Free the Freedom Fighters!
February 1, the first day of Black History Month, was the day of an enormously important event calling for: “International Workers Action for Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and all Anti-racist and Anti-imperialist Freedom Fighters!”—a long title for an on-line Webinar encompassing a huge goal—to bring workers action to bear to free a range of U.S. political prisoners who have spent long decades in prison. All of these prisoners—like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Jamil Al-Amin, Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, Ed Poindexter and others were targeted, prosecuted, and imprisoned because they were and continue to be active opponents of the policies and practices of the capitalist state. Those who were not given slow death row sentences—Life Without Parole—but did have parole dates that are repeatedly denied, such as Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Veronza Bowers, Ruchell Magee, Reverend Joy Powell, Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli), Bill Dunn, and others, are also elders, many are ill and have suffered dangerous COVID infections and other serious diseases including heart attacks, strokes, diabetes. All have faced the lack of decent medical care in prison. All of these prisoners are suffering because they have actively resisted the oppressive conditions imposed on this country and the world by the U.S. ruling class and its so-called justice system.
The February 1 panel was initiated by two organizations: the Black Panther Party Commemoration Committee (BPPCC) and the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC). In its initiating statement the BPPCC said “the capitalist ruling elite’s policy of white supremacist divide-and-conquer rule has been their most effective means of maintaining power…[T]hey destroy the leadership of all sectors of the oppressed [through] a policy of mass incarceration…genocide, apartheid, slavery, penal servitude…extra-judicial lynching.”
The importance of the event is underscored by the active participation as panelists of former political prisoners Angela Davis, Jalil Muntaqim, Jihad Abdulamit (and the endorsement of several other former political prisoners,) as well as international panelists. These included Irvin Jim, General Secretary of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa; Tony Burke, of Unite the Union, UK; and Akiko Hoshino, widow of the Japanese anti-war political prisoner, Fumiaki Hoshino, and also representing the Japanese rail union Doro Chiba. Unite the Union and NUMSA are the largest unions in their respective countries. All of these international representatives have supported Mumia for many years and expressed active solidarity with him and other political prisoners (see transcripts of their messages accompanying this article.) International support and participation for the panel also came from Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Argentina, France, and Germany.
An important focus of the panel was the attention given to prisoners who were active members of the Black Panther Party when the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies carried out actions—including killings—to destroy the organization in the 1970s. Similarly, in December 2000, after then-President Bill Clinton said he would consider Leonard Peltier’s request for clemency, the FBI staged a protest rally outside the White House to protest the possibility that justice would be served. Peltier is still imprisoned.
The goal of the panel was to inspire and encourage action by unions and other working-class organizations to join the struggle to free these prisoners, recognizing that, as the Unite representative said, “states that are built on exploitation and injustice will always lock up or attempt to silence those who really stand up and challenge the system at its core.” The prisoners represented in the February 1 event all have challenged the system at its core! The director of the Jericho Movement for political prisoners, Jihad Abdulamit, said, “Any movement that champions human rights must support these freedom fighters!”
The Oakland Education Association in California has taken up the call to action and is in process of organizing a teach-in to teach students about this key aspect of Black History and the current situation with prisoners. This takes place in the middle of a massive community and union struggle to defend schools in the Black and Latino communities that are faced with closures by the Oakland district administration. Keith Brown, the president of the OEA, was one of the panelists, and he spoke of the union’s history of support for Mumia, for removing cops from the Oakland schools, opposing racist school closures, and defeating the direct effort of the Fraternal Order of Police to censor Oakland Unified School District’s curriculum.
Mike Africa, Jr., the son of MOVE members Mike and Debbie Africa, who was born in a Pennsylvania prison, spoke about the “Love not Phear” campaign, and saying that Mumia is like Bob Marley and Muhammad Ali, that “it’s all about love.”
