LOS ANGELES - A cross-section of the Black community here lit candles on a lawn in front of the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, near Watts in South Central, where victims of crack and addicted infants are treated. The October 3 vigil was the most recent in a series of protests demanding the truth about CIA connections to drug running in the Black community.

More than 1,200 people turned out for the two-hour event, called by the Brotherhood Crusade. It was endorsed by a wide array of more than 75 prominent people in the Black community, including two members of Congress, state and local elected officials, and religious figures.

The vigil came on the heels of an angry protest of 2,500 people here September 28, in the wake of revelations by reporter Gary Webb published in the San Jose Mercury News.

The series details how CIA-employed contras (counterrevolutionaries) in Nicaragua targeted the Los Angeles Black community for cocaine sales in the 1980s to raise money for the U.S.-organized mercenary war against the Nicaraguan revolution.

Public outrage here has resulted in the first steps of a congressional investigation of charges contained in the Webb series. A community hearing on the scandal is set for October 19 at Compton College.

The main known CIA-contra pusher in the 100-kilo-a-week cocaine trafficking venture, Danilo Blandón, is currently employed by the Drug Enforcement Agency, and lives in San Diego and Managua, Nicaragua.

"We are here tonight to start the march," said Democratic Rep. Juanita McDonald, one of many Black elected officials to speak. "This march will not end until we see justice is done."

Many in the gathering wore buttons opposing Proposition 209, a ballot initiative that seeks to overturn affirmative action in state hiring and public education.

Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters spoke about the status of "our own investigation of the CIA." Waters represents the South Central neighborhoods, which were the focus of CIA- contra organized drug trade. She is one of the main capitalist politicians who have placed themselves at the center of the outcry against the once-secret operation.

"We now have information that the federal government knew for years who [these dealers] were," Waters said. "We are getting calls from former FBI agents, calls from inside prisons. And we are passing this information on to the Inspector General and congressional committees." Waters and other politicians have been urging protesters to vote for Democrats in the November elections, saying this is the way to keep the pressure on the investigation.

"I wasn't surprised at all," a man in his 30s told a reporter as the crowd drifted away. "I was into all this [dealing]. There was hardly anything on the street. We didn't have any money. Then, all of a sudden there were ounces and half keys [kilos of cocaine; 1 kilo = 2.2lbs]. You could get as much as you wanted. We knew the feds were involved. How else did all this stuff get in?" he added, referring to the cheap cocaine the CIA-employed contras brought into Los Angeles.

The CIA-linked operators hooked up with Richard Ross, an aspiring major dealer here. He and his team then turned cocaine into crack, and distributed it to gang members and small time pushers on consignment.

This was the beginning of the mass influx of crack into the Black community. "I did time, nine years. I'm clean, don't do this any more," the young man said at the October 3 vigil. "But I know how it got here."

"This is not a racial thing," a Compton hospital worker said. "It's not just Blacks on crack. It's anybody who's desperate and preyed on by people who want to make money."

Curt, a McDonnell Douglas aerospace worker and a member of the United Auto Workers (UAW), was one of several from that plant who attended the vigil. The scandal, he said, is "traumatizing. The thought that your own so-called government is responsible for illegal activity in your community that you would go to jail for is traumatizing.

"I would like to see justice done," he stated. "But look at Oliver North, is he in jail? What about Mark Fuhrman?" North worked for the Ronald Reagan administration and secretly organized aid for the contras when the activity had been banned by Congress. Fuhrman is the racist Los Angeles cop who recently plea bargained a $200 fine and three years probation for felony charges of perjury in the O.J. Simpson trial.

"The damage [of crack] is so devastating," the UAW member said, shaking his head. "Have you ever seen anybody on crack? Any justice we do get can only be measured by the punishment. And there must be very severe punishment."  
 
 
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