Chicago, IL -Chicago is preparing for May Day, which is again a national day of protest against Trump’s racist agenda. A broad coalition of immigrant rights, Black liberation, workers, youth and student organizations are preparing to rally and march on May 1, International Workers Day.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is going all out to build for May Day. One part of FRSO’s contribution is our annual Working Class Awards Dinner. Again, this year, it was held in the hall of the Chicago Teachers Union on Saturday, April 18.

The purpose of the event is to recognize individuals and organizations that have made contributions to the struggle of workers and the oppressed over the past year, celebrate some victories, and recognize the people who made them possible. It is also FRSO Chicago’s main annual fundraiser.

The event was very successful, with almost 300 people in the hall and over $20,000 raised.

A year of resistance to ICE: Four awards presented

Chicago was one of the first targets of ICE occupation, beginning in September 2025. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol officers terrorized immigrant communities, arresting 3000. They even staged a raid with 300 agents at 3 a.m. in the Black community of South Shore, with agents rappelling from helicopters onto an apartment building where Venezuelan refugees lived.

The Rapid Response teams, Migra Watch, and emergency response protests began before Trump surged agents here.

The awards dinner recognized four activists for contributions to resistance to Trump and ICE. Kathryn Zamarrón is an elementary school music teacher at the Walt Disney Magnet School, and a rank-and-file leader in the Chicago Teachers Union. She serves on the CTU Latinx Caucus and Elementary Education Committee. Zamarron played a crucial role in organizing sanctuary teams to protect students not only in her own school, but across the city. She was presented with an award named for Karen Lewis, the legendary president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Corina Pedraza, a worker at the Chicago public library, played a leading role in helping the community provide services to the tens of thousands of migrant laborers bused here by the governor of Texas starting in 2022. She was also recognized for her leading role as an organizer of both Southwest and Southeast Side rapid response teams in 2025. Her award was in the name of Silverio Villegas González, murdered by ICE in a Chicago suburb at the outset of the ICE/CBP occupation.

Reverend Ciera Bates-Chamberlain received the Angela Davis Award for organizing faith leaders in opposition to ICE. As executive director of Live Free Illinois, when ICE threatened Chicago, she organized a multifaith, multiracial coalition including Black ministers and churches on Chicago’s South and West Sides. The network held a press conference, a protest in the pulpits, and rallied with the immigrant rights movement to defend our communities.

Finally, the Mexican Students de Aztlán (MeSA) at UIC received an award named for Rigo Padilla Pérez. A member of the Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance at UIC, Rigo was a leader in the Dreamers movement, which compelled passage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals legislation. He died of cancer three years ago.

MeSA was honored because in October, ICE agents arrested two women near campus. Students protested, and ICE released the women, but the UIC administration failed to respond. MeSA then led a mobilization of over 200 students to oppose ICE on campus and demand a sanctuary campus.

Award for Palestine solidarity

Gabriella Martinez is a Special Education Certified Assistant in the Chicago Public Schools and a rank-and-file leader in SEIU Local 73. She organized coworkers to file ethics complaints against Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs for the purchase of Israel Bonds. Frerichs even purchased more bonds during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. For her work, Martinez received the Assata Shakur award. Together with several members and retirees from SEIU Local 73, Gabi’s family joined her for the event.

Lifetime Achievement Awards: Pete Camarata Award to Jim Fennerty for movement legal defense

Jim Fennerty has been a fixture at protests in Chicago for decades, wearing the lime green cap of the National Lawyers Guild. Jim is a people’s lawyer who has consistently defended our movement from attacks by the ruling class. Jim and his wife, Janet have been politically active in the movement for over 50 years. Jim represented Rasmea Odeh and the Anti-War 23, and he helped win a historic civil settlement representing 800 protesters arrested at the start of the Iraq War.

Fennerty’s award was named after the late Pete Camarata. Pete was a founder of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). In his fight against the criminals that took control of the union, Pete was one of the first to combine rank and file power with legal action.

Fennerty was introduced by family friend Hatem Abudayyeh of the Arab American Action Network and US Palestinian Community Network. Many tables were filled with Jim and Janet’s friends and family, including son Nate, daughter Dina, her husband Daniel Contreras, and grandson Quinn Contreras.

In addition, the family of Pete Camarata was there with the Fennertys, including his wife, Robin Potter, stepson Jackson and his wife, Joan; stepdaughter Aimee, and granddaughter Phoebe.

William L. Patterson Award to Frank Chapman

The night’s biggest moment was the lifetime achievement award for Frank Chapman. It came with recorded greetings from CTU President Stacy Davis Gates and Vice President Jackson Potter.

The William L. Patterson Award was introduced by Anthony Quesada, 35th Ward alderman:

“Through his leadership with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Frank has helped lead campaigns that have shaped Chicago. He has been central to the fight for justice for the wrongfully convicted and for community control of the police. His work helped push forward the movement that won elected police district councils, giving people a real voice in public safety. And today, Frank continues to advance this struggle through our fight for the Community Power Over Policing referendum.

“He has also mentored generations of organizers, many of whom are in the room tonight. Across Chicago and beyond, people have learned from him how to stay grounded, how to build collective power, and how to keep going through every phase of struggle. His impact lives in the people he has shaped and the movements that continue to grow.”

There were other elected officials present, including 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 35th Ward Democratic Committeeperson Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho Lopez, and State Senator Graciela Guzman.

The award is named after William L. Patterson, the Communist Party USA attorney who led the International Labor Defense (ILD), and who organized the mass defense of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s. Later he headed up the Civil Rights Congress, and together with Paul Robeson took the We Charge Genocide petition to the United Nations. The formation of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression was based on the model of the ILD.

Chapman: “We’re part of a better world in birth”

Chapman is the executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression; field organizer and education director of the Chicago Alliance; and a Central Committee member of FRSO. In his remarks, he shared some perspective on the Trump regime and on change in this country from his vantage point having been born in 1942.

Referring to people who see Trumpism as an aberration when they say, “That’s not us,” meaning not what the U.S. stands for, Chapman responded, “The hell it ain’t. What they’re doing to the immigrants happened to me and my people…6200 children have been held in detention since Trump came in,” adding, “And shooting people on the streets execution style.”

“But we’ve seen this: we saw Laquan McDonald shot 16 times. And a few days ago, the state police shot a man 15 times, not far from my house,” and “Quit telling me this is something you haven’t seen before.”

“We’re demanding an end to Trumpism, but we’re going further than that. We’re part of a better world in birth!” Going on with the lyrics of The International, Chapman said, “Arise you prisoners of starvation. Arise you wretched of the earth. For justice thunders condemnation. A better world’s in birth.”

“Are you ready to get this done? Are you ready for the revolution?” he asked, to thunderous applause.

#ChicagoIL #IL #ImmigrantRights #OppressedNationalities #AfricanAmerican #FRSO #NAARPR #FrankChapman #Trump #PeoplesStruggles

Chicago, IL – The No Kings protests and demonstrations are both an organized response and a clear manifestation of a spontaneous uprising in resistance to Donald Trump’s agenda. Given the commentary and calls of the leaders and organizers of the demonstration, it’s clearly entrenched within the limited oppositional politics of the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Republican Party has gone so far to the right that it has actually deprived the Democrats of a lot of oxygen for carrying out their neoliberal programs. The Democratic Party’s neoliberal budget cuts leave us lean, but the Republican cuts are to the bone. This makes for an interesting kind of politics. You might say that the Democrats are for restoring the leadership of the Democratic Party to its neoliberal mission. It’s more about restoring the status quo of neoliberalism, and this shows up in how they are presently negotiating with the Republicans about ICE, government layoffs, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and so on. 

So where do we find the bottom line? If we look for the bottom line that the Democrats are drawing saying “Here’s where we stand. Here’s where we will fight, and we shall not be moved,” it’s hard to find that line. Just look at the fights around the budget. First they said ICE should be abolished. Then they said they had to be restricted. They had to show their badges, their warrants, and not wear masks. They went back and forth on that so much that we couldn’t keep track of what they are demanding, what’s the bottom line. Now that we’re in a period of trying to stop a government shutdown, they agreed to the Republican bottom line in the Senate. Now they’re being critical of the Democrats in the House for not going along with the Democrats in the Senate. 

And what’s wrong with this? They have been negotiated backwards to just the limited demand of giving ICE no more money, when ICE already has gotten hundreds of billions of dollars to function, and they don’t really need more money. So, it’s almost a meaningless demand. 

Both the liberal and the conservative parts of the Democratic Party unite and agree that the problem that people have with Trump is the price of eggs and the price of gasoline, and that he broke his promise to take prices down and instead prices have gone up. They have moved the economy to the front burner. This becomes their principal demand. 

But what about the Medicaid cuts? What about housing? What about the near-elimination of the National Labor Relations Board, where no government official is bound to respect trade union rights? What about the massive layoffs of all of the government workers, including air traffic controllers? And last but certainly not least, what about the white supremacy? What about the unchecked, blatant, gross racism that currently resides in the White House?

