Partisan Defense Committee
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Partisan Defense Committee
The Partisan Defense Committee describes itself as "a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization that champions cases and causes in the interests of the whole of the working people." The PDC works in accordance with the political orientation of the Spartacist League. The committee organizes demonstrations and performs legal work in defense of "class struggle" prisoners. Its longest standing campaign has been in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It has also organized counterdemonstrations in response to rallies planned by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists. Campaigns The PDC describes the following 15 people as "class-war prisoners" and provides small stipends to them: * Mumia Abu-Jamal * Leonard Peltier * 7 members of MOVE ** Chuck Africa ** Michael Africa ** Debbie Africa ** Janet Africa ** Janine Africa ** Delbert Africa ** Eddie Africa * Albert Woodfox of the Angola Three * The remaining 2 of the Ohio 7 ** Jaan Laaman ** Tom Manning (prisoner) ...
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International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)
The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) abbreviated as ICL(FI), earlier known as the international Spartacist tendency (iSt), is a Trotskyist international. Its largest constituent party is the Spartacist League (US). There are smaller sections of the ICL (FI) in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom. The group originated within the Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States and, upon its expulsion from the SWP, it named itself Spartacist in 1964 in homage to the original Spartacist League in World War I Germany, co-led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Publications The central theoretical journal of the ICL(FI) is ''Spartacist'' which is published in four languages approximately once a year. Apart from the above the ICL(FI)'s American section, the Spartacist League, operates the Prometheus Research Library in New York City. The library has publ ...
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Class Struggle
In political science, the term class conflict, class struggle, or class war refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequalities of power in the socioeconomic hierarchy. In its simplest manifestation, class conflict refers to the ongoing battle between the Affluence, rich and Poverty, poor. In the writings of several Left-wing politics, leftist, Socialism, socialist, and Marxism, communist theorists, notably those of Karl Marx, class struggle is a core tenet and a practical means for effecting radical sociopolitical transformations for the majority working class. It is also a central concept within conflict theories of sociology and political philosophy. Class conflict can reveal itself through: * Direct violence, such as assassinations, Coup d'état, coups, revolution, revolutions, counter-revolutionary, counterrevolutions, and civil wars for control of gove ...
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Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Department, Philadelphia police officer Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal#Shooting victim, Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he wrote and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year. Beginning at the age of 14 in 1968, Abu-Jamal became involved with the Black Panther Party and was a member until October 1970, leaving the party at age 16. After leaving, he completed his high school education, and later became a radio reporter. He eventually served as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (1978–1980). He supported MOVE ...
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Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, Reconstruction in the devastated South. Various historians have characterized the Klan as America's first Terrorism, terrorist group.Fergus Bordewich. (2023). ''Klan War: Ulysses S Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction''. Penguin Random House The group contains several organizations structured as a secret society, which have frequently resorted to terrorism, violence and acts of intimidation to impose their criteria and oppress their victims, most notably African Americans, Jews, and Catholics. A leader of one of these organizations is called a Grand Wizard, grand wizard, and there have been three distinct iterations with various other targets relative to time and place. The first Klan was established in the Reconstruction era for me ...
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Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who was convicted of murdering two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment. Peltier became eligible for parole in 1993. On January 19, 2025, Peltier's sentence was commuted to indefinite house arrest by President Joe Biden shortly before he left office. On February 18, the date specified by the grant of clemency, Peltier was released and transferred to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota. In his 1999 memoir ''Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance'', Peltier admitted to participating in the shootout but said he did not kill the FBI agents. However, witnesses say he confessed, including Darlene Ka-Mook Nichols who testified against him at trial. Human rights watchdogs, such as A ...
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MOVE (Philadelphia Organization)
MOVE (pronounced like the word "move"), originally the Christian Movement for Life, is a communal organization that advocates for nature laws and natural living, founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, by John Africa (born Vincent Leaphart). MOVE lived in a Intentional community, communal setting in West Philadelphia, abiding by philosophies of anarcho-primitivism. The group combined revolutionary ideology, similar to that of the Black Panthers, with work for animal rights. MOVE is particularly known for two major conflicts with the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD). In 1978, a standoff resulted in the death of police officer James J. Ramp and injuries to 16 officers and firefighters, as well as members of the MOVE organization. Nine members were convicted of killing the officer and each received prison sentences of 30 to 100 years. In 1985, another firefight ended when 1985 MOVE bombing, a police helicopter dropped two bombs onto the roof of the MOVE ...
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Angola Three
The Angola Three are three African American former prison inmates ( Robert Hillary King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace) who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola Prison). The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974.John Schwartz, "Herman Wallace, Freed After 41 Years in Solitary, Dies at 71"
''The New York Times'', October 4, 2013; accessed March 12, 2019
Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".
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Ohio 7
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the west, and Michigan to the northwest. Of the 50 List of states and territories of the United States, U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-largest by area. With a population of nearly 11.9 million, Ohio is the List of U.S. states and territories by population, seventh-most populous and List of U.S. states and territories by population density, tenth-most densely populated state. Its List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city is Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, with the two other major Metropolitan statistical area, metropolitan centers being Cleveland and Cincinnati, alongside Dayton, Ohio, Dayton, Akron, Ohio, Akron, and Toledo, Ohio, Toledo. Ohio is nicknamed th ...
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Jaan Laaman
Jaan Karl Laaman (born March 21, 1948) is an Estonia-born United States, American political activist, most known for his conviction and imprisonment related to various charges including a 1982 attempted murder of a police officer. He was a member of the United Freedom Front. Laaman grew up in Roxbury, Massachusetts and Buffalo, New York. His family emigrated to the United States from Estonia when he was a child. He had a son who died in 2011. Laaman served a major portion of a 53-year prison sentence for his role in the bombings of United States government buildings while a member of the United Freedom Front, an American leftist group in the 1980s. In the 1960s, Laaman worked in Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization), Students for a Democratic Society and community organizations and advocated against the Vietnam War and racism. As a student at the University of New Hampshire, he was a leader in the SDS. He was also a leader in the student strike in May 1970 in re ...
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Tom Manning (prisoner)
Thomas William Manning (June 28, 1946 – July 29, 2019) was an American Marxist militant convicted of killing New Jersey State Police trooper Philip J. Lamonaco during a traffic stop in 1981. Before the murder he co-founded a small revolutionary Marxist group known as the United Freedom Front (UFF), which bombed a series of US military and commercial institutions and committed bank robberies in the 1970s and early 1980s. He remained a fugitive for three years after killing the state trooper, despite being the subject of a large manhunt including appearing on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He remained active in UFF bombings and bank robberies until the arrest of all five remaining other UFF members on November 4, 1984, which was followed by the arrest of Manning and his wife on April 24, 1985. Earlier in his life, he had served in the US Armed Forces in the Vietnam War and been convicted of armed robbery and assault. He later said he had become politicized while in pris ...
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