As Legal Attacks Mount-Film Honors Heroic Abortion Providers Doctor George Tiller Workers Vanguard No. 1033	1 November 2013

As Legal Attacks Mount-Film Honors Heroic Abortion Providers

“We’ve been at war since Roe v. Wade was passed, except there’s only been one side that’s been fighting this war.” That defiant statement was made by Dr. LeRoy Carhart in the recently released documentary film After Tiller. A former lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, Dr. Carhart is one of only four doctors left in this country who openly provide late-term (third-trimester) abortions. After Tiller, by filmmakers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, introduces us as well to Drs. Warren Hern, Susan Robinson and Shelley Sella. They all knew and worked with pre-eminent abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated in his church on a Sunday morning in 2009. The film portrays the doctors’ compassion for their patients and steely determination to stand up to the anti-abortion bigots who hound them and threaten their lives.

Most abortions take place in the first trimester when the procedure is relatively simple and can often be achieved with medication alone. Less than 1 percent of abortions in the U.S. take place in the third trimester, when the procedure is much more complicated. But this is not the reason why so few doctors are trained or willing to perform this procedure. Third-trimester abortion is prohibited in all but nine states, and late-term abortion providers have been vilified, terrorized and murdered. Dr. Tiller faced massive legal and extralegal harassment for over 35 years for the abortion services he provided women, including late in pregnancy.

Dr. Tiller was the eighth person killed in murderous attacks on abortion providers since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling struck down anti-abortion laws. After Tiller makes it abundantly evident that Tiller’s four colleagues, who have likewise faced years of harassment and threats, are well aware that they, too, could be picked off at any moment. Carhart and his wife recall the arson attack on their property that was carried out in the early 1990s, not long after Carhart had started performing abortions in Bellevue, Nebraska. His daughter was hounded out of her home, and for years Carhart fought anti-abortionists seeking the eviction of his general surgery practice.

The Roe v. Wade ruling represented a precious gain for women’s political and social rights, but from the beginning it was limited and partial. After Tiller underlines the fact that the 1973 Supreme Court ruling specifically granted states the right to outlaw abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy—“after viability,” in the words of the court. The majority decision written by Judge Harry Blackmun upheld the states’ right to interfere in the personal decisions of women, stating that some “argue that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree.”

To make crystal clear what the court meant, the ruling referenced the case Buck v. Bell. That 1927 decision endorsed the racist, anti-poor eugenics theories that states used to justify sterilization of men and women. Tens of thousands were sterilized across the country in the 20th century, often on the specious grounds of “imbecility.” California, which sterilized more people than any other state, has overturned its eugenics laws, like other states. Yet it has been exposed for having recently sterilized female prisoners.

The majority ruling in Roe v. Wade specified measures that could be taken by states to regulate abortions after the first trimester, among them:

“Requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like.”

That list has become, in the hands of the anti-abortionists, a veritable “How To” Guide for restricting women’s right to abortion.

The legislative assault on abortion rights by Republican-controlled state governments in recent years has been even more effective in rolling back abortion rights than the bombings and assassinations carried out by anti-abortion terrorists in the 1990s. Over the past three years, abortion providers have been forced to shut down at the fastest rate since the time of Roe v. Wade. According to a survey by the Huffington Post, since 2010 at least 54 clinics have closed down or stopped providing abortion services. Today, fully 97 percent of rural counties in the country have no abortion services whatsoever.

In the face of this reactionary offensive, it is not difficult for Democrats to be viewed as defenders of abortion rights. Texas state senator Wendy Davis became a nationwide sensation by mounting a filibuster that delayed passage of an omnibus anti-abortion bill. The bill contains almost every one of the attacks on abortion rights that have been adopted by various states in recent years. It bans abortion after 20 weeks due to supposed “fetal pain”; requires abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges; prohibits doctors from phoning prescriptions to pharmacies, thus making women visit a clinic for medication doses in early-term abortions; requires clinics to upgrade their buildings to meet the standards for ambulatory care centers (i.e., they must make medically irrelevant but expensive changes that will put some clinics out of business). On October 28, a federal judge ruled the part of the Texas law concerning admitting privileges to be unconstitutional. Part of the anti-abortionist strategy is to get a test case before the Supreme Court in hopes of overturning the Roe ruling.

While opposing such laws like the one in Texas, the Democratic Party does not even pretend to fight for anything beyond preserving Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion but did not make it generally available. Like all aspects of health care, access to abortion reflects the class divisions and racial discrimination that are inherent in U.S. capitalist society. Over two-thirds of the women who have abortions are poor, and black and Hispanic women are more than twice as likely as white women to experience unwanted pregnancies and to have abortions. What was and is needed is mass struggle to ensure that poor and working women have unrestricted access to abortion. For the rights to abortion and contraception to mean anything, the services must be free.

Bourgeois feminists have never intended to launch such a struggle because their framework is limited to seeking legal reforms through the agency of the Democrats. Despite their pro-choice rhetoric, Democrats have in fact helped restrict access to abortion for working and poor women. Soon after the Roe decision, it came under attack by Democratic president Jimmy Carter, who signed the Hyde Amendment eliminating abortion coverage under Medicaid, which all but deprived poor women of the service. The Hyde Amendment has been renewed every year since, regardless of which party sits in the White House.

We say the state has no right to interfere in the reproductive or sexual lives of women and call for free abortion on demand. The fight for abortion rights must be part of a broader struggle for free, quality health care for all. Decent health care is a burning need for all working people, with employers in recent years gutting the health plans that unionized workers had won in the struggles of earlier decades. But the fealty of the labor bureaucrats to the parties of capital, especially the Democrats, undermines this and every other necessary struggle.

