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Muambi Tanga from the African People’s Socialist Party speaks on the case of community activist Denzel Draughn in San Diego. Denzel was arrested Aug. 28 during a protest in solidarity with the Kenosha uprising and charged with 19 felonies.

On Monday, September 14, supporters will begin a major call-in campaign. The five major demands are: Free Denzel; lower the bail; drop all charges; Black community control of police; reparations for Denzel’s family.

Special thank you to both Gloria Verdieu, contributing writer for Struggle-La Lucha and Socialist Unity Party organizer from Dallas, and Carl Muhammad, San Diego Committee Against Police Brutality, for arranging this interview. FREE DENZEL NOW!

To learn more about the case and what you can do to support Denzel, please go to www.inPDUM.org or email membership@inPDUM.org.

Saturday, September 26, 2020 at 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT

Online Event

Do Trump and the Coronavirus have you down? Then join us on September 26 to celebrate the 15 year anniversary of one of the world’s most beautiful projects: Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade!

By Zoom.
Registration: https://www.cubanobel.org/webinar

There’s even more good news: Danny Glover will be on with us to offer his commentary, and journalist/author Vijay Prashad will host this fascinating conversation! Please join Danny, Vijay, and the Cuban medical personnel for this celebratory event. We promise it will nurture your soul.

The present election is taking place in a period of deep instability. It is fraught with incredible dangers and at the same time opportunities for the working class in this country. What takes place in the U.S. will have repercussions internationally.

A lot will depend on what we do.   

On the one hand, an unprecedented movement against police terror and white supremacy has swept the country. There is not a single town or city that has not been touched by protests of one kind or another. While it is spontaneous to one degree, it is deeply political and can be characterized as a mass uprising.  

This movement is a challenge to the capitalist state and it is taking up the long-delayed fundamental question of racism and white supremacy in this country, what was described by W.E.B. Du Bois as the “unfinished revolution” in his famous book “Black Reconstruction in America.”  

This remarkable struggle is taking place in the midst of a deepening capitalist economic crisis, possibly the worst in our lifetimes, spurred on and coupled with a deadly pandemic that has killed more people in the United States than all the U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War plus four other wars combined.  

Unemployment is at record highs. The working class will eventually face a tsunami of evictions and foreclosures that will certainly top those of the 2008 capitalist crisis. 

RNC ‘white power’ rally, DNC capitulates 

It’s easy to sum up the Republican National Convention as essentially a “white power” rally meant as a clarion call to all of Trump’s most reactionary, racist, neofascist supporters. Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis, Mo., spoke there. Both are facing charges of unlawful use of a weapon. 

None of the rhetoric of the RNC was hidden or coded. It was an outright racist attack on the burgeoning movement, designed to spur on violence against protesters under the cover of labeling the BLM movement as “rioters, antifa, anarchists, outsiders and communists.”

No one can forget that Trump began his first campaign by labeling Mexican immigrants as “rapists and criminals.”

The Democratic National Convention was no beacon of hope. Instead, it was in many respects a cowardly reaction to Trump’s campaign of redbaiting and attacks on protesters.  In essence, the DNC agenda was driven by the rightwing.

Republican billionaires and militarists like Colin Powell, Michael Bloomberg and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran on a campaign to abolish abortion, shared the DNC podium. On the other hand, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given a mere 90 seconds to speak.

Biden’s denunciation of “riots,” referring to the Kenosha protests, does the exact opposite of defending people against the arch reactionary movement that Trump has unleashed. It emboldens them.

More recently, the Biden campaign touted former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s endorsement — a slap in the face to the people of Flint, a majority Black city whose water was poisoned; Detroit, whose assets were robbed through imposed bankruptcy; and Benton Harbor. Republican Snyder imposed “emergency financial manager” dictators over more than half of Michigan’s Black population. 

Stolen election, Trump coup

In this context, it is impossible to ignore the possibility of the November election being either stolen or hijacked by the utterly undemocratic Electoral College system, or the serious threat of Trump refusing to leave the White House. (See “Trump lays groundwork to steal election.”)