The original call to action inspiring the February 1 panel was based on a call by NUMSA when Mumia was very ill, and the prison was ignoring his condition. NUMSA put out a call for workers around the world to put pressure on Pennsylvania governor Wolf to provide treatment for Mumia, citing Mumia’s innocence, comparing Mumia’s condition with the anti-apartheid prisoners in South Africa, and pointing out that Mumia’s opposition to the policies of U.S. capitalism is the reason he is in prison. NUMSA’s call to workers action was endorsed in a resolution at the June 2021 Convention of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The resolution was submitted by Local 10 of the ILWU who had, in 1999, organized a work stoppage on the ports of the whole West Coast of the U.S. in support of freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was on Pennsylvania’s death row then. This was a powerful show of workers solidarity in a meaningful action that stopped production, indicating what workers, united in action at the workplace, could accomplish. This action played a role in getting Mumia off death row, although he is still on what he terms “slow death row”—an accurate name for a Life Without Parole sentence. Two retired members of ILWU, Local 10, Jack Heyman and Clarence Thomas, were panelists.
Gloria La Riva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation presented information on new developments in the case of innocent Native American leader, Leonard Peltier, who was hospitalized with COVID. An intense campaign with widespread support is underway to urge President Biden to free Peltier, who has been in prison for 46 years, though he was blamed, but not charged with murder. La Riva showed a powerful video of Jean Roach, (who was a teenager on the Wounded Knee reservation during the events that sparked the false accusations against Peltier) speaking at a Florida news conference for freeing Peltier.
Former political prisoner, Jalil Muntaqim, the founder of the Spirit of Mandela tribunal on U.S. genocide, spoke eloquently about Ruchell “Cinque” Magee’s 58-year imprisonment, and the imperative of winning his freedom.
Mumia’s case is the exemplar of how far the ruling class will go to deny fairness in a case where the defendant challenges every aspect of the oppressive, racist capitalist system. Mumia is demonstrably innocent. The judge, Albert Sabo, who ruled in his case and in his post-conviction appeals, was heard by a court reporter to state “I’m going to help them fry the nigger.” Black jurors were excluded. Witnesses were bribed and threatened to lie on the stand. Documents were hidden in the D.A.’s office. Major corruption infected the Philadelphia Police Department up to its top levels. This was powerfully explained by Rachel Wolkenstein, a former attorney for Mumia, who highlighted Mumia’s Black Panther Party history and his advocacy for the MOVE organization, which made him well-known to the Philadelphia police. Major corruption infected the Philadelphia Police Department up to its top levels and included: the inspector who oversaw the crime scene, two false “eye-witnesses,” the putative murder weapon, and fabricating that Mumia confessed. This inspector knew who Mumia was. Evidence supports that the U.S. Justice Department as well as then-District Attorney Edward Rendell collaborated in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Wolkenstein has also made the point that current “progressive” D.A. Larry Krasner has joined the chorus of Judge Sabo, cops, the Fraternal Order of Police, and D.A.s who have endorsed the guilty verdict and post-conviction denials of appeals and validation of the guilty verdict.
A statement from Julia Wright, daughter of author Richard Wright, was read by the moderator, Cleo Silvers, a former Panther and member of the Young Lords, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Silvers injected the powerful labor concept that “An injury to one is an injury to all,” throughout the panel, and advocated for the upcoming May Day actions, that labor unions sponsor all over the world, include demands for freeing freedom fighters, anti-racists and anti-imperialists.
The essential value of the February 1 event is the commitment to Leave No Imprisoned Freedom Fighter Behind! The effort to mobilize the power of the working class is also a defense of the young current and future freedom fighters and is a necessity for defense of all who face the cruel oppression of the capitalist system.
Following are a few of the international statements presented to the February 1 Webinar:
Message of NUMSA General Secretary, Irvin Jim from Johannesburg, South Africa
I greet you on behalf of the biggest trade union in South Africa, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), which represents over 350,000 metalworkers. We are honored to be part of the International Workers Action calling for the immediate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all other anti-racist and anti-imperialist freedom fighters who are languishing in prisons.
