Category: Articles

Building a United Front of the Black Left

“If you believe in the politics of Black Liberation join us in Chicago in 1998 at the Black Radical Congress. If you hate what capitalism has done to our community – widespread joblessness, drugs, violence and poverty – come to the Congress. If you are fed up with the corruption of the two party system and want to develop a plan for real political change, come to the Congress. If you want to struggle against class exploitation, racism, sexism, and homophobia, come to the Congress…”

And come they did. More than 2,000 participants from 40 states gathered at the founding conference of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) June 19 – 21 at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Center.

Proclaimed as an organizing center for developing a Black Liberation Agenda for the 21st Century, the event was planned for nearly two years. More than 600 people from the state of Illinois, over 200 from New York, and over 100 each from Pennsylvania, California, and Michigan attended. Over 140 presenters, including trade unionists, youth activists, prominent academics, and community organizers led workshops on issues such as: police brutality, political prisoners, reparations, fighting homophobia, and black workers and today’s labor movement, to name a few. There were 28 workshops in all.

History Professor Manning Marable set the tone for the conference during the opening plenary session when he said, “Brothers and sisters we have been dissed in the house we built.” A portion of the BRC discussed specific ways to build concrete projects, campaigns and struggles out of the convention as was the intention of the conveners of the BRC. As General Baker, Chair, of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America put it, “We had to figure out how to take our weekend movement and have a program for all seven days of the week.”

TASKS TO BE RESOLVED

This paramount task of the BRC is yet to be resolved. In recognition of this a draft proposal has been issued by the conveners of the BRC entitled “The Continuation of the Black Radical Congress”. This document describes the BRC as a “network which represents a united front of the Black left” and calls for the establishment of a National Continuations Committee in October 1998. The document also states, “The BRC will have a national campaign from October 1998 to October 1999. The campaign will be a national petition drive to bring 1,000,000 signatures to the United Nations charging the United States with violating the rights of the African American people. The slogan for the national campaign will be “End Racism and Poverty Now! Fight the Power to Share the Wealth! Human Rights For All!”

Will the BRC succeed in carrying out its stated goals and become a significant political force in the US? The answer to this question depends on a number of factors, most important of which is what the participants do. There is no doubt that the BRC generated enormous enthusiasm among the participants. But enthusiasm and commitment, while necessary, are not sufficient to produce a successful movement, or capitalism would have been destroyed long ago.

A Program that is internally consistent and based on the logic of the class struggle; leadership that has been tested and won the confidence of the organization; a democratically organized process of decision making; disciplined cadre loyal to the organization as a whole; demonstrated support and participation of the people we claim to represent. These are also prerequisites for our success. We have some serious work ahead.

There is currently a severe crisis of leadership in the black community. In fact it may be more accurately described as a leadership vacuum, because recently those national organizations that claim to champion the interests of the black masses have been seriously discredited. The black mis-leadership is running out of fools. Does this require proof? Consider the following:

Mr. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination raised the hopes of million of blacks and working people (including white union workers in the rust belt). Jackson received 7 million votes. Most of those who supported Jackson did so as a protest against the injustices of this racist capitalist system. Jackson is not a leader against the capitalist – he is a Judas-goat for them. In the final analysis, “Jackson action” proved to be a fraud to deceive those for whom the so-called “American dream” is a cruel hoax into voting for the Democratic Party.

Michael Dukakis openly dissed Jackson by picking the Southern ‘gentleman’ Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate without the minimal courtesy of notifying Jackson (he found out from the media). Jackson’s initial reaction was bitter and suggested that he was prepared to part ways with Massa when he said: “It is too much to expect that I will go out in the field and be the champion vote picker and bale them up and bring them back to the big house and get a reward of thanks, while people who don’t pick nearly as much voters, who don’t carry the same amount of weight among the people, sit in the big house and make the decisions.” (New York Times, 15 July 1988)

But by convention time Jackson had rediscovered his role and decided that it was time for “the lion and the lamb to lie down together”. One problem: the only time the lion lies down with the lamb is at dinner time! Then in 1992, Crime Bill Clinton utilized the a Rainbow Coalition gathering to demonstrate his contempt for blacks and his “independence” from Jackson by deliberately and dishonestly misinterpreting a comment by Sister Soldier. From Judas-goat to punching bag, Jackson remains loyal to the Democrats to the point of supporting Clinton’s scandalous Africa Trade bill, which would impose the corporate agenda of starvation wages and union-busting on African workers. Even Jackson’s son, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., voted against this piece of legislation, calling it a new form of slavery. Jackson Senior is clearly incapable of learning or of changing.

