Newspaper Page Text
Mandela downs Jesse Jackson Billy Ocean ||Black Newspapers
South Africa’s urges party performs '&«</ found in
freedom offer re-assessment August. >0 tes
Pagel Pagel Page7 11
VOLUME 14 NUMBER 38
Jailed Black leader rejects South
African offer
SOWETO, South Africa—ln his
first public statement in 21 years,
Nelson Mandela, the jailed leader
of South Africa’s Black un
derground, rejected today a con
ditional offer of freedom made 10
days ago by President Pieter W.
Botha.
Mandela said he would make no
promises until his people were free
of the white rulers’ segregationist
system of apartheid, and he
demanded an unconditional
release before he would negotiate
with the Botha government that
claims to seek reform of the
system.
“Only free men can negotiate.
Prisoners cannot enter into con
tracts,” Mandela said.
N. Y. vigilante sued for SSO million
NEW YORK—Lawyers for a
comatose victim of so-called
“Death Wish” vigilante Bernhard
Goetz has filed a SSO million civil
suit against the subway gunman,
whom they compared to a Ku Klux
Klans man.
The lawyers also released sam
ples from a flood of hate mail
directed at the victim, calling him a
“creep” and an “animal” and
saying, “had I the same oppor
tunity to raise my gun to you, you
would be dead.”
Civil rights attorney William
Kunstler, one of the lawyers,
charged that the paralyzed victim,
Darrell Cabey, 19, was shot in the
back on the subway by Goetz in a
“vicious and wrongful retaliation
for past injury.”
He said the shots were not fired
in self-defense, but came as a result
of a mugging three years earlier.
Racism was another motive for
the shooting, Kunstler said. Some
of the other lawyers, including C.
Vernon Mason, compared Goetz
to KKK member and said New Yok
City was like the South during the
19605.
Goetz is white and the four
teenagers he shot are Black. The
Jesse Jackson assails Democratic leaders
Jesse L. Jackson said on Sunday
that Democratic Party leaders are
attempting to attract white male
voters by “proving they can be
tough on Blacks’* and that Blacks
must now reassess their loyalty to
the party.
Jackson said Democratic
leaders, rebuilding after
President’s Reagan’s landslide
election victory, are engaging in
“self-deception” by failing to un
derstand the reasons for their
defeat and failing to recognize that
Blacks, the young, women,
Hispanics, Asians and the poor are
the future of the party.
Jackson had harsh words for
party leaders, including new
chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr., and
made it clear he will not even
recognize the election of Roland
W. Burris, the Black Illinois state
comptroller who defeated Gary
Mayor Richard G. Hatcher for the
vice chairmanship. Hatcher was
the choice of the party’s Black
Caucus and was Jackson’s cam
paign chairman.
“I assume Roland has his own
constituency since he went outside
of the Black people in the party,”
Jackson siad. “I will not affirm
the product of the violation of the
Black Caucus.
Jackson, defeated by Walter F.
Mondale for the party’s 1984
presidential nomination, said he
will deal with the national party
- iS A
Augusta Neuis-ileuteui
sw IK
Nelson Mandela
..“only free men can negotiate”
subway gunman says he shot the
youths Dec. 22 because he was
afraid they were going to mug him.
Police siad at least three of the
genagers asked Goetz for $5, but
Kunstler disputed that, saying only
one of the youths asked for
the money.
Cabey, partially paralyzed and
brain damaged, has been in a coma
for more than three weeks. He lay
in St. Vincent’s Hospital as the five
victim undergoes surgery
NEW YORK—A comatose
teenager who was shot in the back
by “Death Wish” gunman Ber
nhard Hugo Goetz, underwent
surgery Jan 31 to drain infected
fluid from his lungs.
Darrell Cabey, 19, who has been
in a coma for three weeks, was
taken to the operating room at St.
Vincent’s Hospital about 4:30
p.m. for an hour-long procedure
known as emtyema that involves
removing a portion of his ribs.
Cabey, who is partially
paralyzed and brain-damaged, is
breathing with the aid of a
respirator. A hospital spolesman
said that when the surgery is com-
Bar F
Mt '
Jesse L. Jackson
...“climate is cold for Black
people”
through Kirk and Black Caucus
Chairman C. Delores Tucker,
rather than Burris.
However, Jackson also accused
Kirk of attempting to “gain in
stature at the expense of Blacks”
by opposing the Black Caucus
nominee. Hatcher’s defeat was
viewed by some party leaderd as a
rebute to Jackson.
Jackson, 43, was interviewed in
his hospital room where he is
recuperating from pneumonia and
His tough statement was dic
tated in prison to his wife Winnie
and read to a crowd of 8,000 at a
political rally in a Soweto am
phitheater today by his daughter
Zinzi, 22, who risked imprison
ment under South Africa’s
stringent security laws for quoting
her father in public.
