Socialist Action /April 1999
Berkeley Conference Emphasizes Unity for Mumia
BERKELEY, Calif.-A March 6 "Race for Justice" Western Regional
Conference for Mumia at the University of California here attracted over
1500 activists.
The conference demonstrated the broadest unity yet achieved in the effort
to take the emerging national mass movement to stop the execution and demand
a new trial to a new level.
The conference featured 225 speakers, 50 workshops, and two plenary sessions.
Close to 100,000 April 24 flyers and 4000 posters were distributed to activists
at the conference, who attended from towns, cities, and college campuses
from the Canadian border to San Diego.
The conference was highlighted by the presence of a large layer of activist
youth, many of oppressed nationalities.
Over 150 youth attended the workshop titled "Hip Hop Resistance:
A Discussion About the Politics of Hip Hop and the Struggle to Free Mumia."
Organized by Youth for Socialist Action members, the workshop gave evidence
of the deep roots that Mumia's struggle for freedom has established among
a new generation of youth who seek to link cultural issues with racism and
political repression in the U.S.
Almost a dozen workshops organized by a wide range of youth organizations
and political currents attracted young people from every region in the Western
part of the country. In addition to workshops organized by their parent
organizations, youth chapters from Amnesty International and the ACLU planned
workshops for their members and supporters.
Workshops approaching 100 people were initiated by the Black Radical
Congress, the Jericho Movement for Amnesty, and representatives of current
and former political prisoners. They were jam-packed, often forcing participants
to observe from hallways and through open windows.
A workshop titled "Live From Death Row," initiated by the Campaign
to End the Death Penalty, drew some 150 activists who, through phone hook-ups,
communicated directly with prisoners on death row.
Leonard Weinglass, Mumia Abu-Jamal's chief legal counsel, addressed two
plenary sessions and also afforded conference participants the opportunity
to probe the details of the case in a packed workshop that included leaders
of the ACLU and National Lawyers Guild.
"A Winning Strategy to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal" was the title
of a huge workshop that featured representatives of a number of key organizations
that have united to help lead the struggle for Mumia's freedom.
These included Carole Seligman, the past co-coordinator of the conference
sponsoring organization, The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a
leader of Socialist Action; Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and
Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Clark Kissinger, Refuse and Resist; Richard
Becker, National People's Campaign; and Becky Downer, of the Campaign to
End the Death Penalty.
Other popular workshops related Mumia's struggle to religion, the prison
industrial complex, California's racist Three Strikes Law, media disinformation,
"police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation,"
the death penalty, and the Oakland schools teach-in on Mumia.
Over 100 trade unionists attended a workshop entitled, "Workers
Have the Power: Labor Action for Mumia," which was organized by the
Bay Area Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia. Members of this committee
have won considerable support among Bay Area unions for Mumia's case and
April 24.
This writer co-chaired the plenary sessions and opened the conference
with greetings from 81 members of the Danish Parliament who, a few weeks
before, signed a call for a new trial for Mumia.
Greetings were also received from Jennifer Harbury, whose husband died
several years ago at the hands of Guatemalan death squads with the complicity
of the CIA.
-JEFF MACKLER
Socialist Action /April 1999 |