The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.5           February 3, 1997 
 
 
Say No To Bosses' Death Penalty  
Three men were executed in three hours on the night of January 8 at a penitentiary in Arkansas. The U.S. president's home state has executed three men on the same day once before, in 1994. Clinton set the example for the boss class, while Governor of Arkansas in 1992, when he cut short his campaigning and flew to that state to personally witness the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally ill man who died through capital punishment. The recent state- sanctioned murders were conducted in the midst of much media fanfare about the heinous crimes that were committed and the nightmares of victims' relatives. After the executions, prison officials made phone calls to the families to inform them of the killings.

At one point during this sickening episode, inmate Kirt Wainwright, was left strapped to a gurney with needles in his arms for 45 minutes, while the Supreme Court pondered his appeal.

This was an example of torture and how the death penalty is used to dehumanize inmates and portray them as violent beasts with no rights. The capitalist class uses its media to inundate working people with these images as they prepare their executions while acclimating us for more repression.

The death penalty is used as a weapon of terror aimed at working-class fighters. It's no coincidence that the single- year record of 199 executions was set in 1935, just after the Great Depression and as working-class resistance mounted. In 1934, some 700,000 workers were involved in strikes that paved the way for the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In that decade, 1,667 people were put to death - accounting for nearly 41 percent of all executions from 1930 to 1993. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, was president for the rest of the 1930s and led Washington's entry into the interimperialist slaughter of World War II.

The capitalist bosses will resort to rougher methods to control society when masses of working people mobilize to defend their rights and living standards. As if anticipating big class battles ahead, the "antiterrorism" bill signed by Clinton last April, deepens the rulers' assault on workers' rights. This law restricts the rights of inmates on death row by shortening the appeals process. At the same time, the U.S. government has been eliminating funding for centers that provide legal representation for working people who land on death row.

Prison authorities executed 56 people in 1995, the largest number of legalized murders in the United States since 1957. Of the 4,089 executions carried out from 1930 to 1993, 2,154 of these involved killing Blacks - almost 53 percent.

Some 362 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Of these, 174 were carried out during the Clinton administration - nearly 50 percent! These figures reveal how the rulers will step up their repressive apparatus to stifle working-class resistance to their austerity measures. The labor movement should oppose the death penalty and throw its weight behind any protests against these state-sanctioned murders.  
 
 
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