https://themilitant.com/2018/12/22/new-years-greetings-to-our-readers-behind-bars/
New Year’s greetings to our readers behind bars!
Vol. 83/No. 1
January 7, 2019
Over the last year working people along with our brothers and sisters
behind prison walls have won some important victories against the
propertied rulers who look to restrict our rights and make us pay for
the deepening economic, political and moral crisis of capitalism.
In November, Florida’s Amendment 4 passed overwhelmingly, restoring
voting rights to well over a million former prisoners who have completed
their parole. Workers in Kentucky, Iowa and other states where the laws
restrict prisoners’ right to vote are organizing to build on this victory.
Opposition to death penalty executions in the U.S. — which is the
epitome of “cruel and unusual punishment” — continues to grow, and the
number of executions to decline.
We celebrate the release of former Black Panthers Herman Bell and Robert
Seth Hayes, after more than 40 years in prison; of father and son Oregon
ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, framed for standing up to the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management; and of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his
sons Ammon and Ryan, after the frame-up case against them for standing
up to government attempts to confiscate their cattle was tossed out.
Our class also won fights against prison censorship, from defeating the
most recent attempt by Florida authorities to keep the Militant out of
prisons there, to attempts to restrict access to books in New York,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, as well as in federal prisons.
The total number of people in the U.S. prison system continues its
slight decline, the trend since 2008. But over 90 percent of those
locked up were strong-armed into signing plea bargains under threat of
draconian sentences.
Despite the small decline the capitalist rulers in the U.S. still have
the distinction of presiding over the highest incarceration rate in the
world, with nearly 2.2 million behind bars and 4.6 million on parole or
probation.
Working people in city and countryside are all too familiar with the
cops, courts and prisons of the rulers’ so-called criminal justice
system. They are all part of the rulers’ arsenal used to intimidate the
working class from struggle, and to foster divisions among us. It falls
disproportionately on Blacks, who make up some 34 percent of those
convicted of felonies, even though African-Americans are just 13 percent
of the country’s population.
We call for the release of all remaining Black Panthers who are in
prison, including Ed Poindexter in Nebraska and Jalil Muntaqim in New
York; of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist framed on murder
charges and cruelly imprisoned for decades far from his family; and
Mumia Abu-Jamal who was railroaded into jail in Pennsylvania in 1982 and
has had to fight to get the medical care he needs. And of all
class-struggle and political prisoners worldwide, like Crimean film
director Oleg Sentsov framed up and imprisoned in Moscow’s gulag.
The rulers and their meritocratic state bureaucracies look at all
workers as “outlaws.”
The working class is the future of humanity. As Malcolm X explained from
his experiences behind bars, the key for us isn’t our oppression, but to
recognize our self-worth. In struggle we can be transformed, throwing
off the self-image the rulers impose on us, and conquer the capacity to
wrest political power out of their hands.
To be able to organize effectively and intelligently we need to learn
the lessons and history of past working-class struggles. This is key to
building a working-class party and movement that can change the
miserable conditions created by capitalism.
We invite workers behind bars to get a subscription to the Militant and
order books from Pathfinder Press, invaluable tools in advancing
ourselves and our participation in the class battles unfolding today.
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In This Issue
Front Page Articles •‘Yellow vest’ protests force gov’t concessions
•New Year’s greetings to our readers behind bars!
•Join SWP in taking books, ‘Militant’ to workers doors
•‘We are human beings, not robots!’ Amazon workers protest conditions
•Turkish rulers threaten to attack Kurds seeking autonomy in Syria
•Rail bosses push crew cuts, longer trains, risk lives in drive for profit
Feature Articles •‘What does Cuba teach? That revolution is possible’
Also In This Issue •Hungary protests oppose law letting bosses force
overtime
•Workers donate ‘blood money’ bribes to build SWP
•Celebrate Nan Bailey’s five decades building SWP
•UK out of EU is best terrain for workers’ struggles there
•Join fight against prison censorship of ‘Militant’!
On the Picket Line •Mental health clinicians strike across California
•United flight attendants protest crew size cuts, grueling schedules
•Oakland teachers rally for smaller class sizes, higher wages
•Walmart worker hits bosses’ abuses over intercom
Books of the Month •Workers take political power or face ‘Iron Heel’ of
capitalist rule
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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J.K. Rowling
“ I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing
in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist! ”
― J.K. Rowling
