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   Vol.65/No.18            May 7, 2001 
 
 
Abolish the death penalty!
(editorial)
 
The grotesque spectacle being prepared by the Bush administration for the execution of Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, is part of the rulers' effort to divide the working class, to erode democratic rights, and to prepare the ground for more attacks on the toilers here and in other countries. This move goes hand in hand with the recent Supreme Court ruling authorizing the police to arrest and jail people without a warrant for minor infractions such as not wearing a seatbelt, and Bush's active enforcement of a law passed under the Clinton administration that bars federal aid to students with misdemeanor drug convictions.

The administration hopes to strengthen support for capital punishment and federal death penalty laws with the propaganda around the orchestrated killing of McVeigh, the first federal execution since 1963. This takes place at a time when opposition to the death penalty is growing and resistance by workers to attacks on unions and the social wage is increasing. The ghoulish march to the death chamber also comes in the wake of protests by African Americans and others in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Stuart, Florida, against street executions by the cops--part and parcel of how the death penalty is used in capitalist society.

Bush is building on the accomplishments of the Clinton administration in dramatically expanding the number of crimes covered by the death penalty. From the Waco massacre at the opening of the administration, to the assault by INS and other cops in Miami, to pressing for the death penalty to be exacted against McVeigh, the Clinton administration set a pace for the use of state violence for Bush to follow.

But the ability of the employing class to justify the death penalty as a weapon of terror has been weakened by the resistance and growing solidarity among working people in the United States. This includes the union organizing drives of laundry and meatpacking workers, the stepping forward in struggle by an expanding immigrant workforce, the demands of Blacks and women for equality and justice, and the tractorcades and rallies by farmers fighting to defend their land and right to farm.

By showcasing trials and executions of "spies," "traitors," and "terrorists," the capitalists and their government hope to grease the skids for more infringements of democratic rights in the interest of national security and for the expansion of the repressive apparatus they will increasingly need against the struggles that the working class and its allies will mount.

Politicians of the big-business parties try to deflect growing rejection of the use of the death penalty by proposing moratoriums or reforms to make the punishment "fair." But there is no fairness or justice in the system in which a tiny class of billionaire families, backed up by massive police and military force, the legislature, and the courts, exploits and plunders the vast majority of humanity, the workers and farmers who produce all the wealth.

The labor movement has every interest in calling for an end to the death penalty and participating in protests against state-sponsored murder. Taking this weapon of terror out of the hands of the rulers strengthens the march of workers and farmers toward taking political power and beginning to reorganize society on the basis of human solidarity in the interests of the vast majority.
 
 
Related article:
U.S. government uses McVeigh execution to win support for federal death penalty laws  
 
 
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