USA:
Cops to boycott progressives
by Louis Proyect For the first time in US history, an armed group authorised to investigate, arrest and if necessary shoot citizens, has organised itself to threaten "persons, products and companies" associated with a political cause they oppose. Is this an exercise of free speech by people with guns and the authority to use them, or a chilling next step in the suppression of dissent in the USA? At their recent National Conference in Alabama, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the largest organisation of cops in the United States, voted unanimously to "begin a boycott of persons, products and companies associated with the supporting of Mumia Abu-Jamal convicted for allegedly killing a cop. "The FOP has announced the formal boycotting of the following: "1. Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Products who are donators to a defence fund for the killer. "2. Actor Paul Newman, an outspoken supporter of the killer. "3. Actress Susan Sarandon, another supporter of the killer. "4. Filmmakers Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and John Landis, supporters of the killer. "5. Writers Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, supporters of the killer. "6. Super model Naomi Campbell, supporter of the killer." The above notice was sent via email to police stations and firehouses around the country. Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African American journalist, a founding member of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in the 1960s, a respected public radio reporter, and an outspoken critic of police brutality. In 1981 he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman in a trial that millions have come to see as an openly racist mockery of justice. The Fraternal Order of Police "hit" list appears to be drawn from an open letter that appeared in the New York Times in August 1995, signed by 100 people calling for a new and fair trial for Mumia. Among other signatories, presumably now also under threat from the Fraternal Order of Police, were writers William Styron, Paul Auster, EL Doctorow and Dean Ornish, leading computer software developers Peter Norton and Mitch Kapor, actors Alec Baldwin and Danny Glover, venture capitalist Allan Patricof, film critic Roger Ebert, musician Bobby McFerrin and dozens more. The latest target of the Fraternal Order of Police threat are musicians Sting and Rage Against the Machine, who have at different times expressed opposition to the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sting performed at a venue outside Philadelphia on November 14 and Rage is scheduled to appear at the First Union Centre, a venue near Philadelphia, on December 16. According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 3, "Richard Costello, the head of the FOP, has threatened to boycott the First Union Centre a venue near Philadelphia if Rage Against the Machine holds a concert there. "We'll target anything and everything that uses the First Union Centre, including the Flyers and the Sixers [local professional sports teams] and even the bank that built it", he said. Members of the FOP in Delaware County, where the Sting concert took place, said beforehand that they were prepared to mobilise hundreds of off-duty police and supporters to protest against the concert. "We'd like to make it a traffic nightmare so that maybe people can't get there." Mumia recently won a stay of execution from a Federal Judge in Philadelphia who will hear his petition for a writ of habeus corpus and decide within the next few months whether or not he will be given a new trial. The issues surrounding this nationwide police campaign to kill Mumia and threaten those advocating for a new trial (whom they call "supporters of cop killers") have not been seriously examined in the mainstream US media. It has been likened to the menacing threats we've come to associate with Germany in the 1930s and '40s or South Africa under apartheid. A number of US artists have signed a statement condemning "police attacks on musicians for their political beliefs. The boycott of artists and businesses called by the Fraternal Order of Police is no ordinary political boycott. "The police are government employees who are in a position of power over people, and their boycott is a direct form of police intimidation and censorship of the arts. This national political campaign by police to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal is unprecedented and very dangerous."