NUMSA is a Marxist-Leninist inspired trade union which has always been at the forefront of struggles of the working class and the poor, not just here in South Africa, but all over the globe. Around the world, Imperialism—with its dehumanization and brutal violence has allowed for a small minority to permanently accumulate wealth at the expense of the masses of our people. The ten richest capitalists have doubled their wealth in the last two years by killing women and men from Afghanistan and Iraq to South Africa and the prisons in the U.S.A. In this context, our only option is to recommit ourselves to international solidarity as one of our unions’ core pillars. We cannot defeat our capitalist oppressors without the unity of the working class.
It is our revolutionary duty to raise the levels of consciousness and to organize the working class as a class for itself so that it can drive an agenda in its own interest and transform society in a meaningful way.
In this struggle, our allies are freedom fighters like Julian Assange and Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom we demand that they be immediately released from prison.
During the dark days of Apartheid, international solidarity from the progressive formations around the world helped to amplify the struggles of the Black and African working class in South Africa by putting pressure on countries to impose sanctions on South Africa to pressurize the racist, Afrikaner led government to end Apartheid.
We understand the continued dehumanization of Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners within the context for Black liberation in America and the civil rights movement.
It is a damning indictment against American freedom that today, members of the Black Panther Party are in jail for life for fighting for the rights of generations of Black people on the back of whose labor the U.S. was able to become a global superpower.
The system that the civil rights movement fought against, continues today. The fact that today a Black man is guilty in the eyes of the police, and so many innocent people have been murdered, people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
These attacks are evidence that this system is untransformed and continues to brutalize the Black and African working class—both in the U.S. and abroad.
Even here in South Africa, we have political power, but we do not have economic power and the framework and foundation of the Apartheid system have not been uprooted.
This is why the masses of our Black and African people continue to languish in poverty whilst a small group of white monopoly capitalists continue to get rich.
Our comrades of Abahlali Basemjondolo, whose struggle for land, housing and dignity in South Africa’s shack settlements,1 are being imprisoned in the name of the continued sanctification of private property. In all essential respects, therefore, the colonial status of the Black majority has remained in place.
What has essentially happened is that we have updated our oppressive system with new administrators.
Today the enemy of the working class is this brutal capitalist system which is racist in character, because its victims are always overwhelmingly Black and Brown people of the world.
The entire system is geared towards protecting the ill-gotten wealth of the elite. At its core, this is why people like Mumia and Julian are treated as “public enemy number one” by monopoly capitalists who are willing to destroy the world and its people to continue the expansion of their imperialist interests.
Dozens of workers have been wounded or have died at the hands of our police for simply expressing their constitutional right to protest. This is because the police, just like our courts, serve the interest of the elite.
But we are not alone in our experiences. We know that capitalism is in crisis all over the world. And the attacks on the global working class are unrelenting.
Even in America, we see how capital is exercising its dominance over the rights of workers. We hear shocking stories about the ill-treatment of workers at Amazon, and the courage of workers who participated in the John Deere strike.
Our antidote to attempts by imperialists to divide us along ethnic, gender, tribal and racial lines is true internationalism and solidarity among all those in the world who are exploited and oppressed.
When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels concluded the Communist Manifesto on February 21, 1848, they demanded that: “Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose except your chains…” The only path to our collective liberation is to unite the working class against our common enemy, which is this evil capitalist system in its imperialist stage.
Therefore, we could not keep silent when we heard about the plights of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julian Assange, the persecuted members of Abahlali Basemjondolo and all political prisoners.
Since 2016 we have been supporting this call and we will continue to express solidarity with him.
We believe that he is innocent and has been framed by the corrupt racist justice system in the U.S. We could not stay silent, and we felt it was our duty to say something and to do what we can to lend our voice to demand justice for him.
As NUMSA, we demand Abu-Jamal’s immediate and unconditional release. It is the responsibility of all genuine revolutionaries—to defend the defenseless all over the world, and Abu-Jamal, Assange and all political prisoners deserve to be defended.