The rally was called to pay
tribute to Nobel laureate Desmond
Tutu, returned from abroad. For
most of the audience, it was the
first statement ever heard from
Mandela. It is 30 years since he last
addressed a meeting in Soweto.
His last public statement was from
the dock, where he was sentenced
to life imprisonment in 1964.
Mandela was interviewed last
lawyers filed the SSO million suit in
State Supreme Court.
The lawyers asked for $25
million in compensatory damages
and $25 million in punitive
damages. They also want Goetz to
be barred from owning or using a
gun.
Cabey’s lawyers say he had
taken a turn for the worse during
the past few days and was “near
death,” though the hospital said
pleted Cabey, who has been in
critical condition since the
shooting Dec. 22, should be able to
breath on his own.
The teenager’s lawyer said
Cobey took a turn for the worse
during the past few days and was
near death.
Before the operation, hospital
spolesman Dan Sorrenti said,
“Cabey will undergo a brief
surgical procedure to drain his
right chest cavity to correct his
chronic and persistent chest infec
tion, Cabey’s physicians indicate
that this is not an emergency
procedure.”
Sorrenti emphasized that the
youth’s life was not in danger.
a partially collapsed lung.
“There is a scheme to have the
party to prove its manhood to
whites by showing its capacity to
be unkind to Blacks,” Jackson
said. He said he is advising Black
Democrats to, “reassess their
relationship with the party.” If the
pattern of denial of Blacks con
tinue, he said, Blacks —the party’s
most loyal voting bloc —will leave
the party and become independen
ts.
Democratic Party leaders are
trying to rebuild without knowing
why they lost to Reagan, Jackson
said.
“The new direction the
.Democratic Party is following is
one of self-deception,” he siad,
“and that is not how you win elec
tions.
“The political growth industry
in this nation is in the poor,
females, young people, Blacks,
Hispanics, Asians,” Jackson said.
“That’s the growth market. To try
to read into Reagan’s victory white
male dominance is wrong.”
The future of the party, he said,
is in addressing the “laws of
organization—identifying needs,
and servicing needs to develop a
loyal constituency.”
“We now have 40 million people
in poverty looking for new ideas,”
he said. “We have middle-class
parents who can’t afford to send
their children to college. That’s a
need. Americans living in fear of
February 16.1985
month by Britian’s Lord Bethell,
who reported that Mandela had
offered to negotiate with the
government if it would recognize
his African National Congress. In
subsequent statements, Botha
specified that Mandela would have
to renounce violence first.
At the rally, the crowd roared
Mandela’s name and that of the
underground ANC’s exiled
president, Oliver Tambo —who
earlier rejected Botha’s of
fer —when Tutu asked who were
their leadrs.
“I am a leader by default,”
Tutu said, implying that he was
merely a custodian for Mandela
and Tambo. “You have just heard
See Mandela, Page 2
his condition, which is critical,
remained unchanged.
The attorneys released copies of
the “hate mail” Cabey and his
mother, Shirley, have received sin
ce he and the other youths were
shot by Goetz.
Some of the writers larded their
letters with racial epithets and
other insults and said, they were
glad Cabey was shot and hoped he
would die. One person threatened
Cabey’s life if the youth ever
testified against Goetz.
Cabey’s lawyers said the subway
gunman shot Cabey when he was
20 to 30 feet away. They said
Cabey “never spoke to Goetz; he
didn’t ask Goetz for anything.”
Goetz gunned down Cabey and
another victim, Barry Allen, who
was sitting next to him, because
“they were the only Black people
in the car,” Kunstler said.
A grand jury declined to indict
Goetz on charges of attempted
murder, charging him only with
illegal possession of three
weapons.
Goetz has received an out
pouring of public support and has
been linked to the vigilante hero of
the. 1974 movie “Death Wish ”
nuclear holocaust. That’s a need
Others who want urban American
revitalized, other Americans who
feel acutely shamed by the gover
ment’s relationship with South
Africa. The Democratic Party has
to find a combination of leaders
who can arouse people with ideas,
on the issues.”
Jackson said Kirk’s election
without support from New York,
California, the southern states or
Blacks is a continuation of the
Mondale-labor coalition that lost
the last election. “Kirk inherited
Mondale’s legacy; he won on the
muscle of organized labor,”
Jackson said.
Jackson said organized labor
was guilty of “scapegoating”
Blacks by orchestrating Hatcher’s
defeat with arguments that special
interest groups, such as Blacks,
should not dominate the party.
“I have not heard from the par
ty one rational analysis of why the
party lost,” Jackson said. The par
ty lost, he said, “because it was an
election between one candidate
who was popular and one who was
not, one leader who was
charismatic and one who was not.
