September 2006
Statement of the Internationalist Group
to the September 15 Oakland Rally
Mobilize Workers Power to
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Mumia Abu-Jamal (Photo: ©
Lou Jones)
Mumia
Abu-Jamal is the foremost class-war prisoner in the
United States today. His case is the signal proof that there is no
justice for
the oppressed in the capitalist courts. As a former spokesman of the
Black
Panther Party, Mumia was subjected to the government’s murderous
repression
under the infamous COINTELPRO program. He was framed and sentenced to
death for
his calls for revolution. The threat of execution continues to hang
over his
head 25 years later because the racist rulers are determined to silence
the
eloquent “voice of the voiceless.”
The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, has fought since its inception for workers action to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Our comrades of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil in April 1999 initiated the first labor action for Mumia’s freedom, a state-wide work stoppage by the teachers of Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian teachers linked their action to the West Coast port shutdown by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States for the demand to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. This is a taste of the kind of workers power that will be required to liberate our courageous brother.
Mumia’s
conviction was no aberration but the normal
working of the legal system designed by the slave masters to keep black
slaves
in the chains of perpetual bondage. We call not for a “new trial” by
this
bourgeois injustice system which has condemned thousands of innocents
to die,
while U.S. imperialism lays waste to Afghanistan and Iraq in the latest
of its
countless wars of conquest and pillage. Rather, we appeal to the
working class
to mobilize its tremendous class power to free Mumia and defeat the
imperialist
war abroad and the bosses’ war against the poor, minorities, working
people and
immigrants here.
Bulletin
of the Rio de
Janeiro state teachers union (SEPE), reports
on April 1999 strike action
for Mumia: "Rio Schools and U.S. Dock
Workers Stop Work, Demand Freedom
for Mumia Abu-Jamal."
To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com