It becomes like a meteorite issue that flashes through the political firmament and then is no longer seen and no longer mentioned by the Democratic Party, even when their own leadership, like the Obamas, have been characterized as apes by the President. 

As harsh and mean-spirited as Trump’s racism is, it is not exceptional or unprecedented in the annals of American history. 

The masses of the people are way out ahead of the Democrats when it comes to opposing Trump’s agenda. We think this was demonstrated in Minneapolis, and we think it’s also been demonstrated at numerous Congressional hearings, but mainly in Minneapolis, where we heard an undisputable, unmistakeable protest against the ICE occupation and the police state tactics of Trump, coming from the masses of people. 

I’m not talking about the governor of Minnesota. He opposed it, yes. Nor am I talking about the mayor of Minneapolis. He opposed it, too. But they also did not draw the line when it came to aggressive, brutal and murderous actions of ICE on the ground. They let one face of ICE be replaced by another, switching out Bovino for Homan. 

So, the challenge to us is that in these momentous times, when you have political leaders clearly standing in contradiction and opposition to the popular demands and impulses of the masses, that we consciously intervene and make it clear that defeating Trumpism, or defeating the Trump agenda and all the social savagery that it unleashes on the people, means we must address the racism, xenophobia and gender-based oppression as vigorously and uncompromisingly while we also address the social misery caused by the rise in the cost of living. 

Our response to the neoliberal war cry coined by Bill Clinton decades ago, “It’s the economy, stupid,” is “It’s the politics, stupid.” 

Because of the extremism characteristic of this administration, we must not draw the conclusion that our demands are unreachable. We must take the fighting attitude that to get out of the situation that we’re in, our demands must be met. Our immediate demands to stop the Trump agenda must not be seen as a transitionary demand to tolerate the present moment until we get a better moment.

Trumpism is totally unacceptable now, and we must fight it to the finish.

#Opinion #Commentary #FrankChapman #Trump #PeoplesStruggles #ImmigrantRights

Frank Chapman: Quite a bit came out of it; but let me first address why it was important to have it. December 4th and 5th was just over two years since we held the re-founding conference in 2019. We held the re-founding conference six months before the outbreak of the George Floyd rebellion. At the time, we realized that the struggle for community control of the police was at the epicenter of the Black Liberation movement.

When the rebellion happened, we could see that the Black Liberation movement had grown considerably since 2012. We had 26 million people demonstrating in all 50 of the United States. This was a national rebellion led by Black people – the largest one in U.S. history.

Fortunately, we were prepared to give an organized response to it because we had a national organization we had re-founded in November 2019. When the rebellion came in Spring 2020, NAARPR called for a nationwide protest with the demands for Justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and for community control of the police. More than 22 different cities responded, with protests involving over 100,000 people.

This was clearly a new page in the history of our struggle. We put the demand for community control of the police on the front burner of the Black Liberation movement.

Fight Back!: What’s happening in the struggle against police crimes nationally?

Chapman: 22 cities came to our Second National Conference, all of which had participated in the rebellion. It was very revealing to look at the report backs organizers in these cities gave:

Toni Jones, New Orleans for Civilian Oversight of Police: The demand for community control of the police has made its way to New Orleans. We just started petitioning, but have been out there every week.

Adrian Romero, Utah Against Police Brutality, Salt Lake City: Police murdered Darien Hunt, permanently disabled Abdi Muhammad, both teenage boys. We fought for a police accountability council, the local legislature blocked it and made it illegal in retaliation, but we have continued to fight, bringing thousands of people onto the streets.

Sydney Loving, Dallas Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression: We led the largest protest in Dallas history during the 2020 uprising, with Black women and families leading the march. This led to the resignation of their police chief for her crimes against demonstrators.

David Jones, Tampa Bay Community Action Committee: Started their organization out of the uprising, raising money to get freedom fighters out of jail, bailed out 70+ people. Marched demanding justice for the 67 people arrested for demonstrating in a public park, got all 67 of those charges dropped.

Shut down a plan to move police headquarters into a Black neighborhood by marching to City Hall and demanding an end to increased police presence. City made a plan to evict over 1000 Black people to “decrease crime in the neighborhood,” we shut that program down, and continue to fight for those people to get housing.

Omar Flores, Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (MAARPR): The NAARPR conference in 2019 gave us direction and certainty of what needs to be done. Taleavia Cole, sister of Alvin Cole, came to the conference, and has been organizing with MAARPR since the uprising. Alvin Cole was a 17-year-old Black child who was shot by Wauwatosa PD. The family of Jonathan Tubby, an Indigenous youth killed in Green Bay, also travelled with us to this conference.

The first march we hosted in 2020 for Thee Three, the three people murdered by officer Joseph Mensa, we got support from the Milwaukee Area Labor Council.

There was a park named after the Nazi Charles Lindbergh, they got this park renamed after Lucille Berrien, Milwaukee freedom fighter and founder of the MAARPR chapter back in 1973. From canvassing in the most-incarcerated zip code, we found people did not want more money going to the police, which currently take up almost 50% of the Milwaukee budget. So, they fought against that budget, and found out this week they took $2.4 million out of MCSO’s budget.

Regina Joseph, Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC): NAARPR’s first call to action coincided with the week Tony McDade, a trans man, was murdered by TPD. The second call to action coincided with the George Floyd rebellion.

Then September 5, 2020, 14 of their members were arrested at a protest We got them out thanks to donations from our national movement. Three days after the action, one of their members was pulled out of his home and arrested, but we got him bailed out. He was facing 10 years in prison, $10,000 in fines, and they beat that case.

TCAC stopped TPD from building a $60 million police station on the South side. City commissioners told them it was a done deal, but we showed up in full force and shut it down, which caused the TPD Chief of police to step down. Three people have been murdered by TPD in 3 months since the new chief took over. We have protested every murder.

Angel Buechner, Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar (TCC4J): TCC4J is boots on the ground for community control of the police, setting up CPAC tables in neighborhoods and parks. Angel introduced a new chant: Rain, sleet, or snow, we demand community control!

Jae Yates, TCC4J: We are embedded with the families, and that is the strength of their campaign in Minneapolis. We began fighting for community control in 2017, that’s when they started drafting their legislation. We started by talking with the families about what police accountability would look like to them. We held a lot of community meetings in North Minneapolis in particular, that’s where Jamar Clark was killed. In those forums, we went through the legislation line by line, making it clear why this is the way to get the things people want.

We’re currently collecting signatures for a petition to get our legislation on the ballot, with the goal of getting it on the ballot in 2022. We’ve collected 4000 signatures, on-third of the way to the needed number of signatures

Sol Marquez, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Centro CSO, Los Angeles, CA: We came to this conference with the family of David Ordaz, Jr., killed by East L.A. Sheriff Dept., his sister Hilda, his daughter Emily, and his widow Jazmine. We uplift Chicano victims of police brutality because police violence has to do with Black folks, and it also has to do with Chicanos, Latinos, and Indigenous people.

Justice for Leo Chavez, Paul Reya, 16-year-old Jose Mendez, 14-year old Jesse Romero!

Luis Sifuentes, Centro CSO: Our current focus is on the Sheriff’s Department because we found out there are gangs within that department that deputies are initiated to by executing civilians. We successfully ousted a District Attorney, Jackie Lacey, who refused to prosecute any of these cops. We are working with the replacement, sending a report with recommendations.

Carlos Montes, Centro CSO: In LA we had hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in the George Floyd rebellion. There was a rash of killings in the Black community in LA and also in the Boyle Heights community. The family of Anthony Vargas got involved not only in advocating on behalf of their son, but calling in to get rid of Sheriff Villanueva, and fighting for community control to give power to civilians.

Neal Jefferson, Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC): Led the largest protest for the Black freedom struggle in Jacksonville history in the summer of 2020, over 10,000 people hit the streets on a rainy day. We have worked with the families of Jamee Johnson, Vernell Bing, Kwame Jones, Leah Baker, Reginald Boston Jr., and others.

Monique Sampson, JCAC: We started a campaign called Walking While Black because they noticed a lot of people that were getting traffic tickets were Black people, who were getting tickets for walking off of the sidewalk in neighborhoods where there are no sidewalks. We won that campaign.

Then Ahmaud Arbery was executed an hour and a half away from Jacksonville in Brunswick, Georgia.

Then the George Floyd rebellion took off, and they had 3000 people at their first rally, not including the people in cars

Since then, we have been fighting for a People’s Budget. The JSO [Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office] gets 40% of the budget, and has a 70% unsolved homicide rate.

Jazmine Salas, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR): On May 30 alone, we had 10,000 people in the street and another 6000 in cars. The Uprising is what made it possible to pass our ordinance, Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS).

At the beginning of 2020 we had 100,000 CPAC supporters from every ward in Chicago. When we came to the table to build a coalition for ECPS, we had that backing us up. In City Council we got the support of the Socialist Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Latino Caucus, and the Progressive Reform Caucus, which together was 36 votes out of 50.

