From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: National rally for prisoner rights /ww
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 17:43:22 GMT

 National Rally for Prisoner Rights
 By Cheryl LaBash Detroit

A national movement for prisoners human rights re-emerged Sept.
26 at a rally here sponsored by Together As One We Are One Voice
and the Movement for a Peoples Assembly. National speakers
included Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of the 1985
police bombing of the MOVE home in Philadelphia, and Luis
Talamantez, prisoner rights activist and one of the San Quentin
Six.

The rally's multi-national speakers were equally women and men.
They represented families and loved ones of prisoners, and the
men and women with first hand experience of life behind bars in
the U.S. prison system.

Whether the reporters were from California or New York, the
message was the same as the one heard from activists in Michigan.
A "prison for profit" industry is expanding alongside an
intensified assault on prisoner and families' rights. This comes
at the expense of working class communities, especially Black,
Latino and other oppressed nationalities.

Talamantez said in California alone 100,000 people are held
inside the walls, a majority Black and Latino. Now having 21
major prisons, the state of California plans to build ten more by
1996, including the $224 million Pelican Bay prison. At the same
time state officials have slashed spending for education and
other state services.

Willie Kirksey from the MPA was one of the 95,000 people thrown
off General Assistance in Michigan last year. He said, "Prisons
are concentration camps for the poor. The vast majority of
prisoners are African American, Latino, Native people or poor
whites who are in prisons because they have committed crimes of
survival, most of which are petty by any standards.

"In the meantime, the real criminals, the savings and loan crooks
like Neal Bush, the mass murderers like Bush and Schwarzkopf who
massacred 250,000 Iraqis one-and-a-half years ago, the executives
who rob us of our livelihoods every day, live in mansions in the
suburbs and run the government."

Ramona Africa corrected the notion that people are sent to prison
for what they have been accused of doing. She said, "Take the
issue of drug possession, if you are a Kennedy and are caught
with drugs you don't go to prison. When you are poor, especially
if you are Black or minority, chances are you will end up in
prison. No one is immune--Black, white, old or young."

Africa and other activists called for an independent mass
movement to fight what Kwame Kenyatta of the New African Peoples
Organization and Malcolm X Center in Detroit called "the real
criminals."

Kirksey from the MPA said, "We believe an independent fight-back
movement of the workers and oppressed is what is needed to fight
for our rights. Only through rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins,
strikes, rebellions and direct action that challenges the system
will any changes be won for the working class. We are in the
process of building a peoples assembly, a center of resistance
for all those fighting back against the capitalist government in
Washington and the real rulers on Wall Street."

The rally was endorsed by Zolo Agona Azania, political prisoner
in Indiana; Equal Justice Committee, Gary, IN; Indiana Death Row
Prisoners; Mumia Abu Jamal, MOVE supporter and revolutionary
journalist on death row in Pennsylvania; Osai Tutu Kwamina,
former prisoner of war and co-founder of the National Committee
on U.S. Corrections, Inc.; Ojore Lutalo, political prisoner, New
Jersey State Prison; Melanic Islamic Palace of the Rising Sun;
MOVE;
Movement for a Peoples Assembly; National Committee on U.S.
Corrections, Inc.; Prisoners' Committee for Better Relations,
Inc., Michigan City, IN; Jaami Ahmad Rasheed, Nation of Islam;
Support and Unity for Relatives & Friends of Felons; Kataza
Taifa, political prisoner in Indiana; Harold H. Thompson,
Anti-imperialist Movement; Workers World Party; Paul Wright and
Ed Mead, editors, Prison Legal News.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@mcimail.com".)

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