Join the international week of actions for Georges Abdallah

Following an October 14 protest at the Mission permanente de la France auprès des Nations unies (https://www.facebook.com/events/576460882541303), join the second of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network‘s New York City events during the international week of action to free جورج إبراهيم عبدالله Georges Ibrahim Abdallah (http://samidoun.net/2016/09/15-22-october-international-call-to-action-for-georges-ibrahim-abdallah).

The protest will come a day before a mobilization outside the prison in Lannemezan, France where Abdallah is held (https://www.facebook.com/events/1000930120005464).

After the demonstration, come to the Solidarity Center NYC and celebrate our first year of weekly rallies in support of Palestinian political prisoners (https://www.facebook.com/events/1652595028386817).

Join in the international week of action on October 15-22 in support of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Lebanese Arab struggler for Palestine, imprisoned in French prisons for over 32 years. Georges Abdallah’s case has built significant support in Lebanon and in France, and Palestinian prisoners have highlighted the importance of Abdallah’s case as part of the struggle of the Palestinian political prisoners for freedom and liberation.

Abdallah was sentenced to life imprisonment in France, accused of participating in actions in France targeting U.S. and Israeli interests during the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. During his arrest and trial, one of his original lawyers was a spy against him, working for French intelligence. He has been eligible for release under parole since 1999. He has been repeatedly refused, and at times when his release to Lebanon has been approved by the French judiciary, the highest forces of the state, including then-Interior Minister Manuel Valls – with the clear involvement of the U.S. government, including the personal intervention of Hillary Clinton – have intervened to keep Georges Ibrahim Abdallah locked up in French prison.

Throughout his time in prison, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has remained politically active and, indeed, a leader, extending solidarity and full support to struggling prisoners and peoples’ movements around the world. He and fellow prisoners – Basque and Arab, among others – in Lannemezan prison returned their meals in solidarity with Palestinian hunger striker Bilal Kayed, and he has previously participated in hunger strikes in solidarity with Palestinian individual and collective strikes for justice and freedom. He recently expressed his solidarity with Toulouse BDS activists under attack and has constantly remained an active thinker on Arab, Palestinian and international liberation struggles.

He has always refused to in any way capitulate or renounce his political vision and commitment to the Palestinian cause, to the people of Lebanon, and to international struggles for liberation. He remains a committed anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. In part because of that very refusal, he remains today imprisoned in the French prison of Lannemezan.

The imprisonment of Georges Abdallah comes alongside the persecution and arrest of BDS activists in France for urging the boycott of Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people, ongoing racist targeting of Arab and Muslim communities in France and the “state of emergency” being used to repress popular movements for justice, while the French state promotes itself as a supporter of “peace” in the region while acting directly in support of the Israeli occupation and Zionist colonization.

https://www.facebook.com/uniteherelocal26

http://www.local26.org/

Use these graphics to spread the word about the rally on Saturday! #SupportTheStrike #1u

Contribute to strike fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/local-26-strike-assistance-fund

http://www.apscuf.org/

This is a letter of solidarity with the communities of Eastern North Carolina from the Charlotte Uprising. We invite grassroots organizations and other communities to sign onto this letter. Email us at charlotteuprising(at)gmail(dot)com to sign on.

The Charlotte Uprising Coalition and signatories extend our solidarity with the communities of Eastern North Carolina who are being devastated by the unnatural flooding of Hurricane Matthew. We oppose and condemn the state’s continued environmental racism and the neglect of the Black, indigenous, brown, rural, and poor white communities for which these issues have heightened impact in Eastern North Carolina.

In Charlotte, we continue to fight for justice for Keith Lamont Scott, a 43 year old disabled Black man killed on Sept. 20 by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department. We have received reports that this past Monday, state troopers in Lumberton killed a man amidst the flooding–claiming to have seen him armed with a gun while in water that had risen 3-4 ft high. In the midst of rising water, we want to uplift the name of Deriante Miller, a 18-year-old Black teen, killed by a state trooper in Kinston as he was leaving his sister’s birthday party. No officer was charged and the department continues to lie about the murder.

The misplaced priorities of our state brought on this disaster. While Governor Pat McCrory called the National Guard into Charlotte to protect the windows of Bank of America and the Omni Hotel, he also redirected disaster relief funds to defend his anti-trans and anti-worker HB2 law. He has been unable to develop a plan for communities in the East for whom continued flood waters are anticipated. In both scenarios, lives are at risk and stolen because our state does not value Black and Brown lives.

Environmental justice is more than forests and rivers; it encompasses our workplaces, public facilities, neighborhoods, and schools. Our environments are under constant threat – if not from climate change, pollution or other climate disasters then from police, corporations, and politicians who prioritize profit and property over human needs.

We believe in the right of historically marginalized communities to determine their destinies and build futures that are free from the violence of climate change, corporate greed, and exploitation. We will stand with our community in Eastern North Carolina to reject any attempt made to repress the people’s organizing in response to this crisis; to reject any attempt by the state to use this moment to continue push through the construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline because communities and infrastructure have been wiped out; to reject any attempt to isolate us from each other in the movement for Black lives, working class people, and all oppressed people. The struggle for environmental justice is also a struggle against racism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism, xenophobia, and more.

