Socialist Action /August 2000
Mumia Activists Mobilize for Protest
at Democratic Party Convention in L.A.
By JEFF MACKLER
"The Sunday, Aug. 13 protest at the Democratic
Party National Convention," according to Jim Lafferty, co-coordinator
of the Los Angeles Committee to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, "will
be the largest demonstration for innocent death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal
in Los Angeles history."
Lafferty, also the Los Angeles executive director
of the National Lawyers Guild, told Socialist Action that buses have been
chartered by Mumia support groups throughout the Western states.
"Despite police and city council efforts to
prevent us from exercising our legal and democratic rights," said Lafferty,
"and despite media attempts to falsely portray our demonstration as
violent in order to discourage participation, we expect thousands of people
to join us in Los Angeles for a massive, legal, peaceful protest for Mumia.
Ours is an independent demonstration against the bipartisan attacks on Mumia."
The Los Angeles Committee was initially granted
a Pershing Square assembly site permit and a Broadway march route to the
Staples Convention Center, the site of the Democratic Party Convention.
But when the LA City Council rescinded these permits, the committee was
compelled to file a court suit.
The ensuing battle over the right to peacefully
protest hit the front pages of local newspapers, as city officials conjured
up spurious arguments to deny Mumia protesters their democratic rights.
The fact that Democratic Party presidential candidate Albert Gore was scheduled
to stay in a hotel across the street from Pershing Square, for example,
was cited as a reason to deny the permit.
The legal battle was resolved in mid-July when
a local judge chastised both the L.A. city council and police department
and ordered the granting of permits for every aspect of the Mumia protests,
including a 12 noon assembly site at Pershing Square and a final rally site
within 30 to 100 yards of the Democratic Party convention.
To further insure the peaceful and orderly character
of the march and rally, the host L.A. Mumia committee is organizing volunteer
monitors and legal observers.
Importance of mass action
Several months ago, a few small groups proposed
that the Aug. 13 Mumia demonstration include a civil disobedience component.
But this was unanimously rejected by protest organizers, who aimed at mobilizing
the largest number of Mumia supporters possible.
Civil disobedience protests by Mumia supporters
in recent years have been essentially small-scale non-violent actions designed
in their organizers' view to try to capture media attention because of the
willingness of participants to risk arrest for a just cause. To date, no
more than a few hundred people have participated in such actions, while
tens of thousands of others have joined mass demonstrations that are accessible
to everyone.
The latter demonstrations offer the best opportunity
of involving the broad new sectors of the population necessary to make the
price of Mumia's "legal" murder too high to pay for this country's
rulers in regard to a fundamental loss of credibility in the criminal "justice"
system.
Unlike the mass civil disobedience that was an
important part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, often
involving tens of thousands of people, today's civil disobedience advocates
are largely isolated from the broad constituencies that have yet to be won
to active involvement on Mumia's behalf.
Mumia's freedom and other significant social movement
victories will be won by the engagement of broad sectors of U.S. society,
as opposed to the dedicated, but isolated, actions of the few who tend to
substitute their own personal commitment for the winning of the mass movement
that is today within our capacities.
The Los Angeles Mumia protest has been endorsed
by scores of local, state, and national organizations, including the Los
Angeles County Federation of Labor and several locals of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU).
The L.A. County AFL-CIO endorsement follows a resolution
adopted on July 18 by the state convention of the 1.8 million-member California
Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. The resolution "calls upon [Federal Appeals
Court] Justice William H. Yohn Jr. to hear Mumia Abu-Jamal's new evidence
and witnesses, and if he refuses, calls upon the president of the United
States to intercede and order a new trial."
The California AFL-CIO pointed to "compelling
evidence of [Mumia's] innocence and to gross misconduct on the part of the
police, prosecutor, and judge." Approved unanimously and forwarded
to the national AFL-CIO for similar action, it urged "the entire labor
movement to organize and educate our members and to bring organized labor's
power to bear to assure justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal."
A broad range of speakers will be featured at the
Los Angeles rally, including actor Ed Asner; representatives of labor, church
and human rights organizations; Mumia's chief legal counsel, Leonard Weinglass;
and Pam Africa, leader of the International Concerned Family and Friends
of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia national defense coordinators Clark Kissinger,
Jeff Mackler, and Monica Moorehead will also speak, along with representatives
of various local and regional solidarity groups.
