Atlanta Hosts Panel on May Day Political Repression — Fight Back! News

Atlanta, GA – The Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression hosted a May 4 panel on combating political repression.

More than 40 people were present to hear speakers from the Atlanta Alliance, the Black Alliance for Peace, the AUC (Atlanta University Consortium) Students for Justice in Palestine, the Intercommunity Coordinating Committee of the students of the AUC, GSU ​​(Georgia State University) Students for Justice in Palestine and Freedom Road. Socialist organization.

With the topic of the panel being around political repression, the panelists linked American imperialism, national oppression, and political repression. Speakers discussed the recent wave of pro-Palestinian student organizations, political prisoner Kamau Sadiki, mass incarceration and international solidarity activists against War 23.

“When you deal with imperialism and dispossession on a global scale, you will eventually understand why we are here today: this local repression that comes from every time you try to fight against it,” Damion said Scott, member of Black Peace Alliance. “When we think about political repression, we have to understand that it is constant. When you live in a nation like this, citizens are always repressed on a class and racial basis,” he continued.

Damion also highlighted the case of political prisoner Kamau Sidiki and the struggle to obtain his freedom. Sidiki was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army and was wrongly arrested in an attempt to recapture Assata Shakur in Cuba. Police offered Sidiki a deal that if he helped arrest Shakur, he would regain his freedom. Sidiki refused the 2002 deal and remains in prison to this day.

“When we talk about political repression, things like mass incarceration are incredibly relevant. In Georgia, we see some of the highest incarceration rates in the country and the harshest prison conditions when you look at Rice Street here in Atlanta,” said David Jones, a spokesperson for the Georgia Alliance. Atlanta. “This amounts to actively taking political power away from working-class black people. When people have to sit in prison for months or even years without being convicted, it keeps them out of the political struggle, it prevents them from building and uplifting their communities, and it actively hinders the struggle for autonomy. determination towards which people are organizing across the South.

Rice Street is a Fulton County jail that has come under national scrutiny in recent years because of the appalling conditions inmates are subjected to. The Atlanta Alliance is currently leading a campaign to close the Rice Street Jail.

Alex Carson, a member of the socialist organization Freedom Road and one of the protesters recently arrested at Emory University, also spoke about leading mass campaigns against political repression. Through an analysis of Anti-War 23 and the defense campaign to maintain their freedom, Carson was able to draw lessons that can be applied to other defense campaigns, including the campaign to drop the charges held against Emory protesters.

“The wave of violent repression against Americans who support Palestine will require a strategy of mass defense; a policy that draws student groups, community organizations and unions into a coordinated defense of popular movements,” Caron said. “The state is already trying to present the student movement and its supporters as ‘terrorists’. By being proud of our actions and our policies, we show the state that it cannot prohibit resistance, no matter how hard it tries.”

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