21 May 2024

Letter Protesting Arrests of New York City Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators

The Partisan Defense Committee strongly protests the arrest of hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the New York City area in the last weeks. Most recently, on May 18 police violently assaulted protesters in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn arresting 40. Hundreds, at an annual event commemorating the infamous Nakba (dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland) of 1948 and demanding an end to Israel's genocidal attack on Gaza, were set upon by riot-clad cops. (read more…)

6 May 2024

Defend SAIC Pro-Palestine Activists!

Shut Down All Campuses!

The pro-Palestine encampment near the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was attacked and dispersed by Chicago police on May 4, just a few hours after it was set up. Some 68 people were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. (read more…)

4 May 2024

Protests medical neglect of Leonard Peltier

The Partisan Defense Committee vigorously protests your medical neglect of Leonard Peltier. Mr. Peltier suffers from diabetes, kidney disease, vision loss and hypertension, conditions that without proper and regular medical treatment threaten his life. Clearly, he can only receive life-saving treatment outside of the prison system. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Leonard Peltier. (read more…)

3 May 2024

Defend UCLA Pro-Palestine Activists!

Shut Down All Campuses!

The UCLA encampment was viciously attacked under cover of darkness early on May Day by an organized and genocidal mob of Zionists. The pro-Palestine students bravely held the encampment and repelled an hours-long barrage of fireworks, bear spray, bricks and sticks. This violent assault comes as Israel prepares the slaughter of the Palestinians in Rafah with renewed fury. Throughout the lead-up to the attack, the UCLA administration ensured the Zionists were protected by police and campus security, including at a massive counter-protest right outside the encampment a few days ago. Under orders from Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom, the LAPD and CHP ended up dismantling the encampment and arresting over 200 student protesters. UCLA activists urgently need the powerful organized L.A. labor movement to rally to their defense! (read more…)

30 April 2024

Down With Police Siege at Columbia, CCNY!

Shut Down NYC Campuses to Defend Pro-Palestine Protests!

The U.S. rulers, soaked in Palestinian blood, are pulling out the stops to end the student protest encampments as Israel gears up to massacre the population of Rafah. From Biden to Hochul to Adams, the Democrats have been clamoring to unleash the cops to attack and dismantle the encampments, slandering the pro-Palestinian students as "violent" and "anti-Semitic." At Columbia, cops in riot gear stormed onto campus and hauled off dozens of protesters who had occupied Hamilton Hall. The NYPD plans to remain on campus until at least May 17 at the request of the administration. At CCNY, they assaulted students with tear gas and pepper spray before arresting them. This is an outrage?and it looks like the repression will only grow more brutal as the night goes on. An injury to one is an injury to all! For citywide campus strikes to defend the protests! No reprisals or bans! Drop all charges! (read more…)

April 2024

Ed Poindexter 1944-2023

Former Black Panther and class-­war prisoner Ed Poindexter died in the Nebraska State Penitentiary at age 79 on 7 December 2023. Ed was a leader of the Omaha National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF), an organization affiliated with the Black Panther Party. Imprisoned on bogus charges, Ed spent more than 53 years behind bars for a crime that he transparently did not commit. (read more…)

April 2024

Free Umar Khalid!

For nearly four years, Umar Khalid, an outspoken opponent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's increasingly repressive regime, has been locked up in Tihar prison complex. Khalid, a leftist Muslim champion of democratic rights for national and religious minorities in India's prison house of peoples, was arrested in September 2020 for his prominent role in protesting against passage of the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Charged with sedition and violation of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), he has been denied bail and faces lengthy incarceration if ultimately convicted. The Partisan Defense Committee has written the Indian Embassy demanding the immediate release of Khalid and the many other anti-Modi protesters and the dropping of all charges. (read more…)

April 2024

Free Georges Ibrahim Abdallah!

The Partisan Defense Committee has added Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Lebanese fighter for Palestinian rights and determined opponent of imperialism, to our class-war prisoner stipend program. In his 40th year in prison, Abdallah has spent more time behind bars than any other class-war prisoner in France and most likely all Europe. We demand his immediate release. (read more…)

22 January 2024

Letter Protesting Arrests of Bay Area Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators

The Partisan Defense Committee demands that the charges leveled by your office against 78 demonstrators who were part of a 16 November Bay Bridge protest against the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza be dropped immediately. (read more…)

14 December 2023

Free Oosaka Masaaki Now!

