MUMIA SALUTES IMF PROTESTERS

Ona Move! Millions of people across the country and the world learned an important and powerful lesson from the battle in Seattle last year. We learned the value of solidarity across different movements and across elusive national boundaries.

The battle of Seattle was a crucial one, but as I suggested earlier and in a recent column, it is merely a beginning, not an end. The battle in Seattle exposed the deadly link of world and western capital seeking to shackle and chain workers, trade unionists, activists and the poor into a prison of corporate power. But as we have learned, so too has capital learned important lessons from Seattle.

Notice how in every newscast since then opponents of corporate power have been projected and demonized as "terrorists."

Poor people, workers, activists and organizers were on the receiving end of terror in Seattle as they were beaten by police batons, gassed, shot with plastic bullets and thrown to the ground, shackled and arrested for practicing the alleged first amendment right of free assembly and protest.

When a dozen youngsters broke windows of McDonalds or Starbucks the media heralds it as terrorism. When the cops beat people, assault them, gas them, shoot them and shatter bones, this is characterized as restraint.

At the center of the World Trade Organization lies the International Monetary Foundation and other super- governmental multi-national structures that bleed the planet and her people for profit.

I am in support of the IMF protest and I wish I could be there to join it.

Ona Move! Let's learn from Seattle. Long live John Africa!

Mumia Abu-Jamal

April 15, 2000

İMAJ 2000