Call to Action: For International Workers’ Action-Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and All Anti-Racist and Anti-Imperialist Freedom Fighters!

By Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10 retired, Co-founder Million Worker March,
Author of “Mobilizing in Our Own Name: Million Worker March”

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has a long tradition of defending oppressed nationalities and political prisoners such as Angela Davis in the 1970s. As a retired member and officer of ILWU Local 10, I have been a part of the Local’s efforts to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners. For more than 30 years, the ILWU has been in the vanguard of the labor movement to free the award-winning journalist, the voice of the voiceless and former Black Panther Party member, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

During the 60s, the Black Liberation Movement awakened my political and social consciousness along with countless other Afro-American youth. I joined the Black Panther Party which facilitated my anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialism activism and the need for Afro-Americans to have “self-determination.”

Declaring the Black Panther Party “public enemy number one,” the US government sanctioned the murder of its leaders, vilified the organization in the press, and falsely imprisoned Party members, Mumia Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence of the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

There are Black Panther Party members that were a part of the Black Liberation movement that have been languishing in prison for more than half a century. Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier has been imprisoned since 1977. The horrific imprisonment and the abuse of these political prisoners, represent the long legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid, and racial violence perpetrated against African-Americans.

The labor movement can and must play a vital role in the release of all political prisoners. The ILWU recognizes that the prosecution of radical labor leaders such as Tom Mooney and Harry Bridges is directly connected to efforts by the US government to use lies and frame-ups to put away these fighters for freedom and justice that was promised yet denied to African Americans and people of color in the US.

The ILWU Longshore Division shut down the entire West Coast in 1999 to demand: “Stop the Execution and Free Mumia!” On June 19 (Juneteenth), 2020, the ILWU shut down all 29 ports on the West Coast including Vancouver, Canada to commemorate Juneteenth, to End Systemic Racism, and to Stop Police Terror. No maritime cargo was moved for 8 hours on the entire West Coast. This solidarity action on the part of West Coast dockworkers represents the power of labor at the point of production. It is this type of action that labor must find the courage to exercise on a global level to bring home Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners.