Editor's note: Another body in the river

Socialist Review, 2001 by Stamps, Wickie

"Some years ago, after the disappearance of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwirner in Mississippi, some friends of mine were dragging the river for their bodies. This one wasn't Schwimer. This one wasn't Goodman. This one wasn't Chaney. Then, as Dave Dennis tells it, `It suddenly struck us - what difference did it make that it wasn't them. What are these bodies doing in the river?'

"That was nineteen years ago. That question has not been answered, and I dare you to go digging in the bayou."

-James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (p. 99)

The body count in the struggle against capitalism just rose. Carlo Guiliani, a 23 year old protester was shot and killed by the Italian police during the July 19th antiglobalization demonstrations in Genoa, Italy. Guiliani, a member of the "Black" anarchist contingent, was less than two miles from a conference of the governments of the world's largest industrialized nations.

Guiliani's death was noticed. In fact, it made the front page of the New York Times - for several days in a row. That's news. Articles about the killing, photos of Guiliani's confrontation with the Italian police as well as images of his body crushed under the wheels of a police vehicle - were slathered across international newspapers. TV coverage and worldwide internet coverage were equally extensive. A month later Guiliani's death is still "news."

That Guiliani's death occurred within a political context - he was at the anti-globalization demonstration - was never questioned. The same Times lauded the activist's shooting as "the first death in the demonstrations on globalization." All other media, on the left, the right and the middle, concurred. Guiliani died in the midst of a political event.

There were, of course, the predictable swipes at the legitimacy of the young protester's actions. The Times off-handedly referred to the events surrounding Guiliani's murder as "riots." Fellow anti-globalization activists denounced Guiliani's tactics, distancing themselves from the aggressive strategies of the "Blacks" - which included looting, burning and direct confrontation with the police. But, despite these aspersions, Guiliani's death remained legitimate, a political death in a midst of a political struggle.

Death happens all the time. Indigenous people are murdered for their land; women are killed by their abusers; prisoners, domestically and internationally, are found dead in their cells; homeless people die on the streets. Most of these killlings either go unnoticed or are portrayed as the deaths of thugs out for trouble - as in the ongoing murder of black male youth here at home. These casualties end up on police blotters, become a statistic or sink into nameless obscurity.

It takes a movement for these names to be remembered and for their deaths to be understood as political.

Some murders gets attention. Guiliani's did. He was a floater, rising all the way up to the front page of the New York Times. But what about all those other bodies in the river?

Vickie Stamps,

Executive Editor