[Photo above, Pulitzer Prize novelist-poet Alice Walker]
By Jeff Mackler
One hundred Julian Assange solidarity, antiwar and social justice activists celebrated Assange’s freedom at Berkeley’s Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall on Sunday, Sept. 22. Sponsored by Assange’s defense organizations, the Courage Foundation and Assangedefense.org, 20 other peace and solidarity groups were co-sponsors. (See below).
Featured speakers included Pulitzer Prize novelist-poet Alice Walker, who has served, along with Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, as a co-national chair of Assange’s defense team. Walker, read three of her heartwarming and insightful revolutionary poems. She passionately described her visit to Mumia Abu-Jamal on Pennsylvania’s death row and recounted her visit with Assange while he was granted sanctuary in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London and before his incarceration in London’s brutal Belmarsh Prison.
A broad range of speakers joined in to pledge their dedication to continue the struggle against US wars , racist and political persecution and for democratic rights – free speech and a free press – everywhere The present US-abetted Zionist genocide against Palestine and the West Bank was a special focus for many speakers.
Among the most moving presentations was San Francisco State University professor Dr. Omar Zahzah’s, [photo above] representing the US Palestinian Community Network. Dr. Zahzah explained:
“Freedom is a celebration worthy of occasion for Assange, his family, his loved ones, and also for every journalist, writer, and truth teller dedicated to the struggle for a liberated world.
“But this brings me to the another critical observation. Just as we have much to celebrate, we also have much to mourn. Many of us can’t even keep up with the work of mourning. Nearly one year into the Zionist entity’s most heinous genocide of Palestinians, with the death toll now exceeding 41,431 according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and 95,818 Palestinians wounded!
“Its appetite for destruction insatiable, the Zionist state has now taken to launching the most depraved assaults upon Lebanon in recent history. Witnessing the relentless viciousness of the Zionist colonial regime, its apparent commitment to dispensing nearly every permutation of violence known to the human imagination, it’s no wonder that the sharing of the latest updates is often prefaced with the phrase “No Words.” And that gets me to the final observation. The spectacle of genocidal colonial violence is meant to shock us into silence. But we do have words and a duty to deploy them.”
Margaret Kimberley, [Photo above] Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report and Black Alliance for Peace, like Dr. Zahzah, moved the audience to a standing ovation.
Said Kimberly, “I want to try to connect Julian’s case with other issues of imperialism and domestic and state repression, some of which are ever present but have become so normalized that they’re ignored. How did Assange become a political prisoner? Well, the easy answer is he and his organization, WikiLeaks, revealed what the state did not want people around the world to know, including the war crimes committed by the Bush administration revealed through the Iraq War logs and Afghanistan War logs and Private Chelsea Manning linking the collateral murder video, which showed the deaths of the Iraqi journalists killed by a US army helicopter crew in 2007.
“And that ‘collateral murder’ was released in 2010 during the Obama administration. And it’s interesting, that all of the supposed differences between Democrats and Republicans disappear when US hegemony is in need of being protected.
“And while the Obama Justice Department chose not to indict Assange, they laid the groundwork for Donald Trump to get his hands on him. And these revelations had already put Assange in the crosshairs. But he really angered the ruling class with his revelations about Hillary Clinton misappropriating Democratic Party funds during her presidential campaign in 2016.”
Kimberly added:
“Julian had to plead guilty to one charge of violating the Espionage Act and thus journalism can still be criminalized in the United States. So we all understand that Assange was a political prisoner, but he’s not alone. Prisoners are held here in the US, in California, like the late Ruchel McGee, who was held for decades. They’re held longer than political prisoners anywhere else in the world, only released — and these are prisoners from the liberation movement I’m referring to — who are only released when they’re elderly and at the point of death, if they’re released at all. But prisoners of conscience are not the only political prisoners in this country. The U.S. gulag has some two million political prisoners.”
