U.S. political prisoners? You bet there are
By John
Catalinotto
Apologists for U.S. capitalism constantly boast of its
accomplishments in the field of human rights. Almost 2 million
people may be in prison, but none is a political prisoner, they
claim.
They mean that no people are in prison simply because they
spoke or wrote or campaigned against the government. No one is
in jail for "sedition." People are no longer jailed for
"conspiring to overthrow the government."
But that's only because the capitalist state uses other
methods for eliminating those who effectively resist its rule.
Its charges are seldom openly political; they are aimed at
discrediting and isolating organizers.
Thus Mumia Abu-Jamal, a crusading African American
journalist, is charged not with sedition but with murdering a
cop. Nevertheless, the prosecution brought up his membership in
the Black Panther Party as a motive during sentencing.
Native leader Leonard Peltier is charged not with leading a
liberation struggle for Indigenous rights, but with the murder
of an FBI agent. The agent had been part of a group that
invaded the Pine Ridge reservation and opened fire at American
Indian Movement activists. No one could even show that Peltier
fired a shot. But he was there leading the struggle, so that
was enough to convict him.
These relatively well-known political prisoners--and a
handful of others--have managed to win worldwide attention to
their cases. Besides being people who have suffered a great
injustice, they have become symbols of the struggle for justice
and freedom. But they are only the tip of a gigantic
iceberg.
In March last year, the Jericho '98 organization held a
demonstration in Washington focusing attention on 150 political
prisoners in the United States.
COINTELPRO
Many were imprisoned in the late 1960s and early 1970s
through the FBI's Counterintelligence Program--COINTELPRO. The
government used it to attempt to break up militant
organizations, especially in the Black, Latino and Native
communities.
Any movement of the oppressed that practiced self-defense
against repression was fair game. Other targets of COINTELPRO
were the movement against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia and
the movement for Puerto Rican independence.
The government used agents provocateur--informers and
professional troublemakers--and manufactured evidence to create
turmoil and distrust. Some leaders were framed on the evidence
of paid informers.
Some of the key Jericho '98 organizers--Herman Ferguson,
Safiya Bukhari and Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt)--were themselves
victims of such frame-ups. Ji Jaga recently won his freedom
when it was proven that a key witness against him during his
trial was a government informer and this was kept from the
jury. After ji Jaga spent 27 years in jail, the state of
California finally admitted it had suppressed evidence showing
he was 400 miles away from the scene of the murder for which he
served time.
A Jericho '98 news release made the following point: "During
the period from May 1967 through December 1969 alone, no fewer
than 768 arrests were made of members of the Black Panther
Party under COINTELPRO under the directive of `disrupting'
these organizations through arrests and imprisonment. Geronimo
[ji Jaga] Pratt was but one of the many."
Last year's protest called attention to many others held
behind bars for their fight against U.S. racism and
imperialism. This includes the MOVE 9, Sundiata Acoli, Carlos
Torres, Carmen Valentin, Silvia Baraldini, Ramsey Muniz and
many more.
Beyond these 150 are also the "politicized prisoners." These
are the many thousands of prisoners who may have originally
been arrested--and often enough framed--for "common crimes,"
but who have become political activists and thinkers while
incarcerated.
Class oppression
Harvey Earvin, a leader of Panthers United for Revolutionary
Education and a prisoner on death row in Texas, writes of this
category of political prisoner in the publication, The Caged
Panther.
As the prison population continues to grow, putting the
United States ahead of any other industrialized country in the
proportion of the population it incarcerates, it becomes
glaringly evident that racism and/or poverty are responsible in
the vast majority of cases. In the broadest sense, virtually
all 1.8 million are prisoners of a system of class and racist
oppression.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page