Trump’s antics should be taken seriously, when he tells people to vote twice, or spews lies that mail-in ballots are invalid.  His attempts to dismantle the U.S. Postal Service are clearly in preparation for what might turn out to be much larger developments in November. (See “Wrecking the post office and elections.”)

We should look back in history at the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, when right-wing violence and vote tampering in Florida helped Bush steal the election by gaining an Electoral College advantage.

Our immediate tasks

The capitalist state’s repressive apparatus — that is, the reactionary police, sheriffs, Homeland Security and Border Patrol, and their extralegal forces like the Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, etc. — was temporarily caught off guard by the tidal wave of protests all across the country. Now, under the direction of Trump, they are unleashing a campaign of terror in an attempt to crush the movement.

Let’s vigorously defend and broaden support for all of those arrested, whether it is in Minneapolis, Portland, Kenosha, San Diego, Tallahassee, New York City or in so many other places. (See “Organize to defeat the racist backlash.”)

Prepare for November: Call for general strike of the people

There should be no passive acceptance of a stolen election, regardless of how it unfolds. Any such circumstance must be considered illegitimate. The stakes are too high.  

The working class must prepare as much as possible to intervene on its own behalf. We can’t wait for the Democrats — particularly if they are inclined to lay down and wait for another four years — nor concede and stand on the sidelines.

Instead, we should prepare for a general strike of the people. Whether employed or unemployed, students or youth, organized or unorganized — the goal is to shut the system down through massive action. For those who are able, plan to march on Washington, D.C. and occupy the capital until Trump leaves. We need to appeal to the unions and to the community directly.

If Biden prevails, it does not mean the struggle is off.  

He will be presiding over a capitalist crisis and has no answers whatsoever for our class.  Our message must be to energetically push the movement forward to demand: End police terror and white supremacy! Health care for all! Cancel rents and mortgage foreclosures! Jobs or guaranteed income for all! Hazard pay and workers’ rights! No to wars and sanctions!

Should workers prepare for ‘October surprise’?

The potential for imperialist war, which is driven by economic forces beyond either candidate’s personal control, is greater than ever — whether it is against Venezuela, Iran, Russia or China.  

In an act of provocation, U.S. spy planes have flown over Chinese military bases. The rhetoric against China has continued unabated. 

Leonardo Flores, Latin American coordinator for Code Pink, has documented an increase in U.S. action against Venezuela. (See “The stage is set for a Venezuela October surprise.”) 

Iran continues to be under attack from severe sanctions and military threats.

Intervene as an independent class force 

For much of the working class, the pending elections are viewed as a referendum against racism and reaction. There is little illusion that a vote for Biden will end the suffering that much of the population is enduring. It is more a question of getting rid of Trump.

Some younger voters, particularly those involved in the Bernie Sanders movement, who passionately fought for health care, the Green New Deal, an end to student debt and many other issues, view a vote for Biden as a dead end.  

The elections will certainly be an important barometer. But what ultimately determines the direction of history, whether it is this immediate period or more long term, is the struggle between classes. This includes not only our class, whether unemployed or working, of all nationalities and genders, and global in character; but also bigger world developments reflecting the crisis of capitalism.

Our job as revolutionary socialists is to do everything in our power to defend the current movement and push beyond the electoral arena. What is critical for the working class is to intervene boldly in its own interests in whatever crisis presents itself during the early winter months.

For a moment, let’s travel back in time exactly 100 years to Baku, a city in what was known then as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Somewhere in the city, nearly 1,900 people gathered in a crowded, noisy hall for eight days to conduct the Congress of the Peoples of the East. 

Look around the assembly and we’ll see people representing not only the revolutionary working-class organizations of the capitalist and imperialist nations, but also revolutionaries representing national liberation struggles from the colonial and semicolonial world. 

Some of them may look ragged or in grief from their travels to Baku. The road between their countries and Azerbaijan was perilous. After all, most of the globe was gripped in the ravages of World War I only two years earlier, and the first successful working-class revolution had seized state power from Tsarist Russia a year before that. 

The world’s imperialist powers were eager to contain this type of threat to their power. Britain had established a military blockade of Soviet Russia and used it to impede travel to Baku — in one instance killing two delegates and injuring several others when British warplanes attacked a ship traveling from Iran. The Armenian and Georgian governments, not yet overthrown by working-class forces, outright banned attendance of the conference. Delegates from these countries crossed borders in secret. 

