FROM DEATH ROW
Mumia salutes IMF protesters
Ona
Move! Millions of people across the country and the world learned an important
and powerful lesson from the battle in Seattle last year. We learned the
value of solidarity across different movements and across elusive national
boundaries.
The
battle of Seattle was a crucial one, but as I suggested earlier and in a recent
column, it is merely a beginning, not an end. The battle in Seattle exposed the
deadly link of world and western capital seeking to shackle and chain workers,
trade unionists, activists and the poor into a prison of corporate power. But as
we have learned, so too has capital learned important lessons from
Seattle.
Notice
how in every newscast since then opponents of corporate power have been
projected and demonized as
"terrorists."
Poor
people, workers, activists and organizers were on the receiving end of terror in
Seattle as they were beaten by police batons, gassed, shot with plastic bullets
and thrown to the ground, shackled and arrested for practicing the alleged first
amendment right of free assembly and
protest.
When
a dozen youngsters broke windows of McDonalds or Starbucks the media heralds it
as terrorism. When the cops beat people, assault them, gas them, shoot them and
shatter bones, this is characterized as
restraint.
At
the center of the World Trade Organization lies the International Monetary
Foundation and other super-governmental multi-national structures that bleed the
planet and her people for
profit.
I
am in support of the IMF protest and I wish I could be there to join
it.
Ona
Move! Let's learn from Seattle. Long live John
Africa!
Mumia
Abu-Jamal
April
15, 2000
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