Religious Bigots Target Women’s Rights

Directly after Tiller’s murder, a “fetal pain” law was crafted specifically to drive Dr. Carhart out of business and out of the state of Nebraska. Such laws are based on a cynical hoax. The idea that pain can be felt by a fetus at 20 weeks after gestation has been dismissed by every reputable medical association that has commented on the issue. The passage of that 2010 bill was a watershed victory for the anti-abortionists. Twelve more states have since passed similar legislation.

After Tiller shows the lead-up to the passage of the Nebraska bill and the travails of the Carharts as they tried to relocate afterward. They moved to Maryland, where the law allows late-term abortions under certain conditions, but the anti-abortionists there protested Dr. Carhart’s arrival. They even organized a picket of the middle school attended by the clinic landlord’s daughter.

A similar “fetal pain” measure is on a November municipal ballot in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That city has been specifically targeted in an attempt to close down the clinic where Dr. Robinson and Dr. Sella work, as seen in the film. The push for its passage has been accompanied by an increase in intimidation. On the weekend of August 10, “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust” held a “training camp” in Albuquerque during which an abortion doctor’s house was besieged, trapping his family inside.

Another prong of the anti-abortionists’ pitchfork is the campaign for “fetal rights” laws. These have been adopted by some states as a means to persecute pregnant women for activities that are often harmless to the woman and the fetus, e.g., smoking marijuana. In recent years, hundreds of women across the country have been detained, arrested or forced to accept medical procedures in the name of “fetal protection.” The president of the anti-abortion outfit Operation Rescue has gloated: “We win every time we establish the precedent that the unborn child in the womb is a unique human individual.”

As Marxist materialists, we reject the idealist notion—ultimately derived from religion—that a fetus is a human with a “soul.” Since a fetus and the mother are biologically united during pregnancy, all attempts to endow the fetus with rights come at the expense of those of the mother.

The religious reaction and family-values bigotry that have come to dominate the general social climate in this country make it much harder, especially for teenagers, to avoid pregnancy and to obtain an abortion. Sex education is either woeful or a pack of lies. Parental notification rules for teen abortions are another hurdle. Teen access to contraception is often restricted. Two years ago, the Obama administration blocked easy access by young women under the age of 17 to the morning-after pill, subsequently reversing itself under pressure. The net result is that the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is one of the highest in the developed world, more than twice as high as that in Canada and five times that in Sweden.

After Tiller compellingly relates the stories of individual women who sought late-term abortions. Some had wanted to be pregnant until they learned of severe fetal abnormalities. Others could not find the time or money to make arrangements for abortions before the deadline in their states. One woman had to wait for her tax rebate. One teenager was terrified of telling her religious parents. An older woman had light periods and a negative pregnancy test and so did not know that she was pregnant. In the film, Dr. Robinson rejects the idea that a woman has to have a good story to justify her abortion. She notes that her only criterion is medical safety because women “are the world’s expert on their own lives.”

The Family: Key Institution of Women’s Oppression

The Roe ruling took place against the backdrop of broad social struggles in the U.S. From the civil rights movement to the anti-Vietnam war movement, wide sections of the population were demanding significant social and political changes. The capitalist rulers felt pressure to grant some reforms. The apex of the gains for women won in this period was the Roe ruling, which has been under legislative attack ever since.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan packed the Supreme Court with conservatives in order to reverse the gains of the social struggles of the 1960s and early ’70s. A 1992 court decision left Roe in place but granted extra rights to states to extend waiting periods for abortions and enforce parental consent for teenagers. In the words of the chief justice at the time, that ruling made Roe “a sort of judicial Potemkin Village.” These assaults have continued to this day under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The deep-seated oppression of women is rooted in the institution of the family, which arose with the advent of private property as a mechanism for passing property from one generation to the next—the monogamous wife ensures the paternity of the heirs. A major role of the family is to instill respect for authority and act as a conservatizing force. Together with religion, the family serves to instill a morality that proscribes anything that deviates from the ideal of one man on top of one woman for life.

The war on abortion rights, a battering ram for general social and political reaction, has gone along with a broader offensive against democratic rights and workers gains. With its hands on the wheels of production, the working class objectively has the social power to mobilize the struggle needed to defend its own interests and those of all the oppressed, including women. But given the high level of religiosity in this country, anti-abortion prejudices strongly influence much of the working class. With the dearth of social struggle today and its impact on political consciousness, it is even more difficult to win workers to the understanding that abortion must be defended not only as a “women’s issue” but also an essential democratic right, the loss of which would redound against all working people.

We seek to forge a revolutionary party that will fight for all the oppressed layers in society and render the proletariat conscious of its role as gravedigger of the capitalist system. Such a party will be modeled on the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, who led the October 1917 Revolution in Russia. Only through a victorious workers revolution can society be liberated from the profit system and private property and be reconstructed on socialist foundations. This will lay the basis for the full equality of women and the replacement of the family with socialized care of children and household duties. That is the meaning of our call: For women’s liberation through socialist revolution!

Workers Vanguard No. 1033	1 November 2013

Labor Must Fight for Immigrant Rights!

Immigration “Reform”: Ramping Up Border Crackdown, Guest Worker Servitude

As soon as President Obama emerged victorious in the latest budget wars against the Republican Party, the Wall Street Democrat announced what was next on his agenda: immigration “reform.” There is more than a casual link between the two items. As the spectre of a new financial meltdown loomed, the impasse over the budget and the debt ceiling was resolved only after leading financial titans and industrialists signaled that the intransigence of the Tea Party yahoos was damaging the interests of the capitalist ruling class as a whole. Now Obama aims to push through an immigration overhaul that serves these same interests, beefing up border militarization and reinforcing the brutal exploitation of foreign-born workers as part of an onslaught against the wages and living standards of the entire working class.

Obama was a key mover behind the immigration overhaul contained in Senate bill 744 (S.744), which was drawn up by four Democrats and four Republicans and passed by a two-thirds majority in June. On top of the massive increase in “border security” and the record number of deportations under his watch, totaling some two million, S.744 mandates $40 billion for another 20,000 Border Patrol agents and 700 more miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border. The effect would be, as always, to shift the perilous routes taken by desperately impoverished Mexicans and Central Americans trying to cross over, leading to ever more deaths from drowning, dehydration and exhaustion and killings by the Border Patrol.

The border measure originated as an amendment tacked on to win the support of recalcitrant Republicans for the bill’s 13-year “path to citizenship” and its expansion of “guest worker” visas. Strewn with all-but-insurmountable legal and financial obstacles, the “path” would offer the eleven million immigrants only a slim chance of a reprieve at the end of their ordeal. Nevertheless, racist reactionaries in Congress ludicrously decry the measure as an amnesty, much as they denounce Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act—at bottom, a gift to the insurance and health care corporations—as “socialism.” Against the likes of Ted Cruz, the Democrats can even play up their chutes-and-ladders path to citizenship to bolster their electoral support.

Chamber of Commerce types who throw their money at the Republicans fear not only that right-wingers in Congress will torpedo the overhaul package but that the Tea Party’s undisguised hatred of darker-skinned people, foreign-born or native, will continue to cost the party in national elections. Latino votes count large in this calculation. Even Asian Americans, who not too long ago went Republican by a slight majority, now vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

While Republican-controlled state governments in the South and Southwest have enacted draconian anti-immigrant measures, some states run by the Democrats, like California, have loosened up a few restrictions that were irrational from a bourgeois viewpoint. For example, several states have tried to join several cities in opting out of the federal Secure Communities program, under which those jailed for even the most minor offenses have their fingerprints sent to Homeland Security, on the grounds that it makes it more difficult for local law enforcement to police immigrant neighborhoods. While there may be differences in what they say and how they say it, any policy disputes between the Republicans and Democrats boil down to how best to enforce U.S. capitalist rule.

Centrally important to business interests is the Senate bill’s tinkering with the visa program for guest workers. Recruited to fill specific jobs, these workers, who mostly are paid a pittance, are relegated to a netherworld where they lack fundamental rights. In a New York Times (1 September) op-ed piece titled “Subcontractor Servitude,” Jennifer Gordon describes how Jamaican guest workers brought in to clean luxury hotels and condos in Florida were made to pay exorbitant recruitment fees as well as extortionate rents for the tiny apartments they were packed into and then had their paychecks repeatedly bounce. When the fed-up workers went on strike, the subcontractor they worked for threatened that if they did not return to the job, la migra would put them on the next plane home. According to the National Employment Law Project, more than half the jobs added during what passes for the economic recovery in the U.S. have been in low-wage sectors where subcontracting is prevalent, as it increasingly is worldwide.

This situation underscores that defense of foreign-born workers against the capitalists and their state is in the vital interests of the working class as a whole. The vast majority of immigrants are driven to the U.S. and other advanced capitalist countries as a result of the entrenched poverty imposed by imperialist subjugation of their homelands. Thus the NAFTA “free trade” treaty, which greatly strengthened U.S. economic dominance of Mexico, spurred a massive increase in emigration. The immigration laws of the capitalist state, which are centrally driven by the need to manage the flow of cheap labor, are necessarily chauvinist and repressive. The economic crisis that erupted in 2007 led to the expulsion of immigrants not only in the U.S. but throughout the capitalist world. In Greece and several other European countries, the increase in official anti-immigrant repression has helped feed an explosive growth in fascist shock troops whose ultimate targets are the trade unions and all other working-class organizations.

We would welcome any measure that provides some actual relief from anti-immigrant oppression—something not on offer with S.744 or the various House bills now being hashed out. But as Marxists, we do not seek to advise the bourgeoisie on an alternative immigration policy, which would mean accepting the parameters of a system based on exploitation and oppression. Our demand is that all immigrants and foreign workers be entitled to immediate and full citizenship rights.

As with the fight against black oppression, which is embedded in American capitalism, the working class must actively combat the bosses’ efforts to pit the native-born against the foreign-born—a divide-and-rule tactic they have used since before the Civil War. The labor movement must fight every instance of wage and other discrimination against immigrants, oppose deportations and undertake concerted action to organize immigrant workers into the unions with full rights. Such struggles would go a long way toward promoting the understanding that the multiracial, multiethnic proletariat has distinct class interests—counterposed to those of the racist, chauvinist capitalist rulers—that must be politically expressed through their own class party.

The pro-capitalist union tops take the exact opposite stance, collaborating with the bosses in regulating the flow of immigrant workers in order to protect their own privileges and reinforce the chains binding workers to the Democrats. In 2007, when Bush was in the White House, Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO officials tried but failed to come up with an agreement on guest-worker visas. But this spring the two sides helped prepare the way for the Senate bill by working out a program that pegs the number of visas to employment needs, up to a maximum of 200,000 annually. The heavily immigrant Service Employees International Union, the mainstay of the Change to Win federation, similarly calls for regulating work visas in line with “the needs of our economy.”

A large number of new visas will be for technical professions, as Silicon Valley and engineering firms clamor for skilled personnel they cannot recruit domestically due largely to the woeful state of U.S. science and math education. But a number will go for hotel, restaurant, farm and other manual labor. From the meatpacking plants and warehouses to the service industries, organizing foreign-born workers will be a crucial part of reviving the unions after decades of the capitalists’ one-sided war against labor. But in the view of the hidebound labor bureaucracy, these same workers mainly represent a threat to remaining union jobs. So in hammering out the visa deal, AFL-CIO bargainers insisted that in the construction industry it would apply only to unskilled workers—a nod to racist job-trusting in the skilled trades unions.

At the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles in September, Maria Elena Durazo, chair of the federation’s Committee on Immigration Reform, defended the leadership’s support to S.744 by pointing to a provision that allows guest workers, who up to now have been bound to a single employer, to change jobs. This is scant solace for those like the Jamaican cleaners who would still be offered the lowest possible wages and face the ever-present threat of deportation. The AFL-CIO chiefs have a critical word or two for the bill’s reinforcing of the E-Verify employment database check, a cornerstone of Obama’s anti-immigrant crackdown that doubles as another weapon for the bosses to break union organizing drives. But far from opposing E-Verify, the labor statesmen simply offered tweaks to the procedure, trying to perfect a measure designed to drive those without papers out of the workforce.

Immigrants have been and will be in the front lines of labor’s fight against its exploiters. A century ago, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin noted in “Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration” (October 1913) that “capitalism is drawing the masses of the working people of the whole world, breaking down the musty, fusty habits of local life, breaking down national barriers and prejudices, uniting workers from all countries in huge factories and mines in America, Germany, and so forth.” Indeed, from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries, immigrants to the U.S. included many militants from Europe who helped forge early labor and socialist organizations, running head-on into open chauvinists like AFL head Samuel Gompers. Immigrant radicals were also instrumental in the founding of the Communist movement in the U.S. and elsewhere. In more recent decades, those from Latin America brought into the U.S. proletariat their experiences of convulsive social and class struggles against murderous U.S.-backed capitalist regimes.

Like doubly oppressed black workers, immigrants will play a leading role in forging a revolutionary proletarian party that will lead the exploited and oppressed masses in sweeping away the decaying capitalist order through socialist revolution. As the Bolsheviks in power did, and as the Paris Communards of 1871 did before them, an American workers government would grant full citizenship rights to all who labor, whatever their origin. Through a series of workers revolutions internationally, a world planned economy will be established, laying the basis for finally overcoming material scarcity and, with that, the last remnants of national borders and class divisions.

Free the Class-War Prisoners!-28th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal-Partisan Defense Committee Workers Vanguard No. 1034

Free the Class-War Prisoners!-28th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

This year marks the 28th anniversary of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending stipends to class-war prisoners, those behind bars for the “crime” of standing up to the varied expressions of racist capitalist oppression. The PDC’s Holiday Appeal raises funds to send monthly stipends to 21 class-war prisoners and also provides holiday gifts for the prisoners and their families. We do this not just because it’s the right thing to do. The monthly stipends, just increased from $25 to $50, and holiday gifts are not charity. They are vital acts of class solidarity to remind the prisoners that they are not forgotten.

The Holiday Appeals are a stark contrast to the hypocritical appeals of bourgeois charities. Whether it comes from the megachurches of Southern televangelists or the urbane editors of the New York Times, the invocation of “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” at this time of year is nothing more than a public relations scam to obscure the grinding exploitation of workers and the beggar-the-poor policies that are the hallmark of both major parties of American capitalism. The lump of coal in the Christmas stocking for millions of impoverished families this year is a drastic cut in their already starvation food stamp rations. Christmas turkey for many is likely to be sculpted from cans of Spam.

The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities, from supplementing the inadequate prison diet to buying stamps and writing materials, or to pursue literary, artistic and musical endeavors that help ameliorate the living hell of prison life. As Tom Manning of the Ohio 7 wrote to the PDC four years ago: “Just so you know, it [the stipend] goes for bags of mackerel and jars of peanut butter, to supplement my protein needs.” In a separate letter, his comrade Jaan Laaman observed: “This solidarity and support is important and necessary for us political prisoners, especially as the years and decades of our captivity grind on.... Being in captivity is certainly harsh, and this includes the sufferings of our children and families and friends. But prison walls and sentences do not and can not stop struggle.”

We look to the work of the International Labor Defense (ILD) under its first secretary, James P. Cannon (1925-28), who went on to become the founder of American Trotskyism. As the ILD did, we stand unconditionally on the side of the working people and their allies in struggle against their exploiters and oppressors. We defend, in Cannon’s words, “any member of the workers movement, regardless of his views, who suffered persecution by the capitalist courts because of his activities or his opinion” (First Ten Years of American Communism, 1962).

Initiated in 1986, the PDC stipend program revived an early tradition of the ILD. The mid 1980s were a time of waning class and social struggle but also a time when the convulsive struggles for black rights more than a decade earlier still haunted America’s capitalist rulers, who thirsted for vengeance. Among the early recipients of PDC stipends were members and supporters of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the best of a generation of black radicals who sought a revolutionary solution to black oppression—a bedrock of American capitalism.