At the same time, it is our responsibility to organize and mobilize the working class wherever we find ourselves.
In our own way as NUMSA we have done so. Besides the battles we wage in the workplace, we have been instrumental in the creation of a genuine socialist, worker-controlled political party, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party.
Through this vehicle we are raising the levels of consciousness on the ground, and we are deepening the work of international solidarity. We have put socialism back on the map in South Africa.
This is crucial because if the there is indeed to be genuine change in our society, then we must unite and fight to remove this unjust capitalist system and all its social ills.
All of us (in this seminar and listening throughout the world) must recommit ourselves to the work of mobilizing and organizing all those oppressed by the greedy, racist, imperialist, capitalist system as part of the struggle to build a society that advances humanity.
Akiko Hoshino
Co-Chair, The Hoshino Defense Committee
This is the message of Akiko Hoshino, widow of Fumiaki Hoshino, anti-imperialist war prisoner in Japan who died in prison two years ago and was a comrade of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Hello everybody who is fighting for freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners. We send our solidarity greetings from the Hoshino Defense Committee and Doro-Chiba railway workers union in Japan. Freedom to our friends who are being framed to prevent the overwhelming majority of working people from speaking out against a state designed to protect the interests of a handful of capitalists! Now is the time to win liberation. We are particularly concerned about the deteriorating health of Mumia; he must be released immediately. Let us join forces.
In 1971, my husband, Fumiaki Hoshino, led the demonstration in Shibuya, Tokyo, in defiance of the ban against the ratification of the Okinawa Reversion Agreement—reinforcement of U.S. military bases there. He was sentenced to an indefinite term of imprisonment for a false murder charge and spent 44 years behind bars. Three years ago, he had liver cancer surgery in a medical prison and was deliberately killed by the negligence of post-surgery care; he was retaliated against for continuing the Okinawa struggle in the prison. I am now conducting the state compensation lawsuit. We submitted a doctor’s opinion that if the hemorrhage had been stopped by reopening the abdomen, there was almost a 100 percent chance that Fumiaki would have survived.
Fumiaki said, “If all human beings cannot live humanely, I cannot live humanely. I want to live my life so that all people can live humanely.” Inheriting the will of Fumiaki Hoshino, the Hoshino Defense Committee and Doro-Chiba will organize an appeal to the U.S. Embassy in Japan for the release of Mumia and American political prisoners.
In preparation for the war of aggression against China, the Kishida government is forcing the construction of a new military base in Henoko, Okinawa, and conversion of Nansei Islands including Okinawa into intermediate-range missile bases, which would turn entire Okinawa into a battlefield.
As Mumia says, we must change the very system. Okinawa is particularly important. The struggle to free political prisoners is a struggle that raises hopes for working people. Let’s strengthen the power of international solidarity.
Unite!
Message from Unite the Union, UK by Tony Burke
I’m Tony Burke the former Assistant General Secretary of Unite the Union2 in the UK and I want to start by saying it’s a privilege for Unite to have been asked to make an intervention at this vitally important and timely meeting.
Unite has a long and proud history of standing shoulder to shoulder with those that are the victims of oppression and injustice, and we take our international solidarity work very seriously—especially around political prisoners.
Comrades, many people around the world look to the U.S.A and have the naïve belief that it really is the land of liberty, freedom, and equality.
They simply have no idea about the injustices and inequalities that exist in the U.S. or how the justice system really operates—the structural racism and deep political bias that pervades the system.
But frankly that’s also no different to the naïve impression that many people around the world have about the UK, where just as many structural inequalities and injustices exist, and where my country’s record of political incarcerations runs long and deep.
Unite has always understood that states built on exploitation and injustice will always lock up or attempt to silence those who really stand up and challenge the system at its core.
That’s why we stand with you today in your call for the liberation of political prisoners in the U.S. and around the world.
