Tear down the walls. Free US political prisoners
by David Lethbridge On March 27-29, the Organisation of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAL) will host the "Tear Down the Walls" conference in Havana, Cuba. The conference will be a landmark attempt to draw together activists, militants, and social justice organisations from around the world to focus on the situation of US political prisoners and prisoners of war (PPOWS). "Tear Down the Walls" is sponsored by a broad coalition of about 40 US organisations, including the Prairie Fire Organising Committee, Black Radical Congress, National Lawyers Guild, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, International Action Center, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Ben Evans of the Prairie Fire Organising Committee said that the Cuban location for the conference was significant. "Cuba has a long tradition of giving refuge to prisoners from the USA. It recognises the fact that Cuba has stood up to the US; it provides a space removed from US power, and calls attention to the hypocrisy of the US in the area of human rights." The conference is being organised around three themes: US Human Rights Violations; Countering State Repression; and Internationalising the Struggle. Many US PPOWS have been imprisoned since the 1960s and '70s and are among the longest held political prisoners in any country. The struggle against the US war on Vietnam led to a revolutionary struggle against US imperialism, to increasingly militant demands to expose and smash the racist nature of the US state apparatus, and to support liberation movements not only in other countries, but within the USA itself. Many of the PPOWS are victims of the US Government's aim to destroy any resistance to the quasi-fascist US regime, and its use of any methods to achieve that goal. The majority of US political prisoners are African-American, First Nations, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and white working class. PPOWS are the victims of FBI frame-ups, false witnesses, and planted evidence. Their courageous political actions, aimed at the emancipation and liberation of the American people, have been criminalised and they have been given disproportionately long sentences and held under conditions of isolation and sensory deprivation. "Tear Down the Walls" has several goals on its agenda: to advance the national and international movement to free the PPOWS; to forge solidarity among progressive forces around the world; to analyse the lessons of other campaigns to free the PPOWS; to denounce the racist prison system and the prison-industrial complex; to deepen the analysis of US counter-insurgency; to develop a concrete action program. The situation is critical. As Ben Evans put it, "the conference was planned long before the events of September 11, but now the situation has gotten a lot worse. Prisoners who have been in jail for 20 years or more, who clearly had nothing to do with September 11, have been put in isolation and denied access to their lawyers and to their relatives. The US Government has taken the opportunity to do what they always wanted to do." Can freedom be won for Mumia Abu-Jamal, for Leonard Peltier, and the dozens of other PPOWS? Yes. It is important to recall with what intensity the Nazi regime sought the death of Georgi Dimitrov, leader of the Communist International, and that the US regime was equally determined to murder the Communist philosophy professor and social activist, Angela Davis. And yet their freedom was won not solely in the courts but because of the combined and determined and organised voice of millions. The same strategy of organised mass action is required today. What can be done? We can spread the word that US political prisoners exist. We can research their cases and organise defence committees. We can write to the PPOWS to express our solidarity. And we can mount campaigns for their release. Free all US political prisoners and prisoners of war!* * * People's Voice Canada's Communist Paper