On March 27, a Los Angeles judge dismissed two out of six felony charges against Chicano activist Carlos Montes, who is a supporter of the reformist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! Montes is a victim of an FBI frame-up of 24 leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists. Beginning in September 2010, the FBI raided their homes and offices, mainly in the Midwest. The Feds investigated them for “material support to terrorism” due to their activities in solidarity with the oppressed in Latin America and the Near East and for helping to organize protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention (see “Protest FBI Raids on Leftists, Union Activists!” WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). (read more...)

In our article “Lessons of the Battle of Longview” (WV No. 996, 17 February), we addressed the fight by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 21 against an all-out union-busting attack by the giant multinational grain conglomerate EGT in Longview, Washington. Backed by forces ranging from the local police to the federal courts and the armed might of the U.S. Coast Guard, EGT’s aim was to drive ILWU Local 21 out of jobs at the port the union has worked for 80 years. The union held the line against this union-busting offensive. But the struggle is far from over. ILWU members and their supporters continue to be subjected to a relentless campaign of persecution by the courts, cops and Cowlitz County District Attorney’s office. The union itself is facing more than $300,000 in fines leveled at the behest of the National Labor Relations Board. (read more...)

The following letter, protesting ongoing repression in Longview, WA, was sent on 10 March to the Cowlitz County Prosecuting Attorney:

The Partisan Defense Committee protests the vindictive, anti-union prosecution of ILWU members and their supporters for their efforts to defend their jobs and their union representation at the EGT terminal in Longview. For months ILWU Local 21 members and their allies were targeted by a campaign of police violence, detentions and surveillance with more than 200 arrests made. These workers are being dragged through the courts with many being pressured to plead guilty to misdemeanors or face more serious felony charges. Now, even after a settlement has been reached between EGT and the ILWU, your office continues to escalate this vendetta with new charges, including felonies, being manufactured months later against longshore workers and others who rallied to the union’s defense.

We demand an end to this persecution and that all charges against ILWU members and their supporters be dropped immediately.

Dear Chairman Potteiger:

The Partisan Defense Committee once again joins with those supporting the release of the eight surviving political prisoners who have been collectively known as the MOVE 9. By any standard, such as ties to the community and a support network outside to “ease their transition,” there is absolutely no reason that any one of these men and women should be denied parole.

The main pretext for keeping the  MOVE members incarcerated is their supposed "minimization/denial of the nature and circumstances of the offense(s) committed." But it is clear that these men and women are innocent of the charges related to the death of  police officer James Ramp.  Even the presiding judge Edwin Malmed who was asked after the trial, “Who shot James Ramp?” replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”  Evidence released over time has clearly shown that Officer Ramp was killed in the massive crossfire by nearly 600 police officers who besieged the MOVE home on 8 August 1978. 

The continued refusal to release these prisoners effectively denies parole to those who have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. It is an injustice that these men and women were ever incarcerated at all. Their continued confinement compounds that injustice on a daily basis. We call once more for the immediate, unconditional release of Debbie Africa, Janine Africa, Janet Africa, Chuck Africa, Eddie Africa, Phil Africa, Delbert Africa and Mike Africa.

On February 9, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following protest letter on behalf of Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom), a former member of the Black Panther Party and then the Black Liberation Army. Muntaqim was one of the New York 3 who were convicted in 1975 in a COINTELPRO frame-up on charges of killing two New York City cops in 1971. Muntaqim was also targeted in the recent campaign against former Panthers known as the San Francisco 8 (see “COINTELPRO Charges Dropped Against Four SF8 Defendants” in WV No. 941, 28 August 2009).

We are writing to protest the campaign of harassment being meted out to Anthony Bottom, also known as Jalil Muntaqim, since his transfer to Attica Correctional Facility. Mr. Bottom has now been sentenced to six months in Special Housing Unit (SHU) on the outrageous pretext that he possessed photographs taken at memorials for former Black Panthers. These were confiscated as supposedly “gang-related,” or representative of an “unauthorized organization.” (read more...)

OAKLAND—The city administration and Oakland Police Department (OPD), backed by the local bourgeois media, have been on a campaign of arrests, smears and intimidation against Occupy Oakland protesters. Following the arrest of 409 people at a January 28 protest, a dozen activists have been charged with a combination of felonies and misdemeanors. “Stay away” orders bar them from being within 300 yards of City Hall and Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza by protesters in remembrance of the young black worker killed by a BART transit cop in 2009).

