'End the occupation of Iraq! Free Mumia!'
It was a holiday and it was steaming hot--in
the way Philadelphia gets in July. But 5,000 people put aside
thoughts of cool comfort on July 4 and marched through the
downtown streets demanding the U.S. get out of Iraq and let the
troops come home.
And, in this city that feels like a plantation, they raised
yet again the cry of justice for native son Mumia Abu-Jamal,
whose powerful and passion ate voice of outrage the police want
to hush forever. On death row for 20 years despite abundant
evidence of his innocence, Abu-Jamal is paying for the crime of
exposing racism and police brutality in the "City of Brotherly
Love."
At rallies before and after the march, which wound through
the historic district where the Declaration of Independence was
drafted, speakers tied the monstrous crimes of U.S. imperialism
abroad to its festering sores at home--symptoms of a rotting
capitalist system that can produce in abundance but turns
wealth into pov erty while spreading war and violence.
Unity in action had been achieved among various currents in
the progressive movement. The event was sponsored by
Philadelphia ANSWER, Phila delphia Regional Anti-War Network,
Minority Experience Network, Avenging the Ancestors Coalition,
Unite for Peace and International Concerned Family and Friends
of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
--Deirdre Griswold
Reprinted from the July 17, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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