Rendell: a typical Democrat
The L.A. Mumia coalition and virtually all co-sponsoring
organizations have scored the policies of Democrats and Republicans alike
in regard to Mumia's case.
Democratic Party National Committee Chair Ed Rendell
has been a central figure in the persecution of Abu-Jamal. Rendell was an
early supporter of the Frank Rizzo-led Philadelphia police department, which
in 1970 launched raids on the local offices of the Black Panther Party.
Rizzo forced the beleaguered Panthers to strip naked and line up against
a wall for news photographers. He declared "open season" on Black
radicals.
Rendell's cop friends in the 39th district of the
Philadelphia police department became the only major police unit in America
to be investigated for corruption by the U.S. Justice Department.
Both Rendell and Rizzo had typical Democratic Party
careers-serving wealthy business interests at the expense of working people
and the oppressed. While Rizzo was elected mayor, Rendell became Philadelphia
District Attorney and helped to preside over the police persecution of the
MOVE organization [that Mumia had defended while a radio journalist].
In 1977 Mayor Rizzo set up a blockade of the MOVE
house in the Powelton Village district of Philadelphia to starve out its
residents. Under pressure from the federal government, it was DA Ed Rendell
who entered into an agreement to end the police blockade by settling all
the trumped up charges brought against MOVE. But Rendell then reneged on
the agreement, and the courts soon issued arrest warrants for virtually
every MOVE member.
On Aug. 8, 1978, the police launched an all out
assault on the MOVE house. They opened fire on the house and MOVE members
barricaded in the basement were flooded out with fire hoses.
It was Rendell's office that then prosecuted the
survivors of the attack. The MOVE 9, as they became known, were charged
in the death of a police officer, shot (most likely by other cops) during
the wild police firing on the MOVE house. The nine were each sentenced to
from 30 to 100 years in prison, despite the fact that the trial judge admitted
in public that he had no idea who fired the shot that killed the cop.
In 1982 Rendell oversaw the prosecution of Mumia
Abu-Jamal. Just last year, Rendell was associated with the publicly discredited
effort to present a demonstrated liar, Philip Bloch, as a person who had
allegedly heard Mumia confess more than a decade earlier.
Eight years ago, Rendell, the Democratic Party
candidate, was elected mayor of Philadelphia on a promise to "tame"
the municipal workers' unions in order to "save" the nearly bankrupt
city. He remained mayor until last year when his "tough on crime"
and anti-labor career was advanced with his appointment as head of the Democratic
Party National Committee.
The role of the Democrats in Mumia's persecution
is front and center at the Aug. 13 protest. President Clinton was the guest
of honor at the national convention of the Fraternal Order of Police, (FOP)
the only national group that has organized and financed a national campaign
for Mumia's execution.
Clinton seated Maureen Faulker at his FOP convention
banquet table. Faulkner, the wife of the Philadelphia police officer Mumia
was falsely convicted of murdering, has been a virtual FOP spokesperson,
traveling the nation to advocate Mumia's murder.
In 1996 President Clinton signed into law the notorious
Effective Death Penalty Act. This racist throwback to the pre-civil rights
era was designed to render state court death penalty convictions almost
immune from federal court review.
Democratic Party presidential candidate Albert
Gore's advocacy of the death penalty parallels Clinton's. Gore solidarized
with his presidential "opponent," Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who
leads the nation in execution orders, in the recent state killing of the
innocent death row prisoner, Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham). Gore supported
Clinton's allocation of billions in federal funds for the hiring of 100,000
new police officers to help fill the jails of Clinton's increasingly privatized-for-profit
prison industrial complex.
The L.A. demonstration will also protest Pennsylvania
Republican Gov. Thomas Ridge, who signed two warrants for Mumia's execution
and sought the Republican Party's vice presidential nomination on the strength
of his racist application of the death penalty.
Advancing one's political career at Mumia's expense
and in the name of "crime fighting" is the stock in trade of all
"Republocrats," Mumia's term for the twin parties of bigotry that
will be protested on Aug. 13.
For Los Angeles information, call: (323) 653-4510.
In San Francisco, call: (415) 695-7745.
Socialist Action /August 2000 |