We vigorously demand the immediate release of Oosaka Masaaki and demand that all charges against him be dropped. Since 2017, Oosaka has been imprisoned in solitary confinement and denied any visitation rights. He is being tried on multiple fabricated charges, including the killing of a policeman at a demonstration in 1971 against the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, which stipulated the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. Oosaka participated in this 1971 demonstration, which itself was met with severe repression by the capitalist state. (read more…)

31 October 2023

Hands Off Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators!

On October 26 the Partisan Defense Committee sent protest letters demanding the dropping of charges against scores of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in New York City and we urge others to do the same.

The next day over 300 were arrested at NYC’s Grand Central Station—many more are sure to follow. There has been widespread repression against pro-Palestine demonstrations in cities in the U.S. and around the globe, and a frenzied McCarthyite backlash against pro-Palestinian activism around the country, especially on campuses. It is all part of a vile campaign to brand those showing solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people as being anti-Semitic or even terrorists. These acts of repression represent a threat to anyone opposing the Israeli massacre of Palestinians, which is backed to the hilt by the U.S. and other imperialist powers. (read more…)

26 October 2023

Letter Protesting Arrests of Bay Ridge, NYC Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators

The Partisan Defense Committee vigorously protests the arrest of scores of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the New York City area in the last weeks. This culminated in a police assault on protesters on October 21 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where at least 5,000 marched to demand an end to Israel's raining of death and fire on Gaza. The cops wielded a deafening LRAD (long-range acoustic device), a device supposedly banned after it was used against Black Lives Matter protests. Video footage shows NYPD officers viciously assaulting and punching a group of demonstrators for "failure to use a sidewalk." The 22 arrested, including 3 juveniles, were also spuriously charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. (read more…)

29 September 2023

Drop All Charges Against Uhuru!

For backing Russia against U.S./NATO and protesting against black oppression, three members and supporters of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and the Uhuru Movement, APSP chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Joanne Hess and Jesse Nevel face five years in federal prison on spurious charges of conspiring to act as “agents” of a foreign power—Russia. They also face an additional five years for failing to register as “agents,” which for 81-year-old Yeshitela and 77-year-old Hess would be a death sentence. This racist witchhunt is a dangerous attack on the rights of free speech and association and a threat to labor, black people, socialists and anyone who opposes U.S. imperialism. It must be stopped. We call on all workers, civil rights, civil liberties and left organizations to demand: Drop all charges! Hands off Uhuru! (read more…)

28 August 2023

Mississippi Atrocity Only Tip of the Iceberg

Open All Police Archives!

A Proposal to Rebuild the Movement

For the longstanding “crime” in racist capitalist America of a black man getting too close to a white woman, six Mississippi cops, self-labelled the “Goon Squad,” inflicted on two black men hours of perverse racist sexual assault and torture reminiscent of the KKK lynch mob “tarring and feathering” that terrorized black communities in the South a century ago. In an attempt to cover for their grotesque crimes, these cops did what cops normally do: they planted drugs on their victims. Earlier this month, in what seems like an anomaly to most, the six white cops pled guilty to assaulting Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker.

Make no mistake, it’s not a matter of a few bad apples, rogue racist cops or isolated instances confined to the “red states” of the South. The entire capitalist state is the goon squad for the racist capitalist rulers and commits crimes like this on a regular basis. Recall that it was five black cops that tortured and murdered Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Two weeks ago, cops of various backgrounds were busted in Antioch and Pittsburg, California, for hunting down and siccing dogs on black people and others for “fun.” The same Fulton County Jail in Georgia where Trump’s mugshot was taken is notorious for the many gruesome deaths of mainly black prisoners. These and countless other examples show that what was exposed in Mississippi is only the tip of the iceberg: Enough! The true crimes of the capitalist state must be exposed to all! (read more…)

July 2021

Class-War Prisoner Jaan Laaman Released

After nearly 37 long years, Jaan Laaman, the last of the remaining Ohio 7 still in prison, was released from the U.S. Penitentiary in Pine Knot, Kentucky, on May 15. Laaman had been convicted for his role in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ‘80s. Laaman faced prison torture, having been isolated in solitary confinement for extended periods. (read more…)

