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Speeches from PDC rally "Let's see the freedom of an innocent man." Partisan Defence Committee We print below edited extracts from speeches at the 5 May London rally. Paul Moffat The movement is about Mumia, but it’s also about the 3500 other residents on death row, a movement for social, economic and political justice. We have a duty to fight for Mumia and oppose the death penalty, to expose the conspiracy to commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder of an innocent man. Within the Communication Workers Union, I’ve raised the campaign and taken it to the regions in the UK. We must ensure we use our trade unions’ influences to achieve mass support and mobilisation. We must use the Trades Union Congress and all the unions in the country to support Mumia professionally, publicly, individually both in the physical sense and also in the financial sense. I ask all unions present to take this campaign to heart, to take this back to your unions and wholeheartedly support Mumia and the abolition of the racist death penalty. I’ll take this up with SERTUC myself, which is the Southern and Eastern Region TUC. I have the privilege to be on the executive committee of the TUC for the southeast region, and like the Scottish TUC, I’ll be taking this to the top and the executive committee, to put through a motion as the STUC have done. Mumia’s life is in danger! Mobilise now, act now! Mumia is an innocent man. Let us all work together and work hard to free him, to expose the corruption and the web of lies of the police, the prosecutors, judges, and the state that keeps him illegally locked up for the past 25 years. Get angry, get inspired for the fight ahead! Ask for the freedom of an innocent man who is an inspiration to us all! Use your social power, use your influence, use your friends, use your colleagues, use your work, and use your organisations. Support Mumia Abu-Jamal and those like him and let’s see the freedom of an innocent man! Stephen Hedley I come from the north of Ireland, which is still occupied under British rule. And a lot of things that I saw on that DVD just reminded me of home: the civil rights movement, which was sparked in the north of Ireland from watching the black civil rights movements in the United States; the radicalisation of youth, and the people in general, against injustice, against things like not being able to vote, not being able to have a house, and the gerrymandering of electoral wards and that sort of thing is exactly the same sort of thing that radicalised Mumia in his early years. Another thing that became very apparent as the DVD continued was the same sort of policies that the British state carried out in the north of Ireland—the execution of anybody who raised their head above the parapet—was also carried out by the United States government. And just recently, after the main revolutionary organisation in the north has laid down its arms and gone into a peace process, we’ve now had the admission of what everybody in the north of Ireland knew, that there was collusion between the police and the Loyalist paramilitaries to take out not only political activists, but also lawyers who defended those political activists, and anybody who put their head above the parapet, that head was liable to be shot off by the state or its paid flunkies. I’m here as a trade unionist, and I want to speak about the role of trade unions and what we can do. It would be absolutely marvellous if we could call strikes in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal. But at this time it is hard enough to get trade unionists to strike in defence of their own wages and conditions, and that demand should be raised, but we should look at reality and where we actually are. My branch passed this motion unanimously but I don’t see many people from my branch actually here. And that’s just not good enough. It’s all about raising the profile of it and convincing people. And I take my hat off to the Partisan Defence Committee. I’m not a member of it and I don’t agree with a lot of their politics, but this is a very good example of awareness-raising. The last time they were going to execute Mumia it was this committee who raised [it]—he really did become an international figure because of the work that went on. But what can the trade unions do? We’re not dropping the demand that unions come onto the streets and mobilise in support of Jamal. We’ve got to get resolutions through branch meetings and progress them up to the top of the trade unions. I know our General Secretary Bob Crow has already, in a personal capacity, endorsed this campaign. But it’s different than the whole union taking it on board and I think everybody who’s a trade unionist has to get these motions passed at their meetings and pushed up to national level. We can all see from the evidence that has just been portrayed that that is why Mumia was picked out. It wasn’t because he shot anybody, it wasn’t because he was a criminal. He certainly wasn’t a criminal. He comes across as a very, very thoughtful man, and not someone who would criminalise himself in any way. He was a spokesman for people who were disenfranchised, and that was why they picked him out, and they made an example of him. People used to be hung by the side of the road as an example to other people: don’t do this. And that’s exactly what they’ve done with Mumia, what they’re trying to do with him. Matthew Ryder Not all campaigns around criminal cases are easy. Many contain grey areas, and sometimes to understand the case properly, you have to look past the crime the person is alleged to have committed and look at the political context in which they are supposed to have committed it. But this isn’t really that kind of case, and it’s therefore a much easier campaign for me to support than many campaigns, and the reason it’s so easy is because Mumia is clearly an innocent man. The battle of course is getting the courts to accept that. An innocent man is on death row and has been sentenced to be killed, and he should be free. And this case is that simple, and we should all be working hard to make sure he is free. Governments in enacting the laws they enact and in prosecuting the people they prosecute are much more open than they used to be about the political nature of how they move against citizens. For many, not only do those protections not exist, but there is not even a pretence that they exist. Terrorism is the paradigm within which the most aggressive political action is now taken by the state against citizens. And there is no definition of terrorism in anybody’s textbook or anybody’s dictionary other than one