Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
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Support The Striking Greek Steelworkers!-Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers!
Workers at the Greek steel plant Elliniki Halyvourgia have been on strike for nearly nine months, in struggle against layoffs and cuts in wages and hours. On June 20, the PDC sent a letter of support stating, "We join pith workers internationally who have expressed solidarity with you. Your strike is in the forefront of the (Struggle against the austerity being imposed on not only the working people of Greece but also the working 'class of all Europe. The European Union and the capitalist rulers of each country seek to make the workers 'sacrifice' in order to maintain their profits during the years-long economic crisis." We concluded, "Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers! No wage cuts, hour reductions, or layoffs! Immediate reinstatement of all the workers! Down with capitalist austerity! Workers of the world unite!"
The address for solidarity letters is:
17thKmNEOAK
Elleniki Halyvourgia
Asproprygos 19300, Greece
Fax number: 011-30-210-557-8360
Telephone: 011-30-210-557-0829
Donations in support of the steel strikers should be sent to: National Bank of Greece IBAN:GR40011020000000 2006 2330152 BIC/Swift Code: ETHNGRAA Account holder: Dimitris Liakos
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