Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Drop the Charges Against Norberto González Claudio!
On June 27, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following letter of protest to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Partisan Defense Committee condemns the arrest and prosecution of Puerto Rican nationalist Norberto González Claudio and demands his freedom.
The 66-year-old Mr. González Claudio faces over 200 years in prison—a death sentence—for the crime of dedicating his life to opposing U.S. colonialism in his native Puerto Rico. He is reputed to be a leader of the group Ejército Popular Boricua or Puerto Rican Popular Army, popularly known as Los Macheteros, which took credit for the 1983 robbery of $7 million from a Wells Fargo armored car depot in Connecticut.
Given the more than 100-year history of U.S. occupation, deprivation of democratic rights, brutal terror and frame-up prosecutions of those fighting for Puerto Rico’s independence, there is no reason to believe any of the charges against Mr. González Claudio. At the same time, we recall that money expropriated from Wells Fargo was used to buy and distribute toys to the impoverished children of Puerto Rico.
In their heyday, the Macheteros were widely admired across the Puerto Rico colony nation, a respect displayed by the outpouring of opposition six years ago, when dozens of FBI agents equipped with helicopters, military vehicles and machine guns participated in the coldblooded execution of one of the founders of that group, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. The U.S. government’s efforts to condemn Mr. González Claudio to a prison death for a bank robbery over 25 years ago is part of campaign to criminalize all who would oppose U.S. imperialism and its more than a century of domination of that strategic island. We vigorously defend Puerto Rico's right to demand an end to U.S. colonialism.
We demand that all charges against Norberto González Claudio be dropped and he be released immediately and unconditionally.
Showing posts with label Chicano liberation struggles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicano liberation struggles. Show all posts
Monday, August 08, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
From The Partisan Defense Committee-Defend Chicano Activist Carlos Montes!
Workers Vanguard No. 982
10 June 2011
FBI Raids Hit LA
Defend Chicano Activist Carlos Montes!
Broadening the government’s witchhunt of leftist activists, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s SWAT team and the FBI invaded the Alhambra home of Carlos Montes, a veteran Chicano activist, in the pre-dawn hours of May 17, breaking down the door and tearing his house apart. Using reactionary gun control laws, the agents arrested Montes on a pretext of violating a firearms code. What is clear is that he was targeted for his 44-year history of leftist political activism. A founder of the Chicano Moratorium Movement Against the Vietnam War and cofounder of the Brown Berets, Montes is a supporter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! He is also a leader of the Southern California Immigration Coalition.
Montes had recently worked with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which was formed to defend 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists targeted by the FBI since September 2010 for the “crime” of solidarity with the oppressed in Latin America and the Near East (see WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). Many of the activists had helped to organize protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention. These included Montes, who was named in the subpoena at the time of the September FBI raid. Others were active in the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society and FRSO. Courageously, the 23 activists have refused to testify before the Chicago grand jury.
Released on bail, Montes described the raid to EGP News (27 May). He stated that the FBI and SWAT squad “tore down the door and ransacked my house, took my computer, took my computer files, took my cell phone. They looked at my family albums from the movement, from the Chicano Moratorium, the Community Service Organization, May 1st Southern California Immigration Coalition. It’s political persecution.” The FBI tried to question Montes about the FRSO as he was being taken to jail. The Los Angeles Times and other bourgeois news sources have blacked out coverage of Montes’ frame-up arrest.
In vastly expanding the state’s repressive powers in the name of the “war on terror” over the last decade, the capitalist government has slashed fundamental rights of association and speech. In June 2010, the Supreme Court expanded the definition of what legally can be considered “material support to terrorism” to include a wide range of activities deemed as somehow aiding proscribed foreign organizations, from giving money to Muslim charities to publishing interviews with leftist guerrilla fighters. Three months later, the Feds launched their attack against the Midwestern leftists and labor activists.
During the 2008 elections, liberals and reformist leftists, including the FRSO, pushed the dangerous myth that the election of Obama would reverse the worst policies of George W. Bush. But as the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, Obama has amply shown that his promises to clean up the “excesses” of the Bush administration were nothing other than a statement to wage the “war on terror” more effectively. With the FBI raids against leftists, the Obama White House has trumped the Bush regime’s assault on civil liberties.
The purpose of the “anti-terror” witchhunt is to terrorize the population, which in turn is supposed to accept the expansion of police powers at home while supporting predatory wars abroad. The ultimate target of the capitalist state’s repressive measures is the multiracial working class, which alone has the social power and interest in smashing capitalist rule and replacing it with a workers state.
It is in the vital interests of the labor movement to defend Carlos Montes and all those caught up in the “anti-terror” witchhunts. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the SL, demand that the charges against Montes and the Midwestern activists be dropped, that the subpoenas be withdrawn, and that all seized materials be returned to them. A protest is being called for Carlos Montes’ first court appearance on June 16. It will take place outside the Alhambra Court House, located at 150 West Commonwealth Avenue, at 7:30 a.m. Down with the imperialists’ “war on terror”! An injury to one is an injury to all!
10 June 2011
FBI Raids Hit LA
Defend Chicano Activist Carlos Montes!
