PDC Speaker at Chicago United-Front Rally

Mobilize Labor’s Power to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Break with the Democrats! For a Workers Party!

In the two months since the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the frame-up conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal on March 27, the Partisan Defense Committee, which has championed Mumia’s defense for over 20 years, launched two rounds of protests as part of an international campaign to rekindle the mass movement necessary to win Mumia’s freedom. Having anticipated that the Third Circuit’s ruling would be unfavorable, the PDC—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—and the Labor Black Leagues last summer called for emergency protests to immediately follow the court’s ruling. Building on these protests, which took place on March 28 and 29, the PDC called a series of international united-front demonstrations over the next five weeks, initiated under the slogans: “Mumia Abu-Jamal Is Innocent! Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!” The PDC and its international fraternal defense organizations also organized Class-Struggle Contingents in a number of protests called by other groups.

The speech printed below by PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein, who served on Mumia’s legal defense from 1995 to 1999, explains how Mumia, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter and award-winning journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner and sent to death row solely for his political beliefs. The fight to free Mumia must be based on the understanding that there can be no illusions in the “justice” of the courts, which for over 25 years have shredded Mumia’s rights. What is needed is mass protest, crucially based on the power of labor. The hundreds who mobilized for the recent protests must be turned into thousands upon thousands determined to spike the capitalist rulers’ plans to reinstate Mumia’s death sentence or bury him in prison for life. All efforts on Mumia’s behalf must be redoubled. America’s rulers must be made to understand that there will be a massive social price to pay if Mumia is not freed.

The PDC-initiated united-front protests brought together individuals and organizations representing diverse political viewpoints—trade unionists, anti-racists, death penalty abolitionists, gay rights activists, leftists and others—united behind the struggle to free Mumia. On April 19, some 200 demonstrators mobilized for the united-front protest in Oakland, while over 100 came out in London and in Toronto. On April 23, 55 people turned out for the united-front protest in Sydney, Australia, and some 100 people protested on the campus of the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Mexico City the following day in a united-front demonstration initiated by our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México, section of the International Communist League. On April 26, 200 people joined the united-front protest at Federal Plaza in Chicago and up to 150 demonstrated outside the Westwood Federal Building in Los Angeles. Some 50 people rallied in Melbourne, Australia, on May 17.

Additionally, the PDC and the New York Labor Black League for Social Defense mobilized a Class-Struggle Contingent of some 150 people for the April 19 demonstration in Philadelphia called by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, which drew some 600 protesters. The contingent included workers from New York City’s Transport Workers Union Local 100 and other unionists, as well as students from local colleges and others. The same day, the Committee for Social Defense, the PDC’s fraternal defense organization in France, also built a contingent of over 60 people at a Paris protest that drew over 200 demonstrators, while our comrades of the GEM participated in a protest of some 50 people in Mexico City. On April 12, the Committee for Social Defense in Germany had mobilized a Class-Struggle Contingent of 80 people in a demonstration called by the Berlin Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition that drew about 300. The contingents marched under the slogans: “Mumia Abu-Jamal Is Innocent! Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! Mobilize Labor’s Power—For Mass Protest!”

The PDC campaign for Mumia has been heavily built by the Spartacist League and other sections of the ICL. Over 500 endorsements for the united-front protests were collected from individuals and organizations, including unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers (for a list of endorsers, go to: www.partisandefense.org). The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Western Cape endorsed and issued a statement that declared, “COSATU endorses the campaign to free Comrade ABU JAMAL…. We will stand with the millions of people across the world that are calling for justice to be done and will join the protest against this travesty of justice.”

Some 40 trade-union locals internationally endorsed the united-front protests, including AFSCME DC 37 Local 375 in New York City, Amalgamated Transit Union Locals 241 and 308 in Chicago, Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3902 in Toronto, International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina, and United Steelworkers Local Union 675 in Carson, California. Additionally, former Black Panther Party leaders like Elaine Brown and David Hilliard endorsed, as did Rosario Ibarra, National Coordinator of ¡Eureka! in Mexico, South African actor Dr. John Kani, Cynthia McKinney (U.S. Green Party candidate for president) and well-known writers like Cornel West, Gilles Perrault, Robert Allen and Manning Marable. Cuban author Celia Hart endorsed, as did Aleida Guevara March, Che Guevara’s daughter. A statement of solidarity from imprisoned American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier declared, referring to himself and Mumia: “Given the choice of lying down to die or standing up to live, we chose to live. Standing up and living is our only crime.”

