No political prisoners in U.S.?
N.H. students learn of Peltier, Cuban 5
Special to Workers World
Durham, N.H.
"Think the U.S. has no political prisoners? Guess again!"
This was a main theme of a forum at the University of New
Hampshire on Dec. 3. The meeting highlighted the cases of the
Cuban Five and American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier.
Despite a bitterly cold evening, 75 people, including activists
from Boston, attended the forum
Marquetta Peltier, the Native activist's daughter, gave a
moving account of what it has been like to grow up without her
father because he has been incarcerated for almost 27 years.
She spoke about how her father was railroaded to a life
sentence by the U.S. government after two FBI agents were
killed on the Pine Ridge reservation back in 1975. President
Bill Clinton denied Peltier clemency in 2000.
Monica Moorehead from the International Action Center spoke
about the case of the Cuban Five: Fernando González,
René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo
Hernández and Ramón Labañino. These five
Cuban patriots have been sentenced to long prison sentences in
the United States for monitoring the activities of terrorist
Cuban counter-revolutionaries in Miami. Legal appeals have been
filed to demand a new trial outside the hugely biased
Miami/Dade County area. Free the Five committees are being
organized all over the country and the world, including Latin
America and, just recently, by the Congress of South African
Trade Unions.
Kazi Toure, a former political prisoner and well-known
organizer in the struggle to free African American political
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, told how hundreds of political
prisoners--including the MOVE 9, Sundiata Acoli and
others--have been victims of a racist U.S. policy for many
decades.
The meeting was organized by the Diverse Support Coalition,
a broad-based student organization that "seeks to promote,
educate and support multiculturalism and diversity at UNH."
Under the leadership of Puerto Rican student activist Andrew
Houston, the DSC includes Alliance, a lesbian/gay/bi/ trans
group; the Black Student Union; Hillel, a Jewish student
organization; Mosaico, a Latino student organization; the
Native American Cultural Association; and the United Asian
Coalition.
The question and answer period included discussion about the
role of the prisons, attacks on affirmative action in New
Hampshire and the need to link Bush's war drive against Iraq
with the issue of supporting political prisoners.
Reprinted from the Dec. 19, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
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