Vol. 79/No. 1 January 19, 2015
We join with millions in Cuba and worldwide to celebrate the return of Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino to Cuba Dec. 17, the last three members of the Cuban Five who were held in U.S. prisons, framed up 16 years ago for their actions in defense of the Cuban Revolution. Their victory should be used to extend solidarity to all political prisoners and advance their fights for freedom, including Puerto Rican independence fighter Oscar López Rivera, in prison for 33 years; Native American activist Leonard Peltier; Mumia Abu-Jamal; the Omaha Two, Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter; and others.
Prosecutors, cops, the courts, prison officials and guards treat those who are locked up as beasts who deserve whatever they get. This mirrors the class bias of their masters — the propertied ruling families — who can only maintain the dictatorship of capital, based on the exploitation of wage labor, by treating the working class as outlaws requiring constant surveillance, harassment and intimidation.
The capitalist “justice” system has been placed in the spotlight by growing mobilizations spurred by cop killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley and countless others — Black, Caucasian, Latino and Asian.
The number of “exonerations” are growing with nearly 1,500 prisoners released in the past 15 years, as cop frame-ups are exposed.
The efforts of tens of thousands behind bars to use hunger strikes and other protests to demand their rights and assert their dignity has won grudging gains from some prison authorities. Victories have been won in the U.K. recently and at Taylor Correctional Institution in Florida on the right of inmates to get books and newspapers, including the Militant.
Esaw Garner, widow of Eric Garner, killed by N.Y. cops, has explained her husband’s killing was not a question of race. She’s right, the working class — the revolutionary class — is the target.
Because of their national oppression and record of uncompromising struggle against it, African-American workers disproportionately suffer police brutality, harassment and imprisonment. For the same reasons, they have been in the forefront of battles for union recognition and workers’ rights.
The fights against police brutality and killings by the cops reinforce expanding fights by Walmart, fast-food and airport workers for $15 an hour and a union and by rail workers fighting for job safety. And more unions are joining the fight against police brutality.
Recent revelations of the scope and brutality of CIA torture — from waterboarding to “rectal rehydration” — are of little surprise to those who have experienced the U.S. “justice” system. Washington’s brutality abroad is an extension of the brutality the rulers mete out every day here at home.
We stand with workers behind bars in your fights for dignity, respect and democratic rights
Related articles:
‘Militant’ beats back censorship at Fla. prison
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