Black nationalist groups spoke in London, Chicago and Oakland. The London protest included a speaker on behalf of Galaxy Radio, which had publicized the PDC-initiated demonstration. Jessica Huntley, who helped found Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, gave a vivid picture of Mumia’s professionalism and political knowledge as a journalist when she had met him in 1981. She said that Mumia called her after he was arrested, telling her he was in prison for a crime he did not commit. In Oakland, the crowd was addressed by Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Francisco Torres and Ray Boudreaux of the San Francisco Eight, former Black Panthers who are now being dragged through the courts on frame-up charges of killing a cop, which had been dismissed 30 years ago. Boudreaux stated, “Mumia has no windows but he sees what’s going on in the world. Many of us are asleep. So wake up and stay woke! Free Mumia!” In Chicago, Bill Hampton, brother of Fred Hampton, the Chicago Black Panther Party leader who along with Mark Clark was assassinated by the Chicago cops in 1969, declared: “We know that Mumia is innocent. We know he belongs out here with the people. He’s part of the people.”

Trade-union officials who addressed the various demonstrations included, in L.A., Rosie Martinez, chairperson of the Latino Caucus of SEIU 721, which represents county and city workers in Southern California. In Toronto, Kevin Shimmin, National Representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, spoke, while at the London rally speakers included Stephen Hedley and Dean O’Hanlon of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and Paul Moffat, Eastern Region Secretary of the Communication Workers Union.

It is vital to turn union endorsements and statements into mass labor action for Mumia’s freedom. The fight to free Mumia must be based on a strategy of class-struggle defense: the understanding that capitalist society is fundamentally divided between two hostile social classes—the capitalist exploiters and the working class—and that the capitalist state and its courts are organs of repression against working people and the oppressed. The diversity of those who endorsed, helped build and participated in the recent protests, especially trade unions around the world, lays the basis for going forward.

In fighting for Mumia’s freedom, we seek to reverse the longstanding demobilization of Mumia’s supporters. What was once a mass movement that brought tens of thousands into the streets has been demobilized by a host of reformist organizations that promoted the illusion that Mumia could get “justice” in the capitalist courts. This has been expressed in the longtime subordination of the call for Mumia’s freedom to the manifestly bankrupt call for a “new trial.” In building the protests, the PDC underlined the need for genuine united-front action for Mumia’s freedom: unity in action based on agreed-upon slogans and complete freedom of criticism. As the PDC stressed in its “Open Letter to Fighters for Mumia’s Freedom” (WV No. 912, 11 April), what is necessary is “open debate about what strategy is needed to rebuild the movement for Mumia and fight for his freedom…. Had the political counterposition between our call to ‘Free Mumia’ and those advocating a ‘new trial’ been openly debated over the past decade, the movement for Mumia today would have been stronger and firmly based on the need to mobilize to free this innocent man.”

Addressing the NYC emergency protest on March 28, Mumia’s daughter, Goldii, said that the rulers want to kill Mumia “because they are afraid of him, because of his eloquence, his intelligence.” The capitalist rulers, Democrats as well as Republicans, are determined that Mumia be imprisoned for life or executed. Paula Daniels, speaking for the Spartacist League, stated at the Chicago protest: “Help us build that revolutionary workers party that fights for Mumia’s freedom, for black freedom, women’s liberation and defense of gay rights, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants…. The first American Revolution gained independence from the British, the second smashed slavery. It’s time for a third, a workers revolution.”

Working people and all the oppressed have a stake in the struggle to free Mumia. As the PDC emphasized in its 11 April international call for the united-front protests, “The fight for Mumia is the fight for black rights, for workers’ rights, for the rights of all the oppressed.” We urge Mumia’s supporters to publicize his case further in the unions, on campuses and on the streets. Pass motions in your unions, campus, community and other groups demanding Mumia’s freedom. Make a contribution to Mumia’s legal defense (see ad below), mobilize for the next round of protests, which must number in the many thousands. Help build the PDC and join the struggle to free Mumia and all class-war prisoners.

