Twentieth Annual Holiday Appeal

Free Mumia! Free All Class-War Prisoners!

The Partisan Defense Committee’s 20th annual Holiday Appeal netted over $10,000 at December fundraisers in New York, Chicago, Oakland, Los Angeles and Toronto. The funds raised for the PDC’s Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund are a concrete expression of solidarity with those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression, reflecting the PDC’s character as a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization.

It is more important than ever to carry on this working-class duty in today’s “hypocritical, murderous, revolting so-called democracy,” as a Spartacist League spokesman said at the Chicago event. The speaker pointed out that the capitalist profit system left the poor and black population of New Orleans to die in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath—a racist atrocity that “can’t be separated from the bloody colonial occupation of Iraq, the shredding of civil liberties in the name of the so-called ‘war on terror’ and the imprisonment of the class-war prisoners.”

This year’s Holiday Appeal highlighted the urgent need to mobilize the power of labor and its allies to demand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. A former Black Panther Party spokesman and powerful journalist, Mumia is an innocent man who has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for over 23 years, framed up on false charges of killing a police officer. Speakers emphasized that Mumia’s case has now been put on a “fast track,” as a new court battle looms over appeals in his case.

WV No. 862 (20 January) contains a speech at the New York benefit by Rachel Wolkenstein, PDC staff counsel and formerly a member of Mumia’s legal team, as well as speeches in New York and Oakland by Spartacus Youth Club members, who emphasized the need for youth to ally with the working class. Wolkenstein detailed the massive evidence of Mumia’s innocence that has been suppressed by the capitalist courts. In Toronto, a national representative of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers spoke of the importance of Mumia’s case and the need “actually to take job action if Mumia is put on the block and the execution date approaches.”

This year’s benefits also highlighted the case of Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for nearly three decades because of his activism in the American Indian Movement. The PDC last year added Peltier to its monthly stipend program. His frame-up trial for the deaths of two FBI agents at the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 is yet more proof that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. In Oakland, Donna Wallach of the Leonard Peltier Support Group spoke, and Peltier’s attorney Barry Bachrach sent a taped message to the New York event.

The benefits provided an occasion to honor Ohio 7 prisoner Richard Williams, who died on December 7 (see our commemoration last issue). The PDC continues to fight for freedom for the two remaining imprisoned Ohio 7 members, Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning. Embattled leftist attorney Lynne Stewart, who faces sentencing on trumped-up charges of “aiding terrorism,” spoke movingly at the New York benefit of her own years-long association with Williams.

Among those attending the New York event were a number of city workers, including TWU transit workers in the midst of the union’s contract battle with the MTA bosses. A number of people attended the Chicago event after hearing it publicized on a black radio talk show. The Oakland benefit was attended by three members of the family of Patrick Gaston, a 34-year-old black man brutally killed by police in West Oakland in front of his mother and neighbors on November 10 (see “LBL Protests Cop Killing of Patrick Gaston,” WV No. 861, 6 January).

Many attending the benefits wrote messages of solidarity to the class-war prisoners in the PDC stipend program, who also include: Jamal Hart, Mumia’s son; eight Philadelphia MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—who are in their 28th year in prison; Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, former Black Panther supporters; and Hugo Pinell, a prison rights organizer and the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison.

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Those who would still like to contribute can send a check or money order, earmarked “Class-War Prisoners Fund,” to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.