In spite of the fact that over 6,000 black men and women have been elected to public office (mostly as Democrats), the reality that living conditions for black people have continued to worsen should “make it plain” that these black Democrats are not the representatives of the black masses, but front men, and women, for the capitalist system. What did these black elected official do to organize the black community to resist Crime Bill Clinton’s bi-partisan legislative onslaught against us? All toll. Nothing!

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) the oldest (and most conservative) civil rights group in the country has also proven itself completely incapable of leading the resistance to the blatant dismantling of the gains of the Civil Rights movement that has been going on recently. The NAACP has become so senile and feeble that they couldn’t even wage a serious opposition to Uncle Thomas’ appointment to the Supreme Court. It’s a damn shame! But why has the NAACP become so ineffective a weapon for the black community?

A good part of the reason that the NAACP has failed in its self-proclaimed duty to defend civil rights was revealed in the Benjamin Chavis affair. Chavis was brought in as Executive Director of the NAACP to “revitalize” the ailing organization. He tried to gather disillusioned youth into the civil rights struggle and regroup its leadership. To this effect he invited Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam to join the struggle. The corporate media, America’s Headfixing Industry, went crazy. They denounced Chavis for collaborating with a “racist”, i.e. Farrakhan.

Get this now. The bigoted corporate media that with numbing regularity depicts the black community in the vilest most blatantly racist stereotypes attacked a black leader for attempting to unite with another black leader. This was at once absurd and transparent. Chavis continu
ed to strive for unity. But he forgot the Golden Rule: he who provides the gold makes the rules. The corporate donations stopped flowing into the NAACP’s coffers. Donations from the black community don’t come close to paying the salaries of the NAACP bureaucrats. The bureaucrats screamed bloody murder. In August of 1994 Benjamin Chavis was fired by the NAACP’s board of directors, under the pretext of a sex drama. Crime Bill Clinton is still President in spite of his little drama.

Farrakhan stepped up to fill the void with his Million Man March, in his own words: “a holy day of atonement and reconciliation”. Despite the campaign of vilification heaped upon the event by the Headfixing Industry, the idea of the march caught on in the black community. But Farrakhan’s mixture of black capitalist economics with reactionary mysticism guaranteed that the march would not provide solutions for the hundreds of thousands who attended. Did Minister Farrakhan put forward a program that points the way out of this dead end we are currently in? Did he attack the system that is the root cause of suffering of the black community? Hell no! Instead we were given a lecture in – numerology. When the dust cleared, and the participants returned home, the Nation of Islam proved impotent in creating, leading and sustaining a democratically organized movement capable of addressing the needs of Black America. What Farrakhan thought was a new beginning for his bid to become the premier leader of blacks in America may have been his “Final Call”.

All this has happened in full view of the masses. They have had time to sober up and evaluate their experiences. These experiences show clearly that all of these organizations and leaders (Black Democrats, the NAACP, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam), each in their own way, have demonstrated that they are unfit to organize the struggle to defend the living standards of the black masses, much less improve them. On what basis can we measure the potential of a movement to successfully lead the fight against the unremitting attacks we now face?

It is an axiom of scientific socialism that social and political movements must be judged by the quality of their leadership, program, trajectory, and class composition – not by the illusions of the base. These mis-leaders are not genuine opponents of the system. Their programs are pro-capitalist to the core. They are taking us no where – fast. Their self-contradictory rhetoric is the product of their schizophrenic petty bourgeois class composition – they were rejected by the system they love. These criticisms are not an exercise in “disrespect”. We need the bitter truth in regards to these organizations, not sugary falsehood.

For purposes of black liberation these pro-capitalist mis-leaders do not and cannot represent hope for a better future. They are political corpses. And as a great revolutionary once said: When it comes to fighting, corpses are worthless, but they do come in handy to keep the living from fighting.

BLACK WORKERS TAKE THE LEAD!