We also had this grassroots movement ready to take action, so when we identified 17 wards that were maybes, we hit the ground running in those wards, phone banking, flyering, engaging the community.

It was inspiring to watch that number drop from 17 to 15 to 10 until we had enough votes to pass the ordinance.

Next, we have this police accountability commission, and are working to ensure that nationally oppressed folks, Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano, people who have been impacted by police violence, are ready to run to sit on it.

Anthony Driver, CAARPR: As Political Coordinator for the City and County for SEIU HCII, last year with President Greg Kelley, the question was – how do we get HCII’s 90,000 members on board with ECPS?

HCII sent out 10,000 member surveys almost quarterly to figure out what the members support because we need rank and file support in order to move. Then we got to work educating their members at every meeting and event until it got to the point the surveys came back saying 83% of their members supported community control.

Then we came to the table with CAARPR, lent all our resources to it, and began reaching out to additional labor allies. We got a coalition made of 18 labor unions, over 150 community and faith-based organizations, and over 125,000 Chicagoans.

We were able to pass this ordinance in July, and we have a second round coming up with a ballot referendum that will give greater control to the people.

Fight Back!: The call to the NAARPR conference stated that riding on the crest of the George Floyd rebellion, NAARPR has emerged as a mass movement for community control of the police. Can you tell that story?

Chapman: Here are some more aspects of it: what we have demonstrated in the wake of the rebellion is that Black and brown communities throughout this country are ready to take up this fight. They’re sick and tired of the police tyranny going on in their communities, and able, willing and ready to engage in the struggle for community control of the police.

What our branches and allies have done is to reach out to these communities, particularly families that have been victimized by the police, and have begun to organize mass movements in these cities to bring about community control of the police. This is a very welcome development. It demonstrates that what has been going on in Chicago and Minneapolis is also going on in the nation.

Everywhere throughout this country, the police are actively engaged in a conspiracy to either stop the Black Liberation movement from happening at all, or to squash it where it has emerged. We must continue to organize and be prepared to wage the struggle for community control of the police. This is a very important democratic demand of our people.

Fight Back!: What has the struggle for community control meant for the Black Liberation movement historically? I’ve heard you say that community control of the police is the first line of defense for the BLM. What was meant by that?

Chapman: It’s been like that since the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. As is very well known now, after the Civil War, there was a ten-year period stretching from 1867 to 1877 where Black people were given considerable political control over the areas where they were in the majority. That period is known as Radical Reconstruction, or as WEB DuBois called it, Black Reconstruction. During that time, the police were reconstructed in Black communities to defend the revolutionary gains made by the Civil War.

Of course, prior to the Civil War, the function of the police was slave patrols to catch runaway slaves, and to imprison slaves for theft, and things of that sort. Those slave jails and slave patrols were eliminated by the Civil War. In its stead, Black people through Federal Militias, through the Union League, or through the election of their own marshals and constables, set up a police operation to defend those gains.

That situation was altered and changed permanently by the counter-revolution that was organized by Ku Klux Klan and ex-Confederate generals. Since 1877, when the North withdrew all the federal troops from the South, the struggle for community control of the police has been a very vital, democratic demand in the Black community.

Black people, as an oppressed nation, understand instinctively that the only thing that works for them in terms of policing is that they have a decisive voice, that they determine who polices their communities and how their communities are policed. Because it is precisely the police that are used as a military force against the Black Liberation movement. This has been true since Black Reconstruction was forcibly overthrown, and in its place a police state was set up called Jim Crow. This was true during the Civil Rights era when Blacks struggled against the police state to gain their democratic rights to vote and for public accommodations. It was the police who came out against them with dogs, fire hoses and weapons. It was the police who murdered them and jailed them.

It’s a fundamental understanding in the Black community that the struggle for Black liberation has to confront the police so long as we don’t have community control over those who police our communities.

Fight Back!: Any last thoughts?

Chapman: Recent events have told us that democracy in this country is facing the greatest crisis since the Civil War. In fact, there are forces in this country right now, inspired and led by Donald Trump and other factions of the Republican Party, who are calling for civil war. They’ve been doing it in Texas, to some extent in Florida. Why is this happening? It’s because the most reactionary forces of monopoly capitalism realize that they can no longer maintain their regime in a democratic way, even within the confines of the present state of democracy.

They are prepared to suppress the vote, to talk about secession of states, they are prepared to take states’ rights to the limit like they did during the time of slavery. They are prepared to do all of this rather than give the people of this country the democratic rights that they deserve.

Given that situation, it comes down to this: the Black Liberation movement and the forces of fascism in this country are confronting one another more openly and more clearly than ever before. That’s why our building of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression is going to be so important in the days ahead. This is the only national organization in this moment of our history that is capable of leading the struggle against these extremists who want to destroy every semblance of democracy that we have left in this country.

#ChicagoIL #InJusticeSystem #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #FrankChapman #NAARPR

Fight Back! interview with Frank Chapman, of the Central Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

The book can be purchased here. Fight Back!: Your book is the first major work on Marxism-Leninism, the struggle for Black liberation and socialism to be written in several decades. What prompted you to do this?

Frank Chapman: Several things. The relationship between Black liberation and Marxism-Leninism hasn’t been addressed in several decades. The last significant work I read about it was back in the 70s, when then chairman of the Communist Party, Henry Winston, a Black man, wrote Strategy for a Black Agenda. It was basically a polemic against the narrow nationalism of certain forces in the Black Liberation movement, and also pointing out the reactionary character of that trend of Black nationalism that followed George Padmore.

More to the point, I noticed that during the 60s, a period that I lived through, at a significant high point of the Black Liberation movement, the party had a strong tendency in it to liquidate the national question, to deny that Black people were an oppressed nation. There was a struggle around that – not everybody in the party had that view. I certainly didn’t, and I was in the party.

Since the 60s, what has happened? The Black Liberation movement was damn near destroyed by the COINTELPRO program. It basically came to a holding position where there were no major advances for a couple of decades. Then you had this upsurge that occurred after the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. It was then that I started thinking about addressing this, because I saw a resurgence of the Black Liberation movement.

The big question that came into my head was, we’re not really learning the great lessons that were provided us by the communist movement in the 30s. We’re not taking those historic gains and building on them in the present, and we should be because it was those historic gains that set the stage for the Civil Rights movement.

So, I started looking at it back then, and decided to actually write the book when I saw that there were a lot of people who were Marxist-Leninists and in the socialist movement that really didn’t have a sound approach – didn’t have a Marxist-Leninist approach – when it came to the national question. I felt like this needed to be spoken to.

Fight Back!: You make the point that African Americans in the U.S. are an oppressed nationality. Why is this such an important point?

Chapman: Because we live in the age of imperialism. We live in an era of capitalism where oppressed nations throughout the world are fighting and striving for their right to self-determination. The Black liberation struggle in the United States is a part of that struggle. It’s another manifestation of the need to overcome the national oppression that capitalism imposes on peoples.

It was a tremendous contribution on the part of Lenin that he examined and correctly came out with an analysis that Black people were an oppressed nation within the U.S. As such, the communist movement throughout the world should stand in unconditional solidarity with them as they do with other oppressed nations. That was a significant advance for the communist movement, and it addressed directly and boldly the sellout, the betrayal that the Second International had done when they ignored the national question when it came to peoples of Asia and Africa, and the Black people in the U.S. To the extent that they recognized it at all, they only recognized it for certain European nations.

This is an important point to make because in the U.S., the basic democratic struggles being waged by Black people ever since we’ve been here have basically demonstrated that if you’re going to have a successful movement for socialism in this country, it has to be united with the struggle for Black liberation. Marx said it back during the time of the Civil War, labor in the white skin cannot be free if it’s sold and branded in the Black skin. This is a fundamental cleavage in the working class that impedes the development of revolutionary consciousness that prevents a mature movement to develop that can overthrow capitalism.

Fight Back!: Why do you think it is so important that activists in the Black Liberation movement study Marxism-Leninism?

Chapman: Because Marxism-Leninism has historically proven itself to be the greatest comrade in struggle to the Black Liberation movement. Communists have stood in unconditional solidarity with us for over a century. Marxism-Leninism has demonstrated to the more advanced forces – to the working class within the Black Liberation movement – that we can’t have Black liberation in the absence of a socialist future. In order for us truly to achieve our liberation, the Black Liberation movement and the working class movement must merge, to become one powerful movement against imperialism and capitalism. And at this stage of development, when capitalism is in sharp decline, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the Black Liberation movement – while a revolutionary movement in its own right – must join with the communist movement. That’s why we must study Marxism.

Fight Back!: In your book you spend time talking about the work of communists in the 1930s. What are some of the lessons we can learn from those efforts today?

