Free The Class-War Prisoners-Support Those Inside From Those On The Outside-Join The Committee For International Labor Defense (CILD)

Free The Class-War Prisoners-Support Those Inside From Those On The Outside-Join The Committee For International Labor Defense (CILD)

Comment by Lance Lawrence

A number of people in the Greater Boston area, many having worked on political prisoner campaigns from freeing Black Panthers in the old days (and a few who still inside the walls all these years later putting emphasis on the FBI vendetta against that organization and other militant black organizations as well) to more recently Mumia, Leonard Peltier, Chelsea Manning and Reality Leigh Winner have over the past couple of years decided to form a Committee for International Labor Defense. If those last three words ring a bell it is because this group consciously is trying to model itself after the organization started many years ago back in the 1920s initiated by the American Communist Party and led at first by founder James P. Cannon and others like Big Bill Haywood and his fellow anarchists who saw the need for the labor movement to defend its own and others who were being persecuted by the capitalist state. In all an honorable tradition including stalwart defenses of the martyred immigrant anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti and the Alabama Scottsboro Boys cases.

In practice what the original ILD (and now the CILD) attempted to do was make sure that those class-war prisoner not all of them necessarily in political agreement with the Communist Party or any party were not forgotten. That those inside were treated with the same dignity as those outside the wall (outside for the present anyway given the ups and downs of capital existence that can be a very close thing). For those who have spent time behind bars knowing that there are others outside looking after your interests has been a tremendous morale booster. That along with taking care of families, providing stipend to prisoners to purchase items inside, providing legal defense funds and personnel, writing letter to those inside are just some of the things that the ILD (and now the CILD) was committed to seeing done. Not as charity or social work as Cannon made very clear but as acts of hard solidarity with those inside. Read the statement, check out the website listed, and if possible support with anything from writing letters to donating legal fund in order to get our class-war prisoners freed as quickly as possible. Thank you