Letter from Mumia

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member, explained why the YSA is trying to build a revolutionary socialist youth organization:

“‘You can go out and take some kind of direct action—standing up against the capitalist system— but because you don’t have a plan or an organized method of resistance, it’s just kind of doomed to just be a heroless act,’ Groenewold said. ‘At the same time, if you have a revolutionary theory, such as Marxism, and you don’t implement it, then there is really no point to that theory, and you won’t be able to change society for the better unless you have action.’

“Bronson Rozier, organizer for Socialist Action in Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky, has been an active member of the socialist movement for 47 years. Rozier said he attended the forum to support his comrades. ‘In a socialist society, there will be some differences, but it won’t be like this, where 2 percent of the country owns 80 percent of the wealth,’ Rozier said. ‘It’s going to be the [working-class] majority that is in control of it all.’” n Mumia’s Message to Occupy Wall Street, as dictated while in Administrative Custody at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa.

Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 My Friends of OWS, My message will have to be brief. But let not this brevity take from it, its strength.

You are the central movement of the hour. You’re raising questions that are in the hearts of millions. Your motto, “We are the 99%,” has been heard, heeded, and responded to by millions. You can be certain that the 1% have heard you clearest of all.

Your work, however, is just beginning. You must deepen, strengthen, and further your work until it truly reaches the 99%, almost all of us: workers, black folk, Latinos and Latinas, LGBTs, immigrants, Asians, artists, all of us, for we are integral parts of the 99%. I salute you and hope fervently that you will grow beyond number.

Though I speak to you today by proxy, I’m confident that you will hear my voice soon.

Love, fun and music, Socialist Action january 2012 3

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Mario Tama / Getty Images Japanese internment. “Lesser evilism” in electoral politics has, in the past, led to a serious weakening of the fight to defend working-class political action.

In response to efforts that obfuscate the real political intent of the NDAA provision, the civil libertarian and commentator Glenn Greenwald wrote, “Three Myths About the NDAA.” He explained that supporters of Obama could claim that U.S. citizens are exempted because there are two sections of the provision, and the language about “citizens” is “purposely muddled.” In Section 1021, there is a disclaimer that states that U.S. citizens or others captured or arrested in the United States rather than abroad cannot be held indefinitely by the U.S. military. The next section, Section 1022, however, only exempts accused U.S. citizens from the mandatory military detention.

“It does not,” Greenwald pointed out, “exempt U.S. citizens from the presidential power of military detention: only from the requirement of military detention.” This distinction was the result of a demand by the White House that the president retain his powers and that they not be handed over completely to the military.

The Obama administration also demanded an explicit expansion of the powers that they claimed they had been granted in the 2001 AUMF. The Bush-era AUMF named those whom the president