One candidate said he would raise
taxes if he won, an idea so uni
popular he couldn’t coerce some
Democratic leaders to get on the
stage with him. Democratic can
[ didates were running for office and
i saying ‘I am not a Mondale
Democrat.’
Less than 75 percent Advertising
The News-Review has
learned from reliable
sources that a deal has
been struck which will
result in Assistant
Superintendent Dave
Mack being appointed to
replaceßobert N. Dixon
as associate superinten
dent.
On its face, there is
nothing wrong with that.
Mack would be Rich
mond County’s first
Black superintendent.
But the price is too high.
We are told that in
return for Mack’s ap
pointment, Black elected
officials will be expected
to publicly support
neighborhood (segregat
ed) schools. We hope
none of them will be that
foolish.
Dave Mack and many
other Blacks are well
qualified to serve on their
own merit in any capacity
in the Richmond County
school system. And these
appointments should be
made with no strings at
tached. The appointmen
ts should be based on
their qualifications, the
historical denial of Blacks
at the executive level, and
because of the Black
representation in the
student population (52
percent).
There is no reason that
any deal should be made.
Certainly not one in
which we have to sell our
souls.
We would be among
the first to admit that in
tegration has had its
shortcomings. However,
Blacks reasses their loyalty to the party
“White males were led away
from the party by Democratic
white males,” Jackson said. He
said many prominent Democrats
deserted Mondale, incluidng Sen.
Albert Gore Jr.(D-Tenn.), Sen.
Howell Heflin(D-Ala.), Sen. Carl
Levin(D-Mich.), Sen. Paul
Simon(D-Ill.)and former North
Carolina governor James B. Hunt,
who lost his Senate race against
Sen. Jesse Helms(D-N.C-).
Jackson said the record Black
turnout—about 10 percent of the
national turnout and higher in
several large states —almost all
went to Democratic candidates and
“should be seen as a party asset
and not a liability.”
While the Black vote could not
stop the Reagan landslide, Jackson
said, it “cut his coattails” by
helping Gore, Heflin, Simon and
Levin to win Senate seats and
carrying Democratic candidates
for state office to victory despite
Reagan’s triumph.
Jackson said the party now is in
danger of losing the allegiance of
Black voters because “the bird in
hand is being sacrificed for the
bird in the bush without realizing
how much the two birds have in
common.... You don’t have to give
up -°"i}S.F e JJu e iic t is r urging Black
Democrats to reassess their
relationship with the party. He
siad Black voters are becoming in
dependents and shifting from par-
Souls for sale?
Editorial
there is nothing about it
that would justify a
return to segregated
(neighborhood) schools.
It is high time that the
Black community took a
hard look at the people
making these deals. They
are the same dealers who
are trying not only to
resegregate us, but to
consolidate us, annex us
ind otherwise sell us for
their own purposes.
In none of these deals
will the interest of the
Black community matter.
Black people have died
fighting segregation and
other forms of
discrimination including
annexation, con-
solidation and at large
voting.
Most of these tricks are
old enough that they can
not get past the Black
electorate unless some
Blacks can be found who
can / convince us that
poison isn’t poison—that
it really won’t kill, and
that we just have a false
“perception” of it.
We don’t believe that
the Black electorate is
that foolish, and we hope
that our elected officials
aren’t either. However,
we do know that some of
them will sell us at the
drop of a hat, and it is
high time to stop letting
them pose as our leaders.
They were elected to
represent us, not to sell
us. And those who
would betray us with
schemes like neigh
borhood schools ought to
be replaced.
ty politics to voting rights enfor
cement and voter registration.
“Blacks and Hispanics tend to
win according to boundary lines,
not party lines,” Jackson said.
“So the Rainbow will keep its
focus on voting rights enforcement
because that is the jugular vein of
new politics in this country.... Both
parties reject power for minorities.
So we will get a new lever on power
and win without the par
ties.... When you can win, the
other folks want to coalesce with
y0u.... More and more, Blacks
have to go around the chicanery of
the machinery, and if you can win
without the party, it puts you in
position to rework your position
within the party.”
Jackson contended that the par
ty’s movement away from Blacks
is part of a national wave against
fair treatment for Blacks. He siad,
for example, Bernhard H. Goetz
was not indicted for shooting four
minority youths in the subway.
“The climate in the country is
cold for Black people,” he siad.
“It amounts to a cultural con
spiracy.... People are starting to
look at Blacks like maybe,
something is wrong with these
people.... There is nothing wrong
with Blacks demanding a humane
foreign policy or sensible defense
spending or protesting budget cuts
that leave them unprotected or
asking for a good education. We
will not back dow" ”
304