18th Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners

18th Annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners to be held in San Francisco

Now in its 18th year, the Holiday Appeal raises funds for stipends and holiday gifts for 16 political prisoners jailed for their opposition to class, racial and social oppression. They are Mumia Abu-Jamal, other former Black Panthers, Jamal’s son, eight MOVE members, two of the Ohio 7, Hugo Pinell of the San Quentin 6, and Jerry Dale Lowe, a miner framed up for defending his union’s picket line. This year’s benefit comes at a time of renewed threats on the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal and against immigrants and the rights of citizens in the name of the “war on terror.”

On October 8, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a court of law is no place for evidence of Jamal’s innocence when it barred hearing Arnold Beverly’s confession that he, not Jamal, shot and killed the policeman who Jamal was framed for killing. On death row since 1982, Jamal is America’s foremost political prisoner, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter, award-winning journalist and defiant opponent of racist state terror. This setback appears to terminate his appeals in Pennsylvania, leaving only habeas corpus appeals in federal court. His death sentence was overturned two years ago, but the state has appealed, seeking to reinstate it. Jamal remains just a short walk and maybe a few months from the death chamber.

On November 17, the 2nd Circuit federal Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen detained in Chicago as an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror” and held without charges or evidence. The Executive has imposed martial law on Padilla on the pretext of a “war on terror” which is not a military conflict but a political agenda. The case tests the very existence of due process and poses the evisceration of the rights and privileges of citizenship embodied in the first ten Amendments and secured on the battlefield of the Civil War. If the President is upheld, the Padilla detention threatens to become the Dred Scott case of our time, a declaration that “Citizens have no rights that the government is bound to respect.”

The Holiday Appeal benefit will take up these cases and others including those arrested April 7 at the Port of Oakland and black AFSCME union militant Charles DuBois whose firing was protested at a rally by Locals 2019 and 444 at EBMUD headquarters in Oakland September 17. The benefit party is co-hosted by the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black League for Social Defense. These organizations initiated the February 9, 2002 labor-centered mobilization in Oakland that said “Anti-Terrorist Laws Target Immigrants, Blacks, Labor—No to the USA-Patriot Act and the Maritime Security Act!” and “Down With the Anti-Immigrant Witchhunt!”

The benefit party will be held on Sunday, December 7 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St., SF. Tickets are $10 ($5 student/unemployed) and include buffet dinner and the PDC’s newsletter featuring the amici curiae brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals on behalf of Jose Padilla by the PDC and the Spartacist League. All proceeds will go to the PDC’s Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. Call (510) 839-0852 for more information.
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Order a copy of the Padilla brief for 50 cents from PDC, Box 99 Canal St. Station, New York, NY 10013. See article about this from Workers Vanguard at http://www.icl-fi.org/ENGLISH/Padilla.htm.