The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 76/No. 48      December 31, 2012

 
Greetings to workers behind bars
(editorial)
 

The Militant sends New Year’s greetings to the 2.4 million fellow workers behind bars in U.S. prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, immigration detention centers and military lockup.

The scope of incarceration in the U.S. is unprecedented in history and unparalleled in the world. Some 7 million people are currently entangled in the “justice” system, either incarcerated, on probation or parole. Driven in large part by threats and plea bargains depriving millions of due process or presumption of innocence, the vast majority are working people, and in great disproportion African-American men.

The cumulative impact of capitalist justice on the lives of working people is engendering fights—inside and outside prison walls—against the government’s frame-up system, cop brutality and brutal treatment of prisoners.

And where workers fight back against boss attacks today, they more and more find themselves confronting enemies in the cops and the courts, who invariably side with the owners of capital.

As these struggles win sympathy from broader layers of working people, they help to instill a healthy distrust and hatred of cops and other agents of capitalist repression.

We send our salute to Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González and Fernando González, five exemplary working-class revolutionaries framed up and imprisoned by the U.S. government for their defense of the Cuban Revolution.

We extend solidarity to all political prisoners, including Puerto Rican independence militant Oscar López Rivera, held 31 years, 12 of them in solitary; Native American activist Leonard Peltier; Mumia Abu-Jamal; and Lynne Stewart, framed up for offering legal services to many facing government attack.

Over the past year, the number of subscribers to the Militant behind bars in the U.S. has doubled to some 65. The paper gets passed around and is used in discussion groups and classes. We’d like to see the subscription base in prisons doubled again a year from now.

The Militant is proud to offer complimentary or reduced-rate subscriptions to prisoners. Contribute to the Militant Prisoners’ Fund to help us continue this working-class tradition. (Militant address on page 2.)
 
 
Related articles:
Chicago protesters demand torture cops ‘off the streets’
Fight to free more than 100 victims still in prison
‘I was 16 when I was tortured, framed up, jailed for 28 years’
Mark Clements tells how Chicago cops ‘stole my life’ and many others
Tribute to Malik Williams in NJ: killer cops ‘need to be in jail’  
 
 
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