The congress was called after a decision by the Second Congress of the Communist International, a worldwide coalition of communist parties and organizations from all over the world, for the purpose of building unity and solidarity between the working-class movements of the “West” with the anti-colonial national liberation movements of the “East.” 

Achievements of the congress

Eight days of thorough political discussion yielded the comprehensive Manifesto of the Congress of the Peoples of the East, which laid out the most important unities of the gathering: 

• In the spirit of ending the power of the rich over the workers but also the power of some peoples over others, the congress urged the workers of the imperialist countries to unite with the peasants and other oppressed classes of the peoples of the East.

• The congress thoroughly and ruthlessly condemned the British Empire and its presence and schemes in India, Turkey, Persia (now known as Iran), Mesopotamia and Arabia (areas now roughly corresponding to most of Iraq and Kuwait, and parts of Syria and Turkey), Palestine, Egypt, China, Korea, Afghanistan, Armenia, Georgia and Eastern Europe.
   
• The congress presented a thorough analysis of the political economy of British colonialism and the forced migration of the colonized peoples. In short, British imperialist capital, in order to survive, must go beyond its borders to find new investments and new markets, and by violent seizure of colonies, they own the land, banks and factories of the colonized people. This causes the forced migration of people because they cannot find employment in their own lands.

Most important was the congress’s declaration of solidarity and support for the anti-colonial struggles of the colonized world. Though acknowledging that the liberation struggles would not stop at the elimination of foreign imperialists nor the expropriation of land from the big landlords, the congress urged a united front between the oppressed classes of each country and their own national bourgeoisie in order to begin independent economic development. 

But until the Soviet system is implemented, in which the working and toiling masses gain the experience of self-government, the anti-colonial revolution will not be complete.

Unprecedented steps in women’s liberation

Despite the best efforts of the Communist International, only 55 of the almost 2,000 delegates of the Congress of the Peoples of the East were women. But even this was a leap forward in the fight for women’s political rights — two women sat alongside two men in the joint chair committee and three women won elections to the presidium. 

Perhaps the most remembered and studied speech of the congress is that of Turkish communist Naciye Hanim, who took the delegates to task: “However sincere and however vigorous your endeavors may be, they will be fruitless unless you summon the women to become real helpers in your work.” She insisted on the necessity of women’s liberation and political participation to foster genuine revolution. 

Hanim rejected a women’s movement that aimed for assimilation into feudal or bourgeois life: “The women’s movement in the East must not be looked at from the standpoint of those frivolous feminists who are content to see woman’s place in social life as that of a delicate plant or an elegant doll.” 

Hanim also presented a list of demands that not only reflected the development of the women’s liberation struggle at the time, but also pushed it forward and provided a model for women’s struggles moving forward:

• Complete equality of rights;
• Ensuring to women unconditional access to educational and vocational institutions established for men;
• Equality of rights of both parties in marriage;
• Unconditional abolition of polygamy;
• Unconditional admission of women to employment in legislative and administrative institutions;
• Establishment of committees for the rights and protection of women everywhere, in cities, in towns and villages.

Solidarity from workers of imperialist countries

Readers here in the U.S. would be particularly interested in the statements of John Reed, a U.S. revolutionary and journalist. 

At the time, the United States was the rising imperialist power of the world, having violently seized Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as colonies a little over 20 years before. Having reported on and studied these wars, Reed used his speech to warn the congress about the brutal nature of U.S. imperialism:

“You, the peoples of the East, the peoples of Asia, have not yet experienced for yourselves the rule of America. You know and hate the British, French and Italian imperialists, and probably you think that ‘free America’ will govern better, will liberate the peoples of the colonies, will feed and defend them.

“No. The workers and peasants of the Philippines, the peoples of Central America and the islands of the Caribbean, they know what it means to live under the rule of ‘free America.’”