While the leadership of the BRC is presently a mixed bag (academics, veteran activists, feminists) there is no doubt that if it takes root on the local level the BRC will become a predominately working class organization in its composition, because the black community in the US is overwhelmingly proletarian. Therefore, any serious attempt to organize it must reflect its class needs and aspirations. Thus a new generation of working class leaders can be developed and trained. But this can happen if and only if democratic structures are installed for a movement that is clear about its program and ready to break with the parties and program of capital.

Programmatically the BRC, in the “Freedom Agenda” and other documents, has denounced capitalist exploitation, but stopped short of calling for socialism; made demands upon the US government while calling for “self-determination”. In short, there are internal contradictions within the program of the BRC.

It remains necessary to give specific content, clear and uncompromising, to the algebraic formulations of the “Freedom Agenda”. We must translate our demands into political action that speaks to the needs of Black working people: decent housing, healthcare, education and secure jobs. We must strive to build a movement for fundamental change with the will to join all other workers in America in seeking the power to meet our collective needs, and that means socialism.

During the BRC convention a youth caucus was formed. These young people met for hours striving to hammer out some practical accomplishments that they could take home with them and start to work with. While they were only partially successful, their intensity and enthusiasm was both contagious and inspiring. Some “veterans” feared that the youth caucus meetings could lead to a spin off, or split from the BRC. In fact, the best way to insure such a rupture is to cultivate an atmosphere of distrust and oppression of the youth.

While it remains to be seen, the strength of the BRC could lie in its self-proclaimed desire to act as a united front organization. Without delay functional BRC local organizing committees need to make their presence felt in struggles in their communities. Meet, discuss the political landscape, and decide where you can make your contribution. But of primary importance is – to start.

Gerald Sanders is running for Congress in the 9th Congressional District of California on the Peace and Freedom Party Ticket. He can be reached by phone – (510) 655-5764 or E-mail – gsanders@jps.net

Principles of Unity

1. We recognize the diverse historical tendencies in the Black radical tradition including revolutionary nationalism, feminism and socialism.

2. The technological revolution and capitalist globalization have changed the economy, labor force and class formations that need to inform our analysis and strategies. The increased class polarization created by these developments demands that we, as Black radicals, ally ourselves with the most oppressed sectors of our communities and society.

3. Gender and sexuality can no longer be viewed solely as personal issues but must be a basic part of our analyses, politics and struggles.

4. We reject racial and biological determinism, Black patriarchy and Black capitalism as solutions to problems facing Black people.

5. We must see the struggle in global terms.

6. We need to meet people where they are, taking seriously identity politics and single issue reform groups, at the same time that we push for a larger vision that links these struggles.

7. We must be democratic and inclusive in our dealings with one another, making room for constructive criticism and honest dissent within our ranks. There must be open venues for civil and comradely debates to occur.

8. Our discussions should be informed not only by a critique of what now exists, but by serious efforts to forge a creative vision of a new society.

9. We cannot limit ourselves to electoral politics — we must identify multiple sites of struggles.

10. We must overcome divisions within the Black radical forces, such as those of generation, region, and occupation. We must forge a common language that is accessible and relevant.

11. Black radicals must build a national congress of radical forces in the Black community to strengthen radicalism as the legitimate voice of Black working and poor people, and to build organized resistance.

For more information or to register contact:
Black Radical Congress
P.O. Box 5766
Chicago, IL 60680-5766
(312) 706-7074
http://www.blackradicalcongress.com

Proposed global trade treaty would threaten workers,
the enviorement and democracy

The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) is a bill of internationally enforceable rights and freedoms for corporations against most types of government regulation. Although hardly anyone knows what the MAI says and what it would do, if passed, it has the potential to be the strongest weapon yet for huge multi- national corporations against the world’s workers, democracy and the environment. Because there are no internationally enforceable treaties to protect human, labor or environmental rights, MAI very literally gives corporations more legal rights than people or governments.

In April, international trade representatives at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris announced that they were shelving for six months negotiations on the MAI. This gives opponents of MAI a short period in which to rally to defeat the treaty. Because the MAI is so dangerous, it is essential that people quickly learn what the MAI is and build a global movement to smash it.