We print below, in slightly edited form, PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein’s speech to the Chicago united-front protest.

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I’m very glad to be here today and I’m very glad to see everyone here. It’s truly appropriate to have this rally today, the day after the outrageous decision acquitting the cops who killed Sean Bell. It’s very important to recognize that the three police officers who pumped 50 bullets at Sean Bell were acquitted yesterday. It should be a wake-up call for anyone who still has illusions in the capitalist courts, who thinks there can be justice from the courts absent the strength and the social power of labor and mass protest.

We are all here today in protest and opposition to the state’s vendetta against Mumia. Mumia should never have spent a day in jail. He is an innocent man. We demand that Mumia be freed, now. Free Mumia now!

It is an outrage that the March 27 federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision leaves Mumia still facing a possible death sentence—or at best, spending the rest of his years in the living death of prison hell. It is an outrage—like the infamous Dred Scott decision—in which the black-robed judges declare, yet again, that Mumia, a fighter for black freedom, has no rights that the courts are bound to respect. The decision is an outrage, but not a surprise—the capitalist state has targeted Mumia since he was a teenager.

From the age of 14, Mumia raised his voice—as a Black Panther Party member and later as an outspoken journalist and as a MOVE supporter. And for that, Mumia was framed up for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

Mumia’s only crime is his unbending opposition to racism, police brutality, poverty, imperialist war and colonial depredations and injustices—from Iraq and Afghanistan to Puerto Rico. The “voice of the voiceless” fights not only for the rights of blacks in the U.S., but also for the oppressed around the globe.

When Mumia was just 14 years old, he joined the Black Panther Party and soon became the Philly chapter’s Minister of Information. The Black Panther Party was the best of a generation of militant black youth. They were not down on their knees before the American rulers, and they believed in armed self-defense. The U.S. capitalist state, through the FBI and local police, carried out a war of murder, mass arrest and frame-ups against the Panthers. Hundreds were arrested, and some 38 Panthers were murdered, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago. Mumia was placed on a government list when he was 15 years old for the “crime”—in the view of the FBI—of being an effective spokesman.

Mumia’s recognition that the rights and conditions of blacks in the U.S. are indivisible from the rights of all the oppressed goes back to his earliest period. He was interviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, a mainstream paper, in January 1970, shortly after Hampton and Clark were murdered. There he said: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” In this, he disputed and challenged the state’s prerogatives to keep the poor, blacks and all minorities under the jackboot of cop terror. This statement of elementary truth was used against him 12 years later in his frame-up trial. During the sentencing phase of his trial, Mumia described what this meant, saying, “It’s very clear that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun or else America wouldn’t be here today. It is America who has seized political power from the Indian race, not by god, not by Christianity, not by goodness, but by the barrel of a gun.” And for this Mumia was sentenced to death!

The death sentence in the U.S. is the legacy of slavery, it is the lynch rope made legal—part and parcel of the extralegal terror of the KKK fascists and the killer cops in the ghettos and barrios. There are over 3,000 people on death row in the United States. All of them should be released from the spectre of death. We are opposed to the death penalty for all of them. We in the Partisan Defense Committee oppose the death penalty as a matter of principle—the state should not determine who is to live or to die. We say: Abolish the racist death penalty! We are opposed to the entire racist frame-up system.

Mumia’s 1982 death sentence and the commitment of the state to see him dead or locked up for life are not the result of the action of one racist judge—though there was a racist judge—nor of rogue cops or of one overzealous prosecutor. This is the workings of the capitalist injustice system. In Mumia, the forces of racist “law and order” see the spectre of black revolt.

The court decision that just happened is just a newer version of the December 2001 decision by a federal court judge. Then, over six years ago, Mumia’s death sentence was overturned and his conviction upheld. Mumia responded six years ago, saying: “I continue to be innocent. A court cannot make an innocent man guilty.... Another year of struggle, another year of fighting, not for life in a cage, but for freedom.”

The Court of Appeals’ decision continues the policy of the state and the federal courts to refuse to even consider the mountains of evidence proving that Mumia is an innocent man. Mumia was framed up for his politics in a trial that everyone here knows was a travesty of justice—a racist and political frame-up. Every leg of the prosecution’s case against Mumia has been proven time and again to be a fabrication, from Mumia’s so-called “confession” to the prosecution witnesses who were coerced into false testimony, to the nonexistent ballistics evidence.

