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	Workers Vanguard No. 912	11 April 2008

Worldwide Emergency Protests Against Federal Court Ruling

“Labor Has the Power to Make the Courts Bow! Mumia Is Innocent! Free Him Now!”

After the Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Mumia’s case last May, the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black Leagues, along with the PDC’s fraternal defense organizations worldwide, announced emergency protests for the day after a negative court decision. After the federal court’s March 27 ruling upholding the frame-up conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal while ordering a new sentencing hearing, on March 28 the PDC and LBLs held emergency protests in New York, Chicago, Oakland and Los Angeles. Defense organizations linked with the International Communist League’s sections also held protest rallies in Toronto, Berlin, London on March 28 and in Paris, Hamburg and Sydney on March 29. On March 28, our comrades in Mexico City organized a rally at UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico), while in Vancouver, Canada, comrades held a united-front speakout at the University of British Columbia. The protests brought out trade unionists, students, anti-racist activists as well as spokesmen from some of our political opponents on the left. These demonstrations were launching pads for the united-front protests that have been called for April in cities around the world (see campaign announcement, page 7), part of the fight to revive the movement for Mumia.

In New York, some 130 protesters joined the picket line called by the PDC and LBL in lower Manhattan. PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein called the decision an outrage, adding: “Once again, Mumia’s case proves unquestionably the injustice that exists in the capitalist legal system.” As Wolkenstein noted in a statement to a March 31 press conference in Philadelphia called by Pam Africa, coordinator of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal: “The Third Circuit decision created another set of ‘Mumia rules’—those exceptions to well-established judicial precedent.” Her statement continued: “Every possible legal avenue must be vigorously pursued to challenge the Court of Appeals’ decision. But we cannot afford to have any illusions. The pressure that can make the courts yield is that of mass international protest, crucially based on the power of labor.”

At the New York City protest, Mumia’s daughter, Goldii, gave a powerful speech, calling to continue the fight to free Mumia:

“Mumia Abu-Jamal is guilty of nothing. He is an innocent man and his life is at stake by the state for nothing, because of his political beliefs. We need to let people know, all the people out here on the streets, Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! We will not let him die!... The evidence to prove that he is innocent is there. But they want to deny it because they are afraid of him, because of his eloquence, his intelligence….

“People on the street, you need to take action! You need to read some real stuff from the Partisan Defense Committee, read some information for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Please, we are not going to let this happen!”

Monique Code also spoke at the New York rally, on behalf of Mumia’s son, Jamal Hart, who was framed up and sentenced in 1998 to 15-and-a-half years in prison on bogus firearms possession charges—the state’s revenge for his devotion to the campaign to free his father. Charles Jenkins, member of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 and Second Vice President of the NYC chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, called to mobilize labor: “We have some brothers from the TWU and, along with myself, we intend to put the leadership on the spot—to raise the issue of not putting money into the politicians’ pockets but to fight for the social issues that affect every one of us. Free Mumia! Labor has to do its part in this struggle.”

Tom Cowperthwaite spoke for the LBL and pointed to the social power shown by his union, TWU Local 100, when it went on strike in December 2005 in defiance of anti-strike laws, crippling New York City for three days. He said: “Imagine if one of our demands had been ‘Free Mumia!’” He stressed the need to combat illusions in capitalist Democratic politicians, such as Barack Obama, that are an obstacle to the consciousness necessary to mobilize labor’s independent power.

Several PDC and Spartacist supporters also attended a protest held the same day in Harlem, which had been called by the New York Free Mumia Coalition after the PDC/LBL had already announced plans for emergency protests. That rally, which had no speakers and was attended by nearly all the left groups in the city, drew about 200 people. It was followed by a planning meeting for the April 19 Philadelphia demonstration, where coalition leader Suzanne Ross stated: “If we can bring enough pressure in the streets, then Hillary Clinton might support Mumia—for one minute—to get the black vote”! Several people groaned in disbelief and a PDC supporter blurted out, “Are you out of your mind?!” Ross’ statement is the crystallized (and inane) expression of the reformists’ subordination of the fight to free Mumia to liberal pressure politics.

