Thursday 17 May-MUMIA RALLY (TORONTO)

[Logikal Ethix]

For Class-Struggle Defense to Free Mumia Now!


Join the PDC contingent at Toronto rally:

Thursday 17 May, 6:00 p.m.,

U.S. Consulate, 360 University Ave. (between Dundas and Queen)


On May 17 in Philadelphia the Third Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in what could well be the final legal appeal in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Shot and arrested on 9 December 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal—a talented journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” a former Black Panther, a support of the MOVE organization and an outspoken opponent of racist oppression—was framed and falsely convicted for the murder of police office Daniel Faulkner. Any ruling by the Third Circuit, which could come within weeks or months, will likely be appealed to the reactionary U.S. Supreme Court. Mumia is the victim of the forces of racist capitalist “law and order,” who see in him a voice of defiant opposition to the oppression of black people that is a cornerstone of American capitalism. The state’s determination to carry out his execution is a warning to all who challenge cop repression, to workers who stand up for their rights on picket lines, to those who protest U.S. depredations in Iraq and elsewhere around the world including Canada’s role in the bloody occupation of Afghanistan.

From the unions to the campuses, all out to support Mumia’s fight! The kind of pressure that will have an impact on the courts is the social power of the multiracial labour movement demanding that this innocent man be freed now. It is with this understanding that the Partisan Defense Committee has initiated numerous rallies in cities in the U.S. and Canada over the past period. In Britain on May 5 and Germany on May 12, the PDC’s fraternal defense organi­za­tions have organized similar rallies. On May 17, the day of the hearing itself, the PDC will be mobilizing contingents for demon­strations and rallies called by groups of Mumia supporters in cities including Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto. The Toronto rally, called by the May 17th Committee to Free Mumia, has been called on the demands “Mumia is innocent!” “Free Mumia!” “Abolish the racist death penalty!”—all slogans that the PDC supports and has been raising for many years. The PDC contingent there will also raise the calls, “For class-struggle defense to free Mumia now!” and “There is no justice in the capitalist courts!”

In August 1995, Mumia won a stay of execution based on worldwide protests, crucially involving the labour movement. From 1995 through 1999, new evidence was revealed in his case that further blew the state’s frame-up to bits. All the evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the testimony of William Singletary and Veronica Jones who saw the shooter run away, was rejected by the courts. Around this same time a number of reformist socialist organizations—including Socialist Action and the International Socialists in Canada—raised the call for a “new trial” for Mumia. Instead of mobilizing to free Mumia as an innocent man and victim of a political and racist frame-up, these groups mobilized on the basis that Mumia could get a new and fair hearing, leading to a new and fair trial in the same Philadelphia courts that sent him to death row. These fake socialists promote illusions that Mumia can get justice from the same U.S. capitalist state that killed some 38 Panthers under its murderous COINTELPRO operations, and that massacred eleven black people, including women and children, in the 1985 firebombing of MOVE’s Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia.

Many of these so-called socialist organi­zations now raise “freedom for Mumia” in conjunction with calls for a “new trial.” However, their politics remain in the framework of reliance on the bourgeois state. Behind the attempts to misdirect the struggle for Mumia to a call for a “new trial” is a political program premised on reliance on the capitalist state—a program directly counterposed to a mobilization of working-class power for his freedom. This political program of tying the masses to their class enemies and pushing faith in the capitalist state demobilized millions who once filled the streets in support of Mumia.

Mumia’s case lays bare the workings of the capitalist state. His frame-up conviction was not the act of one “rogue” cop or prosecutor or judge, but that of an entire system that cannot be reformed. Mumia’s innocence has been attested to by mountains of evidence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, killed Faulkner. Arnold Beverly stated that he was hired to kill Faulkner, whose interference with prostitution, gambling and payoffs made him a problem for the mob and corrupt cops. More than five years ago, Mumia’s attorney submitted this confession to the courts, but to the racists in black robes, a court of law is no place for evidence of the innocence of this fighter for the oppressed.

The frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal symbolizes what the racist death penalty in the U.S. is all about: a legacy of chattel slavery, the lynch rope made legal. We oppose the death penalty on principle—we do not accord the state the right to say who lives and who dies. With the execution in December 2005 of Stanley Tookie Williams, over substantial popular opposition, the ruling class sent a signal that they are deadly serious that Mumia will soon be another victim of the barbaric death penalty.

In the international fight to save Sacco and Vanzetti, James P. Cannon of the International Labor Defense pointed out, as the rulers geared up in 1927 for the legal lynching of the two anarchist workers: “It is, of course, absolutely right to exhaust every legal possibility and technicality in the fight, provided—that the workers have no illusions.” He emphasized: “We must appeal at the same time to the laboring masses of America and the whole world who are the highest court of all.” This is the class-struggle defense strategy that the Partisan Defense Committee stands on.

The worldwide movement for Mumia must be revived on the basis that Mumia is an innocent man who must be freed now, that his conviction is a racist, political frame-up, that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. The capitalist state and its courts are not neutral institutions but organs of repression against the working class and the oppressed. Mumia’s freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged “justice” system or on capitalist politicians, whether Democratic, Republican or Green.

The PDC, a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste, fights to mobilize the social power of the multiracial labour movement—those who create the wealth of this society and who can shut it down. That is why our contingents in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto on May 17 are based on the need for class-struggle defense to free Mumia and the understanding that the capitalist state serves the interests of the racist ruling class, in Canada as much as in the U.S. Labour must be mobilized independently of the very forces of the capitalist state that framed up this innocent man! The road to victory in Mumia’s case begins with the understanding that the class enemy is determined to carry out his execution. The multiracial working class has every interest in fighting against that outcome, which would further bolster the machinery of capitalist state violence whose ultimate target is the working class.

The contingents we are building for May 17 are a step toward the labour-centered, mass united-front mobilizations needed to free Mumia. Such mobilizations must send the court the message: We will not let Mumia die or rot another day in prison! Free Mumia now!


--Partisan Defense Committee, 11 May 2007


For more information, contact the PDC at (416) 593-4138 or e-mail pdctoronto@bellnet.ca. Website: www.partisandefense.org
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[UNKNOWNMIZERY]

WE WILL BE THERE, I WANNA SEE ALL THEYOUNG PEOPLES AND ALL MYCOMMNITY MEMBERS OUT HERE.

KILLIN YOUR BROTHER AND RUNNING FROM THE COPS ISNT GANGSTER, MARCHIN ALONGSIDE YOUR BROTHER -AND RUNNING TOWARDS THE COLONIZER IS.


STOP LIVING FOR NOTHING, DIE FOR SOMETHING!!
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"the bitter road is the right road/ no one said it was easy"