[van-announce] Holiday Appeal for Class War Prisoners--December 15th

[Trotskyist League]

PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE

HOLIDAY APPEAL FOR CLASS WAR PRISONERS

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man­-Free him now!
Abolish the racist death penalty! Free all-class-war prisoners!

Saturday, December 15, 1:00 pm
WISE Hall, 1882 Adanac Street, Vancouver
(at the corner of Adanac and Victoria)
Tickets: $6.00 at the door.
Contributors of $10 or more will receive Class Struggle Defense Notes for 
one year.

All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal will go to the Class-War Prisoners 
Stipend Fund. Send your contributions to the PDC, P.O. Box 4932, Main P.O.
Vancouver BC V6B 4A6.


             For the past 22 years, the Partisan Defense Committee in the 
U.S. has been sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to 
those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression. In doing 
so, we have revived the tradition initiated by the International Labor 
Defense under James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the Communist Party and 
the ILD’s first secretary (1925-28). This year, as in years past, the PDC 
calls on labour activists, fighters for black and minority rights, radical 
youth and defenders of civil liberties to join us in building our annual 
Holiday Appeal, which raises funds for this unique program.

             The Holiday Appeal benefits will focus particularly on our 
campaign to mobilize mass protest demanding freedom for death row political 
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent man. A former Black Panther Party 
spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an 
award-winning journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” Mumia was 
framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer and 
sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mumia currently 
awaits a decision by a U.S. federal appeals court on whether to reinstitute 
the death sentence, keep him entombed in prison for life or grant him a new 
trial or other legal proceedings. For those fighting for Mumia’s freedom, 
there must be no illusions in capitalist “justice.” Earlier this year, the 
capitalist courts again turned down appeals by class-war prisoners Leonard 
Peltier, Ed Poindexter and Mumia’s son Jamal Hart.

             Here in Canada, the struggle to free Mumia must be linked to a 
fight against the attacks of our own ruling class­from the racist 
deportation of immigrants to the state “anti-terror” vendetta against 
Muslims, Tamils and others; from assaults on Native protesters to the 
“anti-crime” hysteria targeting black youth; from barring anti-war 
activists at the border to tasering to death those who fall into the 
clutches of the police.

PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE
P.O. Box 4932, Main P.O., Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 4A6, (604) 
687-0353, <mailto:pdctoronto at bellnet.ca>pdctoronto at bellnet.ca, 
www.partisandefense.org

The Partisan Defense Committee is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and 
social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the 
interests of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance 
with the political views of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste.