DA’s office refuses to release Mumia files

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... Women and gender politics in the Russian Revolution By the MOBILIZATION FOR In the latest attempt to further deny freedom to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Phil­ adelphia District Attorney’s office has contemptuously refused to release the files they were ordered to make pub­ lic by Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker.

On April 24, Abu-Jamal’s 63rd birth­ day, his attorneys presented an appeal before Judge Tucker asking that the Philadelphia district attorney’s office release all documents relevant to for­ mer DA Ronald Castille’s involvement in Mumia’s case, which Tucker ordered just days later, on April 28.

Judge Tucker ruled that the DA’s of­ fice must produce and turn over all re­ cords and memos regarding Castille’s involvement in Abu-Jamal’s case: pretrial, trial, post-trial, and direct appeal proceedings; communications between Castille and his staff; and any public statements Castille made about Mu­ mia’s case during or after his tenure as district attorney of Philadelphia. These records were to be handed over to Mu­ mia’s attorneys by May 30.

Instead, the DA’s office submitted an intentionally deficient response to Tucker’s order at the end of the work­ day on May 30 with a two-page cover letter denying any “direct involvement”

by Castille, and 54 pages of front-page court filings that were already part of the public record on the case.

They offered nothing new, nothing ... French election (continued from page 12: “French election results: No choice for workers”) nounced the financial scandals they are involved in, and other candidates did not dare to do this.

Poutou denounced Le Pen for refusing to go to the judge that summoned her because she had misappro­ priated money from the European parliament. Poutou said that while le Pen could use her parliamentary im­ munity, when workers face repression, they don’t have immunity.

The NPA campaign put to the fore the division between the bourgeoisie and the workers right in the middle of a somewhat “polite” and dull debate. After that debate, he was viewed with sympathy by lots of workers. In the campaign he appeared like an average worker that is not (continued from page 6: “Women & gender politics in the Russian Revolution”)

Rural women made huge strides as well. The records show us that peasant women and men often had op­ posing views. They debated the Family Code and how it applied to peasant units in which land was owned collectively by more than one family. They participat­ ed in national conferences under the Women’s Depart­ ment in which all sectors came together to debate and assess what was good in theory but not in practice.

The revolutionary government had to take measures to provide for workers in industry and the orphaned children in the midst of deprivation and civil war.

Communal kitchens and other alternatives to domes­ tic labor became mass affairs.

Women filled the workshops. Alexandra Kollantai was recorded as gloating that the family was dead.

But in the midst of the civil war that threatened to roll back the revolution completely, those driving forward on the plans to emancipate women were premature in their conclusion that the old order—that of the com­ pulsory family with its double burden and sexual re­ pression—was over.

As soon as the war ended, the revolutionary gov­ ernment was forced to try to revive the war-torn economy through applying some market measures.

Factories were forced to implement strict accounting related to productivity. There were mass layoffs, with women being chosen to be the first to be laid off by old-fashioned supervisors.

Under these measures, collectively known as the that couldn’t be found by pe­ rusing court records. In other words they are still going to great lengths to hide the truth.

Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have 15 days to challenge the DAs coverup.

Abu-Jamal’s case was one of 16 petitions considered by the court on April 24 by 14 prisoners with similar legal issues. All the cases are based on a June 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Williams v. Pennsylvania that found it was a violation of a defen­ dant’s constitutional right to due process when a judge presides over a case in which they had had prior significant or personal involvement as a prosecutor.

The Williams case was ad­ judicated by Castille while he was on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court even though he had prosecuted the defen­ dant as Philadelphia District Attorney years earlier.

Abu-Jamal’s April 24 court proceeding was based on the post-conviction peti­ tion filed Aug. 7, 2016, by attorneys Ju­ dith Ritter and Christina Swarns charg­ ing that his appeal process denied him due process.

Ronald Castille was Assistant Phila­ delphia DA at the time of Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial and Philadelphia District Attorney when his office opposed AbuJamal’s direct appeals in 1988.

He was responsible for producing a jury selection training video for pros­ ecutors with instructions on how to evade the historic Supreme Court deci­ sion on Batson v. Maryland, against ra­ cial bias in jury selection.

In the infamous DATV “Jack McMa­ hon training tape” prosecutors are told: “Blacks from low-income areas are a politician. But I think the NPA campaign might have done a better job of promoting current social struggles, struggles that didn’t stop despite the electoral period.

CH: What are the NPA’s plans after the elections? How do you see the anti-capitalist movement going forward?

JRF: As the elections were coming to a close, a very original initiative took place, the Social Front, with the active participation of revolutionary militants.

Several trade unions and militant collectives organized a demonstration on the day before the elections and an­ other one the first day after Macron was elected. Some 3000 people showed up at the first demo and almost 10,000 at the second one, despite the fact that not a sin­ gle naitonal trade union or political leadership has sup­ ported this effort, and despite the state of emergency.

It was possible because during the Loi Travail move­ ment, different militant sectors from different traditions New Economic Policy, many child-care centers and other communal facilities were closed. But the ideal was not lost, and up through about 1925 there was still progress in consciousness and practice.

In short, while not always successful, and with the limitations imposed, the overall achievement of the Bolshevik revolution is diametrically opposed to that of global capitalism today. Even an underdeveloped country, torn by imperialist invasion and war—but under working class leadership—could make advanc­ es far beyond what the most sophisticated capitalist economies have been able to do in the last 100 years.

We should not only learn from the advances made in Russia but from the retreat. By 1925, the left forces around Trotsky were essentially defeated by a reac­ tionary bureaucracy headed by Stalin. As the bureau­ cracy consolidated its power, it moved quickly to reestablish the compulsory family as a social and eco­ nomic unit.

Stalin’s turn toward the strategy of enriching a sec­ tion of the peasantry necessitated a tolerance for the social mores of the patriarchal peasant family. Moth­ erhood became the object of awards. The Women’s Department was abolished. In 1930, abortion was made illegal. By 1936, the family was celebrated as a unit of social order and used to bolster the authoritar­ ian regime.

And homosexuality was once again criminalized. Eventually, it was officially described as a “bourgeois deviation.” This was the position not only of the Soviet (Left) Mumia Abu-Jamal, framed for killing a police officer in 1981.

less likely to convict … you don’t want these people on your jury.” Castille sup­ pressed the existence of the tape and his own responsibility for it.

According to Philadelphia activist Pam Africa, “If we are not vigilant, the long history of corruption and suppression of evidence in the Philadelphia DA’s of­ fice could stand in the way of Mumia’s files from seeing the light of day.”

Corruption and cover ups are nothing but business as usual for the Philadel­ phia District Attorney’s office, an office that represents the city in the pros­ ecution of criminal offenses, and is the chief law enforcement officer and legal officer of the city’s jurisdiction.

Given the notorious history of that agency, close to 100 human rights activ­ ists and community members seeking justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal converged on the DA’s office just hours before the May 30 deadline.

Despite an unnecessary and eventu­ ally unsuccessful effort by dozens of heavily armed police to use metal bar­ riers to enclose and limit the protest, demonstrators held a press conference and rally outside the DA’s office calling for the release of all the files and de­ manding an end to decades of corrup­ tion. n More information can be found through Mobilization4Mumia on face­ book or by contacting mobilization­ [email protected].

learned to work together. And also because a process of differentiation inside the labor movement is under way, with trade-unions especially breaking.

The Social Front aims at regrouping the militants who want to fight the government and who want to regroup the struggles. And now, in part thanks to the formation of this front, there is a big debate in the trade-union movement about a key question: should we discuss with and meet the new president as if it were possible to ne­ gotiate with your class enemy or should we at once or­ ganize the resistance?

The Social Front organized another demo, this time in front of the parliament, the day after the general elec­ tions. If this initiative is a success, we hope to pressure the labor leaders to call for a national strike quickly, be­ cause Macron has already stated that he will destroy the Labor Laws without even consulting the parliament. n Union but of all the Communist Parties in the world, including in the United States. From the Russian expe­ rience, we have learned to expect these adaptations to the reactionary social past in any period of reaction or retreat. Women’s fate is inextricably tied to the fate of the whole working class.

What does this show activists today?

We must build a social feminism that seeks to strengthen the movement of women, immigrants, women of color, the working-class movement as a whole, and all those who are struggling independent of the bosses’ parties.

We must strive to win victories on many fronts against the forces that seek to limit and roll back the rights of women and other oppressed people. But his­ tory shows us that to achieve deep and lasting gains, the strategy for women’s and sexual liberation must chart a course towards a break with capitalism and toward the working-class seizure of power.

Of course, we are not on the verge of a revolution in any of the advanced capitalist countries. But activists, including those in the women’s movement, are at a moment of decision regarding which strategic road to take.

On this 100th anniversary of the bravery of the women of the Bolshevik Party and the millions of women in the Soviet Union who saw the future and fought like the devil for it, the road marked out by these revolutionaries provides important lessons for today. n SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2017 11

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SOCIALIST ACTION