July 2021

Class-War Prisoner Jeremy Hammond Released

On March 5, after nearly a decade of unjust incarceration, anarchist Jeremy Hammond was released from federal custody. Hammond had been serving a ten-year sentence for hacking the computers of the Stratfor private security firm. He passed on emails exposing Stratfor's spying on leftists at the behest of corporations and capitalist governments to WikiLeaks and dozens of media outlets. As he approached eligibility for early release, he was hauled before a grand jury assembled to witchhunt WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Like Chelsea Manning, Hammond refused to testify and was jailed in contempt of court until the grand jury expired in March 2020. He was then remanded back to the federal Bureau of Prisons to serve out the remainder of his sentence. We welcome his release noting he never should have spent a day behind bars in the first place. (read more…)

July 2021

Class-War Prisoner Jeremy Hammond Released

On March 5, after nearly a decade of unjust incarceration, anarchist Jeremy Hammond was released from federal custody. Hammond had been serving a ten-year sentence for hacking the computers of the Stratfor private security firm. He passed on emails exposing Stratfor's spying on leftists at the behest of corporations and capitalist governments to WikiLeaks and dozens of media outlets. As he approached eligibility for early release, he was hauled before a grand jury assembled to witchhunt WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Like Chelsea Manning, Hammond refused to testify and was jailed in contempt of court until the grand jury expired in March 2020. He was then remanded back to the federal Bureau of Prisons to serve out the remainder of his sentence. We welcome his release noting he never should have spent a day behind bars in the first place. (read more…)

21 February 2020

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Still Fighting for His Freedom

This year marks the 40th year in prison—the first 30 spent on death row—for class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, MOVE supporter and award-winning journalist. Condemned to prison hell in a textbook frame-up that featured racist jury-rigging, evidence tampering, phony ballistics, terrorization of witnesses, lying prosecutors and a judge who boasted “I’m going to help them fry the n----r,” Mumia was convicted and sentenced to be executed for the shooting death in December 1981 of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Both Pennsylvania and federal courts have rubber-stamped the multiple violations of Mumia’s constitutional rights and turned a blind eye to the mountains of evidence of his innocence—including the confession of Arnold Beverly that he shot Faulkner. In 2001, a U.S. District Court judge overturned the death sentence and ten years later the Philly D.A.’s office dropped its efforts to legally lynch Mumia, content to watch him suffer the slow death of life in prison with no chance of parole. (read more…)

21 February 2020

MOVE Speakers Address Holiday Appeal

Enduring some 40 years of prison hell and persistent persecution and victimization, the seven survivors of the MOVE 9 have over the past 20 months all been released—Debbie, Janine, Janet, Mike, Eddie, and, most recently, Delbert and Chuck. Merle Africa died in prison in 1998 as did Phil in 2015, both under suspicious circumstances. The MOVE 9 were framed up on bogus conspiracy and murder charges stemming from the killing of an officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire during a murderous police assault on their Philadelphia Powelton Village home in August 1978. Despite evidence of their innocence, the MOVE 9 were sentenced to 30 to 100 years behind bars. For years, they were continually denied parole for refusing to confess to a crime they did not commit. (read more…)

21 February 2020

Nina Droz Released!

After nearly three years in U.S. Federal custody, Puerto Rican activist and class-war prisoner Nina Droz Franco has finally been freed. On February 7, Droz was let out of a halfway house in Puerto Rico, where she had been held since last November after release from prison in Florida. She was framed up on bogus charges that she had tried to burn down a bank in San Juan during a national work stoppage on May Day 2017 (see “Nina Droz Sentenced—Free Her Now!” WV No. 1136, 29 June 2018). Droz was targeted for her political activism and railroaded by the vindictive U.S. colonial overlords, who, with the help of their local lackeys, have long bloodily repressed, looted and starved the Puerto Rican people. For the right of independence for Puerto Rico! (read more…)

21 February 2020

Free Xinachtli (Alvaro Luna Hernandez)!

Alvaro Luna Hernandez, who prefers to be called Xinachtli, is the newest recipient of the PDC class-war prisoner stipend program. Xinachtli is currently serving a 50-year prison sentence, framed up in 1996 after he disarmed a Texas sheriff who was trying to shoot him. Targeted for his political convictions, Xinachtli is a Chicano activist who has fought tenaciously against the oppression of Mexican Americans and the wretched conditions of prisoners in U.S. dungeons. (read more…)

7 February 2020

MOVE Member Delbert Africa Paroled After 41 Years

On January 18, Delbert Orr Africa was finally released from prison. Along with the rest of the MOVE 9, Delbert was framed up for the killing of a police officer during a massive cop assault on MOVE’s Powelton Village home in Philadelphia in 1978. Five MOVE members—Janet, Janine, Debbie, Eddie and Mike Africa—have been paroled over the last 18 months. Phil and Merle Africa died in prison under suspicious circumstances. Chuck Africa is the last of the nine still locked up. (read more...)

