---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002
From: randy <redpoet@swbell.net>
Subject: How Come
HOW COME THEY ARE NOT HELD ACCOUNTABLE?
In the last couple of months I've read over and over again in editorials
and columns in newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the San
Francisco Examiner, from Southern California to the Midwest (and hard from
pundits like George Will) when discussing Sara Olson that she must be held
accountable, that she must accept responsibility, that she must apologize
for her past (which is generally predicated, I might add, upon the
assumption that she is now lying about that past). Since Sept. 11th there
has been a campaign also waged against Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers in
much the same manner, in many of the same places. There has been this
clamor about how these and other activists from the 60s and 70s were
nothing but a bunch of spoiled terrorists who never accepted the
consequences of their actions. This drone has gotten to me. I'm sick of
it. First off, there is the question of what actions, of who did what, of
who is "guilty" of what crimes. Second, there is the fact that many of US
did in fact "do time," are doing time still, were punished severely in a
myriad of ways including death - often times merely for our political
beliefs, sometimes for actions related to those beliefs. But you know
what really galls me is that THEY were never held accountable, THEY never
accepted responsibility, THEY never apologized. Were those who gave the
orders or pulled the triggers at Kent State and who killed four students
and wounded nine ever punished for anything? Were the police who on May
14, 1970, killed two young black men and wounded 12 others during a campus
protest at Jackson State arrested and jailed? Are they serving time? Does
anyone remember hearing an apology? Were the Chicago police who murdered
Mark Clark and Fred Hampton IN THEIR SLEEP ever locked up or even brought
to trial? Were the prison guards who gunned down George Jackson ever held
responsible? Were the killers of 43 prisoners at Attica brought to
justice? How about the state troopers who killed three students and
wounded 27 on the South Carolina State University campus who were
demonstrating to demand the desegregation of Orangeburg's, South
Carolina's only bowling alley? Heard from those troopers recently - ever?
Were the Lawrence, Kansas cops who shot Black Student Union member Tiger
Dowdell in the back of the head and a few days later fired into an unarmed
crowd in "hippie haven" killing Nick Rice ever tried for anything? How
about the cops who blinded one man while mortally wounding another in
Berkley during the People's Park demonstrations? Has justice been done
there yet? How many of the goons on the Pine Ridge Reservation are locked
away in prison like Leonard Peltier? What about the gallant LA police
officers who killed journalist Ruben Salazar and two other Chicanos during
the Chicano Moratorium on August 29, 1970? Are the LA prosecutors who
went after Sara bringing them to court? Any news on the cops who turned
the dogs loose on civil rights protesters in Mississippi or the cops who
clubbed demonstrators in Chicago in the 1968 police riot, or those who
murdered Black Panthers by the score in city after city across this great
land of ours? Have any of them ever expressed concern for their deeds.
Are they being held accountable for their actions? I could go on and on
with this list and I'm not even bothering to get into the big fish. I
could write of more of the same which occurred in every decade since, but
I won't. Why are only WE who fought for social justice, who fought against
an illegal war, who fought against racism, white privilege and white
supremacy, who fought for human rights, who struggled for Black
liberation, etc. why are WE the ones from whom an apology is demanded?
Why are WE the ones whom have to give up a pound of flesh? How come that
is anyway?
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