Letter to Governor Tom Ridge demanding release of Mumia Abu-Jamal1 July 1995 Governor Tom Ridge Governor Ridge: We demand the immediate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner on death row for 13 years, falsely convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman. The case of Mumia exposes the fraud of the U.S. "human rights" campaign against the People’s Republic of China and other targets of U.S. imperialism, In fact, the U.S. has the largest prison population of any country in the world. The "land of opportunity" and the "American Dream" is in reality a land of mass poverty and degrading racial oppression where thousands of poor, black and white, are driven into petty crime out of desperation, while the capitalist class loots with impunity. The most exploited, especially blacks and other minorities, have few illusions in the "American Dream." Lives of daily racist insults and discrimination, desperation, grinding poverty, junk-food diets and junk-food jobs make it hard for blacks to accept the lies at face value. The lack of social justice is all too obvious! Where ideology doesn’t work, the capitalists must resort to repression through the judicial system, the police, FBI, and National Guard to maintain the day-to-day "law and order" necessary to guarantee profits with a minimum of disruption. The planned execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, if carried out, can never silence the "Voice of the Voiceless!" Instead, it would create a martyr whose stature would tower more and more with the passage of time like Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, and Malcolm X. Were Mumia to be legally murdered, his memory would become a wellspring of inspiration for all those who work to end this system of misery and exploitation. For each activist you strike down, ten will arise to take his or her place. The decline of U.S. capitalism guarantees that all attempts by the state to stifle the class struggle are ultimately futile. We cannot foresee the timing and circumstances of a working-class counteroffensive. But we know that the chaos and irrationality of the capitalist New World Order generates its own nemesis from within: out of the ranks of the working class, whose labor is the source of all capitalist profits, shall arise new leaders to pick up the torches carried by those struck down. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!!!For the Bolshevik Tendency, |
Posted: 19 December 2004 |