Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Workers Vanguard No. 1024
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FBI’s Racist “Anti-Terror” Vendetta Against Assata Shakur
Although the government largely succeeded in destroying the Black
Panther Party decades ago, the state vendetta against these courageous fighters
for black freedom is not only alive and well, but thriving under the
administration of the first black president and attorney general. To great
fanfare, two weeks ago the FBI named Assata Shakur (formerly known as Joanne
Chesimard) as the first woman to be placed on the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted
Terrorists.” Shakur was convicted in 1977 on frame-up murder charges in the
shooting death of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster on 2 May 1973 and
sentenced to life plus 33 years. Shakur escaped from prison in 1979, and five
years later was granted political asylum in the Cuban deformed workers state,
where she has resided for the past 29 years.
Declaring a 65-year-old grandmother one of the world’s deadliest
“terrorists” may have many scratching their heads and wondering what the Feds
are smoking. But this is deadly serious. At a May 2 press conference, the Feds
and New Jersey State Police announced they were doubling the bounty on Shakur to
$2 million. In an unprecedented move, the FBI placed billboards with her
likeness, reading “Wanted: Terrorist Joanne Chesimard a/k/a Assata Shakur,”
along New Jersey highways.
Given that Shakur is unlikely to pop up in Newark or Jersey City
any time soon, this may seem a bit gratuitous—but that’s hardly the point.
Cloaking the decades-long vendetta against Assata Shakur in the guise of the
current “war on terrorism” has a dual purpose: to settle the score against those
who fought for black freedom over 40 years ago and to warn that radical activity
would be treated as “domestic terrorism.” It underscores what we have insisted
since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon—that the
ultimate target of the vast “anti-terror” arsenal will be labor, blacks and
radical youth. Indeed, the Democratic administration of Barack Obama has
accelerated the use of anti-terror laws against leftists. The renewed vendetta
against Shakur is particularly ominous coming on the heels of the April 15
Boston Marathon bombing, which was seized on by the bloody capitalist rulers to
further enhance their vast repressive powers.
The FBI/cop crusade is nothing but a racist political witchhunt
with a drawn gun. New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes railed,
“From her safe haven in Cuba, Chesimard has been given the pulpit to preach and
profess, stirring supporters and groups to mobilize against the United States by
any means necessary.” Aaron T. Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI Newark
Division, complained that in Cuba Shakur has continued to espouse her “anti-U.S.
views” in speeches advocating “revolution and terrorism,” and ludicrously added
that she may have connections to international terrorist organizations. He
added: “She’s a danger to the American government.”
The State Department seized on the FBI announcement to make clear
that Cuba will remain on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” one of the
many pretexts for the continued embargo of the tiny island, where capitalist
rule was overthrown 53 years ago. As always, whom the U.S. capitalist rulers
consider a terrorist is entirely self-serving. Freely roaming the beaches of
Miami is Cuban CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind of the 1976
bombing of a Cubana airliner, which killed 73 people, as well as hotel bombings
in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded 12 other people.
On 2 May 1973, Shakur and two other former Panthers, Zayd Malik
Shakur and Sundiata Acoli—then members of the Black Liberation Army—were stopped
by troopers Foerster and James Harper on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for
a “faulty taillight.” Approaching the car, one of the cops drew his gun and
ordered the three to raise their hands. A moment later, Zayd Shakur was shot
dead by Harper. Foerster died in the crossfire, shot with a bullet from a
police revolver. Assata had just been shot twice, once in the back.
Acoli was convicted of killing Foerster in 1974 and sentenced to life. After
standing trial six times on other charges without a conviction, in 1977 Assata
Shakur was finally tried and convicted by an all-white New Jersey jury on
grotesque charges of killing her own comrade Zayd as well as Foerster.
At their May 2 press conference, Fuentes and Ford repeated the lie,
dutifully echoed by the bourgeois press, that Shakur “murdered a law enforcement
officer execution style.” This never happened, nor could it have. One of the
bullets that struck Assata shattered her clavicle and median nerve, paralyzing
her entire right arm. Assata’s fingerprints were absent from every gun and piece
of ammunition found at the scene. Neutron activation analysis taken immediately
after Assata arrived at the hospital showed there was no gunpowder residue on
her hands. Shakur was never convicted of firing the shot that killed Foerster.
Instead, she was railroaded to prison as an “accomplice” under a New Jersey
statute that declares that if a person present at the scene of a crime can be
construed as “aiding and abetting” it, she can be convicted of the crime
itself.