Although the agreement is hundreds of pages long and complex, the core of the treaty makes the right to invest and move money a legally enforceable private property right. MAI would for the first time in history give transnational corporations standing equal to governments to sue other national, state or local governments in either local or international courts. Suits could be brought seeking hundreds of millions of dollars of damages if any national, state or local government made any rule which restricted corporate actions in a way considered to be tantamount to expropriation. This definition would not require that a government actually take property from a corporation. Regulations, including those preventing an investment which was merely planned, would be enough.

For example, under rules similar to the MAI contained in NAFTA, Ethyl Corp., a US transnational, has sued Canada for $250 million in damages because Canada banned MMT, a fuel additive and dangerous neurotoxin. Although the Canadian ban was based on environmental grounds, Ethyl has argued that the ban constitutes an illegal expropriation of its assets, since it would have made money on MMT had it not been banned.

The expropriation rules could prevent governments from saving forests, limiting mining, or slowing urban sprawl. Under MAI, governments around the world could be prevented from passing any environmental regulations to avoid being sued.

MAI also sets international standards for environmental and labor regulations and prevents governments from passing any law which would help workers or the environment more than permitted under these standards. These rules are called standstill. The MAI also contains rollback rules which would require governments to gradually get rid of rules that provide more protection than the international standards.

The MAI would be binding on state and local governments and laws (in addition to national governments and laws), although only the Federal governments would agree to MAI. Therefore, cities like Berkeley and San Francisco would be prohibited from passing laws providing stricter labor and environmental protections than international standards. In addition, any local government trade sanctions, like bans against buying South African or Burmese goods, would be banned. Under MAI, San Francisco’s domestic partners law and Berkeley’s gasoline boycotts would be prohibited.

The MAI is designed to quicken the pace of economic globalization. MAI will make it easier for multinational corporations to ship investment capital and jobs anywhere in the world. This allows transnationals to shop for the country with the lowest wages, worst working conditions, and most lax environmental standards, while simultaneously punishing any government or people who try to protect living standards and the environment. The final result is to centralize ever more wealth and power in unaccountable corporations while people lose the ability to pass laws to protect themselves from the corporations.

Because MAI threatens the lives and health of the majority of the worlds peoples, the transnational corporations that back MAI and their government lackeys tried to keep MAI a secret for as long as possible. Its text was secret until a draft was leaked and put on the internet in January 1997. The MAI has gotten little media coverage and the Clinton Administration has kept its participation quiet.

World leaders choose to negotiate MAI through the OECD as part of a clever attempt to exclude most of the world’s governments from the process. The OECD is made up of the 29 richest industrialized nations. Once MAI is approved by the OECD countries, the OECD plans to present MAI to the rest of the world’s nations for approval with no changes permitted. Any country wanting access to the world’s capital markets will have no choice but to sign on. Resist the MAI

People around the world have begun to rise up against the process of economic globalization which, like colonialism before it, concentrates the world’s wealth in a few western hands. From India to Mexico to Indonesia to Brazil, millions in non-OECD countries now oppose the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and are ready to fight MAI.

And in many OECD countries opposition is gathering. Since the United States is one of the main countries pushing passage of the MAI, activists in the US have a pivotal role to play in defeating MAI.

The Clinton Administration, in an attempt to avoid organized opposition to MAI, is trying to pass fast track trade legislation that will strip Congress of the ability to amend MAI, forcing it to either approve or reject MAI if Clinton treats MAI as an agreement rather than a treaty. Fast track will also allow approval by a simple majority, rather than the two-thirds majority required under the Constitution for a treaty.

Aside from opposing and defeating fast track authority, the most important way to oppose MAI is to make sure everyone in the US knows what it would mean for their lives. The mainstream press, controlled by global corporations set to reap billions if MAI is finished, have kept news about MAI out of the news. Activists need to break the silence.

To get involved in the struggle against MAI, contact the International Forum on Globalization, 1555 Pacific Ave, San Francisco, CA 94109, 415-771-3394, www.igc.apc.org/ifg.

Phase-in of Costa-Hawkins act will bring higher rents,
evictions, displacement and misery

Starting January 1st, 1999, there will be no limits on the rents that Bay Area landlords can charge new tenants. All Bay Area rent control which previously existed will be crippled due to the full phase-in of the Costa- Hawkins Act, a law passed by the California legislature in 1996. Many poor, long-term tenants will be vulnerable to evictions without cause, and entire communities may be forced out of the Bay Area.