He further exposed the bloody role of U.S. imperialism in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Armenia and, most notably, the Black nation inside the U.S.: “With the purpose of distracting the attention of the American workers from the capitalists, their exploiters, the latter stir up hatred against the Negroes, provoking war between the white and Black races. The Negroes, whom they lawlessly burn alive, are beginning to see that their only hope lies in armed resistance to the white bandits.” 

John Reed provides a model for the workers of the imperialist countries on the revolutionary attitude to take towards U.S. imperialism and solidarity with the peoples of oppressed nations: “Do not believe the promises of the American capitalists! There is only one road to freedom. Unite with the Russian workers and peasants who have overthrown their capitalists and whose Red Army has beaten the foreign imperialists!” 

Vital lessons for anti-imperialists 

The theses developed at the Congress of the Peoples of the East were built on the foundation of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and to this day provide revolutionaries with a stronger analysis on how to build a world revolution. 

Those who read this article and study the minutes of the congress may be shocked at the continuing relevance of its theses. Of course, we must always take into account the changes in material conditions of the world — the role of “number 1 imperialist” shifting from Britain to the United States, the structural shift from outright colonialism to neocolonialism, etc. 

But the relevance of the Congress of the Peoples of the East speaks to the timeliness of the tools of Marx and Lenin for the study of society and revolution. 

As nationwide protests against police killing Black people and calls for defunding and reform have gained national and international support, law enforcement backlash from President Trump to the NYPD and PBA have also accelerated. In New York City, Mayor de Blasio and the NYC Police Department have pushed the NYC Council to introduce an amendment to the new chokehold ban law that took effect in July 2020.

Last week, NYC Council Member Donovan Richards, chair of the Public Safety Committee, wrote an amendment to the chokehold ban law which makes use of a chokehold, or chest/back diaphragm compression by a law-enforcement officer a misdemeanor crime punishable by up to a year in prison. Donovan’s proposed amendment to the law will insert the word “recklessly” in regard to diaphragm compression and would give the police a huge loophole and reverse clear police accountability.

December 12th Movement member Attorney Roger Wareham said that it is in this setting of police intimidation that we are now seeing elected officials back tracking. The same Council Member Donovan Richards who in mid-August said, “The PBA (Police Benevolent Association) and the police department do not have a right to act on pieces of legislation the council passes that they don’t like in an active slowdown, because that’s certainly what we are feeling on the ground,” later in the month told cable news channel NY 1, “I would be open to having a conversation about the diaphragm portion of the chokehold bill if this means the New York City Police Department would ‘get back to work. And I don’t want to hear excuses.’”

Wareham determined: “It is clear, the push to get this amended bill of capitulation through city council would first seek support in the Black, Latin and Asian Caucus. Upon learning of these developments, the December 12th Movement immediately moved to inform the community. On August 31, it held a street demonstration at the office of Queens City Council Member Daneek Miller, co-chair of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus. In the BLAC meeting, only Council Members Inez Barron and Deborah Rose took a definitive position against the amended bill.”

The December 12th Movement then immediately held a public emergency ZOOM webinar on September 1, 2020 to inform the community. The distinguished panel, led by Viola Plummer, chair of December 12th Movement, included NYC Council Member Inez Barron, Attorney King Downing, former NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett, Dr. Susan Williams of the Freedom Socialist Party, Father Frank Morales of the All Souls Episcopal Church, New York State Senator Elect Jabari Brisport, Hawk Newsome of Black Lives Matter of Greater NY, and New York State Assemblyman Charles Barron. All agreed on the need for direct action to stop City Council from passing the “watered down” amendment.

The video can be viewed at facebook.com/December12thMovement/videos/2594324594211756.

The December 12th Movement Direct Action Team hit the streets on Friday, September 4 converging at the front door of Council Member Donovan Richards’ District Office in Far Rockaway, Queens. Protesters chanted “Don’t Roll Back the Choke Hold Ban” and ‘No Compromise! No Sellout!’ while distributing information exposing Richards’ conduct to his constituents.

Sefu Sankofa, a leading organizer stated, “While tens of thousands have taken to the streets of NYC to demand defunding of the police and an end to police murder of our people, Richards is making back room deals with NYPD and the mayor for his own political advancement. It is no more business as usual, we have got to expose him and stop him in his tracks. Stop the amendment now!”

