NATIONAL NEWS

Continued Repression

By Joan Gibbs and Sara Bennett

New York (LNS)—The event hadn't been scheduled as a celebration. But that's what a New York gathering in support of long-imprisoned Black revolutionary Assata Shakur turned into November 9. Gone were the banners and chants demanding "Free Assata Shakur," replaced by a newly printed poster proclaiming "Assata Shakur Welcome Here." Because a week earlier, on November 2, three Black men and a white woman posing as visitors had com-. mandeered a prison van, taken two prison employees hostage, and fled a Clinton, New York prison with the woman known in the press as "the soul" of the Black liberation movement. No one was hurt during the escape.

Immediately after Shakur's escape New Jersey officials set up road blocks at every possible exit from the state and called in the FBI. On November 9, New York police equipped with riot gear swarmed into the home of former Black Panther Party member Ronald Boyd Hill, claiming that he had participated in the escape. Although the only charge against Hill is a federal charge of abetting an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, he is currently being held on $1 million bond. Hill, who was unarmed at the time of his arrest, has stated through his lawyer that he is innocent. And supporters have pointed out that just about the last place you would expect to find someone who had just taken part in an armed jailbreak would be sitting at home. Nonetheless, FBI officials

Republic of New Afrika/LNS

have also been reported visiting the homes of other known Black activists.

One of the primary targets of a well-planned government attack on the Black liberation movement during the early 1970's, Shakur was arrested in 1973 in a "shoot-first-ask-questions-later" attack by New Jersey State troopers. Zayd Shakur, another former Black Panther Party member, was killed during the attack, along with one of the state troopers.

At the time of her arrest, Shakur was being sought as a fugitive under six indictments. But government officials failed to obtain a single conviction on any of the charges listed in those indictments. Still, Shakur was eventually sentenced to life in prison plus 65 years on charges resulting from the New Jersey Turnpike shootout. She was imprisoned for nothing other than being present at her own arrest and the gunfire that accompanied it, even though medical evidence confirmed that she had been shot while holding her hands above her head. The state trooper who testified against her insisted she had been crouched down and firing a weapon. Another Black activist, Sundiata Acoli, who was also arrested in the incident, also received life in prison.

"I am ashamed that I have even taken part in this

Page 4/What She Wants/December, 1979

trial," Shakur charged upon her conviction. "You abuse the law," she told the all-white jury, "I knew it was racist. I knew the judge was unfair. You have convicted a woman who had her hands up in the air."

Earlier in her trials, Shakur posed and answered the question of why the government was trying to put her behind bars: "In the late 1960's, in the early 1970's, this country was in an upheaval. There was a strong people's movement against the war, against racism, in the colleges and in the Black and Puerte Rican communities. This government, local police agencies, the FBI and the CIA launched an all-out war against people who they considered militants. We are only finding out now because of extensive investigations into the FBI and into the CIA how extensive and how criminal those methods were and still are."

Shakur's escape was hailed by more than 3,500 people at a Black Solidarity Day protest at the UN on November 6. Participants in the rally and in the November 9 celebration heard a letter written by Shakur since her escape, in which she explained that she had no choice but to escape and that she hoped

her action would push the Black liberation movement forward.

For over a year prior to her conviction and while still an unconvicted, pre-trial detainee, Shakur was kept in a dungeon basement at an all-male prison in New Jersey. After her conviction, New Jersey of ficials moved to have her transferred to Alderson, West Virginia, 600 miles from her lawyers who were working on an appeal of the decision. Her transfer back to New Jersey earlier this year came about only because the maximum security unit at Alderson was closed and New Jersey prison officials refused to have her released into the general population.

The recently-formed African National Prisoners Organization (ANPO) launched a "Hands Off Assata campaign, calling for demonstrations, pickets and rallies to show mass support for Shakur. Shakur was the second political prisoner to escape in the New York-New Jersey area this year. The other was William Morales, described by himself as a prisoner of war in Puerto Rico's struggle for inpendence and by police as a bomber for the Lueras Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FAIN). Mo ales has never been recaptured.

and More Suppression

Portland, Ore.(LNS)-Committed to nuclear energy for war and peacetime, the U.S. Government is continuing policies designed to curb scientific research on the biological effects of radiation.

U.S. scientists have received their marching orders from the government throughout 17 years of largescale atmospheric nuclear testing, atomic weapons production, underground tests, and nuclear power expansion. As time passed and the latent health impact of routine radiation exposure began to come due, seientists funded by the government arrived at figures indicting atomic programs as causing cancer and irreversible genetic damage.

"Reaction by industry and the energy-related U.S. government departments to the recent health findings. has been hostile, suppressive, and marked by attempts to delay serious consideration of the research," asserts Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a seasoned biostatistician whose work analyzing the health data of more than ten million people was truncated by the government after her findings correlated low-dose radiation exposure with increases in chronic illnesses. Bertell points out that "when scientific information is suppressed within a country it is also suppressed in the international community."

In the 1960's, when Drs. John Gofman and Arthur Tamplin found strong evidence linking low-level radiation with cancer and leukemia, they faced increasing pressure to keep a lid on their findings; when they refused, their research funding at the governmental Lawrence Radiation Lab was all but eliminated.

Dr. Karl Z. Morgan, widely venerated as the founder of health physics, readied a paper to be presented to an international symposium in 1971. The paper was critical of plutonium breeder reactors. But on the eve of the conference, his report was axed by federal officials at the Oak Ridge nuclear center in Tennessee.

Dr. Thomas F. Mancuso's decade-long research implicated low-level radiation for causing elevated rates of cancer and leukemia among workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. His federal funding at the University of Pittsburgh was suddenly removed in late 1974. A congressional investigation by the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment three years later exposed a web of lies, distortions, and slander against Mancuso by top officials of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration.

In the summer of 1976, when Dr. Irwin Bross

presented findings of genetic damage in children whose parents were exposed to X-rays, he came under vigorous attack and the National Cancer Institute refused to renew his government grant.

"Someone discovers a problem within an area of government and immediately he's a pariah," commented Dr. Edward Radford recently. Radford, who chaired the prestigious Commission on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, added that “the whistle blowers are always the ones who get stomped on by the government."

Dr. Thomas Najarian, a Boston hemotologist who discovered evidence of increased leukemia among atomic workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire, recently was the target of an attack by Senator Edward Kennedy. In June of this year, Najarian testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on allegations of coverups of Portsmouth health data. Kennedy, who chairs the committee, took the oportunity to lambast Najarian publicly for "irresponsibility" because his testimony offered the professional assessment-shared by many other researchers in the field-that federal radiation standards are far too permissive.

The Portsmouth nuclear shipyard is the largest single employer in New Hampshire, a state that holds the nation's first presidential primary election. Reliable sources say Kennedy has blocked a congressional probe into nuclear health effects at Portsmouth.

Some Expression

New Jersey foster care officials have confirmed that they have been placing homosexual youths with homosexual foster parents since 1975. There are at least two officially sanctioned homes operating in the state, one headed by a single lesbian, the other by a lesbian couple. National child advocacy groups report no knowledge of similar practices in any other

state.

We applaud New Jersey's public acknowledgment as well as their awareness that homosexual youths and adults are a reality. However, we hope that this practice will not perpetuate the kind of segregated thinking that dictated black children belong only with black parents, white with white, etc. Obviously there are many ramifications to this issue which bear close scrutiny.