MESSAGE TO MUMIA MARCHERS
Unite to fight racism and war
By Greg
Butterfield
On April 24 in Philadelphia and San Francisco, youths will
be at the forefront of demonstrations that fill the streets
chanting: "Mumia is fearless and so are we!"
They will express passionate determination to fight racism
and injustice--to be troops in a liberation struggle.
From the tiny death-row cell where he is confined 23 hours a
day, Mumia Abu-Jamal has come to be known the world over as
"the voice of the voiceless"--an uncompromising speaker of
revolutionary truths and an inspiration to this new generation
of fighters.
Abu-Jamal's case symbolizes a wider struggle against a
system that thrives on divide-and-conquer tactics, economic
exploitation and violent repression. That system is
capitalism.
War at home & abroad
Mumia Abu-Jamal is not just a prisoner. He's a prisoner of
war--the U.S. government's long war against African Americans,
Latinos and other people of color.
That war is being waged against other oppressed groups, too:
women, the lesbian/gay/bi/trans community, immigrants.
It takes many forms: police terror, prison expansion,
workfare slavery and merciless cutbacks.
On April 15 Aquan Salmon, a 14-year-old Black youth, became
the war's latest casualty. He was shot dead by a white cop in
Hartford, Conn. Eyewitnesses said the unarmed youth was shot
with his hands in the air.
"The officer yelled `Stop!' and the young man was stopping.
His hands were going up. Then the officer shot him," Orus D.
Dawson told the Harford Courant.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was 14--the same age as Aquan Salmon--in
1968, when he was arrested and beaten by cops at a protest
against George Wallace, the KKK governor of Alabama who was
running for president.
Abu-Jamal was just 15 when he helped found the Philadelphia
branch of the Black Panther Party. That's when the FBI began
its ongoing surveillance of Abu-Jamal as part of
COINTELPRO--the Counterintelligence Program to undermine
militant movements for Black, Latino and Native liberation.
His political activism was used in 1982 as an excuse to
impose the death penalty after a kangaroo court convicted him
of murdering a white cop.
Now listen to what Abu-Jamal says about another front in the
war--the U.S.-NATO bombing of Yugoslavia:
"NATO is but a fig leaf for American `interests,' and the
bombing of Yugoslavia is but a global demonstration of the
ruthlessness of the American empire.
"Let us consider the claims that the U.S. is concerned about
`human rights' or about the `rights of ethnic minorities,' as
the corporate press projects hourly," Abu-Jamal wrote. "What of
America's largest national minority--African Americans?
"The world-respected Amnesty International, speaking through
its secretary general, Pierre Sane, announced just days before
the bombing, `Human rights violations in the United States of
America are persistent, widespread and appear to
disproportionately affect people of racial or ethnic minority
backgrounds.'
"This isn't about `human rights,'" said Abu-Jamal. "It isn't
about `ethnic minorities.' And it also isn't about `genocide.'
It's about establishing who's `boss' in the next century. It's
about keeping Russia in its place. It's about keeping the
European Union under the thumb of Wall Street."
Who fights? Who dies?
On April 16 President Clinton ordered 33,000 military
reservists called up for possible deployment in Yugoslavia.
This should be a warning signal to all young activists
fighting against racism and repression here at home. It is this
generation that will be called on to fight and die in a ground
war against their Balkan sisters and brothers.
An ominous report in the April 18 Guardian of London states,
"NATO is making plans for a ground invasion of Kosovo as early
as the end of May. ... 80,000 troops have been earmarked for
the operation. American forces are already starting training in
a reconstruction of a Balkan village in the Colorado
Rockies."
During an April 20 visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels,
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for an invasion. His
words carry weight because Blair often serves as President
Clinton's right hand in imperialist military adventures.
Since the Vietnam War, Washington has limited itself to air
wars and blitzkrieg invasions of small countries. But in their
greedy rush to redivide the world's spoils, the imperialists
are tottering near the edge of a long, bloody ground war.
Like the Vietnamese people a generation ago, the Yugoslavs
are ready to resist in defense of their homeland. And in the
U.S., the anti-war movement must move as quickly as possible
from protest to resistance.
Who will be sent to fight and die in Yugoslavia? It won't be
the sons and daughters of the rich. Especially not when ground
troops are sent in.
No, it will be the same youths--Black, Latino, Native,
Asian, and poor whites--who today fill the prisons or are
targets for killer cops.
The youths demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal have
natural allies in the anti-war movement. The communities
fighting police brutality and racism can build these alliances
too. They are not fighting for justice at home only to have
their sons and daughters drafted into Washington's army of
conquest.
Likewise, the anti-war movement must embrace the anti-racist
struggle to grow. Supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight for
justice is an important step.
Together, these movements can become a powerful force to
stop Wall Street's war on both fronts.
On June 5, the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War has
called for a national march on the Pentagon in Washington.
"Money for jobs and education, not for war in Yugoslavia," is
the protest's demand.
Be in Washington June 5. Make Abu-Jamal's stand against the
war known to all.
Brick by brick, wall by wall, we'll free Mumia
Abu-Jamal--and stop the dirty U.S. war!
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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