We send our solidarity with the organized communities and the communities getting organized to take care of each other. In Charlotte we have been saying, “we keep us safe” and in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, nothing could be truer. We say we keep us safe; we say Black Lives Matter; we say our liberation is intertwined; and we say justice for the communities in Eastern North Carolina is long overdue.

Signatories: Trans Queer People of Color Collective Charlotte, Tribe Charlotte, Southern Vision Alliance, Ignite NC, Youth Organizing Institute, NC Environmental Justice Network, Witness For Peace Southeast, Workers World Party, Movement to End Racism and Islamophobia, UE Local 150 NC Public Service Workers Union, The Greensboro Mural Project, Cakalak Thunder, Jewish Voice for Peace-Triangle, Customer 49, Sistersong, Palestinian American Community Center

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To learn more about the NC Environmental Justice Network visit: www.ncejn.org
Or attend their annual EJ Summit next weekend (Oct 21-22) at the historic Franklinton Center: https://ncejn.wordpress.com/ej-summit/

To learn more about Charlotte Uprising visit: CharlotteUprising.com

http://www.hondurassolidarity.org/

“…The Honduras Solidarity Network in North America denounces the assassination today, only a few hours before this writing,  of Jose Angel Flores, President of the campesino organization MUCA (Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguan) and Silmer Dionosio George, another MUCA leader. The campesino activists were killed by gunmen as they left a meeting of MUCA members. While we are still waiting for more information about the murders, we wish to emphasize that both men were recognized to be at risk by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and were recipients of that organization’s precautionary measures making the Honduran government responsible for their safety. 

We are indignant that in the face of the ongoing and documented violence, repression and corruption involving the Honduran government, the US State Department has certified that it is satisfied that the Honduran government has taken effective steps to improve human rights. This inexplicable certification, given the situation in Honduras, clears the way for $55 million in U.S. aid..”

Sign petition: http://bit.ly/2eRZ2WE

Petitioning Attorney General Lynch and President Obama

Created by Robert and Michael Meeropol

Our parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed on June 19, 1953 during the anti-communist hysteria of the Cold War Era. They had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, in what was called “the crime of the century.” We were six and 10 years old when they were killed.

Our mother was not a spy, and her execution was wrongful. Her conviction was based on perjured testimony and prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. The charges against our mother and the threat of the death penalty were meant to intimidate her and our father into cooperating. The U.S. government wanted Julius to falsely confess to passing “the secret of the atomic bomb” to the Soviet Union, and name others involved.

Their trial took place during a time of widespread panic about communism. The sentencing judge went so far as to blame our parents for the Korean War.[1] In denying clemency, President Eisenhower accused them of causing future nuclear wars.[2] These outrageous statements and our parents’ execution helped fuel a dangerous climate of fear and intolerance in our country which permitted political opportunists like Senator Joseph McCarthy to poison our society. Today, we face a similar climate of hatred which targets immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQI individuals and others.

A formal acknowledgement of the wrong done to our mother and our family will help prevent similar injustices in the future. A healthy democracy requires that the government acknowledge and correct its transgressions. The government cannot return our mother to her loving family. But it can admit this miscarriage of justice.

Please, join us in calling on Attorney General Lynch and President Obama to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg before they leave office. More than 60 years after her unjust conviction and execution, now is the time to clear her good name.

Why Ethel’s Execution Was Wrongful

The grand jury testimony of a chief prosecution witness against our parents, our mother’s brother, David Greenglass, was made public recently. This material — along with previously released testimony and other records — proves that our mother was prosecuted simply for refusing to turn on our father.

The evidence presented against our mother at her trial consisted of testimony by David, and his wife, Ruth. They stated that Ethel took part in two meetings between the Rosenbergs and Greenglasses in 1945 (including one at which David gave Julius a sketch of a cross-section of the bomb), and that our mother’s participation included typing notes. Our mother’s conviction hinged on these alleged actions of hers.

The record now refutes these claims. David’s grand jury testimony made no mention of Ethel’s presence at either meeting, much less her typing. Instead, responding to questions about spying, David told the grand jury: “My sister has never spoken to me about this subject,” and, “I never spoke to my sister about this at all.”[3]

Despite this testimony, prosecutors developed a plan to use our mother against our father. An assistant attorney general told the F.B.I. that there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Ethel, but that she could be used “as a lever against her husband.”[4] Furthermore, a month before the trial, a prosecutor told a congressional committee: “The case is not too strong against Mrs. Rosenberg. But for the purpose of acting as a deterrent, I think it is very important that she be convicted too, and given a stiff sentence.”[5]

At our parents’ trial, David contradicted his sworn grand jury testimony and suddenly implicated our mother in the alleged spy ring by describing Ethel’s presence at the meetings. Decades later, David admitted on national television that this testimony was a lie.[6]  Therefore, Ethel’s conviction – which hinged on this story – was wrongful.

Based on these revelations, on September 28th, 2015 (what would have been our mother’s 100th birthday), 13 Members of the New York City Council and the Manhattan Borough President issued proclamations declaring that our mother was wrongfully executed.[7] This was a step towards acknowledging a terrible injustice. Now, it is time for the federal government to do the same.