hardened steel devices embedded in blocks of concrete.

Four East Liverpool residents sat on ledges attached to the outside of the bus, their arms extended through holes that had been cut into the side of the vehicle. Several activists were underneath the bus, their arms locked to the drive shaft of the vehicle. Others were locked down inside of the bus, which extended part way on to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Two young women wearing Greenpeace t-shirts sat atop the immobilized bus, their arms frozen inside of a mock smokestack that belched steam into the air.

As officials from the Washington, DC Police Department and the Federal Protective Service pondered how to remove the activists, an audio tape of Al Gore’s July 19, 1992 election promise to block the operation of the WTI incinerator boomed over the bus’ public address system. Gore made the remark on a campaign stop with his running mate Clinton in Weirton, West Virginia.

“I’ll tell you this - a Clinton/Gore Administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We’ll be on your side for a change,” boomed Gore’s voice over Greenpeace’s audio system.

Gore also articulated his commitment to deny the WTI facility an operating permit on a post-election speech on December 7, 1992.

However, those promises still ring hollow some eight years later for Wolf, who sat locked down on the outside of the bus in front of EPA headquarters on Wednesday wearing a T-shirt that read, “Whatever it takes.” Above him, a sign emblazoned on the side of the bus read, “Clinton/Gore: Our children are being poisoned.”

Wolf recently collected soil samples from the East Elementary School playground in East Liverpool, which is 1,100 feet, a little longer than three football fields, from the WTI incinerator. Two independent laboratories analyzed the samples, which were found to contain dioxin levels six to nine times the national average. The laboratories also reported that the samples contained elevated levels of arsenic and lead.

Wolf said his wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, which he attributed to the toxic pollutants being emitted from the WTI incinerator.

Wolf said he was a registered Democrat, but that he has become disillusioned with the party because of Gore’s “broken promise” on the WTI incinerator.

Asked if he was satisfied with Gore’s endorsement of Martin’s recommendation that the plant now be shut down, Wolf said, “I think Al Gore is making the EPA the fall guy. He’s making the EPA fall on its sword.”

Wolf’s point was echoed by Terry Sweringen, who was also locked to the bus in front of EPA headquarters.

“We’re here to tell Vice President Gore to demand that the EPA shut down the incinerator,” said Sweringen, who has been arrested more than nine times for her protests against the WTI incinerator.

Sweringen, Wolf and the Greenpeace protesters also called for an immediate meeting with EPA Administrator Carol Browner, chanting, “Carol Browner, come on down here.”

Browner did not appear, but an EPA official later told ENS that agency takes the protesters’ concerns “very seriously.”

According to the official, the EPA is in the process of taking new soil and air samples at the WTI site. The official emphasized that in accordance with the Ombudsman’s recommendation, the EPA will conduct a new test burn at the incinerator.

“If there are any problems, the agency will move swiftly to resolve them,” the official said. The plant could be shut down if the new information warrants it, the official added.

Meanwhile, a police official said that the 15 protesters arrested on Wednesday were all charged with “Incommoding,” a misdemeanor charge tantamount to blocking the free flow of traffic. The protesters were expected to be released Wednesday evening.

Civil rights leaders petition UN to address US racism

By Mithre J. Sandrasagra

United Nations, Oct. 24 (IPS)— Prominent United States civil rights leaders presented a hard-hitting petition at UN headquarters Tuesday highlighting the persistence of race bias against minorities under successive US administrations.

Frustrated by the lack of response at the state or federal level to endemic racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, civil rights leaders are now bringing the issue before the United Nations, Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Council for Civil Rights, told reporters.

This ‘Call to Action’ - coming on the 53rd anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’ historic presentation of the first Call to the fledgling United Nations to take up the issue of racial discrimination - “represents our sincere conviction that we have exhausted our domestic remedies in the United States,” stressed Julian Bond, Chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP).

