Labor's Gotta Play
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Showdown on West Coast Docks: The Battle
of Longview
(November 2011).
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Chicago Plant Occupation Electrifies Labor
(December 2008).
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May Day Strike Against the War Shuts
Down
U.S. West Coast Ports
(May 2008)
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October 2022
As Racist
Courts Again Block Appeal
Portland Painters Call for
Workers
Action to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
On October 26, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in
Philadelphia rejected the request by Mumia Abu-Jamal for a
new Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) hearing on his case,
based on new evidence of prosecution misconduct and bias
from boxes of materials that had been hidden in the
District Attorney’s office until being discovered in 2018.
Mumia is the most prominent class-war prisoner in the
United States, imprisoned for over four decades, on death
row for almost 30 years, on frame-up charges – of which he
is entirely innocent – of killing a police officer in
December 1981. He was targeted by the police and
capitalist politicians as a former Black Panther and
broadcast journalist whose stinging exposés of atrocities
by the Philly cops had enraged local authorities, who run
the reputed “city of brotherly love” as a racist police
state.1
A week before this latest outrage in court, on October
19, the Portland, Oregon, Local 10 of the International
Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) passed a
resolution (see below) highlighting how Mumia Abu-Jamal
was railroaded to jail, sentenced to death by a racist
“hanging judge” at a rigged trial in 1982, and ever since
prevented by the capitalist judicial system from proving
his innocence. The Local 10 resolution cites labor actions
protesting the persecution of Mumia and demanding his
freedom, notably a coordinated action in 1999 by the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which
shut down all U.S. West Coast ports, and a statewide work
stoppage by teachers in Rio de Janeiro. In a march in San
Francisco during that action, ILWU dock workers chanted
“An injury to one, is an injury to all – Free Mumia
Abu-Jamal!”
The denial by Judge Lucretia Clemons of the request by
Mumia’s lawyers for a hearing on evidence of exclusion of
black jurors, and of prosecution witnesses paid for their
testimony with promises of money and dropped charges, is
one more proof: There is no justice for the exploited
and oppressed in the capitalist courts.
In the face of the stonewalling of the courts, the
Portland Painters resolution should be a clarion call
to workers and defenders of black and labor rights,
and of elementary democratic rights, around the globe
to redouble efforts and take action NOW. To liberate
Mumia from the monstrous racist injustice
system of police, courts and prisons that serves and
protects the interests of the bourgeois ruling class
while destroying millions of lives of those it
exploits and oppresses, what is urgently needed is
workers action to free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Resolution
on Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Local
10, International Union of Painters
and Allied Trades (IUPAT), Portland Oregon
![](mumia-l10-armc-movie-flier-220625.jpg) Class-struggle
trade unionism:
fighting to bring out labor’s power in defense of all the
oppressed.
Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the most prominent
political prisoner in the United States, has been defended
by the trade unions internationally; and
Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther,
writer, and president of the Philadelphia Association of
Black Journalists, is renowned around the world for
standing in solidarity with workers in struggle while on
death row, and for his critique of the ravages of
capitalism and worker exploitation, racist repression, and
imperialist war; and
Whereas, he is innocent of the charge of killing a
police officer, and was framed up and sentenced to death
in 1982 by a racist judicial system, without any
corroborating physical evidence on false testimony by
coerced witnesses who [later] said Mumia Abu-Jamal was not
the shooter; and
Whereas, the courts have kept Mumia Abu-Jamal
behind bars in spite of the sworn confession of another
man, Arnold Beverly, that he, and not Mumia, shot the
police officer; and
Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial before a
racist Judge Albert Sabo, known for sending more men to
death row than any other judge in the United States, who
stated during Abu-Jamal's trial that he was going "to help
them fry the [N-word].”; and
Whereas, Mumia Abu-Jamal remained on death row for
nearly 30 years, saved from execution in 1995 and 1999 by
international mass protest supported by trade unions,
including the International Longshore and Warehouse Union,
with West Coast ports shut down and teachers in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil participating in a statewide work
stoppage; therefore
Be it resolved, that IUPAT Local 10 demands
immediate freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and calls for a
policy of working-class struggle through agitation,
publicity, protest, and continued coordinated workers
action on a national and international scale to free Mumia
Abu-Jamal. Painters Local 10 calls on workers of all
countries to use their power to free our brother Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
Message
from Mumia: Workers of the World, Unite!
After being informed by long-time fighter for
Mumia’s freedom Johanna Fernández of the action of the
International Union of Painters and Allied Trades
(IUPAT) Local 10 in Portland, Oregon calling for
workers action to demand his freedom, Mumia Abu-Jamal
responded with a message, which we excerpt here,
edited for publication:
![](mumia-abu-jamal-2019.jpg) Mumia Abu-Jamal, in 2019.
That is so outstanding and so impressive. I am
overjoyed and humbled that this union could make such a
noble gesture and resolution. Thank you for sharing that
with me, and thank the union for doing their work and
calling for other brothers and sisters of the union
movement to join with us in the struggle for freedom. I
am moved and impressed….
It used to be that unions were among the most
progressive sector of the population. And that’s because
they had what? Fundamentally a working-class
consciousness. It is that very consciousness which
unites people across boundaries of gender, boundaries of
so-called race, boundaries across nationality.
I was talking to a brother the other day and I was
telling him that when Marx and Engels got together, they
formed the International Workingmen’s Association. They
were calling for workers of the world to unite, for
workers across countries to unite, that labor has no
country and that they must unite against capitalism and
capitalist wars.
When World War I happened, of course, that shattered
because Germans remembered that they were Germans and
Frenchmen remembered that they were Frenchmen and they
began to sacrifice their lives for the capitalists in
these wars. That’s always the case because nationalism
has its hold. It’s because people are conditioned to
think as nationalists and not as internationalists, not
about their class. So in times of war, in times of
crisis, people forget their class and sign on to defend
the rulers who during the war and after the war, treat
that class like a subjugated class and treat them like
shit.
When people get out of the army, they’re outraged at
what they went through. But that’s what the army is
there for. The army is not there to defend the nation.
It is there to defend the rulers. We see that clearly in
“third world” countries where the army only acts against
the people. There are always foreign threats, but when
the people begin demonstrating and people begin
protesting, and the people begin marching for their
freedom, the army and the police come out to attack them
to defend the rulers, not the people. That’s a global
reality….
So that [the resolution of the Portland Painters union]
is a beautiful thing. Their timing could not be better.
Johanna Fernández: Hooray for reviving this idea of
class consciousness the world over!
Mumia: Hooray for the painters!
My friends, I thank you all for your noble gesture and
resolution. It warms my heart and I hope it warms yours.
There is a saying and we need to repeat it and make it
reality: Workers of the world, unite! Thank you all,
with love, not fear.
This is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
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