7 February 2020

NYPD Hands Off “FTP” Subway Protesters!

On January 31, hundreds of activists gathered in subway stations across New York City to protest cop terror on the trains and demand free, fully accessible public transit. “FTP3” was the third in a series of “Fuck the Police” demonstrations against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that have taken place since November (see WV No. 1168, 17 January). (read more...)

13 December 2019

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

34th Annual Holiday Appeal

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

13 December 2019

Free Julian Assange Now!

Since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London by British cops last April, he has been languishing in the maximum security Belmarsh prison, with a hearing on extradition to the U.S. scheduled for February. Both Democrats and Republicans have been screaming for his head on a spike going back to 2010 when WikiLeaks released a trove of documents provided by Chelsea Manning, then an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army. That material exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and imperialist turpitude elsewhere. The Democrats especially have it in for Assange, who they scapegoat for supposedly having cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election after WikiLeaks released a huge cache of Democratic National Committee emails. The U.S. has indicted Assange on 17 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act, each carrying a sentence of ten years. No extradition! Drop the charges! Free Assange! For unobstructed passage to any country that grants him asylum! (read more...)

1 November 2019

Free All Imprisoned Catalan Independentistes Now!

Independence for Catalonia! For a Workers Republic!

The following article is a translation of a supplement issued on October 19 by our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste de France and published in French, Spanish and Catalan. The Catalan version was distributed at a protest of at least 350,000 on October 26 in Barcelona against the jailing of Catalan nationalist leaders.

Massive demonstrations that erupted on October 14 in Catalonia expressed anger over the sentencing of Catalan politicians and activists to prison terms ranging from nine to 13 years. In a show trial that triggered a wave of Castilian chauvinism against the Catalans, leaders of Catalan nationalist parties, including Oriol Junqueras, former vice president of the Generalitat of Catalonia (the autonomous government), and Carme Forcadell, former president of the Parlament, were convicted for having organized the October 2017 referendum on independence [when 90 percent voted for an independent republic]. The charges are outrageous: “sedition,” “disobedience,” “embezzlement.” Not only were nine of the 12 defendants sentenced to prison, but the Supreme Court renewed a European arrest warrant against Carles Puigdemont, the former president of the Generalitat, who fled to Belgium in October 2017. These convictions and the persecution of prominent Catalan bourgeois politicians are an ominous warning to the oppressed Catalan, Basque and Galician nations that the “indissoluble unity” of the Spanish prison house of peoples is not negotiable.. (read more...)

23 August 2019

Honoring a Class-War Prisoner

Tom Manning

1946–2019

After more than three decades of torment in America’s dungeons, class-war prisoner Tom Manning died on July 30 at the federal penitentiary in Hazelton, West Virginia. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but it was the sadistic prison authorities who were responsible for the death of Manning, one of the last two incarcerated Ohio 7 leftists. In retaliation for his unwavering opposition to racial oppression and U.S. imperialism and his continued political activism, the jailers treated his medical needs with deliberate indifference and delayed necessary medication. His comrade and former prisoner Ray Luc Levasseur bitterly remarked, “Supporters scrambled to get a lawyer in to see him, but death arrived first.” Although we Marxists do not share the political strategy of the Ohio 7, we have always forthrightly defended them against capitalist state repression. (read more...)

26 July 2019

Eddie Africa Paroled

On June 21, after being incarcerated for over 40 years in Pennsylvania’s dungeons, Eddie Africa was released, the fifth of the MOVE 9 to be paroled over the past year. MOVE, a largely black, back-to-nature radical group, has been a target of the racist capitalist state since the early 1970s. The MOVE 9 were sentenced to 30-100 years for the death of a cop killed in police cross fire during a murderous siege of MOVE’s Powelton Village home in Philadelphia on 8 August 1978. The state vendetta against MOVE reached a peak with the 1985 bombing of their Osage Avenue home by the police and the Feds, which killed eleven people, including five children, and reduced a whole black neighborhood to ashes. The bombing was ordered by black Democratic Philly mayor Wilson Goode.

Over the years, prison authorities and guards heaped further vicious abuse on the MOVE 9. In celebrating Eddie’s release, class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is a former Black Panther and longtime MOVE supporter, wrote: “Forty years is far more than 40 years if your name is Eddie Africa. That’s because MOVE people face the fury of county and state officials, and that meant a kind of cruelty that most prisoners have never seen nor imagined.” Two of the MOVE 9, Merle and Phil Africa, both died under suspicious circumstances behind bars. (read more...)

