We are currently winding up our 26l Annual Holiday Appeal activities. Fund raising took place in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Chicago, Toronto and New York. While it is too early to give a full accounting of the results from these efforts, some of which took place in January, we can report that thousands were netted in these successful activities. We would like to thank our supporters for making this important program a success and keeping alive the necessary solidarity with those who have stood up to racist capitalist repression and imperialist depredation.
As we were building for this year's Holiday Appeals, the Philadelphia District Attorney in December announced his office's decision to stop its long-standing efforts to seek Mumia's legal lynching. Subsequently he was transferred from death row to vindictively onerous conditions at SCI Mahanoy in the Pennsylvania prison system. As Mumia, himself described it in his greetings to the Holiday Appeals, he now considers himself on "'slow' Death Row." The text of the greeting is printed in Workers Vanguard'No. 994 (20 January).
The significance of our stipend program was expressed in greetings from Mumia and nearly all of the sixteen prisoners. Tom Manning sent a letter replete with heart-rending details of the numerous and serious medical conditions he is facing as exemplified by the fact he was suffering mini-strokes even as he was writing. Jaan Laaman's letter thanked us for the many years we sent a holiday gift to his son who recently passed away. Hugo Pinell sent inspirational greetings from Pelican Bay Special Housing Unit, the focal point for two hunger strikes in the California penal system. Many warm letters of appreciation were received from the class-war prisoners known as the MOVE 9, all of whom have been turned down for parole over the last three years.
In the New York fundraiser held at the CWA Local 1180 Hall, trade unionists, students and PDC supporters heard from Ralph Poynter, husband of Lynne Stewart. He read a statement from her in which she said, "I want to thank you with my heart for your consistent, never-failing support of political prisoners. Many other groups do so only when there is some momentous event to trigger their memories. PDC has always remembered and remembers all of us." The gathering also heard from Francisco Torres, the last of the San Francisco 8 to finally have his charges dismissed earlier in 2011. Noting the torture that was used against his codefendants in the 40-year vendetta against the former Black Panthers, he said, "Torture is in the DNA of America."
One of the highlights of the evening was the speech of PDC Staff Counsel, Valerie West in remembrance of the life and struggle of Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). As you will recall Geronimo passed away in Tanzania last June. For nearly a decade West was part of the legal defense team, with attorney Stuart Hanlon. In 1997, after 27 years in the California dungeons, this innocent class-war prisoner and former Black Panther was finally freed, having been framed for a murder the cops knew he did not commit. Her personal reminisces, motivated by the PDC's non-sectarian defense for those cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people, made for a powerful presentation. The entire text of that speech can be seen in Workers Vanguard No. 994.
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