Foremost among these was Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), former leader of the BPP in Los Angeles. Geronimo won his release in 1997 after spending 27 years behind bars for a murder the cops and FBI knew he did not commit. FBI wiretap logs, disappeared by the Feds, showed that Geronimo was 400 miles away in San Francisco at the time of the Santa Monica killing. Other victims of the government’s deadly Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) remain entombed decades later. Absent an upsurge of class and social struggle that transforms the political landscape, they will likely breathe their last breaths behind bars.

Among the dozens of past stipend recipients are Eddie McClelland, a supporter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party who was framed on charges related to the killing of three members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, and Mordechai Vanunu, who helped expose the Israeli nuclear arsenal. At its outset, our program included five British miners imprisoned during the bitter 1984-85 coal strike. State repression of labor struggle in the U.S. added to our program, for a time, other militants railroaded to prison for defending their union against scabs in the course of strike battles: Jerry Dale Lowe of the United Mine Workers in West Virginia, Amador Betancourt of Teamsters Local 912 in California and Bob Buck of Steelworkers Local 5668 in West Virginia. (For more background on the PDC and the stipend program, see “18th Annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners,” WV No. 814, 21 November 2003.)

The most recent additions to the stipend program include Lynne Stewart and the Tinley Park 5. Stewart is an attorney who spent four decades fighting to keep black and radical activists out of the clutches of the state, only to find herself joining them behind bars on ludicrous “support to terrorism” charges. The youthful anti-fascist fighters known as the Tinley Park 5 were thrown in prison for heroically dispersing a meeting of fascists in May 2012.

At the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we warned that the enhanced police powers being amassed to go after immigrants from Muslim countries would also be used against the oppressed black population and the working class as a whole. That the “war on terror” takes aim at leftist opponents of this or that government policy is affirmed by the massive “anti-terror” police mobilizations and arrests that have accompanied protest outside every Democratic and Republican national convention, among other gatherings, in recent years. Other recent examples include the FBI-coordinated nationwide crackdown on “Occupy” movement encampments and the state of siege in Chicago during the 2012 NATO summit.

The witchhunt against the Tinley Park 5 coincided with and fed into the hysteria whipped up against the anti-NATO protesters, particularly anarchists and participants in Black Bloc actions. Sitting in jail awaiting trial for 18 months are three protesters set up by a police provocateur. They were arrested and charged under Illinois anti-terrorism statutes, the first time these laws were ever used. Free the anti-NATO protesters! Drop the charges!

Continuing the Legacy of Class-Struggle Defense

The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization that champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the Marxist political views of the Spartacist League, which initiated the PDC in 1974. The PDC’s first major defense effort was the case of Mario Muñoz, the Chilean miners’ leader threatened with death in 1976 by the Argentine military junta. An international campaign of protests by unions and civil libertarians, cosponsored by the Committee to Defend Worker and Sailor Prisoners in Chile, won asylum in France for Muñoz and his family. The PDC has also initiated labor/black mobilizations against provocations by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis from San Francisco to Atlanta to New York to Springfield, Illinois, and mobilized sections of the integrated labor movement to join these efforts.

Cannon’s ILD, which was affiliated to the early Communist Party, was our model for class-struggle defense. It fused the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) tradition of militant class-struggle, non-sectarian defense and their slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with the internationalism of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a revolution made not merely for the workers of Russia but for the workers and oppressed of the world. These principles were embodied in the International Organization for Aid to Fighters of the Revolution (MOPR), a defense organization formed in the Soviet Union in 1922 that was more popularly known as the International Red Aid.

The ILD was born out of discussions in 1925 between Cannon and Big Bill Haywood, who had been a leader of the Western Federation of Miners and then the IWW. The venue was Moscow, where Haywood had fled in 1921 after jumping bond while awaiting appeal of his conviction for having called a strike during wartime, an activity deemed a violation of the federal Espionage and Sedition Act. Haywood died in Moscow in 1928. Half his ashes were buried in the Kremlin, the other half in Chicago near the monument to the Haymarket martyrs, leaders of the fight for the eight-hour day who were executed in 1887.

The ILD was founded especially to take up the plight of class-war prisoners in the United States. Initially, the ILD adopted 106 prisoners for its stipend program, including California labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, framed up for a bombing at the Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco in 1916, and Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, immigrant anarchist workers executed in 1927 for a robbery/murder they did not commit. The number grew rapidly: Zeigler miners in Illinois whose fights over wages and working conditions pitted them head-on against the KKK; striking textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey. The ILD monthly, Labor Defender, educated tens of thousands of workers about the struggles of their class brothers and carried letters from prisoners describing their cases and the importance of ILD support.

Many of the imprisoned militants were IWW members. After a brief membership in the Socialist Party (SP), Cannon himself had been an IWW organizer and a writer for its press. Witnessing the anarcho-syndicalist IWW crushed by the bourgeois state while a disciplined Marxist party led a successful proletarian revolution in Russia, Cannon rejoined the SP in order to hook up with its developing pro-Bolshevik left wing. In 1919, that left wing exited the SP, with Cannon becoming a founding leader of the American Communist movement. He brought a wealth of experience in labor defense. As Cannon later recalled, “I came from the background of the old movement when the one thing that was absolutely sacred was unity on behalf of the victims of capitalist justice.”