Wareham said, “The momentum against police murder of Black people is rising. From the NBA, WNBA, NFL and other professional sports organizations to the streets of Rochester NY, Louisville KY, Lafayette LA, Portland OR, and Durham NC, people insist on fundamental changes in policing across the country.”

The next direct action protest to expose NYC Council Members who support the chokehold ban amendment will be held Friday, September 11, 2020 at 5:30 p.m. at Office of NYC Council Member Adrienne Adams. Assemble at Rochdale Village Mall / 165-40 Baisley Blvd, Jamaica, Queens New York.

For more information visit December 12th Movement’s website at D12M.com or call 718-398-1766.

Source: Amsterdam News

Russia didn’t put Donald Trump in the White House. Large sections of the U.S. billionaire class did, with help from the FBI. 

Yet most of the corporate media convicted the Russian Federation of the crime. The country is now being accused of using Facebook and Twitter to help reelect Trump.

The New York Times claims that Russia’s Internet Research Agency is “targeting Americans with misinformation.”  What’s the real story? 

• It was the U.S. Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act ― not Russia.
• Russia didn’t create the Electoral College that selected Donald Trump to be president despite Hillary Clinton receiving nearly 3 million more votes. It was the slave master James Madison who devised the Electoral College to protect slavery.
• The capitalist media gave Trump nearly $3 billion of free publicity. NBC made this racist clown a nationally known figure by giving him his own TV show.
• Eleven days before the 2016 election, then-FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress virtually accusing Hillary Clinton of crimes involving her email server. In 2020, the police state apparatus is solidly behind Trump in trying to crush the Black Lives Matter movement.
• While some billionaires oppose Trump, the day after the 2016 election, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up 272 points. No billionaires refused Trump’s tax cuts for the super rich.

The campaign against Russia diverted the struggle against Trump. It plays into the hands of Pentagon generals, who want to occupy Russia’s 6 million square miles. There’s a real danger of a U.S. war against Russia and China.

Instead of allegations concerning Ukraine and Russia, Trump should have been impeached for racism. That’s what Texas representative and Black Congressional Caucus member Al Green advocated. 

World’s biggest liar points at Russia

It’s the CIA that drenches the world with lies. Radio Free Europe was a CIA front. So was Radio Liberty, aimed at the Soviet Union.

The Pentagon spent at least $5.5 trillion between 1940 and 1996 on nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. That money should have been spent on reparations for Black and Indigenous people.

The socialist Soviet Union’s downfall was an immense tragedy for poor and working people everywhere, just as Reconstruction’s overthrow was for Black people in the U.S. 

U.S. capitalists continued to meddle after the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991. U.S. election consultants bragged that they helped reelect Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996. 

The CIA’s payroll was filled with lying propaganda experts. Among them were David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt.

Both of them worked to overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, in 1954 on behalf of United Fruit. In the decades following the CIA’s Operation PBSuccess, 200,000 people, overwhelmingly Indigenous, were murdered by death squads.

Phillips would later play a key role in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, while Hunt went to jail for President Richard Nixon’s Watergate burglary.

Other U.S. propaganda assets include Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Martí, beamed at Cuba. In 2018, the U.S. Agency for Global Media spent $803 million on these lie machines.

CIA executive Frank Wisner called the agency’s propaganda efforts a “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ. The CIA even operated a daily newspaper in Rome, the Daily American. 

Operation Mockingbird was the CIA’s influence program aimed at the United States. Dozens of newspapers, magazines and broadcasting companies willingly participated in this illegal program.

Among them were Time, ABC, CBS, NBC and the New York Times ― the same outfits that are now attacking “Russian propaganda.” Journalist Carl Bernstein, who helped expose the Watergate scandal, estimates 400 editors and reporters wrote stories supporting U.S. military intervention and coups through this program.

Directing Operation Mockingbird was Cord Meyer, whose wealthy family developed the swanky Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens, N.Y.

Mary Pinchot Meyer ― Cord Meyer’s ex-partner ― was murdered in what many people believe was a death connected to JFK’s assassination. The U.S. government attempted to frame a Black man, Raymond Crump, for the crime, but his lawyer, Dovey Roundtree, secured an acquittal from the jury.