Broadening the government’s witchhunt of leftist activists, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s SWAT team and the FBI invaded the Alhambra home of Carlos Montes, a veteran Chicano activist, in the pre-dawn hours of May 17, breaking down the door and tearing his house apart. Using reactionary gun control laws, the agents arrested Montes on a pretext of violating a firearms code. What is clear is that he was targeted for his 44-year history of leftist political activism. A founder of the Chicano Moratorium Movement Against the Vietnam War and cofounder of the Brown Berets, Montes is a supporter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! He is also a leader of the Southern California Immigration Coalition.
Montes had recently worked with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which was formed to defend 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists targeted by the FBI since September 2010 for the “crime” of solidarity with the oppressed in Latin America and the Near East (see WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). Many of the activists had helped to organize protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention. These included Montes, who was named in the subpoena at the time of the September FBI raid. Others were active in the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society and FRSO. Courageously, the 23 activists have refused to testify before the Chicago grand jury.
Released on bail, Montes described the raid to EGP News (27 May). He stated that the FBI and SWAT squad “tore down the door and ransacked my house, took my computer, took my computer files, took my cell phone. They looked at my family albums from the movement, from the Chicano Moratorium, the Community Service Organization, May 1st Southern California Immigration Coalition. It’s political persecution.” The FBI tried to question Montes about the FRSO as he was being taken to jail. The Los Angeles Times and other bourgeois news sources have blacked out coverage of Montes’ frame-up arrest.
In vastly expanding the state’s repressive powers in the name of the “war on terror” over the last decade, the capitalist government has slashed fundamental rights of association and speech. In June 2010, the Supreme Court expanded the definition of what legally can be considered “material support to terrorism” to include a wide range of activities deemed as somehow aiding proscribed foreign organizations, from giving money to Muslim charities to publishing interviews with leftist guerrilla fighters. Three months later, the Feds launched their attack against the Midwestern leftists and labor activists.
During the 2008 elections, liberals and reformist leftists, including the FRSO, pushed the dangerous myth that the election of Obama would reverse the worst policies of George W. Bush. But as the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, Obama has amply shown that his promises to clean up the “excesses” of the Bush administration were nothing other than a statement to wage the “war on terror” more effectively. With the FBI raids against leftists, the Obama White House has trumped the Bush regime’s assault on civil liberties.
The purpose of the “anti-terror” witchhunt is to terrorize the population, which in turn is supposed to accept the expansion of police powers at home while supporting predatory wars abroad. The ultimate target of the capitalist state’s repressive measures is the multiracial working class, which alone has the social power and interest in smashing capitalist rule and replacing it with a workers state.
It is in the vital interests of the labor movement to defend Carlos Montes and all those caught up in the “anti-terror” witchhunts. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the SL, demand that the charges against Montes and the Midwestern activists be dropped, that the subpoenas be withdrawn, and that all seized materials be returned to them. A protest is being called for Carlos Montes’ first court appearance on June 16. It will take place outside the Alhambra Court House, located at 150 West Commonwealth Avenue, at 7:30 a.m. Down with the imperialists’ “war on terror”! An injury to one is an injury to all!
Saturday, August 28, 2010
*From The Blogosphere-40TH ANIVERSARY, CHICANO MORATORIUM - AGAINST THE WAR IN VIETNAM,- AUGUST 29TH, 1970
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indy Media entry on this archival entry from the Vietnam War era highlighting Chicano opposition to that war (and the current ones).
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
*Damn It- Free Hugo Pinell Now!
Commentary
This entry is passed along from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add nothing more other than I remember back in the early days of the San Quentin Six when the Black Panthers were alive and struggling; when George Jackson was being feted on the left and when Jonathan Jackson led his famous freedom raid. That was also a time when Angela Davis was the subject of an international campaign for her freedom that every one with any pretensions to leftism came out to support. Now, a generation or so later, Hugo, an old still unbroken warrior remains behind bars. Where are the massive forces that should be fighting for his freedom? Honor the memory of George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Sam Melville and other class war fighters. Free Hugo now.
Outrage! Hugo Pinell Denied Parole
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
On January 14, the California Board of Parole denied Hugo Pinell parole for the ninth time—and declared that he will not have another parole board hearing for 15 years! Pinell, the last of the San Quentin Six still in prison, is 63 years old and has been in prison since he was 19. Despite having no disciplinary write-ups for 27 years, he has spent the last 39 years in solitary confinement, 19 of them in the notoriously brutal Security Housing Unit of the Pelican Bay dungeon, where he is subjected to high-tech sensory deprivation: 23 to 24 hours a day in a small cell, no windows, no natural light, no contact visits and prolonged isolation. The capitalist rulers have kept Pinell locked down because he remains true to his vision of a society finally rid of racist repression.