Chapman: The great accomplishment of the communists in the 1930s, with the help of the Third International, they were able to see clearly the centrality of the struggle for Black liberation in the revolutionary movement. They were able to see clearly that a path to revolution in the U.S. has to be beaten out. The Black Liberation movement and the Marxist-Leninist movement together can find that pathway to socialism, because that’s the only pathway in the U.S.

The communists proved that in the 30s by going into the Deep South where you had Jim Crow states ruling with terror and brute force over Black people, to go into that situation to organize Black and white workers in a united fight against capitalist bosses and the landlords. That demonstrated, number one, that Black and white unity could be forged in the dirt and blood of class struggle. Number two, once that kind of unity was achieved, the Black Liberation movement and the working class movement were unstoppable. They proved that in the 30s with one victory after another.

Also, the communists in the 30s showed us the importance of the strategic alliance between Black people and the labor movement. It’s an alliance that objectively makes scientific sense, because what’s the class composition of Black people? 90% workers. So, this is only natural. This is an obvious connection. Black people have shown over and over again to be pro-union, and to be militant fighters for the union. Now today when we have millions of Black folks in the organized labor movement, we can drive these lessons home like never before.

What happened here in Chicago with the passing of the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance is an example of that. We could not have won this historic victory without the support of the labor movement. It was the labor unions led by Black presidents that delivered the final blow for us, that brought the victory home.

We’re benefitting today by building on the experience of the communist movement in the 30s, by using the same strategy and tactics that were successful then, proving in the dirt and blood of battle they can be successful now.

#UnitedStates #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #Interview #Socialism #FrankChapman #MarxistLeninistPerspectivesOnBlackLiberationAndSocialism

Minneapolis, MN – Some 80 people gathered at North Regional Library on August 22 to hear Frank Chapman speak about his book Marxist-Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism. This event was the final meeting of a book club that had been meeting over the summer to read the book together with Freedom Road Socialist Organization. After outlining the book for attendees, Chapman took questions and signed books. Like his book, the discussion focused on both the fundamental revolutionary content of Marxism and the significance of what Chapman calls the George Floyd Rebellion. As he writes in his book, “We think it is deeper, we think it is the youth sounding the death knell of the racist police repression that stands like a blockade in the road to Black liberation. It is a call for mass resistance to the police terror that has stalked our communities and denied us the organizing space we need as a nationally oppressed people to wage the struggle for Black Liberation, to finish the unfinished revolution.”

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #Socialism #FrankChapman

On March 20, the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS) will be launching its six-week long global campaign to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune of March 18 to May 28, 1871. The “Paris Commune at 150” campaign (PC150) will be a global mass commemoration to refresh, revitalize and sustain interest in the Paris Commune: its historical context and impact in the past 150 years, its lessons and continuing validity for the current era.

In March of 1871, the working class of Paris rose up and took over the city. For months, workers controlled production and distribution of goods; by universal suffrage, they elected a Commune, with workers having the right of recall. As Karl Marx wrote in The Civil War in France, “The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune.” The commune cancelled rent as they were under siege by the militarist Bismarck.

Sadly, the French ruling class regrouped, gathered an army of mercenaries, marched into Paris and massacred the communards. But Marx declared the workers were an inspiration around the world for “storming heaven.”

To launch the effort, there will be a webinar Saturday, March 20 (9 a.m. Eastern Time, 8 a.m. CDT, 6 a.m. PDT) with Professor Jose Maria Sison, Chair Emeritus of the ILPS presenting a major address. Frank Chapman, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression will respond to Sison’s remarks. Chapman, also a member of the Central Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, just released his book, Marxist Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism. In his book, Chapman discusses that the Paris Commune took place during the same period as Black Reconstruction in the U.S. South, the most democratic period for Black people in this country’s history.

To register for the webinar: bit.ly/ParisCommune150WebinarLaunch

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #InternationalLeagueOfPeoplesStruggle #Socialism #FrankChapman #ParisCommune

Chicago, IL – It is so befitting that Trump, the self-made tyrant, with his latest political stroke to upend the elections, has in fact opened a new era of struggle – an era that will be characterized by the desire of the ruling class to return to normal, to return to the norms of bankrupt neo-liberal policies which will portray itself as the only path to political stability and economic growth.

So, the first order of business, ushered in by Trump’s electoral defeat and articulated by President-elect Joe Biden, is to stop the spread of COVID-19 infections, provide treatment for the sick (including the uninsured), give stimulus relief to the nearly 30 million unemployed people and to small businesses on the brink of extinction. Of course, the banks and the monopoly capitalists will get the lion’s share of any stimulus package the Republicans sign off on.

Without the intervention of the progressive democratic forces, the Democrats and the Republicans will seek a way to embark upon the road of recovery from the coronavirus and economic disaster by turning the present situation into one that is profitable for Wall Street. In other words, ‘return to normal’ means bailing out the banks and Wall Street and maintaining the status quo for the working class and the oppressed Black and brown communities.

In this new era of struggle we must expose their call for ‘unity and reconciliation’ with the racist, white supremacist movement fermented by Trump and his Republican cohorts for what it really is: a formula for the way forward based on rejecting the demands of the Black liberation movement, and characterizing any and all attempts to regulate the economy for the benefit of workers as ‘socialist.’ Their rejecting of the demands of the Black liberation movement and the workers’ demands for safety and economic relief is in fact a formula for the way backwards.

In an open communication to Biden, Black Lives Matter addressed the formula for the way backwards thus: “Up until this point, the United States has refused to directly reckon with the way that it devalues Black people and devastates our lives. This cannot continue.”

Only we the workers and oppressed peoples can stop the Democrats from caving into this racist-dominated, white supremacist movement initiated by Trump and the Republican extremists. Now is the time for us to organize and fight back – and to do this based on the basis of the broadest, deepest unity of the masses, of the working class and the oppressed peoples.

Organization + Unity + Struggle = Victory. All Power to the People! Frank Chapman is the executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #Elections #FrankChapman

Frank Chapman, a longtime leader in the Black liberation movement and Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, talks about the upsurge against police crimes and the need for community control of the police.

Fight Back!: What are your observations about the rebellions and upsurge in the fight against police crimes?

Frank Chapman: The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression initiated this campaign against police crimes back in 1973 – over 46 years ago. We have never seen an uprising like this, that confirms in the dirt and blood of battle that what we need is community control of the police.

The rebellion is not necessarily raising that demand, but that’s ok. They are raising issues around it, like defund the police, putting regulation on police behavior, such as outlawing choke holds, and more generally prohibiting brutality. Community control of the police is the vehicle for achieving all of this.

Once we have passed legislation that empowers our people to say who polices our communities and how our communities are policed then we can defund the police, we can demilitarize the police, and we can regulate the police. That’s what community control of the police does. And that’s what we can bring to this rebellion – it puts power into the hands of the people. A very important and very democratic demand, and this rebellion is bringing that demand forward like nothing that has happened in our history.

Fight Back!: What has the NAARPR been doing in the context of the upsurge?

Chapman: The main thing we’ve been doing is being in it, and I think that is so important. In fact, we called for a national day of protest before the rebellion really got underway. We called a national day of protest around the question of depopulating the prisons, the detention camps and the jails. Then when the rebellion got underway, we added demands for Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others who had been murdered by the police or vigilante groups.

Shortly after we put out that call for a national day of protest these murders became the headlines throughout the country and the world. On May 30, our national day of protest, with less than a week of organizing, we were able to bring into the streets in Chicago over 20,000 people, and over 100,000 nationally in 23 cities [Washington DC; Los Angeles; Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa, Miami and Pensacola, Florida; Chicago, Louisville, Baltimore, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Saint Louis, New York, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Dallas, Austin and Houston, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Milwaukee]. It was phenomenal. In Chicago, we had 4000 cars in a caravan.

We were paid back in great advances: on May 30, over 700 people joined our national organization, and with over $30,000 in contributions, and now we have over $60,000 for the National Alliance. And in this spontaneous protest movement, we have been bringing forward the demands for community control of the police.

Fight Back!: Some are calling for “defunding the police.” Why is the fight for community control of the police so important?

Chapman: As I said earlier, once we have community control of the police, we can defund them. It’s important who controls the process here. Defunding, controlled by the powers that be – the city councils and the mayors – is going to work the way that they work it, and the way that they have been working the whole question of police accountability. We don’t trust them. We want the people to be in charge of the process, and that’s what community control of the police does – it puts the people in charge so that the people are controlling the defunding of the police.

We’re not against defunding the police, but this is a slogan without a program right now. Once we bring it into conformity with community control of the police, then it becomes a slogan with a program. In Chicago we call it CPAC – an all elected, all Civilian Police Accountability Council. In other areas it may go by another name. What it all comes down to is giving the community the power to say who polices our communities and how our communities are policed.

#UnitedStates #OppressedNationalities #Opinion #PeoplesStruggles #Interviews #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #Antiracism #FrankChapman #NAARPR

Chicago, IL – The headline in the Chicago Tribune Wednesday, April 19 blared: “Two charities have bailed scores of felony defendants out of Cook County Jail. Some were soon charged with new crimes.” The headline could have said, with equal validity, that “Millions of Chicagoans were not arrested last year. Some were charged with new crimes.”

