Found at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint/A_Red_look_at_White-_and_Blue-Collar_law_and_order.html
A Red look at
White- and Blue-Collar law and
order
(The
following article is from
the July 1-31,
2007
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in
Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per
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ON, L8P 2H3.)
Compiled
from
the news services by David Tymoschuk
WHITE
COLLAR
Rodney Arnold
Barton stole over
$1 million from the Bank of Nova Scotia. As reported in The
Chronicle-Herald, the National Parole Board says that Barton could
potentially reoffend. Yet he was approved for parole five months into
his three year jail sentence. You see, Rodney Barton was a former
manager with the bank. Things would be different if he was a blue
collar worker who held up a gas bar.
Jeffery
Skilling, the CEO of
Enron, was sentenced to 24 years in jail back in October 2006. Let's
not forget the fact that $2 billion in pensions were wiped out.
Skilling's actions ruined many lives.
Dennis
Koslowski, former head of
Tyco, is serving up to 25 years for stealing $1 billion from the
corporation. But his minimum prison term is just over eight years.
Taking money from a corporation can be good news, but Koslowski was no
Robin Hood, just a greedy boss. His wife, who still enjoys the good
life, wants a divorce. So much for love.
A few such
scapegoats were sent
to prison, but after September 11, prosecutors in the United States
slacked off on white collar crooks, as reported by the New York Post
and the Christian Science Monitor
last September. Why? Maybe too busy jailing suspicious "terrorist
looking" types?
Here's
another case. A person
placed print ads for loans: "bad credit no problem." Those who phoned
and took the bait had to pay a fee of a couple hundred dollars to get
their loan. The poor became poorer, because they never received a
thing. The operator of the loan company picked up $1.1 million. He was
sentenced to just two years probation and a $1000 fine.
BLUE
COLLAR
Here's a
serious crime: building a cabin.
Roberta
Keesick, a Grassy Narrows
hunter, clan mother, blockader, mother, and grandmother, is engaged in
building two cabins on her people's traditional hunting grounds. These
cabins are used for shelter and storage during the cold winter season,
and as a base from which to hunt, fish, and pick berries and medicines
to provide for her family and live the Anishnabe way of life.
Recently,
Roberta received a
summons indicating that she is being charged with three offenses for
building on public land without a work permit. Her response: "I got
permission from the creator who put us here and made our people a part
of the land. I can't bring myself to ask for permit. We have always
been here and we have never needed permission." Funny how homesteaders
could build on "free" land, yet a Clan Mother cannot build on her own
traditional territory. Public land - except for people from Grassy
Narrows. Her court case is coming up soon.
As reported
recently in People's Voice,
Elder Harriet Nahanee passed away one month after she was sent to jail
on January 24, 2007. Madame Justice Brenda Brown sentenced Nahanee, age
72, to fourteen days incarceration for contempt of court for disobeying
the Eagle Ridge Bluff injunction. Jailed under unacceptable conditions
at Surrey Pre-Trial Center, held in a cell with tens of other inmates
and subject to racist treatment, Harriet Nahanee contracted pneumonia.
She was hospitalized within a week of her release, and passed away
within another week.
An extreme
example in Leandro
Andrade, who is serving 50 years in a California jail for stealing nine
VHS cassettes. Whose life did he ruin except his own? And did he ruin
his own life? No, the justice system, part of the capitalist state,
helped Leandro along in ruining his life. The draconian "three strikes"
law is clearly a mockery of justice.
In Avon Park,
Florida,
kindergarten student Desre'e Watson was arrested last April and charged
with a felony. What charges? Battery on a school official, and
resisting a police officer. Does a six-year old really deserve a
criminal record?
In 2000, the St. Petersburg Times
reported that charging children is normal in Florida: "Kids as young as
seven spend the night in detention centers. Kids as young as 10 are
sent away for a year or more. And in a very few cases, children enter
the justice system at even younger ages, such as a 5-year-old St.
Petersburg boy charged this year with burglary; and incredibly, a
preschool arson suspect who went through a pretrial diversion program
in South Florida at age 3."
Freedom of
movement? On April
24th, Immigration officers armed with M-16 rifles raided a shopping
mall in Chicago. The entire mall was closed while officers forced
shoppers and workers to sit on the floor.
The
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) has been conducting Operation Return to Sender and
Operation Wagon Train, signs of growing xenophobia and intolerance by
the U.S. government. During a raid in March at the Michael Bianco
company in New Bedford, Mass., a factory that makes leather military
gear, officers forcefully separated babies from nursing mothers before
any undocumented workers were arrested. Last December, raids at six
Swift meatpacking plants arrested more than 1200 workers. In some cases
children were left to fend for themselves for varying lengths of time
after parents were picked up in the raids.
Two police
officers in Atlanta
plea bargained in the 2006 murder of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. The
murder charges were dropped, and the officers will get 10 and 12 years
in prison. A raid on Johnston's address occurred when an informant lied
to police about cocaine being inside. Obtaining a no-knock warrant,
officers busted into the home with no advance warning. Johnston was
armed (this is the U.S.), and seeing armed people in plainclothes, she
fired one shot in defence, inflicting no injuries. Police returned fire
(39 shots), handcuffed the bleeding woman (shot 6 times), then
conducted a search of the premises while she died. No drugs were found,
so they were planted.
An informer
tipped off reporters
who broke the story. The informer was picked up by the police officers,
who then attempted to force the informer to confess to purchasing drugs
at Johnston's address. The mere idea of a 92-year-old drug kingpin is a
good case to not cut old age pensions! Having to sell street drugs to
pay for prescription medication is not too far off.