Build the Campaign to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Mumia Honored in France

On April 29, the city government of Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, named a new street in honor of class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Some 150 people attended the dedication ceremony, held a few steps from Nelson Mandela Stadium. The French Communist Party (PCF) city mayor, Didier Paillard, hailed Mumia for becoming “a symbol of the fight for justice.” Patrick Braouezec, PCF member of Parliament and president of the group of towns that includes Saint-Denis, said, “We in Saint-Denis wished to find an event which would allow us to salute the fight led by Mumia in prison, not just for him but for all those today who are on death row and who have been condemned to death.”

The fight to free Mumia, America’s foremost class-war prisoner, has reached a critical turning point. His legal case has been put on the “fast track” by the Third Circuit federal appeals court and decisions that will put his life in the balance could be made within months. At the event in Saint-Denis, Rachel Wolkenstein, Partisan Defense Committee counsel and a former member of Mumia’s legal team, emphasized: “The cops, prosecutors and the entire so-called ‘criminal justice system’ have colluded to kill Mumia for the crime of being an eloquent and effective critic of racist oppression, for being a former Black Panther Party member, and for being a MOVE supporter. In Mumia, the U.S. government sees the spectre of black revolution.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed up and sent to death row, falsely charged with killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Shredding their own precedents, court after court has rubber-stamped the wholesale trampling of Mumia’s rights at his 1982 sham trial. The courts have barred proof of Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he—not Mumia—shot and killed Faulkner. In fact, in the current round of court hearings, Mumia is barred from presenting evidence that he had nothing to do with Faulkner’s killing. Mumia’s opening brief, due July 13, is limited by the courts to three issues: the D.A.’s racist jury selection that kept blacks off the jury in Mumia’s 1982 trial; the D.A.’s prejudicial closing argument stating that the jury should convict because Mumia would get “appeal after appeal”; and the grossly biased state post-conviction hearings before the notorious hanging judge Albert Sabo, who presided over the original trial.

Wolkenstein was invited to address the Saint-Denis gathering to speak on the Beverly confession and other evidence that proves Mumia’s innocence. Referring to the current legal proceedings, she warned, “We cannot be lulled by the fact that the courts have agreed to hear legal issues which could lead to a new trial or new appeals proceedings. It is necessary and urgent, now more than ever, for there to be a mass mobilization based on the power of labor. The rallying cry for this movement must be to free Mumia now! That Mumia is an innocent man—that the frame-up was racist and political.” This is a vital point in the fight for Mumia’s cause. The international mass movement that stayed the executioner’s hand after a death warrant was signed in 1995 has since been demobilized, not least by the reformist left and liberals who subordinated the fight for Mumia’s freedom to the call for a “new trial.” These groups promoted the illusion that the very same courts that have kept Mumia on death row for 24 years could give him justice.

In an interview printed in the PCF’s daily newspaper, L’Humanité (25 April), Mumia himself said, regarding the current court hearings: “I have very little hope in a favorable decision from the Federal Court which has accepted to look at three points of the petition submitted to appeal by my lawyers.” As Wolkenstein underlined in her speech: “We must place all our faith in the power of the masses. It is that power, centered on the power of labor to shut down the workings of this system, which can free Mumia now. The courts will provide justice for Mumia only when faced with the determination of that power.”

Other speakers at the Saint-Denis event included Robert Bryan, Mumia’s attorney; Pam Africa and Ramona Africa of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ); Julia Wright, daughter of author Richard Wright and coordinator of the International Committee in Solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal and Political Prisoners, Paris; and Leslie Jones from the Youth for Mumia and the ICFFMAJ. Also present at the event were our comrades of the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League, who for years have played a key role in bringing Mumia’s case to broader forces in that country. Mumia sent a note of thanks and solidarity to the gathering.

Ramona Africa, who spent seven years in prison for the “crime” of being the only adult survivor of the government’s 1985 bombing of Philadelphia MOVE (see “Remember May 1985 MOVE Massacre,” this page), powerfully spoke of the government’s vendetta against MOVE and Mumia: “The government murdered my family but nobody went to prison for it except me. Nobody sits on death row for burning babies alive. But they want to convince you that Mumia is a murderer and that he should be executed. Mumia is innocent.”

In the U.S., the death penalty is a legacy of black chattel slavery and represents the pinnacle of state terror. Though in France the death penalty has been abolished, minorities, particularly those of North and West African descent, face daily police brutality and racist discrimination, a legacy of French colonialism. As Wolkenstein stated, minority youth in France “are stigmatized as potential ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘casseurs’ [hooligans—a racist codeword] and ‘anti-Semites’. When young people revolted in the banlieues [suburban minority ghettos] last fall, the workers movement should have taken up their cause. They should be freed, granted amnesty and all charges dropped!”

In her speech at Saint-Denis, Wolkenstein emphasized: “A labor-centered campaign on Mumia’s behalf must be built on the principle of political independence of the working class from the capitalist class enemy and its state. In the U.S., just as the so-called ‘war on terror’ is supported by both major parties of capitalism, Democrats and Republicans, Mumia is in all their gun sights. In France, that means no illusions in a new Popular Front.” This was a warning against the attempts in France by the PCF, the Socialist Party and several small bourgeois parties—such as the Chevènementistes, the Left Radicals and the Greens—to form a new popular-front capitalist government, disarming the working class by tying it to the class enemy.

It is crucial that Mumia’s fight be taken up internationally. A week before the Saint-Denis event, a French delegation from the PCF and CGT trade-union federation participated in a meeting in Philadelphia for Mumia’s defense. Earlier this year, a coalition including the PCF, the CGT, and other labor, anti-racist and left groups launched a drive to raise 100,000 euros (close to $130,000) for Mumia’s defense. And in Mexico City on May Day, a comrade from the ICL section Grupo Espartaquista de México addressed a rally of some 15,000 people sponsored by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), calling on Mexican workers and youth to join the campaign for Mumia.

The key to Mumia’s freedom lies in the social power of labor. In her speech, Wolkenstein referred to the fact that France was rocked this spring by two months of massive protests, involving student youth and workers, and strikes against the hated First Employment Contract, forcing the government to back down. This is the kind of social power that must be mobilized behind Mumia’s cause! As Wolkenstein stated: “That Mumia is innocent is the truth. That the capitalist state has spent decades putting its lying, corrupt class- and race-biased forces to work to see Mumia dead is also the truth. But we need to use these truths and bring out more power, social power, to fight for Mumia’s freedom.” Free Mumia now! Abolish the racist death penalty!