The forceful petition of more than 50 signatories - African- American, Arab-American, Latino and Native-American civil rights advocates joined by women’s rights advocates and educators - appealed to Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in her capacity as Secretary- General of the World Conference against Racism to address issues of racial discrimination common in the United States and to galvanize international assistance in pressing US authorities to implement a comprehensive plan for combating them.

“Our political leaders speak loudly about human rights abuses in the rest of the world. They should start by offering a more concrete strategy for eliminating racial discrimination at home - and the world should hold them accountable,” Henderson emphasized.

The ‘Call to Action’ urges the world body to investigate racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty, with respect to racial profiling and lack of police accountability in the United States.

Furthermore, the United Nations is asked to remind the United States of its binding treaty obligations, under the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to end racial discrimination. The United States ratified that treaty in 1994.

The Call proposes a UN Mission to the United States to investigate human rights violations of racial discrimination and racial bias in the criminal justice system.

Speaking Tuesday at a Town Hall Meeting here of all the signatories to the ‘Call to Action’ Robinson highlighted the issue of racial profiling - the use of race as a presumption of guilt without evidence of criminal conduct - as one of great concern to the UN High Commission.

“Racial profiling affects nearly every minority community,” she said.

“Whether minorities are stopped by local or state police simply because they are black, or by US Border Patrol because they look Hispanic; whether they are people of Arab descent who are profiled at airports and subjected to heightened scrutiny by customs and immigration; or whether they are Asian-Americans whose loyalty to the country is questioned - all suffer at the hands of federal and local law enforcement,” stressed Robiniso

Racial profiling is routinely used against people of color even in schools and outside their own homes; subjecting them to arrests, police brutality, and even death.

Seykou Diallo, father of Amadou Diallo a young man who was gunned down outside his family’s home by New York City police officers because he was holding his wallet suspiciously, told those gathered here that today his son’s murders are walking free while his son is in the grave yard.

Evidence of racially disparate treatment can be found in all stages of the US criminal justice system.

Almost 73 percent of motorists stopped and searched on a major New Jersey highway in 1999 were African-Americans, even though African- American violators made up less than 18 percent of traffic violators, according to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study - this has prompted the presumed offense to become known as “Driving While Black.”

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report for 1998, “42 percent of people arrested for violent crime nationwide in 1998 were African-Americans, even though African-Americans make up just 12 percent of the population.”

Women of color are 10 times more likely to be prosecuted for drug abuse during pregnancy than white women, despite similar rates of substance abuse overall, according to a Harvard University study conducted by Professor Dorothy Roberts.

Disparities in sentencing and incarceration have grown to such an extent that African-American men comprise 50 percent of the US prison population despite representing just six percent of the US population as a whole, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

African-Americans make up 62.7 percent of the drug offenders sent to state prison although nationally there are five times as many white drug users as African-American users, pointed out the International Human Rights Law Group.

The petitioners here pointed to overwhelming evidence that the use of the “death penalty in the US criminal justice system is tainted by race and class bias exemplified by police and prosecutorial misconduct and bias in courts” resulting in “42 percent of death row inmates being African- American and 80 percent of executions being for cases involving white victims.”

The ‘Call to Action’ petition stresses that racial discrimination in the United States is particularly insidious and denigrating because it is often obscured under guises such as the “war on drugs” and crime prevention.

Signatories to the petition include: Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch; Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr.; film maker Spike Lee; Ira Glasser, Executive Director of the ACLU; Hala Maksoud, President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Karen Narsaki, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium; and William Lucy, President of Black Trade Unionists.

Last month the United States submitted its first report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination making the historic acknowledgment that “racism remains an obstinate American problem” - however, this report arrived five years after it was due.

The report outlines many problems including racial biases in housing and education, but it fails to tackle the problems with respect to the criminal justice system or to propose any solutions.

The UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is expected to review the US government compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in January 2001 prior to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that will take place in Durban, South Africa from Aug. 31 to Sep. 7, 2001.