Anyone who has been trying to find a place to live in the Bay Area in the past few months has probably noticed how bad the situation has become. A representative of Berkeley Connections, a rental referral service which profits from people’s difficulties in finding housing, reported that this is the "craziest" year that the rental market has ever seen, with up to 200 people sometimes attending the showing of a single apartment.

The booming economies of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, and San Francisco’s reputation as a livable city, has created a massive demand for housing. This allows realtors and landlords to set prices as high as they want. In San Francisco the market price of rents rose an average of 40% from 1996 to 1997, Ted Gullickson of the S.F. Tenants Union reported. Between 1997 and 1998 they rose another 25%. The situation is so serious that a study released recently by a Washington-D.C. think tank reported that in the San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan area, 73% of low-income renters spend more than half of their income on housing.

At this point in Berkeley, and to a much lesser extent in Oakland, the profiteering of landlords is still at least partially checked by rent control laws and rent stabilization boards. But the full phase-in of Costa-Hawkins will end many of the existing checks on landlord power.

Costa-Hawkins’ main clause disallows all "vacancy control" stipulations in pre-existing California rent control laws. Having "vacancy control" means that when a person moves out of a rent controlled unit, the landlord cannot increase the rent that the next occupant will have to pay. Berkeley had vacancy control for 18 years prior to the introduction of Costa-Hawkins. San Francisco has never had it, but getting vacancy control has been the main push of the S.F. Tenants Union. The original Oakland rent control law of 1980 included a vacancy control clause, but this was amended in 1986 through the intervention of various landlord groups.

Under Costa-Hawkins all existing rent control laws in California must be changed to include "vacancy de- control." This means that after a tenant voluntarily moves out of a rent-controlled unit (though technically not after they are evicted) a landlord can legally raise the rent to whatever they want. But Costa-Hawkins doesn’t just introduce this rather clear, if deadly, change to rent control. It is a confusing piece of work which also manages to outlaw rent control on all single family units with leases beginning after 1996, and it introduces complicated, ambiguous restrictions on subletting. It even contains language which some S.F. landlords have interpreted to mean that they can suddenly change a renter’s terms of tenancy (such as rules dealing with pets or subletting) without consultation with the renter or even warning. These unilateral changes to a renter’s terms of tenancy are usually aimed at driving out long-term inhabitants in rent-controlled units in order to raise the rent to much higher market rates.

Though Costa-Hawkins was passed in 1996, its provisions dealing with single family residences and vacancy de-control have been slowly phased-in over the last 2 years. So far people who leased single family units after the bill was passed have only had to pay rents at the level legally allowed by local rent control laws. At the same time vacancy de-control has been limited to a maximum of two 15% increases due to voluntary vacancies during the 1996-1998 period.

What can we expect in the coming year, as the phase-in period for Costa-Hawkins ends and its full implications become more clear? For starters, the number of S.F. residents fleeing to the East Bay to find more affordable housing will swell. In S.F. the first of the year will mean an end to rent control on between 10 to 12 thousand single family homes and condos. This will mean rent increases of between 50-75% on these units, in order to bring them up to market rates.

Besides those families unable to pay these higher new rents, many tenants will be driven out of the city by landlords stepping up their efforts to drive long-term tenants out of rent-controlled units and thereby raise the rent. Though the S.F. Tenants Union reports moderate success in fighting landlords’ attempts to drive old tenants out with sudden unilateral changes to terms of tenancy, such tactics will certainly be stepped up as they become increasingly profitable for landlords. Though evictions based on illegal subletting and breach of rental agreement are still at the low level of 50 or so a year, they have increased in frequency by 100% since Costa-Hawkins was passed.