31 May 2019

Louisiana Black Panther

Albert Woodfox Chronicles Prison Hell

Earlier this year, Grove Press released the memoir of Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement; My Story of Transformation and Hope. The book is a testament to incredible courage and tenacity in the face of brutal physical and psychological punishment and illuminates the hideous, racist reality of the capitalist injustice system in this society based on the exploitation of labor and founded on chattel slavery. Solitary tells the story of the Angola 3 (Woodfox and his comrades Robert King and Herman Wallace), who collectively spent over a century in the torture of solitary confinement—mostly at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. While there, the three formed a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The decades that the Angola 3 were locked away in solitary were retribution for their joining the BPP and organizing protests and legal challenges against unspeakable prison conditions.

Solitary depicts the harsh reality of black life in America—on both sides of the prison bars. As Woodfox recalls of his coming of age in a New Orleans ghetto: “We always knew the police picked up the men in our neighborhood because they were black and for no other reason.” Woodfox graphically describes the all too common grinding poverty and racism that drove his mother to prostitution, and himself to fall into the gang scene. He recounts, “When money was tight and there was no food in the house I shoplifted bread and canned goods. It never felt like a crime to me, it was survival.” (read more...)

31 May 2019

Janet and Janine Africa Paroled

Free All the MOVE Prisoners!

On May 25, MOVE members Janet Holloway Africa, 68, and Janine Phillips Africa, 63, walked out of prison on parole. Their release after more than 40 years in Pennsylvania dungeons follows the paroling of Debbie and Michael Africa Sr. last year. All of the MOVE 9 were jailed and sentenced to 30 to 100 years in 1978, framed up for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer during the cop siege of MOVE’s Powelton Village home. Despite being model prisoners, Janet and Janine had been repeatedly denied parole since 2008 for “lack of remorse.” Merle Africa and Phil Africa died in jail under suspicious circumstances. Chuck, Delbert and Eddie Africa are still behind bars. Free them now!

Soon after the predominantly black, radical back-to-nature MOVE commune emerged in the early 1970s, it became the target of vicious cop terror, not least because the group championed the right to armed self-defense. Janine’s infant son, Life, was trampled and killed in 1976 when police invaded the MOVE house and knocked her over, baby in arms. On 8 August 1978, after a months-long siege, nearly 600 cops surrounded the house to evict the residents. Police unleashed a barrage of gunfire, then stormed the home. One officer died in the cops’ own cross fire. At least eight witnesses testified that no gunshots came from the house. Weapons the cops said they found inside had no fingerprint of any MOVE member on them. The MOVE 9 were all innocent. (read more...)

17 May 2019

“Progressive” D.A. Drops Appeal, Continues Vendetta

Free Mumia Now!

No Illusions in the Capitalist Courts!

On April 17, Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner abandoned his effort to prevent class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal from challenging his frame-up conviction for the 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Last December, Judge Leon Tucker of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas threw out the state Supreme Court decisions from 1998 to 2012 that rubber-stamped Mumia’s frame-up because a judge on that court had given an “appearance of bias.” The judge, Ronald Castille, had been the D.A. during Mumia’s first appeal of his conviction and sentence. Making clear that the decades-long vendetta against Mumia will not end on his watch, Krasner proclaimed that the decision to withdraw his appeal of Tucker’s ruling “does not mean Mr. Abu-Jamal will be freed or get a new trial.” According to Faulkner’s widow Maureen, Krasner promised “that he would do everything within his power to keep my husband’s remorseless killer in prison for the rest of his life.”

Krasner rode into office supported by a host of liberal activists and fake socialists as a “progressive” D.A. and a pillar of the decarceration movement. Krasner had pursued the appeal out of expressed concern that Tucker’s ruling would open the door to challenges by all inmates victimized by Castille’s dual role as prosecutor and judge—and some might then actually be decarcerated. According to Krasner, he can now rest easy because a supplemental ruling by Tucker narrows the scope of his order. (read more...)

19 April 2019

Free Julian Assange!

APRIL 15—Last Thursday, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London by British cops and arrested. He is now being held in the maximum security Belmarsh prison on an extradition request from Washington. Assange, an Australian citizen, has been in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism for years. Both Democrats and Republicans have been howling for his head ever since 2010 when WikiLeaks released a trove of documents provided by Chelsea Manning, then an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. No extradition! Free Julian Assange now! For unobstructed passage to any country that grants him asylum!

