We agree with Eugene Debs, who said, “The prison in our modern life is essentially a capitalistic institution, an inherent and inseparable part of the social and economic system under which the mass of mankind are ruthlessly exploited.” The U.S. socialist leader, jailed for speaking out against the first imperialist world slaughter, had personal experience with the American prison system and with fellow working people locked up inside it.

The Militant follows this labor tradition of solidarity with prisoners. We send a special salute to those jailed by the capitalist rulers for refusing to stop fighting for justice. They include:

Five Cuban revolutionaries serving draconian sentences in U.S. prisons on frame-up charges stemming from their monitoring of ultrarightist Cuban-American groups that have carried out violent attacks on Cuba. Their federal appeal will be heard in March. In February the five were put in the “hole” for a month, and the wives of two of them have repeatedly been denied visas to see their husbands. We urge you to protest this outrage and demand that Washington grant the visas now.

Five Puerto Rican political prisoners—Haydée Beltrán, Antonio Camacho, Oscar López, Juan Segarra Palmer, and Carlos Alberto Torres—who have been jailed for some two decades for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico from U.S. colonial rule. We urge a big welcome to Segarra Palmer on January 23, when he is due to be released. And, following the victory in forcing prison authorities to back down and let López get a hernia operation, we should press harder to force them to allow a second needed operation.

Without charges or legal recourse, some 660 men from 40 nations remain locked down “indefinitely” under subhuman conditions at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and two U.S. citizens—José Padilla and Yaser Hamdi—have been jailed in a U.S. naval brig in South Carolina.

Class war prisoners around the world—from Saharan independence fighter Ali Salem Tamek, locked up by the U.S.-backed Moroccan regime, to Irish republicans jailed in the United Kingdom.

Many others are in U.S. prisons because of their political activities. Among them are: Native American leader Leonard Peltier, jailed for a quarter century on frame-up murder charges; Sami al-Arian, a Florida professor awaiting trial on phony “terrorism” charges; Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a Palestinian revolutionary currently in a New Jersey county jail with no charges against him; Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black rights fighter who was framed up in 1981 on charges of murdering a Philadelphia cop; Ciarán Ferry, an Irish republican fighting efforts to deport him to Britain; and five union coal miners—Donnie Thornsbury, Arnold Heightland, James Daryl Smith, David Thornsbury, and Jerry Lowe—framed up on murder charges.

We join with others in demanding the immediate release of these men and women, and in saying: you are not alone.  
 
 
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