Participants at the meeting joined with others throughout the world celebrating the release earlier that day of 11 Puerto Rican political prisoners from U.S. jails. Puerto Rican activist Willie Rivera, explained that nearly 100 people had gone earlier that day to the federal prison in nearby Dublin, California, to welcome four of the female prisoners released from jail.

Cassidy, McAllister, and the other panelists expressed their solidarity with the Puerto Rican patriots.

Like most Republicans in the North of Ireland, both McAllister and Cassidy lived with daily intimidation and abuse from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland's heavily armed police force, and from the British troops still occupying the six northern counties of Ireland. Under the United Kingdom's Prevention of Terrorism Act, both were detained numerous times, and frequently received serious beatings.

"I was raised as an Irish nationalist," Cassidy said." I was first arrested when I was nine years old selling Easter lillies commemorating men who were killed in the 1917 Easter rebellion. In 1970 I joined the Irish Republican movement. I started counting the number of times I got arrested. When I got to 100 I stopped counting. Sometimes I was beaten and sometimes just interrogated."

McAllister said he is fighting for political asylum and against deportation by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

In 1983 Malachy was convicted in a juryless" Diplock" court on frame-up charges, based on an informers' testimony, of conspiracy to murder an RUC officer. Malachy served three and a half years in Long Kesh prison.

On Oct. 2, 1988, two masked loyalist gunmen fired 25 shots into the Malachy home. He and his wife were not there but his four children and mother in law narrowly missed being shot. No one was ever charged in the attack.

The RUC later notified the McAllisters that information on their family was in the hands of loyalist paramilitary organizations.

"We had no choice but to separate as a family for awhile," said Malachy." We decided to keep the family together and left for Canada. We then left Canada for the United States before I got deported."

The INS denied the McAllisters' applications for asylum, stating there is no reason for them to fear harm should they return to Ireland.

"We're for the peace agreement, but it's clear that the loyalists aren't," said McAllister." The revolution we've been having in Ireland against British occupation shows that the loyalists are not prepared to accept any kind of change whatsoever. I lost my first job in Belfast when I was 15 because I was a Catholic. Our situation is the same as what Puerto Ricans are facing. What Blacks and Latinos face in New York is the same as I faced growing up in Belfast."

Cassidy spent 13 months in Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast, without trial, after initially being arrested and charged with being an intelligence officer in the Irish Republican Army (IRA). After finally being tried and falsely convicted in a" Diplock" court on perjured testimony of a British army intelligence officer in March 1979, he spent the next 23 months in Long Kesh prison.

Cassidy said that because he demanded to wear his own clothes rather than the prison issued uniform, like many Republican prisoners, he was forced to live" on the blanket" his entire time at Long Kesh.

"I lived naked in a cell for 23 months," Cassidy said." That whole time I could not wash, shave or brush my teeth. I went to mass on Sundays. The only other time I was allowed out of the cell was one half hour visit per month. They [the guards] beat us every time we left our cell. We decided we couldn't take it anymore. In October 1980 seven men went on hunger strike in Long Kesh prison." They were joined in December of that year by three women at Armagh prison.

Cassidy is now married to a U.S. citizen and since the end of 1982 has been living in the United States. In December 1990 Cassidy was arrested at gun point at their home in Maryland and since then has faced deportation proceedings.

Larry Lane, representative of the Socialist Workers Party and a member of the International Association of Machinists also spoke on the panel." For all of us this is an occasion of incomparable joy," he stated." The release of the Puerto Rican political prisoners is a victory to celebrate. The fight for self-determination for Ireland, Puerto Rico, East Timor, Quebec, and other struggles of oppressed nationalities take place in the general framework of our entire epoch — the fight of workers and farmers for power. The struggle of nationalists for a free and united Ireland is more united, broader, and drawing in more youth. The loyalists are marked by disunity and disintegration into terror."

It's important, Lane said," for those struggling for national liberation to link up with workers resisting the bosses belt-tightening demands today like the recent Newport News strike, the Teamsters workers who walked out at Basic Vegetable in King City, the San Francisco hotel workers, the locked-out Kaiser Aluminum workers, and US Airways machinists and flight attendants pushing for contracts. We find greater ease in winning our co-workers to support the struggle for national self-determination in Ireland and elsewhere and to support the concrete cases against deportation that the other panelists described."

Deborah Liatos is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers.  
 
 
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