that is a subjectively political definition. It creates a permanent state of emergency and a permanent state of fear. Under the guise of fighting terrorism, the most extreme forms of state political action can be sanctioned. Here in England now, you can be detained without trial. You can be prohibited from undertaking all sorts of activities, such as the use of the Internet or associating with other people, unless they’ve been named and approved by the government. So, in one view, the crude framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal might not be necessary now. It might have been necessary back then, but it might not be necessary to the Mumia who would be operating today. There would be no need to pretend to give somebody a fair trial, or a fair appeal, the political nature of his case would be more transparent. Mumia, long before his trial, would probably have been characterised as a terrorist, and they wouldn’t have needed to charge him with a crime. He could simply have been stopped. So what does that difference tell us about Mumia’s case today? For me in some respects, it makes Mumia’s case much more straightforward because, if according to those who prosecuted and convicted him and deny his appeal, if he is simply a criminal, then why isn’t he being judged on the evidence? If, as the prosecutors claim, Mumia is not a political prisoner, if Mumia is not a so-called terrorist, using the current language, then why isn’t Mumia free? If this isn’t a political prosecution, why hasn’t he been freed, when the evidence shows, as we’ve all seen, that he has not committed a crime? If the system that convicted him is supposedly colour-blind and supposedly politically neutral, why will it now not release him when we can all see that his conviction is wrong? Those questions for me are what makes Mumia’s case so important, not just to people in America, but to us and people all over the world. Glenroy Watson Like Steve, I hope that we can get trade unionists out on the street to make these protests. I was fortunate to have been in South Africa with my oldest daughter when we saw on the streets of Johannesburg a march for Mumia Abu-Jamal. And you didn’t need previous notification, we just saw that and we realised what it was about, and we joined in. Mumia is known for supporting many struggles. Mumia is known for supporting the MOVE campaign. Mumia is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the state’s intention to wipe out the Black Panther Party is not unknown. So there are many reasons why this campaign screams at people for justice. And I believe we should reach out everywhere we can get such support. Probably not as appealing to the church and the mosque and so on, but we’ve got to tell them also. If they believe in justice, if they honestly believe that something should be done, then we should ask them to stand up on their principles. There was a time when the trade union movement would have been in its droves about supporting this, and to oppose unfair deportation, and unfair immigration status. I remember supporting at the TUC with Bill Morris [of the Transport and General Workers Union], who was demanding that immigration rules be changed, the unfair system that exists. As trade unionists, we should make a further commitment to go and demand [the T&G’s] participation in issues and events like this. I’m from the age where we used to be on the street fighting deportation, carrying out pickets, ensuring that people are not sent to countries that they are running away from. Gareth Peirce Perhaps unbeknownst to you, I have sent many faxes in the middle of the night on behalf of Mumia in the past. Not just for myself, I’ve added the names of Gerry Conlon, Paddy Hill, Billy Power, Paddy Armstrong and so on. We know that [the evidence] was suppressed, fabricated, manipulated; that there has been perjury at the highest level. Now, in this country, we are pretty much experts in that. We’re experts because this is precisely our methodology, and it has been for many years, in how to subvert a fair trial for a person, particularly a person who is perceived by the society in which they live, as an outcast or an outlaw. We have a situation in this country where so much has now been done in the name of the war on terror, that it would not be the slightest surprise if the Home Office and our government said the time has come to reintroduce the death penalty. We have found ways of evading the entire question of a jury trial at all. In December 2001, in imitation of Bush and his Patriot Act, Blair said we have a threat in this country so extreme that the fabric of society is threatened, and we will therefore reintroduce internment, but we will only do it for foreign nationals. They are free to go to the countries that will torture them, but we will lock them up indefinitely without trial. And so arbitrarily, in one fell swoop in this country, without anyone knowing and with very little protest, they introduced an absolute 100 per cent avoidance of jury trial. For a very, very brief moment when it became clear that there were British citizens in Guantánamo Bay, and that they were building a death chamber next to where they were incarcerated and that two British citizens were to be the first to be tried before those kangaroo courts, there was an across-the-board reaction in this country, and a revulsion that our government had done nothing and said nothing. We have in our power to say we will not have this in our name, but we don’t use it. And I simply warn that: Beware. It is little use some years later being surprised at things that are done that we have watched in silence and ignorance and may have come to pass. And so part of what we can say to this amazing campaign for Mumia, amazing campaign which could not have sustained itself over all these years if there was not an absolute understanding of the integrity and truth and justice of what it was saying, and of the man it was saying it about—what we can contribute is that we must learn from history. When we defend cases now we are haunted by what goes wrong. We can see it coming. We can see the innocents now before the courts who are going down. In a way that is not intended to be callous. We are privileged to have the example of Mumia. It should haunt us. And with that privilege we should return what we have learnt and do everything we can to achieve his release. We look forward to meeting him and having him join the ranks of those who through their lives and their suffering have taught us all of the absolute injustice of our systems and our country is at the forefront of what it has contributed.
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