At least one activist, a black man known as Truth, has been in jail since his arrest the night of the November 2 mass protest at the Oakland port. Marcel Johnson, a black homeless man better known as Khali who was part of the Occupy Oakland encampment, has been incarcerated since his arrest on December 16 and could face a life sentence under California’s draconian “three strikes” law. Free Truth, Khali and all Occupy protesters! Drop all the charges! (read more...)

JANUARY 30—Two days ago, the Oakland Police Department (OPD)—aided by 14 other police agencies—turned downtown streets into a virtual war zone, firing tear gas, smoke bombs, flash-bang grenades and “less lethal” beanbag and rubber bullets at Occupy Oakland demonstrators. The protesters had assembled to take over an abandoned building and turn it into a neighborhood community center. By the end of the night, the cops, with batons swinging, had trapped hundreds of protesters outside a downtown YMCA. In total, some 400 people were arrested, many for “failure to disperse,” even as the trapped demonstrators were chanting, “Let us leave!” A 19-year-old woman was hospitalized with internal bleeding after being beaten by the cops. Free the protesters! Drop all the charges!

At a press conference the next day, Democratic mayor Jean Quan denounced the protesters as “violent” while City Council member Ignacio De La Fuente accused them of engaging in “domestic terrorism.” Coming in the wake of Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act, which enshrines into law the indefinite detention of American citizens, this is a deadly serious charge. (read more...)

On January 27, class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal was finally released from solitary confinement into the general prison population at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pennsylvania. See the letter by the Partisan Defense Committee protesting that prison authorities had vindictively kept Mumia in solitary under onerous special restrictions following the decision by the Philadelphia district attorney to not seek a new death sentence. In a message thanking those who signed petitions on his behalf—some 5,500 people, according to freemumia.com—or wrote statements of support, Mumia noted that “this is only part one” in the struggle for freedom. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

LOS ANGELES—On 23 September 2011, an Orange County, California, court convicted ten of eleven Muslim students charged with “conspiracy to disrupt a public meeting” and “disruption of a public meeting” for protesting Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., during his speech on 8 February 2010 at University of California Irvine (UCI). For the crime of exposing this Zionist butcher, who the students decried as an “accomplice to genocide,” they were each sentenced to three years of informal probation, 56 hours of community service and $270 in fines! The ten defendants have filed to appeal their convictions. We in the Spartacus Youth Clubs demand: Overturn the convictions! (read more...)

We print below a speech, edited for publication, by Rosie Gonzalez of the New York Spartacus Youth Club. The speech was given on January 6 at the Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners in New York.

Welcome! My name is Rosie and this is my third Holiday Appeal. I joined the Spartacus Youth Club a little over a year ago, after I broke from radical-liberal activism. I came to understand the class nature of the capitalist state, the social power of the labor movement, and based on this I learned that it is simply not enough to just have good intentions and to put your body on the street. One must have a party based on a Marxist program, developed through the study of victories and defeats of the past. Now I can stand here and say: We Trotskyists of the Spartacus Youth Clubs demand the immediate freedom of all class-war prisoners and all fighters against capitalist oppression! We say they should not have spent one second in jail. (read more...)

On January 6, 125 people packed the Communications Workers Local 1180 union hall in lower Manhattan to take part in a fund-raiser with live jazz for the 26th annual Partisan Defense Committee Holiday Appeal. Along with benefits in other cities, this event helped support the PDC’s program of annual stipends and holiday gifts to 16 class-war prisoners—former Black Panther Party (BPP) members, MOVE supporters and others singled out and thrown behind bars for standing up to racist capitalist oppression. Our support to these prisoners is an expression of non-sectarian, class-struggle defense: it is the duty of the workers movement to defend such victims of capitalist repression irrespective of their particular political viewpoints. (read more...)

A recording by Mumia of the following greetings was heard at the January 6 New York Holiday Appeal.

Partisans of the PDC! Ona Move!

Fraternal Greetings! (read more...)

William Singletary, who courageously came forward with evidence of the innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 61. Singletary was at the scene of the 9 December 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, for which Mumia was falsely accused and sent to death row. Years before Arnold Beverly confessed to killing Faulkner, Singletary testified not only that he saw someone other than Mumia shoot Faulkner, but that the cops terrorized Singletary into silence. Mumia, America’s foremost class-war prisoner, remained on death row until this past December, when the Philadelphia D.A.’s office dropped its efforts to reinstate the death sentence, which was overturned by a federal court in 2001. (read more...)