Assange resided in the embassy for seven years, having been granted political asylum by Ecuador’s then president Rafael Correa. At the time, he was facing deportation to Sweden on bogus allegations of “sexual molestation” and “rape,” which was simply a step toward handing him over to U.S. authorities. Correa’s successor, the U.S. imperialist lackey Lenín Moreno, revoked Assange’s asylum (as well as the Ecuadorean citizenship he had acquired). Trampling on the sovereignty of his country, Moreno threw open the embassy doors to the British cops. (read more...)

22 March 2019

Jailed for Refusing to Fink on Julian Assange

Free Chelsea Manning!

Former Army intelligence analyst and truth-teller Chelsea Manning has been jailed again by the vindictive U.S. capitalist state. Tortured in prison for seven years by the Obama regime for exposing U.S. imperialist war crimes, Manning was thrown back behind bars on March 8 because she refused to testify before a grand jury in a secretive star-chamber inquiry against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Manning declared: “I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.” Held in contempt of federal court for her principled stand, Manning was sent to jail, where she could remain for a year or more as the investigation proceeds. Release Chelsea Manning now!

In 2010, WikiLeaks published files leaked by Manning that cast a spotlight on the bloody work of U.S. imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best-known of these is the graphic aerial video, dubbed “Collateral Murder,” which shows a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship massacring at least 12 civilians in Baghdad in 2007 while the Army pilots gloated over the carnage. After releasing the video, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and classified documents recording more murder, torture and rape carried out by the imperialists. (read more...)

22 February 2019

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

“Progressive” D.A. Continues State Vendetta

On January 25, Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner announced that his office was appealing the December 27 ruling of Judge Leon Tucker of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, in which Mumia Abu-Jamal won the right to challenge his frame-up conviction. A former Black Panther spokesman, MOVE supporter and award-winning journalist, Mumia has been in prison hell for 37 years—30 of them on death row—falsely convicted of killing Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981. Tucker’s ruling threw out the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions from 1998 to 2012 that rubber-stamped Mumia’s frame-up, because a judge on that court gave an “appearance of bias.” The judge, Ronald Castille, had been the D.A. during Mumia’s first appeal of his conviction and death sentence.

We welcomed Judge Tucker’s ruling and protest Krasner’s appeal, a further demonstration of his commitment to keep Mumia entombed for life. The ink was barely dry on Tucker’s decision when a host of liberals, radical activists and reformist socialists stepped up their campaign calling on Philly’s top prosecutor “to do the right thing.” Krasner is “doing the right thing”—for the capitalist class that he was elected to serve. The D.A.’s office, no less than the cops, courts and prisons, is at the core of the state machinery of repression whose purpose is to defend the profits and rule of the bourgeoisie. (read more...)

18 January 2019

PDC Holiday Appeal

Support the Class-War Prisoners

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

This year’s Holiday Appeal marks the 33rd year of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression and imperialist depredation. This program revived a tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary (1925-28). The PDC currently sends stipends to eleven class-war prisoners.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch Mumia, condemning him to life in prison with no chance of parole. In 2016, attorneys for Mumia filed a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) seeking to overturn the denial of his four prior PCRA claims by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. On December 27, Judge Leon Tucker of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas granted Mumia’s petition, allowing him to argue before an appellate court for reversal of his frame-up conviction (see article, page 8). (read more...)

18 January 2019

Mumia Wins Right to Appeal Frame-Up Conviction

Mumia Abu-Jamal Is Innocent—Free Him Now!

After 37 years behind bars—30 of them on death row—class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has won the right to challenge his frame-up conviction for the killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. On December 27, Judge Leon Tucker of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas threw out the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions from 1998 to 2012 that rubber-stamped Mumia’s frame-up on the basis that one of its justices, Ronald Castille, refused to recuse himself. Castille had been Philly district attorney during Mumia’s first appeal of his conviction and death sentence in the late 1980s.

Judge Tucker was ruling on Mumia’s appeal based on the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision Williams v. Pennsylvania. In the Williams case, Castille as D.A. authorized his prosecutors to seek the death penalty. When Terrance Williams later appealed, Castille was among the judges on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who affirmed the conviction and sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court held that Castille’s “significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision in the defendant’s case” raised “the risk of actual bias in the judicial proceeding.” (read more...)