A recording by Mumia of the following greetings was heard at the January 6 New York Holiday Appeal.

Partisans of the PDC! Ona Move!

Fraternal Greetings!

This Holiday Season is perhaps the direst in memory; not because of my situation, but because of our situation.

A deliberately-created slump in the economy; soul-sucking wars abroad; the very real specter of imperialism and aggression around the world via NATO, and, here at home, joblessness, foreclosures, crony capitalist looting gone wild, and the growing, biting repression of the State—prisons bursting at the seams, and police attacking the People like storm-troopers who’ve fed on gunpowder—and blood.

All of this under the authority of the nation’s first Black president, who, despite his blackness is but a Clinton clone. A servant of big business, and a cudgel against the Black Movement, which has been rapped into a rare silence—making them aiders and abetters of imperialism abroad and powerlessness at home.

And when the historically most progressive movement in the nation is stymied, other movements take the hint, lowering their voices, tempering their demands (if there are demands!), while their lives, hopes and neighborhoods slide into the abyss.

I thank the PDC for bucking this trend; for continuing to raise hell, and for their long and principled support of Jamal ibn Mumia—my son.

This season will continue to be bleak, until we change the temperature—and rumble like it’s summertime. The only thing we have to lose, is our chains!

Ona Move!

From “slow” Death Row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

* * *

(reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 994, 20 January 2012)

Workers Vanguard is the newspaper of the Spartacist League with which the Partisan Defense Committee is affiliated.