That’s why back in 2015 when there were real fears about the health of Mumia, Unite joined the international demands for immediate medical attention and for his immediate release.
We re-iterate that call today and we join you in the call for the liberation of all prisoners that are being held on political grounds, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the remaining Black Panthers who still sit in jail decades after being imprisoned.
And I think it’s important to also remember that it’s not just American citizens that are locked up indefinitely by the American state.
My union had a huge campaign demanding the liberation of the Cuban 5 when they were locked up in the U.S. after doing nothing other than trying to expose and prevent the terrorism of Cuban exiles against the island of Cuba.
We also continue to call for the freedom of Simon Trinidad, the Colombian political prisoner who should have been liberated with the other former combatants when the peace agreement was signed in 2016, but who still sits in an American jail in total and indefinite isolation.
And as committed internationalists we are under no illusions about the inherently racist nature of the American justice system and how it punishes those who dare to question how America works or behaves—whether that’s from people inside the U.S. or outside.
But on top of recognizing that the U.S. imprisons people from both within and without on a political basis, as committed internationalists it’s also vitally important we understand that the struggles in our own countries are inherently linked to the same struggles to free political prisoners around the world including Julian Assange, held in a British jail at the behest of the U.S. government, for telling the truth about the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And you can be proud that on May Day 2008 the Longshoremen’s union shutdown all West Coast ports in America to oppose that war!
It’s why for two decades we have campaigned for the release of so many of the Colombian political prisoners who were held under trumped up charges of terrorism—mostly for simply having the audacity to try and stand up for their rights against the murderous Colombian state and—a state that was shamefully supported by the U.S. and the UK.
It’s why we currently have a big campaign—that I personally have been heavily involved with—demanding the liberation of the jailed Kurdish political leader Abdullah Ocalan who has been locked up for over 20 years and held in total isolation with no access to lawyers or his family.
It’s why our solidarity work with the people of Palestine includes the demand to release the Palestinian political prisoners who are locked up in appalling conditions, again for simply daring to challenge the Israeli oppression and to demand an end to the apartheid regime that is being installed there.
Last year dockworkers supported picket lines of Palestinian supporters against the ZIM Lines ship VOLANS, protesting at the slaughter of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Comrades that’s what international labor solidarity looks like.
And it’s why, of course, we, like so many others around the world, stood at the center of the demands to Free Nelson Mandela and end apartheid in South Africa—at a time when Margaret Thatcher and right wing UK politicians was still referring to Mandela as a terrorist for challenging apartheid and white supremacy.
So, I close with this.
Comrades, your struggle to free your political prisoners is the same struggle that is going on in the UK and many, many other countries in the world and we stand with you in that fight.
Just as you’ve seen the rise of Trump and a Far-Right racist movement that has become ever more powerful and ever more dangerous, so too we’ve had the Brexit, anti-immigrant movement of Boris Johnson and the right wing of the Tory party.
Just as you have witnessed waves of renewed police brutality and moves to remove the right of death row prisoners to even be able to appeal their cases, so we see in the UK moves to further limit our right to take actions like boycotts and divestment, and new legislation to limit the right to protest.
Just as you witness a dominant right wing media feeding lies and propaganda to fan the flames of hatred and divisions, so too we face the same problems in the UK.
But there’s also a growing international movement that’s more and more aware that the struggles they have in their own countries are just a part of the wider struggle for global justice and equality.
And that’s why it’s our duty to continue to stand together and demand freedom for political prisoners in the U.S. and around the world.
It’s why we must urgently redouble our efforts to build the campaigns and the pressure that we need to get them free.
Unite has been with you in the past and we will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in our joint struggles—fighting for international solidarity and freedom for all U.S. political prisoners!
1 The shack dwellers’ movement that organizes land occupations, collectives, and campaigns against evictions.
2 Unite the Union is the largest union in the UK with over 1.3 million members, representing manufacturing, public services, transport, food, finance and construction.