In the year preceding the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the ILD and sections of the International Red Aid led mass actions in their defense, including protests and strikes of tens of thousands on the eve of the executions. The SP and pro-capitalist union tops undermined the growing workers mobilization by looking to the political agencies of the class enemy, a policy accompanied by a vicious anti-Communist campaign of slander and exclusion. Cannon addressed the two conflicting policies:

“One policy is the policy of the class struggle. It puts the center of gravity in the protest movement of the workers of America and the world. It puts all faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatever in the justice of the courts. While favoring all possible legal proceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity, demonstrations—organized protest on a national and international scale.... The other policy is the policy of ‘respectability,’ of the ‘soft pedal’ and of ridiculous illusions about ‘justice’ from the courts of the enemy. It relies mainly on legal proceedings. It seeks to blur the issue of the class struggle.”

—“Who Can Save Sacco and Vanzetti?” (Labor Defender, January 1927)

The principle of non-sectarian, class-struggle defense has guided our work, in particular our more than two-decade struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. As a small organization, we don’t pretend that we are able to mobilize the type of hard class struggle that not only built the unions in this country but also harnessed the social power of the working class to the defense of labor’s imprisoned soldiers in the class war. Such struggles are today a very faint memory. Nor do we want to distribute rose-colored glasses through which even the most minimal stirrings against particular atrocities by the racist capitalist rulers appear as sea changes in the political climate—a practice that is common fare for sundry proclaimed socialists.

Instead, we are dedicated to educating a new generation of fighters in the best traditions of the early Communist defense work before it was poisoned by Stalinist degeneration. As Cannon wrote for the ILD’s second annual conference: “The procession that goes in and out of the prison doors is not a new one. It is the result of an old struggle under new forms and under new conditions. All through history those who have fought against oppression have constantly been faced with the dungeons of a ruling class.” He added, “The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem.” Keeping the memory of their struggles alive helps politically arm a new generation of fighters against the prison that is capitalist society. We urge WV readers to honor the prisoners by supporting the Holiday Appeal.

The 21 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below.

*   *   *

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 America’s foremost class-war prisoner. Mumia remains condemned to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 69-year-old Peltier is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another eleven years! Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family.

Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 36th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

Lynne Stewart is a lawyer imprisoned in 2009 for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric convicted for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. Stewart is a well-known advocate who defended Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state. She was originally sentenced to 28 months; a resentencing pursued by the Obama administration more than quadrupled her prison time to ten years. As she is 74 years old and suffers from Stage IV breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and back, this may well be a death sentence. Stewart qualifies for immediate compassionate release, but Obama’s Justice Department refuses to make such a motion before the resentencing judge, who has all but stated that he would grant her release!

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles 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. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals, but, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They are victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation, under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his late 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber Pelican Bay SHU in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesque inhuman conditions.

Jason Sutherlin, Cody Lee Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin, John Tucker and Alex Stuck were among some 18 anti-racist militants who, in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park in May 2012, broke up a gathering of fascists called to organize a “White Nationalist Economic Summit.” Among the vermin sent scurrying were some with links to the Stormfront Web site run by a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon. Such fascist meetings are not merely right-wing discussion clubs but organizing centers for race-terror against black people, Jews, immigrants, gays and anyone else the white-supremacists consider subhuman. For their basic act of social sanitation, these five were sentenced by a Cook County court to prison terms of three and a half to six years on charges of “armed violence.”

Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredations. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

•Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.

•Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.

•Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.

•Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

•Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

•Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

•Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

•Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

Seven Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The Struggle Continues …

Seven Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea Manning

*Call (202) 685-2900- Major General Jeffery S. Buchanan is the Convening Authority for Private Manning’s court- martial, which means that he has the authority to decrease the sentence imposed no matter what the judge handed down. Ask General Buchanan to use his authority to reduce the draconian 35 year sentence handed down by Judge Lind.

Please help us reach all these important contacts: Adrienne Combs, Deputy Officer Public Affairs (202) 685-2900 adrienne.m.combs.civ@mail.mil

Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, Public Affairs Officer (202) 685-4899 michelle.l.martinhing.mil@mail.mil The Public Affairs Office fax #: 202-685-0706

Try e-mailing Maj. Gen. Buchanan at jeffrey.s.buchanan@us.army.mil

The Public Affairs Office is required to report up the chain of command the number of calls they receive on a particular issue, so please help us flood the office with support for our heroic whistleblower today!

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online or print and share PDF petition Please sign the petition on the reverse side of this letter, “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.

*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns. Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Contribute to the Private Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Bradley E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304. You must use Bradley on the address envelope.

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

*Call: (913) 758-3600-Write to:Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander U.S. Detention Barracks 1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027-Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).” (for more details-http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html#!/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html

Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me.
Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include:

*that Private Manning was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.

*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.

*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.

*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!

Signature ___________________________________________________________

Print Name __________________________________________________________

Address_____________________________________________________________

City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

No dejaremos a nuestros Sister Detrás presidente Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning ahora!

Discurso pronunciado en nombre del Chelsea Manning en los Smedley mayordomo Veteranos anuales Brigada de la Paz patrocinado por la paz en caso de Armisticio / Día de los Veteranos 11 de noviembre de 2013 a Fanueil Hall en Boston

No dejaremos a nuestros Sister Detrás presidente Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning ahora!