A more common dirty tactic of landlords in S.F. are so-called "owner move-in" evictions, where a landlord claims that they or a relative is going to move in to a rental unit. This tactic is almost never contested by the rent board, and its use has increased by 300% — from 300 to 1200 a year — since Costa-Hawkins passed. Many of those fleeing from San Francisco in the coming year will first look to relocate to quiet and relatively cheap Berkeley. This increased demand for housing, combined with the damage done by Costa-Hawkins to Berkeley’s formerly strong rent control laws, will mean a rapid inflation in Berkeley rents. As in S.F., landlords will begin using any dirty tactics they can in order to drive out long-term tenants and make way for richer renters. Poorer minority tenants, who are less likely to be aware of their legal rights and recourses, will be the most vulnerable to these attacks. As Berkeley fills up with rich professionals and becomes even more of an elitist lifestyle-enclave than it already is, the effects will ripple into Oakland. Because Oakland’s rent control board and ordinance are incredibly weak when compared to Berkeley, it will be even easier for the landlords of Oakland to drive out the poor and minorities. Oakland has no just-cause eviction clause in its rent laws, which means that tenants can be evicted for no reason — only increases in a tenants’ rent warrant a hearing with the rent board. And the Oakland rent board has a hard enough time getting a full quorum of appointed members in order to have an actual meeting, let alone actually dealing with renters’ problem and complaints. The efforts being waged against Costa-Hawkins in the Bay Area are paltry at best. The Oakland Tenants Union is putting their bets on a legalistically convoluted plan. At its base is public testimony made by the writers of the Costa-Hawkins act to the effect that Oakland would be exempt from the Act because it already had vacancy de-control. If Oakland can therefore be shown to be exempt from Costa-Hawkins, the Tenants Union believes that it might then be possible to campaign to have vacancy control introduced in the city. The legal headaches of such a scheme are obvious and infinite.

In San Francisco and Berkeley, the Tenants Unions’ are for now just concerned with nibbling at the edges of the problem, fighting unfair evictions caused by rampant rent profiteering whenever they can.

SB 1730 Burton is a bill coming before the California state legislature soon, aimed at restricting further landlord profiteering in California. Its main focus is to keep greedy landlords from being able to cancel the Section 8 contracts of poor, elderly, disabled people in order to evict them and raise the rent as a form of "vacancy de- control." Though the Burton bill would do several good things to help ten
ant organizing and low income renters in general, it is only the smallest beginning of a struggle for justice in housing. When it comes to using legal channels to struggle for justice in housing, Costa-Hawkins basically leaves everyone’s hands tied.

But that does not mean that Bay Area residents should simply pay up the increased rents or shuffle off into a hole and die. The masses of renters, who stand to lose so much at the hands of a minority of greedy landlords, need to take a stand against the injustice of escalating rents now. Tenants unions throughout the Bay Area need to unite with other activist organizations and community groups to organize a massive rent strike. This will demonstrate to landlords that using courts, police and rent boards to enforce their greed will no longer be tolerated. Long term tenants should not be displaced and established communities must not be destroyed in order to make way for further yuppie gentrification in the Bay Area. Costa-Hawkins must be repealed and Bay Area rents must return to an affordable level. And who knows, maybe if renters can be organized to stand up for those things, they can even come to realize en masse that landlords are really nothing but parasites and that the idea of having to pay for necessities like housing is utterly ridiculous. When people get together anything is possible…

Try contacting the Eviction Defense Network (415-431-0931), the San Francisco Tenant’s Union (415-282- 6622) or, the Oakland Tenant’s Union (510-704-5276).

Slingshot is a quarterly, independent, radical newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988.

Last month we held a Graphics Extravaganza and, through a strange combination of party and assembly line, managed to organize a mountain of our graphics into a tidy filing system. We had categories which ranged from Police, Riots and Violence to Animal Liberation, Environment, and as the night progressed, Religion.

We’ve been talking about it for years, but we finally found ourselves a local union shop printer! We didn’t think one existed, but found Alternative Web Printing right in Oakland.

In other news, we’re hoping to release the 1999 Slingshot Organizer by mid-September. Don’t miss it! Your purchases keep Slingshot going, and keep you well informed and, hopefully, on-time to your appointments.

We actually managed to cut enough articles to get down to 16 pages this issue. We’ve got a mix of local and global issues covered which we hope will inspire all you readers to write us substantive letters so we can keep up the debate.

We’re always looking for writers, artists, photographers, editors, distributors and foundries to make the paper even better. Slingshot accepts unsolicited articles. Please send a disk if you can. We also accept letters, art and photographs. We do not print poetry.

