Luis Rosa
Luis Rosa spent 19 years in U.S. prisons for his actions on behalf of Puerto Rican independence. As a result of a defense campaign that won worldwide support, he and 10 other independentistas were released in 1999. Today Rosa is a leader of the ongoing campaign to win the release of five remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners locked up in the United States.

I send warm greetings and add my voice to the celebration of 75 years of militancy, resistance, and struggle on this anniversary of the Militant newspaper. It’s not easy, nor was it easy 75 years ago, to be a militant socialist and dare to organize within an anti-working-class, capitalist arena and government that is blinded by its greed.

In the class struggles, the anti-racist struggles, the community struggles, you were—and are—a constant factor. During the 20 years that I was locked up in the Yankee dungeons, I received copies of the paper. For a prisoner, and especially for a political prisoner, being connected to the struggles that nourish the revolutionary soul is extremely important. That is how we can turn the jails into new trenches and into the universities that George Jackson always talked about—using everything available to serve as a point of reference and analysis.

In 1979, five of our Puerto Rican Nationalist heroes were freed from prison. The campaign for their release was long and intense, and it was able to bring together revolutionary forces from all sectors and all parts of the world. That campaign made it necessary to educate both the Puerto Rican people as well as people abroad about who were Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Irving Flores, Oscar Collazo, Lolita Lebrón, and Rafael Cancel Miranda. The Militant newspaper contributed to the effort to raise this consciousness.

In 1999, the Puerto Rican people, and all people marching at their side in solidarity, celebrated the release from prison of 11 anticolonial fighters and prisoners of war. That too was a long and intense campaign, and once again we had to appeal for support from those who dared to go against the current and make the impossible a reality. There too the Militant was present.

Today we celebrate a Vieques without the presence of the Navy, and we live in a Puerto Rico that is more confident of its capacity to defend its national dignity. We also find ourselves in a Puerto Rico that consistently offers solidarity to just struggles.

But Puerto Rico continues to be a colony, and the Vieques struggle as well as the fight to free our political prisoners continue.

In one of its recent issues, the Militant published an article on the delicate state of health of Oscar López Rivera, one of our five political prisoners. In publicizing this information, the paper not only educates people about the situation facing this fighter, but also lets his jailers know that Oscar is not alone.

Thanks again to the compañeras and compañeros of the newspaper. There are many reasons for which we should fight for a more humane, a more dignified world without exploitation. The main ingredient in any revolutionary struggle must be love, and with the same intensity that we love freedom, we must reject everything that enslaves us.

Greetings of solidarity,

Free all the political prisoners in the United States!

Independence and socialism, cueste lo que cueste [whatever it takes]!

Standing up in struggle,

Luis Rosa Pérez

Farouk Abdel-Muhti
Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a well-known advocate in New York for Palestinian self-determination, was arrested by immigration cops in April 2002 and has been locked up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania jails for the past 19 months (see front-page article on his case). This message has been translated from Spanish.

I speak to you with all frankness at this celebration of the 75th anniversary of this unique source of information that, with an internationalist spirit, has crossed the borders of this country on behalf of the working class.

In its pages you can read and study some of the speeches of that great revolutionary, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X). Its pages always cover the socialist revolution in Cuba, the internationalism of Che, of Fidel, as well as the rights and the resistance of the Palestinian people, the Arab and Islamic peoples, and all the people of the world who oppose injustice, inequality, and colonialism, the defense of the indigenous peoples of this nation and continent, of the political prisoners and victims of oppression and racism, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Its pages always condemn the unjust imprisonment of the five Cuban comrades who are victims of a conspiracy. It also opposes the brutal, unjust “vise” used by this government (since 9-11) against immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia. It always denounces this anti-human campaign against immigrants, both with and without residence papers, by this sinister administration in Washington.

The Militant is always in the trenches of peace with justice, opposing imperialist invasions against the sovereignty of peoples and nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

I sincerely wish the best, from this jail in Bergen County, New Jersey, to this great weekly, the Militant, a light for the working people, for Marxist and humanist socialism, and opposition to imperialism’s exploitation and racism.

Congratulations and keep going forward. Not a single step backward.

Venceremos! [We shall win]

Socialism yes, imperialism no!

Farouk Abdel-Muhti

Rafael Cancel Miranda
Rafael Cancel Miranda is a longtime leader of the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. He was one of five Nationalists who spent more than a quarter of a century in U.S. prisons for conducting armed protests in Washington, D.C., against U.S. colonial rule of their country. From 1954 to 1979 Cancel Miranda was locked up successively at the federal prisons at Alcatraz, in the San Francisco Bay; in Leavenworth, Kansas, and in Marion, Illinois. He and the other Nationalist heroes were freed in 1979 as a result of a years-long international defense campaign. Cancel Miranda read the Militant in prison, and on a few occasions contributed articles and letters to the paper.

In prison the Militant informed me about things I could not find anything about and which other papers said nothing about. It helped me to follow the road I had chosen and to have a better understanding of what was happening around the world. While I was in prison, reading the Militant strengthened me.

Since getting out of jail, I have continued reading the Militant. I appreciate its articles on the struggle in Vieques, in defense of our prisoners, and in support of independence for Puerto Rico.

It has always helped me get a better appreciation of the world: the situation facing the workers in the United States, the social struggles.

I remember that two years after getting out of jail, in 1981, the Young Socialists invited me to their congress in Chicago, and I went. There I got to know a number of comrades in the Young Socialists, and comrades from the Militant.

I thank the Militant for its solidarity. I thank you for the interview with me that later ended up being published as a pamphlet.

When I get it, I always share it with others.

For me, reading the Militant is like talking with a comrade.

Rafael Cancel Miranda
 
 
Related articles:
New York meeting celebrates 75 years of ‘Militant’
Cleveland event: ‘I hope ‘Militant’ stays in business for a long time’  
 
 
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