Los titulares del verano son ahora aún. El veredicto, la sentencia judicial si no el veredicto de la historia, en el caso de los Estados Unidos contra el soldado de primera clase Bradley Manning ha sido proclamado, culpable de 20 de los 22 cargos. La sentencia draconiana 35 años se ha impuesto por la cruel descaradamente progubernamental juez militar, el coronel Lind. Los expertos de los medios y comentaristas también han dado su opinión, principalmente, que la popa se había hecho justicia por la convicción, la convicción de acuerdo a su propio deseo de mantener las cosas en secreto para nosotros y no dejar que un soldado alistado humilde exponga su castillo de naipes. Algunos, como el avestruz New York Times, se resistió un poco a la sentencia excesiva y luego siguió su camino. Otros tenían una risita momentánea cuando Bradley se convirtió en Chelsea para expresar su verdadero género y entonces ellos también se fue. Todo ahora está tranquilo, el caso es noticia de ayer ya mucho tiempo fuera del interés de 24/7 ciclo. En sus ojos Chelsea Manning ha tenido sus quince minutos de fama y ahora se reduce a sólo un prisionero de guerra confinada a los cuarteles de máxima seguridad en las praderas de Kansas en Fort Leavenworth para hacer frente a un futuro incierto.

Chelsea Manning ahora también se enfrenta al duro destino que se da en casi todos los casos de presos políticos, haciendo difícil la espera para el proceso de apelación engorroso lento para trabajar su camino a través de los tribunales militares y civiles de apelación. Espera en el corto plazo para una posible reducción de la pena por el oficial de convocatoria de Manning de Private corte marcial que tiene la autoridad para hacerlo para el Distrito Militar de Washington, el general Buchanan con sede en Fort McNair. Y espera también, con franqueza, con la esperanza de desvanecimiento, de alguna manera corta hogar indulto presidencial a un presidente que injustamente interrumpió a sí mismo en el caso de sus comentarios desde el principio. Esa campaña perdón dio un giro serio para lo peor cuando el post-convicción de Amnistía Internacional / Private Manning Support Network Casa Blanca petición en línea fallaron, cayendo gravemente corto de conseguir las 100.000 firmas necesarias que habría obligado a la Administración Obama para abordar la cuestión planteado por la petición.

Chelsea también tiene que hacer frente a la caída real de que ya se ha producido en el apoyo público ferviente y la actividad en torno a su caso, ya que el veredicto y la sentencia se encuentran y el interés de los medios se ha cerrado en torno al caso. Habrá menos mítines públicos periódicos de todo el mundo, desde Afganistán a los Estados en su nombre, lo que refleja una difusión de foco ahora que los seguidores no están fijos en la presencia pública en el juicio. La larga lista de las celebridades y ciudadanos comunes que han contribuido con sus nombres, su tiempo, su dinero y sus energías tienen y se caerá en nombre de nuestros Wikileaks heroicas señales de alarma también. Incluso los partidarios fuertes y comprometidos que han liderado los esfuerzos Manning aquí en Boston han decidido llevar a cabo otras estrategias menos públicos para obtener la libertad de Chelsea. Eventos Para luchar la batalla por su libertad en otros frentes de la recaudación de fondos para ponerse en contacto con los funcionarios del gobierno que va a "engrasar el camino" al presidente que nos dé una audiencia sobre la solicitud de indulto.

Y este último punto es realmente el quid de la cuestión. La lucha continúa, continúa hasta que Chelsea es gratis. Ahí es donde los Veteranos por la Paz se presenta en las personas que han servido en las fuerzas armadas, que han conseguido "religión" en el lado derecho de los ángeles en las cuestiones de la guerra y la paz, y que se han destacado en la solidaridad y la defensa de Chelsea, Manning desde el inicio de su encarcelamiento. Todos nosotros, ya sea que sirvieron en las guerras o en "tiempos de paz", pasó por el rigor y la locura de la formación básica en venerables viejos sargentos nos golpearon en la cabeza con la idea de que tenía que cuidar de su compañero, que su supervivencia, y con esto querían decir en el fragor de la batalla, dependía de nosotros comprando en ese concepto.

Cualquier veterano puede contar muchas historias acerca de cómo al final su participación en el ejército se redujo a sólo incorporada idea de que cuando el acuerdo fue hecho y las cosas se calmaron. No decepcionar a sus amigos. No dejar a sus amigos atrás. Si la mayoría de los perforados, en los conceptos militares que aprendimos valen nada es difícil de juzgar, el miedo y la imprudencia de hecho, puede desempeñar un papel más importante. Sin embargo podemos tomar que "no salir de su amigo detrás" concepto y aplicarlo aquí. Sin embargo, podemos llegar a la prestación de apoyo a Manning Chelsea es con el entendimiento de que es nuestro amigo. No vamos a dejar a nuestra hermana atrás. Recuerde que. Recuerde que esto también presidente Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning ahora!

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Speech made on behalf of Chelsea Manning at the annual Smedley Butler Brigade Veterans for Peace- sponsored peace event on Armistice/Veterans Day, November 11, 2013 at Fanueil Hall in Boston

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The headlines of the summer are now still. The verdict, the legal verdict if not the verdict of history, in the case of the United States vs. Private First Class Bradley Manning has been proclaimed, guilty on 20 of 22 counts. The draconian 35 year sentence has been imposed by the cruel pro-government military judge, Colonel Lind. The media pundits and commentators too have had their say, mainly that stern justice had been served by the conviction, a conviction in keeping with their own desire to keep things secret from us and not let some lowly enlisted soldier expose their house of cards. Some, like the ostrich-like New York Times, balked a little at the excessive sentence and then moved on. Others had a momentary titter when Bradley turned into Chelsea to express her real gender and then they too moved on. All is now quiet, the case is yesterday’s news now long outside the 24/7 cycle interest. In their eyes Chelsea Manning has had her fifteen minutes of fame and now she is reduced to just another military prisoner confined to the maximum security barracks out in the prairies of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth to face an uncertain future.