The article is filled with racist ‘dog whistles’ about [Black and brown] people with guns and hysteria regarding violent crime. In actual fact, in the past three years the rate of violent crime in Chicago has declined significantly. The Tribune is blowing the racist ‘get tough on crime’ horn that fuels the racist, jingoist and misogynist President Donald Trump.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, as if on cue, responded to legal actions to save the lives of people facing COVID-19 in Cook County Jail and unable to post cash bonds. The mass release of jail detainees, she declared, could put Chicago residents “at an increased risk of being the victims of serious crimes.” In fact, during the last three years a lot more people who were out (but out on bail) were arrested for crimes than people who were out and who were not on bail. The Tribune did not go so far as to suggest that everyone should be jailed because they might commit crimes.

The explicit target of the article is the organizations and individuals who believe in the Eighth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution, which declares that “Excessive bail shall not be required,” and who put their money where their words are when they say that Black and brown and poor people should not be jailed simply because they are poor.

But the real target of the article is the thousands of people, overwhelmingly Black and brown, who are crammed into the COVID-19 infested Cook County Jail who have been convicted of no crime but who are facing death from the epidemic raging through the jail.

The article tries to suggest that two charitable organizations, the Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF) and The Bail Project, jeopardized public safety by posting bail for nearly 1000 people during the last three years who were only in jail because they were too poor to post bail. The Chicago Alliance is an ally and supports the CCBF.

Tribune ‘investigators’ found 162 people who had made bail and were later charged with felonies since 2017. Two of them have been charged (not convicted) for murder. Yet COVID-19 has killed a reported six prisoners held in Cook County Jail. Six people dead in jail are OK for the Tribune, against two people charged with murder outside.

Almost 500 people in the jail had confirmed COVID-19 on April 27, yet the jail is not routinely testing prisoners unless they become seriously ill. In prisons where authorities have conducted wider testing the infection rates are 75%, as in Marian, Ohio. Many observers think the number of deaths and cases in Cook County Jail is much higher than reported.

The Chicago Tribune should apologize to the people of Chicago, especially Black and Latino people, and retract this article. Words matter. These words can, and probably will, result in increased racist attacks, by police and racist vigilante groups.

Chicago police have a long and sordid record of killing unarmed Black and brown people, and torturing suspects to extract confessions. The Tribune has helped to expose some of these police crimes. It’s time for the paper to do some real investigative journalism.

Frank Chapman is executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and co-chairperson of the Chicago Alliance.

#ChicagoIL #InJusticeSystem #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #Antiracism #FrankChapman #COVID19 #ChicagoTribune

Chicago, IL – Hundreds of prisoners at the Cook County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 6. Frank Chapman, the interim Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, stated, “Right now, the Cook County Jail is a death trap for the prisoners because it is overcrowded, and the prisoners can't practice social distancing. This jail must be depopulated at once to save lives.”

Chapman continued, “All low-level charges must be dismissed by the States Attorney Kim Foxx, all prisoners who are locked up because they can't make bail must be freed, all elder prisoners must be freed and prisoners who are medically compromised must be freed. These are minimal demands that are critical to maintaining public safety in this pandemic crisis.”

#ChicagoIL #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #FrankChapman

Frank Chapman, a long-time leader in the Black liberation movement, talks about the November 22- 24 Chicago conference to refound the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The interview was prepared for the print edition of Fight Back! which is now on hold due to the pandemic.

Fight Back!: In November, you helped organize the re-founding conference of the National Alliance in Chicago. What conditions are there in the country that led up to the conference?

Frank Chapman: Our call for the re-founding of the National Alliance was a direct response and a conscious intervention into a mass youth uprising that we can trace back to the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Our young people became very agitated by how they were being ruthlessly and recklessly murdered by the system. The police said it was OK for Zimmerman to stalk and murder this teenager. That sparked a very powerful response and agitated into being organizations of young people such as Black Lives Matter, Dream Defenders, and Black Youth Project 100. This was the dawn of a new youth-led stage in the Black liberation movement.

Coming into the present, police repression has continued to grow and intensify, bringing tens of thousands of people in the streets... We had a new stirring in the Black community that had to be reckoned with, and from the point of view of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, had to be organized.

Fight Back!: How did you lay the basis for launching a national organization to oppose police crimes and fight for community control of the police?

Chapman: The Chicago Alliance was the branch of the National Alliance that refused to die, that continued to organize even though the national organization had withered and no longer existed. The reason for that are the special conditions that exist here in Chicago. In the words of Kim Foxx, our recently-elected states attorney, Chicago is the false-confession capital of the U.S. We would take that a step further, something new that was happening in the United States of North America with regard to Black people, Chicago became the capital of torture-acquired confessions: deliberate, militaristic type torture, mostly perpetrated against teenagers.

Those are the objective conditions that the Alliance had to face and struggle with, that would not permit us to fold up our tents and go home. I will always say this: thanks to Josephine Wyatt, Clarice Durham, and Ted Pearson – they kept this fire burning. When I first came to Chicago ten years ago to help the Chicago Alliance organize a campaign against police crimes, Josephine said to me, “How did we let this happen?” She held our movement responsible for the level of mass incarceration, and for the torture cases in Chicago.

So it became our duty to organize a massive campaign for community control of the police. We started that campaign in 2012, one month after the murder of Rekia Boyd, a 21-year-old Black woman murdered by a police officer, for making too much noise in the park.

By consistently working in the community – tabling, street canvassing, door to door campaigning for an all elected, all civilian police accountability council, CPAC – we built to 60,000 supporters in a seven-year period.

We raised the slogan, “Community Control of the Police,” and activists in other cities came to the conference because they saw in Chicago it wasn’t just a slogan, but backed up by a program, and there was nothing else like it in the country.

Black and Brown people understand that the slogan means we have a democratic right as a people to say who polices our communities and how they are policed. That right is being, and has been, trampled on historically. They felt the time to change this is now. The call to re-found the National Alliance could not fall on deaf ears, because the historical conditions were already there.

The national conference was held at the Chicago Teachers Union hall because the Alliance has always seen that the fight for democracy in the U.S. has to be the united struggle of two major components, and that is labor and Black liberation. In Chicago, we have proven that is not just a theory. When labor and the Black community unite in the struggle for community control, it is the foundation of an undefeatable coalition.

Fight Back!: What were the accomplishments of the conference?

Chapman: The accomplishments of the conference were beyond our expectations. We figured we would have over 500 participants, and that it would be concentrated in the Midwest, and in those areas of the country where Freedom Road had been engaged in mass struggles around police crimes, and those areas where the Alliance had some influence, like Saint Louis.

When we looked at who the registrants were, we saw that they were from 28 states, 101 different cities, and 255 different organizations. Then on the opening night of the conference, we saw 1200 people who came to the opening night of the conference. We saw mostly youth, and most of them were Black and Brown, but a significant number were also white working class, both students but also people involved in the organized labor movement.

We saw in the room that night the foundation of a united front: Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Palestinian and Arab, Filipino, working class, and the LGBTQ community. Based on my 50 years of experience, I have never seen the breadth and depth of what we had on November 22 – 24. That is the greatest indicator to us that we are at a significant crossroads in the development of our movement.

Fight Back!: Can you address the importance of the campaign for the release of political prisoners and the wrongfully convicted?

Chapman: We’ve always seen that the cutting edge of mass incarceration is the police. Before you see the judge, before you see the prosecutor, you see the police. This history of this is deep and overwhelming. When our movement was under attack in the 1960s, who was shooting down our movement, particularly the Black Panthers? Who was arresting people, framing them up, and trying to send them off to jail, just because they were demanding social change, and engaged in revolutionary struggle? It was the police at every level of government: local police, the FBI and the CIA.

The program they perpetrated against our movement was called COINTELPRO. From that experience there was created in this country an enormous body of political prisoners, mostly Black, but also Latino and indigenous people. We are left with that today because the U.S. government and local police still have a political vendetta against those people who participated in the Black liberation movement, Chicano, and Puerto Rican liberation movements, and the struggle of indigenous people for their sovereignty and liberation. These people are the longest-held political prisoners in world history.

We have to make our people aware of this and make the demand for this so loud and so clear until the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down. That’s why we have linked up with the Jericho movement.

In this struggle to free all political prisoners, let me just say that all of those tortured and wrongfully convicted are also political prisoners. They were tortured in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and in violation of international covenants in the United Nations. None of their torturers have been punished, and prisoners remain in jail 20 and 30 years later. It’s also time to get them out.