Assata Shakur was on the receiving end of the greatest terrorist
enterprise in the world—the bloodthirsty American capitalist rulers. She and her
two comrades were among the targets for assassination by the FBI and cops under
the deadly Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). In the eyes of the
capitalist rulers, the great crime of the Panthers was not only proclaiming the
need for a revolutionary solution to the oppression of black people but
advocating the right of armed self-defense against the racist terrorists,
whether in the white robes of the KKK or the navy blue of the police. The FBI’s
J. Edgar Hoover labeled the Panthers the “greatest threat to the internal
security of the U.S.” and in 1968 vowed, “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must
be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will
be dead revolutionaries.” Despite our deep political differences with the
Panthers, we as Marxists vigorously defended them against the capitalist state’s
murderous drive to crush black radicalism.
Thirty-eight Panthers were cut down, including Chicago party leader
Fred Hampton, shot to death in December 1969 as he lay in his bed. Countless
more were locked away for decades on frame-up charges. Foremost among them was
Los Angeles Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who himself survived an
LAPD assassination attempt days after Hampton’s murder and was later imprisoned
for 27 years on frame-up charges for a murder that FBI wiretap logs confirmed he
could not have committed, as he was 400 miles away. Today, former Panther
spokesman Mumia Abu-Jamal is condemned to a life of prison hell on false charges
of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Mumia spent 30 years on death
row before his death sentence was overturned two years ago. Like Shakur, the
seriously wounded Mumia could not have shot anyone: no physical evidence linked
Mumia to Faulkner’s killing and the courts rejected outright the evidence of
innocence. In Mumia’s case, the suppressed evidence included the confession of
the actual killer.
After the New Jersey governor put a $100,000 bounty on her head 15
years ago, Shakur stated in an open letter:
“I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government
persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political
repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards
people of color....
“This political persecution was part and parcel of the
government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with
crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such
charges....
“I guess the theory is that if they could kidnap millions of
Africans from Africa 400 years ago, they should be able to kidnap one African
woman today. It is nothing but an attempt to bring about the re-incarnation of
the Fugitive Slave Act. All I represent is just another slave that they want to
bring back to the plantation. Well, I might be a slave, but I will go to my
grave a rebellious slave.”
In the absence of a class-struggle leadership of labor committed to
the fight for black freedom, the Panthers, their personal courage
notwithstanding, rejected the only strategy for sweeping away the racist
bourgeois order—socialist revolution by the multiracial proletariat. Instead,
they embraced a reformist program that included the utopian call for “community
control” of the police. Racist repression and cop terror will only be ended when
the working class seizes state power under the leadership of a Leninist vanguard
party. Hands off Assata Shakur! Free Sundiata Acoli! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
The U. S. Senate is 
Shelagh Foreman
After
more than a year of research and in-depth interviews, the newest documentary
from producer and director Robert Greenwald and Brave New Foundations, War on
Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State highlights the
stories of four individuals who were compelled to reveal grave acts of
government illegality and violations to the U.S. constitution during the
explosion of the military industrial complex followed by 9/11. Whistleblowers,
journalist and experts, such as Michael DeKort, Bill Keller, Jane Mayer, Franz
Gayl, and Thomas Tamm, share what happens when the government turns its back on
the people they’re sworn to protect and punishes those who stand up to defend
the constitution.
Military veterans are turning out in force to show support for PFC Bradley Manning this Saturday, June 1, 1 pm at Fort Meade, Maryland, on the eve of his historic court martial, which begins on Monday. The diminutive 25-year-old Manning, who has acknowledged giving classified Army documents to Wikileaks about U.S. conduct of the wars Iraq and Afghanistan, is facing the possibility of life in prison. In what many people see as “overkill,” the Army has charged him with “Aiding the Enemy,” the most serious of 22 charges.
![[A protestor and police in Gezi Park. 31 May 2013. From Yücel Tunca via Nar Photos.]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s0SYp0i2sdTYC3RiMRQWWpywMbeu48B3l2qIfLFh6I_fvUTd_PT8MMuBVdUqE1I0vk1gOFFLtCJ9MSGdP593SLfmLFzu8f2ohv_2Cr62eqwtB6FKzCABGNDfg=s0-d "[A protestor and police in Gezi Park. 31 May 2013. From Yücel Tunca via Nar Photos.]")
Along the march, many people took the 
On June 1st almost two thousand people rallied to support Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, where Bradley’s trial is set to begin on Monday. At the same time rallies, signholdings and marches were held in cities around the world. For what happened at Fort Meade, see 
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