Broad range of speakers
Among the keynote participants was Vincent DeStefano, [photo immediately below] National Organizing Director of Assangedefense.org, who explained that Assange was released from prison and allowed to return to his home in Australian on condition that he not use any form of public transportation. With no alternative, he was compelled to hire a private plane and billed an astronomical $750,000 by the British government. DeStafano recounted however, that this amount was raised quickly by Assange’s worldwide supporters via a GoFundMe appeal. DeStefano posted prominently at the front of the meeting hall large photos of some 25 journalists around the world who, he explained, like Assange, had been murdered or incarcerated while covering the world’s seemingly endless wars of conquest and domination. [See photo below].
Other keynote speakers included Joe Lombardo, [photo immediately above] National Coordinator of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). Lombardo reviewed UNAC’s united front, mass action, democratically-organized coalition strategy aimed at opposing all US imperialist wars, from the present US-backed Zionist slaughter in Palestine to the ongoing US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and the past US-NATO-Gulf State monarchy’s war against Syria.
Jeff Mackler, Director, of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and National Secretary, Socialist Action, chaired the rally as a National Steering Committee member of Assangedefense.org.
Phoebe Thomas Sorgen, Chair, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee, welcomed the crowd on behalf of the Unitarian-Univerialists.
Jodie Evans, National co-founder of CodePink, joined in hailing Assange’s freedom and in encouraging future united efforts for democratic rights and an end to wars.
O.T. Sabbath, representing the defense team of Leonard Peltier, falsely imprisoned for some 50 years, detailed the ongoing struggle to free Peltier, the longest incarcerated Native America in US history.
Wendy Snyder of the Uhura Solidarity Movement detailed the forthcoming fight to reverse the recent conviction of African People’s Socialist Party leader Omali Yesheteli and Uhura [Freedom] organization’s leaders Penny Hess, and Jesse Neville on spurious charges of conspiring to present Russian ideas, today deemed contrary US “national security interests”!
Incarcerated on California’s death row for almost 40 years, Kevin Cooper, yet another innocent government/police frame-up victim, addressed the event via a phone hook-up after an introduction by his Amnesty International representative, Gavrillah Wells.
Performing a special song, “Free Julian Assange,” authored by KPFA’s Flashpoints host, Dennis Bernstein, was Francisco Javier Herrera [photo below of Bernstein, left and Herrera], Bay Area singer-songwriter-cultural worker.
Bernstein explained the critical importance of a free media to tell the truth about critical US and world events. His popular daily Flashpoints radio program promoted the rally in the days before the event and KPFA followed up by offering its listeners during its current fund drive a video transcription of the Assange freedom celebration.
Special brief greetings were presented by Cynthia Papermaster, Bay Area CodePink; Rick Sterling, Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center and Tobe Blomé of the Ban Killer Drones! organization.
Free ‘Em All!”
Jeff Mackler [photo above] concluded the rally with an account of the police-government frame-up of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who also sent audio greeting celebrating Assange’s freedom. Mackler presented his conception of the meaning of the demand, “Free ‘Em All,” explaining that the US has the largest number and percentage of its population in prison than any nation on earth, the great majority from the poor, nationally oppressed and working class masses. “In the world that I hope to build,” said Mackler, “in a world free from class and racist oppression, we would empty the prisons completely, and provide an exemplary quality of life for everyone, while rehabilitating the few who the horrors of capitalist society have deeply wounded.”
The meeting ended with informal exchanges and everyone feasting on three giant tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, donated by Assange supporter, Ben Cohn, as well as a giant birthday cake and cupcakes provided by Bay Area CodePink to celebrate Jodie Evan’s birthday. The crowd joined in a rousing “Happy Birthday” song for Evans.
$5,000 contributed toward Julian Assange’s legal battles past and future.
A fund pitch earlier in the meeting by this writer netted $5,000 to be used in future legal efforts to pardon Assange, whose plea bargain settlement and immediate release included his pleading guilty to one count of violating the reactionary 1917 Espionage Act. The US government originally aimed at imprisoning the physically ailing Assange for 175 years! His freedom, all agreed, was a product of the consistent work of thousands of activists around the world who joined to champion Assange’s rights to free speech and to publish the truth about US imperialism’s endless and monstrous wars.
[Photo below: Post rally photo celebration with activists rallying behind “Pardon Assange: Journalism Is Not A Crime” banner prepared by Toby Blomé of Ban Killer Drones.]
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