As always, your generous donations are needed to keep us going. About $20 per person is great.

Editorial decisions about Slingshot are made by the Slingshot collective. Articles do not necessarily represent the opinions of everyone involved with Slingshot. We welcome debate, discussion and criticism.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

New volunteers interested in getting involved in Slingshot can meet with us on September 20th at 5 p.m. at the Long Haul. Address is printed below.

Article Deadline & Next Issue date

The projected deadline for Issue #63 is November 3rd.. Issue #63 is expected to be out on November 19th.

Printed August 5, 1998
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Dear Slingshot,

Wow! Someone must really like me, since mail call produced your “fine” newspaper.

I’m a P.O.W./victim of the “War On Drugs.” Another statistic whose crime was “furnishing” the “killer weed,” marijuana to sick and terminally ill patients who belonged to my cannabis co-op.

I was charged with four (4) counts of sales, but was convicted of two (2) counts. A total of 3/4 of an ounce to a 73 year old terminally ill cancer patient who has since passed away.

I noted in P.B. Floyd’s article “Marijuana Updates” (summer ’98 Slingshot) that the son of Tony Blair’s home secretary was busted for sales, but released with a warning. Gee! What do they know in Europe that we don’t know here? One thing is for certain however, and that is I will join a half a million of my brothers and sisters that are arrested annually for marijuana offenses alone.

As a member of this movement from it’s conception, (compassionate use) I have made it my goal to keep updated on “marijuana facts and figures.” Some that you and your readers may or may not be aware of are: There has been a 700% increase in drug related arrests since 1980. That 70% of all state prisoners are in for non-violent offenses, (majority drug possession), that over 100,000 people die per year from overdosing on legal prescription medicine, and one million are hospitalized annually. “No one” has ever overdosed on marijuana, no one, nada, nein, nyet. Marijuana is safer than aspirin. The fastest growing business in California is corrections. (1. Chicago Tribune, 2. Calif. Dept. of corrections 1997 annual report, 3. same as number 2, 4. U.S. news and world report March ’98, 5. New England journal of medicine editorial Jan. 1997, 6. same as 2 and 3) and by the year 2003 there will be a 73% increase in the states prison population from 183,000 to 234,000 plus. (Calif. Dept. of corrections.)

On November 5, 1996, 56% of the registered voters in California who bothered to vote passed Prop. 215, the compassionate use act, now HS11362.5.

As of this date, no state governmental agency has implemented any way of distributing safe, mold and pesticide “free” cannabis to those who have doctor’s recommendations to use it. The Federal government, along with state Attorney General Dan Lungren, have succeeded in prosecuting and closing down the San Francisco Buyer’s Club, San Jose, San Diego, Marin, Hayward, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Oakland, and Flower Therapy. Peter Baer, Scott Imler, Dennis Peron, Marvin Chaver, Jeff and Scott (San Diego), Todd McCormick, and Lynette Shaw are all awaiting trial for furnishing, sales, distribution, etc. This is not what the voters intended and it is not what we were about. Having to “buy” our supply, we asked for a donation of $20 per quarter (7 grams) limit of one ounce per week. If you could not afford to donate it was given to you for free!! No questions asked. Simple as that. We only wanted to cover cost! Now I face six years in prison for “sales” of 3/4 of an ounce or 21 grams.

Not pounds, not kilos, but grams, and less than 28.5 on top of it. Oh well!! Not as bad as some of my fellow P.O.W.’s but still a little stiff.

I was denied Prop. 215 as a defense as well as “medical necessity,” so I have no effective defense. My public defender is appealing, but it will take at least two years to get into the appellate. All of our volunteers are die-hard activists, and we knew what was involved when we got in to this. Still, I feel my time is nothing compared to “Move” and Geronimo Pratt, and Aim, and some of the others, but we are still not free! Even after it was voted in to law. So our fight and struggle goes on too!

Thank you for putting me on your mailing list, and one day I will gladly repay you through a donation. Till then, yours in the cause!! David Herrick

P.S. I’d love to get letters:
David Herrick #1750882
550 N. Flower St. J-4-4
Santa Ana, CA 92703

P.S.S. I have a written recommendation to use cannabis from a bonafide Calif. Physician, but that was not the issue. Caregiving and sales was!!