#ChicagoIL #OppressedNationalities #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #ChicanoLatino #PuertoRico #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #PoliticalPrisoners #PoliticalRepression #FrankChapman #NationalAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #ConferenceToRefoundTheNationalAlliance

Minneapolis, MN – Hundreds of people came out for several events marking Black History month with Chicago’s Frank Chapman, who is a leading member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

“I had one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had during my over 50 years as a Black freedom fighter and a red. I spoke to about 150 Black, brown and white students, and if that wasn’t amazing enough I was invited to speak by the Black Student Union united with an organization of Marxist students,” Chapman said of his visit to Minneapolis South High School on Friday, February 7. Both the Black Student Union and the Student Marxist Assembly of South High (SMASH) are new groups formed at South High this year.

Chapman continued, “They wanted to celebrate Black History month by having me talk about the historical relationship between Black liberation and socialism and the strategy for achieving Black liberation and socialism in this present moment. What an honor! What an opportunity to share with these remarkable young people the legacies of two of the greatest revolutionary traditions of all people of all times. Here I was an old warrior for freedom being honored by these young high school revolutionaries. I let them know that when I was their age I entered the Black freedom struggle and the struggle for socialism through the U.S. prison system. And they let me know that they are entering the struggle through high school to break the school to prison pipeline, to stand up to the powers that be, to demand justice and to fight for Black liberation and socialism. I never knew that before I would die I would have the privilege of experiencing the future of our movement in this manner. All power to the people!”

Then, on Friday evening, Chapman spoke to a crowd of about 100 at a Freedom Road program on “The Radical History of the Black Freedom Movement.” There, he talked about the historic fight of Black people for equality and self-determination, and the unbreakable ties between the struggles for Black liberation and socialism, as well as the tasks of our movement today.

Chapman’s final event was hosted on February 8 by the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar (TCC4J) and focused on the work of building the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR), of which Chapman is the executive director. He spoke in the heart of Minneapolis’s Black community, less than a mile from where Jamar Clark was murdered by police in 2015, and where protesters occupied the police precinct for almost three weeks, demanding justice for Jamar.

Local families of those impacted by police murder and wrongful convictions also spoke about their work, including Myon Burrell’s father, Michael Toussaint; Cordale Handy’s mother, Kimberly Handy-Jones, and Toshira Garraway Allen, the fiancé of Justin Tiegen and mother to his son. Chapman spoke to the importance of waging a fight not just for justice for individuals, but to overturn the corrupt and racist system that stole these lives. He called for Minnesotans to join the Alliance.

#MinneapolisMN #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #PoliticalPrisoners #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganizationFRSO #PoliticalRepression #FrankChapman #BlackHistoryMonth

Fight Back! interviews Frank Chapman on the November 22-24 Chicago conference to refound the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.

Fight Back!: Could you say a few words about what the conference to relaunch the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression will look like?

Frank Chapman: The most powerful incentive for the relaunching of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression is the national epidemic in police crimes and state violence being perpetrated against Black and brown people, LBGTQ and trans people. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the DOJ’s refusal to intervene in the tragic murder of Eric Garner and the brutalization and murder of families at the U.S./Mexican border.

This dramatic increase in racist and political repression is accompanied by mass incarceration and the fact that the United States has the longest-held political prisoners in the world. Leonard Peltier, from the indigenous peoples’ movement, and Jalil Muntaquim, from the Black Panther Party, have been political prisoners for over four decades. And there are many others, like Gerald Reed, who are being held in prison as a result of being tortured and wrongfully convicted.

These are the reasons why we need to relaunch the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

Fight Back!: What is going on in our communities that makes the relaunching of the Alliance so important?

Chapman: Black and brown communities are over-patrolled and under-protected and must confront police harassment, racial profiling, torture and murder on a daily basis. This is not happening in just Chicago, New York City or Los Angeles; this happening throughout the nation. Also the police are the cutting edge of mass incarceration throughout the nation. We believe the enormity of the problem of police tyranny has created a mass demand for community control of the police. We believe this problem can best be confronted by a national movement organized by a refounding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR).

Fight Back!: What kind of support and backing is this effort getting?

Chapman: From all over the country and in virtually every community of Black and brown people, spontaneous movements against the reckless and murderous violence of the police have developed, often spearheaded by the families and friends of the victims of police crimes. Combined with the outrage of people living in these communities, these developments often morph into movements calling for the jailing and prosecution of police criminals.

It is precisely these movements that support and back up our efforts to refound the NAARPR.

Fight Back!: What has been going on in Chicago with the fight for community control of the police?

Chapman: The fight for community control of the police in Chicago began as a conscious movement under the leadership of the Black Panther Party 50 years ago. After the heinous murder of Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the movement for community control took a setback. With the founding of NAARPR in May, 1973 there was an attempt to launch a national movement for community control of the police. For various reasons – but mainly due to the ferocity of the repression and racist backlash of the seventies and eighties – the movement for community control did not take hold nationally.

Yet it continued to persist in Chicago, led by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a surviving branch of NAARPR. In 2012, in the wake of the murder of a 21-year-old Black woman, Rekia Boyd, CAARPR launched a campaign to pass an ordinance in the city council to create an all-elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC).

This campaign for CPAC, rooted in the Black community, has become a citywide mass movement for community control of the police. We believe it is time for it to become a nationwide movement for community control of the police and the refounding of the NAARPR will certainly facilitate this development.

Fight Back!: How can people become involved with the effort to refound the Alliance?

Chapman: Where we have the capacity, we have already started to organize local committees in various cities throughout the country to begin the work of mobilizing and organizing people in their respective communities to come to Chicago for our refounding conference.

So, the first level of involvement is to get all those who are involved in anti-police crimes work in your city to disseminate our Call to the NAARPR National Refounding Conference this November 22-24, 2019. In other words, help us get the word out throughout the breadth and depth of our movement to all the pockets of resistance to police tyranny throughout the land.

Then comes the work of organizing participation in the conference through registration and transportation. This work must proceed by way of contact and communication with our National Organizing Committee for the Conference.

#ChicagoIL #OppressedNationalities #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Interview #PoliticalRepression #FrankChapman #NationalAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression

Entrevista con Frank Chapman sobre la Conferencia Nacional para la Refundación de la NAARPR este 22 al 24 de noviembre, 2019. Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Pudiera compartir unas palabras sobre cómo se lucirá la conferencia para relanzar la Alianza Nacional en Contra de la Represión Política y Racista?

Frank Chapman: El incentivo más poderoso para el relanzamiento de la Alianza Nacional en Contra de la Represión Política y Racista es la epidemia nacional de crímenes policiales y la violencia de estado perpetrados en contra de la gente de color, y también la comunidad LGBTQ y las personas transgénero. Nada demuestra esto más claramente que el hecho de que el Departamento de Justicia rehúsa intervenir en el caso del asesinato trágico de Eric Gardner y la brutalización y asesinato de familias en la frontera de Estados Unidos y México.

Este incremento dramático en la represión racista y política es acompañado por el encarcelamiento masivo y el hecho de que los Estados Unidos tiene a los prisioneros políticos encarcelados por más tiempo que en el resto del mundo. Leonard Peltier, del Movimiento de los Pueblos Indígenas (AIM, por sus siglas en ingles), y Jalil Muntaqim, del Black Panther Party (“Partido de la Panteras Negras”), han sido presos políticos por más de cuatro décadas. Hay muchos otros, como Gerald Reed, que están encarcelados por causa de ser torturados e injustamente condenados.

Estan son las razones por qué se debe relanzar la Alianza Nacional en Contra de la Represión Política y Racista.

Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Que está sucediendo en nuestras comunidades que hace el relanzamiento de la Alianza tan importante?

Chapman: Las comunidades de color están siendo sobre-vigiladas y desprotegidas; deben enfrentar el acoso policiaco, el prejuicio racial, la tortura y el homicidio a diario. Esto no solo está sucediendo en Chicago, Nueva York, y Los Ángeles; está sucediendo por toda la nación. La policía también está al frente de la encarcelación masiva por toda la nación. Nosotros creemos que la enormidad del problema de la tiranía policiaca ha creado una demanda, por parte de las masas, por el control comunitario de la policía. Creemos que este problema puede ser confrontado de mejor manera por un movimiento nacional organizado por la refundación de la Alianza Nacional en Contra de la Represión Política y Racista (NAARPR).

Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Que tipo de apoyo y respaldo está recibiendo esta iniciativa?

Chapman: Por todo el país, y virtualmente en cada comunidad de color, se han desarrollado movimientos espontáneos en contra de la violencia homicida y atolondrada de la policía; muchas veces, los mismos movimientos son liderados por las familias y los amigos de las víctimas de los crímenes policiales. Combinados con la indignidad del pueblo que vive en estas comunidades, el desarrollo de estos movimientos los transforman en movimientos que exigen el encarcelamiento y el enjuiciamiento de los policías delincuentes.

Son precisamente estos movimientos que apoyan y respaldan nuestros esfuerzos en refundar la NAARPR.

Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Que ha sucedido en Chicago con la lucha por el control comunitario de la policía?

