For Class-Struggle Defense to Free Mumia Now!

Partisan Defense Committee Statement

27 November 2006

Join the PDC Contingent—Philadelphia, December 9!

On December 9, 2006, Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent man, will have spent 25 years in prison and on Pennsylvania’s death row. Shot and arrested on December 9, 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal—a talented journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” a former Black Panther, a supporter of the MOVE organization and an outspoken opponent of racist oppression—was framed and falsely convicted for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. The next few months will be crucial in the fight to win his freedom. Mumia’s battle has reached a critical juncture. Last December, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania put Mumia’s case on a “fast track” for decision. This October Mumia submitted the final papers in his appeal against this racist frame-up and sentence of death. A ruling by this court could come early next year after the courts have heard oral arguments from Mumia’s attorneys and the prosecution. Any decision by the court will likely be appealed to the reactionary, racist U.S. Supreme Court, which is the end of the legal line.

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. Their 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. imperialist depredations in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.

Millions in the unions, on the streets and campuses must be mobilized now behind Mumia’s fight! The kind of pressure that will have an impact on the courts is the social power of the multiracial labor movement demanding that this innocent man be freed now. It is with this understanding that we are mobilizing a Partisan Defense Committee contingent at the “Mumia Must Be Free!” rally called by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal on December 9 in Philadelphia. Join the PDC’s contingent under the slogans: “For Class-Struggle Defense to Free Mumia Now! There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!”

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. Today, Philadelphia officials are suing the city of Paris and its Saint-Denis suburb for naming a street after Mumia and making him an honorary citizen, once again revealing the depth of hatred the bourgeois state has for Mumia.

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.” Like the International Labor Defense, the Partisan Defense Committee advocates pursuing all possible legal proceedings, while placing no faith whatsoever in the justice of the courts.

In August of 1995, Mumia won a stay of execution based on worldwide protests, crucially involving the labor movement. From 1995 through 1999, new evidence was revealed in his case that furthered in blowing the state’s frame-up to bits. All of this evidence that pointed to another man being responsible for the death of officer Faulkner, including the testimony of William Singletary and Veronica Jones, was rejected by the courts. Around this same time a number of reformist socialist organizations and their front groups, such as Workers World Party, Socialist Action, the International Socialist Organization and the Revolutionary Communist Party, 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 in federal court, leading to a new and fair trial in the same Philadelphia courts that sent him to death row. 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 limit 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.

That worldwide movement must be revived, based on the premise that Mumia must be freed now, that this case is a racist, political frame-up of an innocent man and 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 Marxist Spartacist League, fights to mobilize the social power of the multiracial labor movement—those who create the wealth of this society and who can shut it down. That is why our contingent in Philadelphia December 9 is 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. Labor 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.

We are building this contingent in Philadelphia as a step toward the labor-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!