At the Oakland PDC/LBL protest, which drew over 100 people, Fred Hampton Jr., the son of the Black Panther Party leader killed in 1969 by the Chicago cops working with the FBI, addressed the crowd: “We made it clear that the same U.S. COINTEL program that targeted Fred Hampton when he was 14 years old, the same COINTELPRO that targeted Mumia Abu-Jamal when he was 16 years old, the same COINTELPRO that has increased the bounty on the head of Assata Shakur, our modern-day Harriet Tubman..., that same counterinsurgency, the same vicious COINTELPRO continues.” Also speaking in Oakland, along with other unionists, was Jack Heyman, a representative of the ILWU Local 10 longshore union.

At the Berlin emergency protest, called by the Committee for Social Defense (KfsV), Steffen Singer, speaking for the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany, section of the International Communist League, pointed to the way reformist organizations in Germany covered the new court decision in Mumia’s case. Citing the headline of a column in the paper of Linkspartei (Left Party), “New Hope for Mumia,” Singer explained: “What this headline meant was: stay at home, trust the courts, you don’t have to go into the streets, everything will be okay.” Those class-collaborationist politics, Singer said, are what we “have to fight consistently if we want to get a mass movement on the streets again.”

The KfsV has issued an April 3 leaflet to mobilize a class-struggle contingent for a Mumia protest called by the Berlin Coalition for Mumia for April 12. The leaflet explains: “Not only the multiracial working class in the U.S., but also the multiethnic working class in Germany and Europe, has every interest in fighting for Mumia…. The capitalist rulers in Germany use racist oppression to split the multiethnic working class in Germany, with its central component of Turkish and Kurdish workers…. A union that defends Mumia, defends itself.” The leaflet raises the call to defend the Turkish leftist DHKP-C and the Kurdish PKK, targeted by the German government as “terrorists.”

Everywhere, the emergency protests—in their speeches, chants and placards—demanded freedom for all class-war prisoners. In New York, chants rang out for freedom for the Cuban Five and the eight surviving members of the MOVE 9. The MOVE prisoners have spent some 30 years in prison on frame-up charges stemming from the death of a Philly cop who was killed in the police’s own cross fire during the vicious police assault on MOVE’s home in Powelton Village in August 1978. A parole hearing for Debbie Africa, Janet Africa and Janine Africa is scheduled for April 10. Free all the MOVE prisoners now!

At the London protest, Steve Hedley from the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union took on the question of calls for a new trial, noting: “There was never ever any arguments that the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four should have another trial. These people were innocent…it was a frame up. We all know that Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed up, there’s absolutely no need whatsoever for another trial. He’s an innocent man.”

At the Toronto protest, Fred Loft, a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said: “We, the aboriginal people, have the same issue going on with Leonard Peltier. Leonard Peltier was an innocent man that was said to have killed two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation. All fabricated evidence.” He noted that Mumia “belonged, at one time or another, to the Black Panther organization. Leonard Peltier, again, belonged to AIM [American Indian Movement].”

At every protest, speakers for the SL and other sections of the ICL emphasized that the fight to free Mumia is central to our defense of the working class and oppressed and to the fight for socialist revolution. In Los Angeles, SL speaker Diana Coleman noted that “the fight against capitalism at home, including for Mumia’s freedom, also means fighting against imperialism abroad.” Against the reformist left’s support to the counterrevolutionary calls to “Free Tibet,” speakers underlined our unconditional military defense of the Chinese deformed workers state. Workers Vanguard salesmen highlighted the article, “Counterrevolutionary Riots in Tibet,” in WV No. 911 (28 March).

Mumia is hated and feared by the ruling class as “the voice of the voiceless” and a symbol of black revolt. That is why the capitalist ruling class has marked him for death. As the PDC has underlined, Mumia fought for all of us; now we must rededicate ourselves to fight until he is set free.