Denying El Mozote massacre

The lying continued years after Operation Mockingbird was exposed.

The Washington Post and New York Times capitulated to the Reagan administration after reporting about the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. Around 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, were killed by U.S.-backed forces there on Dec. 11, 1981. 

The Wall Street Journal called the articles written by Times reporter Raymond Bonner “communist propaganda.” Abe Rosenthal, the Times’ managing editor, then transferred Bonner from El Salvador to the paper’s financial desk in New York.

Alma Guillermoprieto, who wrote about the massacre for the Washington Post, was reassigned to cover the Maryland suburbs.

Last year, Congressperson Ilhan Omar righteously questioned Elliot Abrams about his role in the coverup. Like the Wall Street Journal, Abrams labeled reports of the massacre as “communist propaganda.”

War criminal Abrams, who coordinated death squads for Reagan, is now Trump’s point person in trying to overthrow Venezuela’s elected president, Nicolás Maduro Moros.

Our enemies are in the Pentagon and corporate boardrooms ― not in Moscow.

When Vice President Mike Pence announced an Aug. 26 visit to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, the Peoples Power Assembly called for a protest march and car caravan with the message, “Trump/Pence out of Baltimore!” 

Pence chose the location to give his acceptance speech after being nominated for a second term as vice president during the Republican National Convention. More than 20 cars gathered in South Baltimore to begin the first leg of the protest.

At Fort McHenry, demonstrators were blockaded and confronted by the Secret Service. Alongside the Baltimore Police Department, the Secret Service forcibly redirected the caravan away from where Pence was speaking. One organizer reported being flipped off by Baltimore cops while leading chants. 

The caravan and march took place just three days after police in Kenosha, Wis., shot Jacob Blake in the back in front of his three children, paralyzing him from the waist down. Marchers demanded justice for Blake and an end to racist police terror.

At the opening rally at Douglas Homes, a public housing project in East Baltimore, protesters sent a strong solidarity message from Baltimore City to Jacob Blake, his family and loved ones, and the demonstrators in Kenosha being attacked by the cops and right wingers.

Longtime activist the Rev. Annie Chambers exclaimed: “We want Jacob Blake and his family and all the people in Kenosha to know that we are behind them and we’re going to continue to fight!”

Rev. Chambers remarked on the outright racism of Trump and Pence, including Trump’s 2019 comments calling Baltimore “rat-infested.” 

She described the administration’s attack on the U.S. Postal Service as an attack on poor people: “Mail is slowing down in working-class and poor people’s communities. The mail boxes are being taken up in our communities.”

Trump admitted that he would sabotage the post office to prevent universal mail-in voting amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The march and caravan then headed to a post office to show support for postal workers, demanding, “Shut down racist voter suppression, not the post office.” Marchers stopped in front of a loading dock where workers were loading trucks and gave a brief rap showing support for their jobs.  

Peoples Power Assembly organizers explained that the White House attack on the post office is an attack on Black and Brown people, poor and oppressed people, and elderly and disabled people. 

Organizer Andre Powell told the group that these attacks were another attempt at union busting. There are several unions that represent postal workers, including the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers.

The caravan and march were well-received by the people along the way, even in the neighborhoods in South Baltimore around Fort McHenry, which, 40 years ago, were working-class neighborhoods. Now they are overtaken by gentrification and overpriced luxury condos. Residents left their homes to film the demonstration and raise their fists in solidarity. 

Baltimore made it clear: Black lives matter here, and racist rats Trump and Pence are not welcome.

First things first: Who is Julian Assange? And second, why is his struggle of import to any of us?

Assange, born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, in 1971, is the founder of the global online media service known as WikiLeaks. As such, Assange is a journalist. His group has been a blockbuster, capturing and passing on files and internal memos of governments all around the world.

For this, he has been hounded, targeted and jailed, now serving over 50 weeks for allegedly jumping bail in Britain, to avoid extradition to the U.S., which seeks to imprison him for violating the U.S. Espionage Act.

As shown earlier, Assange, born into a British Commonwealth State (Australia), is not an American and owes it no fealty.