Beginning over fifteen years ago, the PDC attorneys who were then part of Mumia’s legal defense team, myself and Jon Piper, who is also here today, found and uncovered massive evidence of Mumia’s innocence. This includes witness William Singletary, who said Mumia was not the shooter; witnesses Veronica Jones and Pamela Jenkins, who testified that the prosecution witnesses were coerced into lying; forensic evidence that proved the prosecution’s story of the shooting was totally fabricated; and the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia’s own declaration in 2001 stated, “I did not shoot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. I had nothing to do with the killing of Officer Faulkner. I am innocent.” Yet the Court of Appeals decision repeats every single lie of the cops and the District Attorney.

The Third Circuit decision created another set of “Mumia rules”—exceptions to the well-established precedents that are supposed to govern the court’s decisions, if law was to be law in this country. While directed at Mumia, the court of appeals ruling is an attack on the rights of all of us. This includes vitiating the applicability of the Supreme Court decision that held that prosecutors should not exclude jurors based on race. The court upheld the exclusion of black jurors and approved the outrageous racist conduct of Judge Sabo. The Third Circuit made “Mumia rules” in order to undermine those rights that are supposed to be in the Bill of Rights for everyone, including the requirement that the government prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. To that end, the Third Circuit gave license to the prosecutor’s unconstitutional argument to the jury that they could convict Mumia because he’d have “appeal after appeal after appeal.”

The decision is an integral part of the “war on terror,” which was launched in its current form after September 11 by targeting Muslims. It is intended to intimidate and persecute black people, immigrants, workers and leftist opponents of the U.S. government. And that includes activists of all sorts, including Andy Thayer, one of the endorsers of this demonstration, who is facing trumped-up felony charges of aggravated battery (see “Chicago Gay Liberation Network Activist Targeted—Drop Charges Against Andy Thayer!” WV No. 914, 9 May).

The ruling in Mumia’s case confirms, again, that no justice can be expected from the capitalist courts. Every possible legal avenue must be pursued vigorously to challenge this recent court decision. But we cannot afford to have any illusions in fair hearings and impartial judges.

The state has made clear time and again its commitment to see Mumia dead or rotting in prison for the rest of his life. The question is: Why? As Mumia himself said after the recent court decision, in an interview with Fred Hampton Jr., this decision is “not a victory…. For those in the establishment, I represent, in many ways, their greatest nightmare…. Those people who live it…know that the life of a black person in the ghetto or the life of a brown person in the barrio today is unmitigated hell.” What those in the establishment “fear is the black revolution reigniting.”

There is a pressure and there is a power that can make the courts yield—that is the power of mass international protest, crucially based on the power of labor. This is what stayed the executioner’s hand in August 1995, after a death warrant for Mumia was signed.

It is all the more urgent today to revitalize mass protest to free Mumia on the basis that he is an innocent man and to link his fight to the struggle to abolish the racist death penalty—to expose the race and class injustice of the American legal system. Mumia’s freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged “justice” system or through capitalist politicians, whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Greens. It is very notable and not an accident that this decision came just before the Pennsylvania primary, where both Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, support the death penalty. Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who is a major force in the Democratic Party nationally, was the D.A. that framed Mumia.

It is hardly a coincidence that this decision also came just before the parole hearings scheduled for the eight surviving members of the MOVE 9, who have spent 30 years in prison. And parole has just been denied to the MOVE women. Free the MOVE prisoners now! Mumia’s oldest son, Jamal Hart, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on frame-up charges for having been outspoken on behalf of his father. We also call to free Jamal Hart!

The social power to free Mumia is in the hands of the workers who can stop production, transportation and communication in demanding: Free Mumia now! The fight for Mumia’s freedom is integrally linked to the fight for every worker for a living wage, for every immigrant for full citizenship rights. It is part of the broader struggle to end every manifestation of repression, exploitation and oppression around the globe.

We stand here together in much smaller numbers than should be out here today, but nonetheless representing in embryo the potential power to free Mumia—organized labor, joined by civil rights activists, radical students, leftists, all committed to fighting until Mumia is freed from the hellhole of living death in prison! Free Mumia now! Free Mumia now! Free Mumia now!