Pinell, who immigrated from Nicaragua at age 12, was locked up in 1965. In the late ’60s he became a leader of a developing movement in the California prisons against wretched conditions and racist abuse. He was a student and close comrade of George Jackson, the imprisoned Black Panther spokesman. The prisoners’ movement, which was met with heavy repression, reflected the intense struggles taking place outside the prison walls, from the “black power” movement to radical protests against the war in Vietnam. Pinell and five others—the San Quentin Six—were framed up on charges of conspiracy murder stemming from the killing of three prison guards in the protests that erupted after the assassination of Jackson in the San Quentin prison yard on 21 August 1971. Pinell represented himself at the 18-month-long trial and was convicted of two counts of assault.
The parole board’s decision to deny Pinell parole for another 15 years was made possible by the grotesquely reactionary Proposition 9, passed in the November 2008 elections. Under previous California law, Pinell would have to be given another hearing within two years. Proposition 9, dubbed a “victims’ bill of rights,” rewrote a whole section of the state constitution, as well as state penal law, in order to bolster the repressive powers of the state and further eviscerate the rights of those charged or convicted by the racist capitalist criminal injustice system. The ballot initiative was bankrolled with $4.8 million by sleazy billionaire Henry Nicholas III, who last year was indicted on securities fraud and other charges, such as drugging his customers’ representatives. In 2004, Nicholas also pumped in $3.5 million in a last-minute campaign to defeat Proposition 66, which would have rolled back some of the provisions of California’s notorious, draconian 1994 “Three Strikes” law.
For over 20 years, Hugo Pinell has been one of the class-war prisoners supported by the Partisan Defense Committee’s monthly stipend program. As the PDC noted in a recent letter to the California parole board, in 2006 “a commissioner berated Mr. Pinell saying ‘you continue to show no remorse...’. This is a common ruse for denying parole for political prisoners. Mr. Pinell has no reason for ‘remorse’ for his commendable political convictions.” The fight to free Pinell and all the other class-war prisoners is part of the fight against the whole system of exploitation and repression inherent in capitalist rule. Free Hugo Pinell now!
This entry is passed along from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add nothing more other than I remember back in the early days of the San Quentin Six when the Black Panthers were alive and struggling; when George Jackson was being feted on the left and when Jonathan Jackson led his famous freedom raid. That was also a time when Angela Davis was the subject of an international campaign for her freedom that every one with any pretensions to leftism came out to support. Now, a generation or so later, Hugo, an old still unbroken warrior remains behind bars. Where are the massive forces that should be fighting for his freedom? Honor the memory of George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Sam Melville and other class war fighters. Free Hugo now.
Outrage! Hugo Pinell Denied Parole
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
On January 14, the California Board of Parole denied Hugo Pinell parole for the ninth time—and declared that he will not have another parole board hearing for 15 years! Pinell, the last of the San Quentin Six still in prison, is 63 years old and has been in prison since he was 19. Despite having no disciplinary write-ups for 27 years, he has spent the last 39 years in solitary confinement, 19 of them in the notoriously brutal Security Housing Unit of the Pelican Bay dungeon, where he is subjected to high-tech sensory deprivation: 23 to 24 hours a day in a small cell, no windows, no natural light, no contact visits and prolonged isolation. The capitalist rulers have kept Pinell locked down because he remains true to his vision of a society finally rid of racist repression.
Pinell, who immigrated from Nicaragua at age 12, was locked up in 1965. In the late ’60s he became a leader of a developing movement in the California prisons against wretched conditions and racist abuse. He was a student and close comrade of George Jackson, the imprisoned Black Panther spokesman. The prisoners’ movement, which was met with heavy repression, reflected the intense struggles taking place outside the prison walls, from the “black power” movement to radical protests against the war in Vietnam. Pinell and five others—the San Quentin Six—were framed up on charges of conspiracy murder stemming from the killing of three prison guards in the protests that erupted after the assassination of Jackson in the San Quentin prison yard on 21 August 1971. Pinell represented himself at the 18-month-long trial and was convicted of two counts of assault.
The parole board’s decision to deny Pinell parole for another 15 years was made possible by the grotesquely reactionary Proposition 9, passed in the November 2008 elections. Under previous California law, Pinell would have to be given another hearing within two years. Proposition 9, dubbed a “victims’ bill of rights,” rewrote a whole section of the state constitution, as well as state penal law, in order to bolster the repressive powers of the state and further eviscerate the rights of those charged or convicted by the racist capitalist criminal injustice system. The ballot initiative was bankrolled with $4.8 million by sleazy billionaire Henry Nicholas III, who last year was indicted on securities fraud and other charges, such as drugging his customers’ representatives. In 2004, Nicholas also pumped in $3.5 million in a last-minute campaign to defeat Proposition 66, which would have rolled back some of the provisions of California’s notorious, draconian 1994 “Three Strikes” law.
For over 20 years, Hugo Pinell has been one of the class-war prisoners supported by the Partisan Defense Committee’s monthly stipend program. As the PDC noted in a recent letter to the California parole board, in 2006 “a commissioner berated Mr. Pinell saying ‘you continue to show no remorse...’. This is a common ruse for denying parole for political prisoners. Mr. Pinell has no reason for ‘remorse’ for his commendable political convictions.” The fight to free Pinell and all the other class-war prisoners is part of the fight against the whole system of exploitation and repression inherent in capitalist rule. Free Hugo Pinell now!
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