But the U.S. empire rules the world, not just U.S. territory.

On July 25, 2010, WikiLeaks published on its website some 75,000 documents on the Afghanistan war. These documents presented a damning portrait of the U.S. empire at work.

But when you attack the empire, the empire strikes back.

For publishing documents that embarrassed the United States, Assange, if convicted, faces over a century, in fact, 175 years in prison. And, as a foreign national, the First Amendment to the Constitution does not provide a defense.

So, wait: The U.S. can invoke its criminal law for use worldwide, but the Bill of Rights doesn’t obtain to foreigners?

That sounds fair…

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now widely considered the biggest blunders in U.S. foreign policy, for the wars of regime change floated into being on a raft of lies and misinformation. (Quick! Remember “weapons of mass destruction”?)

How many thousands — and tens of thousands — died based on an American mirage?

Assange, through his journalistic revelations, helped awaken generations to the elements of imperial wars.

He wasn’t spying. Spies work for governments and militaries. Journalists work to inform people, to broaden the reaches of democracy.

In the not-so-recent past, the U.S. empire used its tools of repression to silence its opponents — even when they were U.S. citizens.

The targeting of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg comes to mind; they were called spies, and subsequently electrocuted.

The case of Sacco and Vanzetti, immigrants from Italy, comes to mind.

The targeting of the New York branch of the Black Panther Party and the trial of the Panther 21, on trumped-up charges, also comes to memory.

Julian Assange is a prisoner of a political vendetta.

Is he thus a political prisoner?

You damn betcha.

Listen to Mumia’s commentary at PrisonRadio.org.

Las organizaciones y partidos revolucionarios en los EE.UU. seguramente están conscientes de la importancia del actual período político. Hay manifestaciones masivas en las calles, tanto organizadas como espontáneas, en una total rebelión  contra el racismo.  Una pandemia global ha demostrado la incapacidad y la absoluta falta de voluntad del imperialismo y el capitalismo monopolista para proteger cualquier cosa que no sean sus ganancias.  Y el terror del Estado en forma de asesinatos policiales, ejecuciones extrajudiciales y secuestros, además del belicismo imperialista, sigue siendo la orden del día en todo el mundo.

La conciencia revolucionaria de clase está creciendo entre la clase trabajadora estadounidense de una manera sin precedentes, y la clase dominante capitalista se da cuenta.  Sabemos que los capitalistas se están preparando para defender su dominio de clase.  Ya vemos el aumento de fuerzas policiales y militares en colusión con pandillas fascistas supremacistas blancas, dirigidas  a sofocar las rebeliones contra el racismo y el terror policial.

Es por esto que el Partido de Socialismo Unido/Socialist Unity Party urgentemente hace un llamado a la unidad, coordinación y preparación entre partidos y organizaciones revolucionarias en los Estados Unidos. Una situación crítica se está desarrollando en el centro global del imperialismo y a medida que se intensifiquen las diversas luchas, llegarán a un callejón sin salida sin liderazgo revolucionario de la clase trabajadora.

Es la responsabilidad de los partidos y organizaciones revolucionarias, armados con la combinación de teoría y práctica revolucionaria de por décadas, de preparar a las masas para este período político y los venideros. Para eso, las fuerzas revolucionarias dispersas geográfica y políticamente, deben comenzar a unirse.

El Partido de Socialismo Unido propone un primer paso hacia esta unidad: Debemos comprometernos a defendernos unos a otros de los ataques del Estado.  Ya hemos visto a revolucionarios secuestrados y encarcelados por su heroica labor en las rebeliones.  El Partido de Socialismo Unido pide a todos los partidos y organizaciones que planteen estos casos para que el movimiento pueda amplificarlos y darlos a conocer a nuestra clase para movilizar apoyo.

El aumento y la disminución del movimiento en este período requerirá que las fuerzas revolucionarias evalúen, analicen y planifiquen constantemente nuestros próximos pasos.  Pero lo que seguramente se requerirá es una unidad más fuerte entre los partidos y las organizaciones revolucionarias.  Esperamos sinceramente que este pueda ser el primer paso.

¡Unidos hacia la victoria y liberación!