Chapman: La lucha por el control comunitario de la policía en Chicago comenzó como movimiento consciente bajo el liderazgo del Black Panther Party (“Partido de las Panteras Negras”) hace cincuenta años. Después del asesinato atroz de los líderes Fred Hampton y Mark Clark, el movimiento para el control comunitario tomó un paso atras. Con la fundación de la NAARPR en mayo del 1973 hubo un intento de lanzar un movimiento nacional para el control comunitario de la policía. Por varias razones pero principalmente dado a la gran represión y reacción racista de los años 70 y 80 el movimiento para el control comunitario no se pudo sostener al nivel nacional.

Aún así, continuó en persistir en Chicago, liderado por la Alianza en Contra de la Represión Política y Racista de Chicago, una sucursal sobreviviente de la NAARPR. En el 2012, apenas sucedió el asesinato de una mujer de color de 21 años, Rekia Boyd, CAARPR lanzó una campaña para pasar una ordenanza en el consejo municipal para crear un Consejo Civil para Responsabilizar a la Policía (CPAC); que sería elegido por el sufragio popular. La campaña para el CPAC, arraigado en la comunidad afroamericana, se ha convertido en un movimiento masivo por toda la ciudad para el control comunitario de la policía. Creemos que es el tiempo para convertirnos en un movimiento a nivel nacional para el control comunitario de la policía y la refundación de la NAARPR ciertamente facilita este desarrollo.

Lucha y Resiste!: ¿Cómo puede la gente sumarse al esfuerzo de refundar la Alianza?

Chapman: Donde tenemos la capacidad, ya hemos empezado a organizar comités locales en varias ciudades por todo el país para empezar la tarea de movilizar y organizar a la gente en sus comunidades respectivas para venir a Chicago, a nuestra conferencia refundadora.

Entonces, el primer paso en sumarse al esfuerzo es llegar a hacer que todos los que están involucrados en la lucha contra los crímenes policiacos en sus ciudades diseminan nuestro llamado a participar en la Conferencia Nacional para la Refundación de la NAARPR este 22 al 24 de noviembre, 2019.

En otras palabras, ayúdanos a hacer correr la voz en todos los niveles de nuestro movimiento hasta todos los focos de resistencia a la tiranía policial por todo el país.

Luego viene la tarea de organizar la participación en la conferencia por medio de la registración y transportación. Esta tarea debe proceder por medio del contacto y comunicación con nuestro Comité Nacional Organizador para la Conferencia.

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Chicago, IL – Frank Chapman’s new book, The Damned Don’t Cry: Pages from the Life of a Black Prisoner and Organizer, is getting a great reception. About 30 people attended a book signing at the office of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, July 2. Chapman’s autobiography is available here.

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Chicago, IL – I’ve been waiting for this book. I first read an earlier draft of Frank Chapman’s memoirs in 2014. I thought then and now that this needed to get published, first and foremost, because the revolutionary movement needs it. As a result of the prison abolition movement, there is a broad awareness of the injustice of mass incarceration, but this book sees the revolutionary side of the misery.

There’s a specific section of society which needs this book: those in prison. Chapman relates how becoming a communist led him not into his frustration, but out of it. The book belongs in the genre with the Autobiography of Malcolm X and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother as a work that needs to get inside the prisons, because the meat of Chapman’s book is his politicization while in prison from 1961 to 1975.

Reading the book, I thought of the poem by Ho Chi Minh made famous in the U.S. when George Jackson said, “The dragon is coming” in his last dying words, after being gunned down by a prison guard. Ho’s poem reads:

Prisoners loosed from prison can build their country

From great misfortune arises true fidelity

The most troubled souls are the most virtuous

When the prison doors open, the real dragons emerge.

Frank Chapman is one of those dragons.

Imprisonment as a young man

The first chapters walk through the experience of the community and culture of Black, working-class Saint Louis in the 1940s and 50s. Born in 1942, the oldest child of 12, the indomitable spirit of his mother and the bebop musical genius of his father are the juice that formed his personality. He describes the life of hustle he developed to deal with the poverty that resulted from his father’s drug addiction and imprisonment. His engaging writing style draws you in, so that his tale of surviving the penal and mental health system, his own addictions and criminality doesn’t read like a tragedy.

In 1961, Chapman was involved in a robbery in which a man died. He had been hospitalized several years earlier for addition to drugs and alcohol and had escaped from the treatment center. Had he been white, the court would have taken that into account. Instead, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 50 years in prison. There was never a presumption of innocence. As he put it, for him and the other Black prisoners awaiting trial, “Your very life is in the balance and like it or not we were all being legally hung, it was just a question of whether they were going to hang us high or low.”

Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, noted that time in prison is not lost because you have time to study and to write. Although not sent to prison for political activity, shortly after arriving at the Missouri maximum security penitentiary in Jefferson City, at the end of 1961, Chapman desired to read law in order to get out of the hell he found himself in. He spent over a year getting the administration to allow him to go to school full time. Then, in less than another year, he had his GED. He began to read voraciously, and soon became one of the jailhouse lawyers.

He also inhaled science, soon deciding he was an atheist, seeing “… human beings as a force of nature governed by the same physical and chemical laws that govern the sun, moon and stars.” A white, working class communist – in prison for blowing something up during a Teamsters strike – gave him his first Marxist literature, a book called A Marxist Handbook. This was an introduction to the philosophical, political and economic writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

He said reading the Communist Manifesto played the critical role. “I was no longer helpless, now I could consciously be part of a revolutionary movement designed to empower the wretched of the earth.”

Soon he was organizing a Marxist-Leninist study group. Not just a debating society, what they called the “Collective” “took on certain practical tasks such as fighting to desegregate the prison facilities, to unite Black and white prisoners around issues of common concern, to get Marxist literature in the prison through legitimate channels and start PE (political education) classes among the prisoners, to fight for higher education programs for prisoners and establish strong links to the progressive movements on the outside.”

Segregation in prison

The system of racist national oppression followed Chapman into Jefferson City. In the Black halls, there were four to six men in cells, but white men were in cells of one or two. Black prisoners had the worst jobs, and the terrible conditions in the segregated areas led to more Blacks dying.

Chapman didn’t just help inmates file lawsuits for their own cases. He learned the relationship between civil rights, civil liberties and criminal justice. In his first initiative, Frank drafted a complaint based on the First Amendment right to pursue knowledge and an education; to express your beliefs in writing without fear of reprisal; but also the issue of racial discrimination and segregated facilities. Soon after filing it, the U.S. district court issued an order to the warden to respond.

This was met with stiff resistance by the warden. In the ensuing years, the warden unleashed violence to punish the Black prisoners, to get the racist white prisoners to attack them, and the Blacks and racist whites to fight each other. A number of Black prisoners and some whites died in the violence stoked by the warden. The drama unfolded until there was an uprising in the prison, which was put down with beatings, mace and the threat of the National Guard. The prisoners were able to emerge with a victory in part because the whites joined together with the Blacks against the warden. In later years, the warden unleashed another assault by guards on Chapman, breaking three ribs and other bones. Today, he suffers from arthritis as a result of that beating.

Chapman proved it was possible to win victories even inside that prison: the actions taken led to the end of segregation and over-crowdedness; the winning of First Amendment rights to read literature on national liberation and socialism; and the right to pursue college education.

The impact of the Black Liberation Movement

Through Freedomways magazine, started by leading Black Communist Party (CP) members Esther Cooper Jackson, Jack O’Dell and others, Chapman established movement contacts in the outside world. Over the years in prison, Freedomways and the Daily World, the CPUSA’s paper, published a number of his writings. Herschel Walker, the Black CP district organizer in Saint Louis, was the living link to the movement in Missouri, and started a defense committee to free Chapman.

Chapman is very clear that it was the massive movement to free Angela Davis which paved the way to freedom for him and other political prisoners. From the CP, he learned about Davis leading the founding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The National Alliance said Chapman was a political prisoner because he had started advocating for civil rights while in prison. Clearly, he suffered attacks by the prison for his efforts.

The National Alliance took up his case, and after they had helped free him, he became the leader of the Saint Louis chapter, building it up through community and labor struggles to becoming one of the largest chapters in the country. Eventually he became the executive director and moved to New York City. Years later, the CP leadership had the Alliance dissolved as a national group, but several chapters – including Louisville, Kentucky as well as Chicago – refused. When Frank moved to Chicago in 2011, he found the organization here still continuing under the leadership of Josephine Wyatt, Clarice Durham and Ted Pearson. He joined in with them, and today has helped rebuilt the movement here and nationally. As a result, this fall the National Alliance will be re-founded in Chicago.

The Black liberation movement and the socialist movement freed Frank Chapman, and in turn he has made a lifelong commitment to those intertwined struggles. After leaving the CP ten years ago, Chapman has joined a newer Marxist-Leninist group, Freedom Road Socialist Organization. He has joined our central committee and is helping to guide and train a new generation of Black communists.

