ILPS calls for freedom of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal

The International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS) stands in solidarity with the continuing calls for the freedom of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The July 4th day of action protests the 38 years of unjust imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal, world-renowned journalist, former Black Panther and supporter of the MOVE organization who has been persecuted for decades for his unrelenting criticism of racist police terror and the system which relies on both racism and state fascism to ensure its survival: US imperialism.

The ILPS reiterates its condemnation of the vicious murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and countless African-Americans by the US police.

The ILPS supports the black people of the United States and millions of people around the world who are rising up against racial injustice and the subjugation of peoples of colour rooted in capitalism and imperialism and their bloody histories.

The latest wave of murders of African-Americans further shows that the corrupt legal institutions and law enforcement system which have ensured Mumia Abu-Jamal’s imprisonment remain intact, continuing the systematic oppression of peoples of colour.

Racism is rooted in capitalist accumulation through centuries of slave trade and labour, colonialism and neo-colonialism. In the Americas, slaves from Africa worked the land of the West Indies and the Southern colonies from dispossessed Native Americans. The expansion of the slave trade brought enormous profits and concentrated capital in Europe and America for the expansion of commerce and industry. The blood and sweat of African slaves produced sugar, tobacco, and cotton for the refineries, distilleries and textile mills of Western Europe and subsequently of the Northern United States.

When the United States fought a war for independence against its mother empire, it did not free the slaves. It fought an internal civil war that purportedly freed these slaves but then segregated them to be exploited and degraded on the basis of colour. The systematic oppression of peoples of colour had to be sanctified by ideology, a philosophy of racial supremacy.

The economic progress of the United States was made possible by keeping black people and other peoples of colour at the bottom of the social ladder as an unskilled reserve labour force to be exploited for the benefit of the ruling class in American society. The US ruling class has maintained this labour force to serve the economic needs of advancing capitalism as it has developed to its present stage — that of imperialism.

The recent lynchings in the US are an essential component of the exploitation, oppression and repression faced by black people that cannot be separated from capitalism any more than the development of racism can be separated from capitalism. The place of peoples of colour in the fringes of society is a direct result of capitalism and racism supporting one another.

The current black people-led movement cannot, therefore, evade tackling all the problems of American capitalist society. At the core of all the problems of the black people is the same structure and system that exploits all working people. This struggle of the black people is inevitably linked with the general struggle of the peoples of the world against US imperialism. The crimes of US imperialism against peoples of colour unveils the link between reactionary policies pursued by the US government at home and its policies of exploitation and aggression abroad.

The monopoly capitalists who have kept the working classes and the black people of the United States in a state of decrepitude are continuing to do the same thing to the toiling masses and peoples of color all over the world. It imposes fascism at home through its armed forces and fascist rule over neo-colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America through its puppet regimes. It maintains its dominance throughout the world via its military-industrial complex, by stationing troops and establishing military bases all around the world.

The United States refers to itself as the protector of democracy and the free world. What it protects is a system that enables monopoly capitalists to keep the toiling masses in economic misery and widespread poverty and which uses the armed powers of the state to suppress uprisings and movements for social change.

Political power must be taken away by the working class from the US financial oligarchy and monopoly-capitalist class who perpetuate a system of superprofit accumulation by all means necessary. The abolition of racism and all forms of oppression requires the construction of a society that eliminates the exploitation of all other races, the working classes and neo-colonies which are inseparable from capitalism.

The ILPS supports the call of the peoples of the US to establish community control over the police which will establish law enforcement transparency and accountability instead of the current law enforcement system which have victimized the likes of Mumia Abu-Jamal, where police forces have become a rallying point for militant white extremism and are dedicated to the preservation of the status quo.

The ILPS calls on movements fighting racism and imperialism to seize the upsurge of mass mobilizations to strengthen progressive movements and the struggle for social liberation. Let us step up our organizing and education efforts and our general efforts to expand and strengthen our organizations.

The ILPS pledges its solidarity with the black people and oppressed peoples of all origins in the struggle against US imperialism, a system dominated by the monopoly capitalists which has committed mayhem, murder, aggression, destitution and destruction. The ILPS unites with the peoples of the world for transforming society into one which is controlled by the toiling masses.

ILPS raises its collective fist:
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Long live the courageous struggles of the African American people!
Long live international solidarity and the worldwide resistance to imperialism!

Signed:
Len Cooper
Chairperson, ILPS
5 July 2020