Chelsea Manning now also faces the hard fate that occurs in almost all political prisoner cases; doing the hard time while waiting for the slow cumbersome appeals process to work its way through the military and civilian courts of appeal. Waits in the near term for a possible reduction in sentence by the convening officer of Private Manning’s court-martial who has the authority to do so for the Washington Military District, General Buchanan based at Fort McNair. And waits too, candidly, with fading hopes, for some short way home presidential pardon from a President who wrongfully interjected himself into the case with his comments early on. That pardon campaign took a serious turn for the worst when the post-conviction Amnesty International/ Private Manning Support Network White House on-line petition failed, falling seriously short of getting the required 100,000 signatures that would have forced the Obama Administration to address the question posed by the petition.

Chelsea must also face the very real falloff that has already occurred in the fervent public support and activity around her case now that the verdict and sentence are in and the media interest has shut down around the case. There will be fewer periodic public rallies around the world from Afghanistan to the States on her behalf, reflecting a diffusion of focus now that supporters are not riveted to the public presence at trial. The long list of those celebrities and average citizens who have contributed their names, their time, their money and their energies have and will fall off on behalf of our heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower as well. Even strong and committed supporters who have led the Manning efforts here in the Boston have decided to pursue other less public strategies to gain Chelsea’s freedom. To fight that battle for her freedom on other fronts from fund-raising events to contacting any governmental officials who will “grease the way” to the President to give us a hearing on the pardon application.

And that last point is really the crux of the matter. The struggle continues, continues until Chelsea is free. That is where Veterans for Peace comes in, people who have served in the military, who have gotten “religion” on the right side of the angels on the questions of war and peace and who have stood in solidarity with, and defense of, Chelsea Manning since the beginning of her incarceration. All of us, whether we served in wars or in “peace-time,” went through the rigors and madness of basic training where hoary old drill sergeants beat us over the head with the notion that you had to take care of your buddy, that your survival, and by this they meant in the heat of battle, depended on us buying into that concept.

Any veteran can tell you many stories about how in the end their involvement with the military came down to just that embedded idea when the deal went done and the dust settled. Not letting down your buddies. Not leaving your buddies behind. Whether most of those drilled-in military concepts we learned are worth anything is hard to judge, fear and recklessness may in fact play a larger role. Nevertheless we can take that "not leaving your buddy behind" concept and apply it here. However we may end up providing support to Chelsea Manning it is with the understanding that she is our buddy. We will not leave our sister behind. Remember that. Remember this as well- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Pvt. Manning attorney to speak in LA, Oakland, Seattle

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David Coombs, attorney for American prisoner of conscience US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, will speak at three upcoming West Coast events hosted by the Private Manning Support Network. Mr. Coombs continues to represent the heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower recently sentenced to 35-years in military prison.
Sunday, Dec. 8 at 7:00pm — Los Angeles CA
The Church in Ocean Park, 235 Hill Street, Santa Monica CA 90405
Monday, Dec. 9 at 6:30pm — Oakland CA
Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland CA 94612
Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 7:00pm — Seattle WA
University Temple United Methodist Church (Fireplace Room), 1415 NE 43rd St., Seattle WA 98105
Events will include Q&A with Mr. Coombs, and a fund pitch by the Support Network to benefit Pvt. Manning’s ongoing defense efforts, including pending legal appeals.
Oakland event is presented by Courage to Resist, with the support of the Bay Area Military Law Panel, Veterans for Peace-SF, War Resisters League-West, Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation, SF Women in Black, World Can’t Wait-SF Bay, CodePink Women for Peace-East Bay & Golden Gate, OccupySF Action Council & Environmental Justice Working Group, OccupyForum, SF LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, Queer Strike, National Lawyers Guild-SF, and the Civilian-Soldier Alliance. $5-$10 donation requested at the door to cover event expenses. Wheelchair accessible. For more info, contact: Courage to Resist, 510-488-3559.

***Songs To While The Time By- Rod Stewart’s Lady Day 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

…she had to move on, move on with her life she said. Said their, quote, “flirtation” was not built to last, not made of the stuff of dreams (sweet dreams, he said, quote). And of course she was right, she was right for her, right to want to move on. To leave the country life behind, to leave the dull behind and shake up the world a little, shake up the world a little with her love too. He, well, he was a tattered and tore guy, a guy who would be swallowed up in cities, would find no air to breathe. Still it hurt, hurt like hell that she wanted to leave, wanted to leave her tattered and tore behind like a dust rag. Still it hurt that she never looked back when she walked up the road to take that Greyhound bus to who knows where. Still, well, still he loved her, a small love in a big world but love…      

************
Lady Day

North winds have made my face a little older
And my back is bent through trying too hard
My vest is torn, so I make no perfect picture
To place upon your white-washed wall

 

I'd like to stay but you have not asked me
Still I don't really expect you to
Dusty boots would shame you now, Lady Day

Are we really that far apart?

I wish the world could see you now, Lady Day
Laughing down at your oldest friend
The one who shared just about all he had

In a one-sided love affair

I get scared when I remember too much
Wasted time I suppose you could say that
Strange, it don't seem that way to me

But wait a minute, I don't even think you're listening

Just let me tell you how I really feel
I've seen the inside of your heart, Lady Day
When you wanted to be shown the way
I loved you then as I love ya now, girl

Read more: Rod Stewart - Lady Day Lyrics | MetroLyrics