Working with Frank over the past five years, I have seen something that highlights the importance of this book. In his role leading the struggle for community control of the Chicago police, Frank instantly commands the respect and trust of those in and around the movement who have been wrongfully convicted or who have wrongfully convicted family members in prison. When he points the way forward, they believe in him. This book will only cement further the status he has in their struggle.

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Rasmea Odeh, an historic figure in the Palestine national movement, is being threatened by German authorities with denial of her right to speak in Germany, as well as attempting to take away her visa.

The Chicago Alliance once again expresses our complete solidarity with our dear sister, Rasmea, and with her beloved Palestine. For a number of years, the Alliance and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network marched together to defend Rasmea from the political trial that she was subjected to by the U.S. Dept. of Justice; and the Palestinian organizations that Rasmea helped to lead marched together with the Black community in Chicago in our struggle for an end to police crimes by calling for community control of the police.

In 2014, I saw the Palestinian people in Ferguson, Missouri, expressing their solidarity with Black people there who had risen up to demand justice for Mike Brown, the innocent young Black man who was slain by a white police officer. That uprising reignited the Black liberation movement in the U.S.

I said then and I say again today that Black people and Palestinians have a future together. In Chicago, we face a police department that occupies our communities, as Palestinians are occupied by the Israeli military. Hundreds of Blacks and Latinos in Chicago were tortured by cops into confessing to crimes they did not commit, just as Rasmea was tortured in 1969 into such a confession. The Palestinian people are fighting for their liberation since their land was taken from them in 1948. Black people have been fighting for our liberation since we were stolen from Africa centuries ago.

Let Rasmea speak!

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Minneapolis, MN – On February 20, Freedom Road Socialist Organization hosted Black liberation leader Frank Chapman. Over 50 people attended the event.

In a program entitled “The Radical History of the Black Freedom Movement,” the talk began with an explanation of how capitalism was “consciously dependent,” as Chapman put it, on slavery. However, Chapman insisted that an honest portrayal of Black history could not focus only upon enslavement and oppression.

“The first thing we got right was the day we started to fight,” Chapman exclaimed. He furthered the point by explaining: “If you talk about slavery, you have to talk about slave rebellions. The slaves didn't sit there and hope that the nice Union people would win.”

Chapman pointed out that the Emancipation Proclamation was merely an acknowledgement of the reality that slavery was already over – thanks to the revolutionary efforts of former slaves, and not to the generosity of Abraham Lincoln.

Tying the thread of revolutionary resistance all the way from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panthers, Chapman continuously emphasized the importance of real, concrete organizing over idealistic calls to action. “We can't think our way into correct practice,” he said. “We have to practice our way into correct thinking,” he said.

Chapman emphasized the people need to get organized to fight national oppression and capitalism. And told the crowd “Join Freedom Road.”

Chapman's presence in Minneapolis was especially important for local organizing against police killings in the Black community. The Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar (TCCJ4J) had Chapman speak at their own event the night before about his work with Chicago's Civilian Police Accountability Council.

CPAC seeks to address the problem of racist policing in Chicago by taking control out of the hands of the city and putting the police under the direct supervision of the communities they police. Chapman repeatedly encouraged attendees to visit http://www.stoppolicecrimes.com/ and read their legislation, which is crafted to reverse the gross power imbalance between the people of Chicago and their police.

TCCJ4J has taken the legislation as a model and has drafted a three-year campaign to get their own version of it on the Minneapolis ballot by 2021.

“It's important to our campaign for community control to hear how they got people together to support it,” said Loretta VanPelt, a member of TCCJ4J. “It's inspiring.”

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #Socialism #FrankChapman

Chicago, IL – Longtime leader in the Black liberation movement and the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Frank Chapman, condemned the January 4 decision of the Alabama-based Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to abruptly cancel their plan to present Angela Davis with the Fred Shuttlesworth Award. Fred Shuttlesworth was a prominent leader in the civil rights movement.

Chapman stated, “Angela Davis and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth were dearest friends and co-leaders in the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression at the same time that I served as its executive director.”

“It is very shameful and cowardly that she is being denied an award that bears the name of Fred Shuttlesworth because she opposed the racist, Zionist regime in Israel for their continued persecution of Palestinian freedom fighter Rasmea Odeh. This particular U.S. cultural center dishonors Fred Shutlesworth, Angela Davis and our movement,” continued Chapman.

According to a statement from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, because of “Ms. Davis’ statements and public record, we concluded that she unfortunately does not meet all of the criteria on which the award is based.”

Organizations supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine have been waging a vendetta campaign against political figures who demanded justice for veteran Palestinian American activist Rasmea Odeh. A powerful movement that brought together Palestinians and progressive people across the U.S. prevented her imprisonment on trumped-up charges, but she was deported.

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Thomas “Blood” McCreary is a veteran of the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s, having been a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then the Black Panther Party (BPP), and then the Black Liberation Army. Today he continues to press for release of the former Panthers who are still in prison, many for 45 years. He also advocates for the dropping of the cases against the Panthers abroad, including Assata Shakur.

Frank Chapman is the Field Organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

McCreary was in Chicago for an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and agreed to an interview with Fight Back! Fight Back!: Tell us about how you got involved in the movement, become a political prisoner, and lat-er started working for the freedom of other political prisoners.

Thomas “Blood” McCreary: I became involved in the liberation struggle in this country after returning from Vietnam in 1967. I started working with SNCC, and in 1968 I went to working with the Black Pan-ther Party, about a year and a half later. We did what the Panthers usually did: breakfast program and housing for kids, medical care, transportation for families to visit prisoners.

I became a member of the BPP in New York City. There was a lot of intense law enforcement surveil-lance of our activities. Unbeknownst to us, later it was proven that there was a counter intelligence program waged against the BPP. Through COINTELPRO, a lot of people ended up dead, in exile, framed and in prison. That was just another way that the government was trying to break the back of the liberation movement by us having to exert time, energy and resources to defend people on trumped up charges.

I became a political prisoner in 1972. I was captured in Saint Louis, Missouri. I was paroled after five years. When I came out, I got involved in trying to liberate other comrades who were doing long prison sentences.

Angela [Davis], her case had been a very highlighted case, and I knew she had been a member of the L.A. chapter of the Panthers. We were mainly concerned with getting Elmer Geronimo Pratt out of prison at that time. One of the encounters I had with Angela and Frank took place in Birmingham, Ala-bama. She agreed to get involved in Geronimo’s case. She agreed she would visit him, but as it turned out, Gi thought it would be best if she didn’t come in because San Quentin was threatening to send him further away, and his family was close to San Quentin.

Frank Chapman: In response to that meeting, McCreary convinced me to visit all the Panthers who were in prison. We visited with a number of Panthers, mainly in New York: Anthony Bottom, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Nuh Washington, Bashir Hameed, and those visits convinced me, and to this day, that our organization needed to be involved in this great fight.

McCreary: Anthony Bottom is one of the longest-held political prisoners. [Bottom was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences based on circumstantial evidence.] He comes up for parole some time after the first of the year. His co-defendant, Herman Bell was released in April.

After Bottom, the longest-held prisoner is Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur’s co-defendant, arrested dur-ing the New Jersey turnpike incident in 1973. Assata had seven or eight other cases, and she was ac-quitted on all of her charges. It seems to me that if the other cases were false, and they were the rea-son she was on the run, we should call it even. Sundiata Acoli is 81 years old. At his last parole hearing, they told him to come back in 15 years. They want him to die in jail. Of course, Assata was liberated from prison and she lives in Havana.

Fight Back!: What is the campaign that needs to happen to free these remaining Panthers and all polit-ical prisoners?

McCreary: In New York State, how we won the release of Herman Bell is we got rid of the members of the parole board. Some of the members of that board had been appointed by Governor Rockefeller [who served from 1959 to 1973]. We’re trying to end the practice of the Police Benevolent Association giving impact statements at the parole hearings.

Also, we have to include support for the exiles, like Assata Shakur and Pete O’Neal.

In terms of support, we need letter writing. In letters to prisoners, ask them specifically, “What is it I can do?” In New York, we have an annual dinner with about 600 people, families of the political pris-oners and supporters. Last year we raised about $6000 to split among the political prisoners.

[McCreary recommended https://thejerichomovement.com as a resource for more information.]

Chapman: We should use our historical experience freeing other political prisoners, such as Reverend Ben Chavis, Joanne Little, and Johnie Imani Harris. One effort by Jazmine Salas, a new leader in the Al-liance in Chicago, is organizing a campaign to send holiday cards of solidarity to prisoners to let them know we will make it a priority in our work to struggle around their cases. We will also work with the Jericho movement for amnesty and freedom for these political prisoners.

Fight Back!: Thanks for sharing this history and informing our readers of the continued injustices facing the former Panthers and other political prisoners. We invite supporters of the imprisoned Panthers and others to our annual People’s Thanksgiving in Chicago, Saturday, December 1, where we’ll have letter-writing to these and other political prisoners and the wrongfully convicted. http://bit.ly/PeoplesThanksgiving18

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