Mumia’s supporters stand with France’s student rebels

Statement from the International Mobilization4Mumia

The International Mobilization4Mumia extends our support for and solidarity with the brave and courageous students in France, now in their fourth week of mass demonstrations over severe teacher shortages, lack of resources in schools and deteriorating learning conditions.

The student rebellions started in France’s colonies from French Guiana to Martinique, the birthplace of Frantz Fanon, about whose work Mumia is writing his PhD.

We are particularly proud of the youth of St. Denis who were among the first to walk out. Twenty years ago, St. Denis named a street for U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and pushed back against pressure from U.S. politicians and the Fraternal Order of Police to retract that decision. Today, St. Denis’ high school students — not even born when Rue Mumia was established — are demonstrating the same courage shown by their elders.

While the students are asking for more teachers and decent schools, the state has repeatedly deployed violent riot police against them, using tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the crowds. Thousands of students have been arrested, and hundreds have been injured. The French police appear to be deploying tactics similar to what we witnessed in the U.S. in 2020, when millions took to the streets here to protest the choke-holding of George Floyd.

We also once more extend our solidarity to St. Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko who has joined with the youth of his city to take a stand against brutal police assaults. Mumia was moved to hear that Bally stood in the streets to protect the youth against police brutality. Mayor Bagayoko once visited Mumia at SCI Mahanoy where he remains unjustly imprisoned. Bally has also recognized Mumia as an honorary citizen of his city.

In the fall of 1967, Mumia, then 13 years old, was part of the leadership of some 3,500 high school students fighting to change the name of Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia to Malcolm X High School. Those protests were ended by an attack by police, headed up by a racist demagogue by the name of Frank Rizzo, who was then the police chief and later became the mayor of Philadelphia. Mumia was expelled from high school for circulating pamphlets calling for “black revolutionary student power.”

From that day on, the FBI started arbitrarily surveilling the minor Mumia — as the United Nations Petition to the Group on Arbitrary Detention has recently shown.

Today, France, like the U.S., is prioritizing military spending at the expense of young people. We are moved by the numbers of youth connecting their struggle to the resistance in Palestine.

Your demands including “Money for schools, not war” and “Fund high schools, not genocide” are resonating with youth around the world, including Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, Albania and India, where the lack of educational opportunities has been a major focus of the Cockroach Janta Party. In Spain, tens of thousands of young people have taken to the streets to demand housing justice. In Rome, high school students began occupying their schools on Oct. 5 under the slogan “Let’s do as in France.”

Solidarity with all the students fighting for your future. Free Mumia and all political prisoners.