Communists in Montana

MONTANA

Student and community activists in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal met on Dec. 2 in Missoula, Mont., on the campus of the University of Montana (UM) to hear Larry Hales, an International Action Center organizer, and see the film distributed by the Peoples Video Network, “The Framing of an Execution: Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Media.”

Rachael Carroll, an organizer with the Montana Human Rights Network and Montana Abolition Coalition, a statewide movement against the death penalty, also spoke. The coalition was also a sponsor of the event.

Carroll reported that the Montana component of the prison-industrial complex is part of the racist trend throughout the United States, where members of oppressed nations are imprisoned and receive death sentences far beyond their numbers in the population. She said, “American Indians in Montana are about 6 percent of the population, but Indian women comprise between 42 percent and 75 percent of all women in prison in the state. In addition, Indian men comprise more than 22 percent of both prisoners and those receiving the death penalty.”

Both Hales and Carroll spoke about the need for people to get involved in local and statewide actions against the racist death penalty as well as to support Mumia and demand that his legal lynching be stopped. Both organizers encouraged those present to follow the advice of Mumia to “Organize! Organize! Organize!”

Elisabeth Stoeckel, a UM graduate student, chaired the meeting and represented the Social Justice Action Network, an event sponsor and a UM organization that provides social work graduate students with the opportunity to get involved with social justice activities on campus and in the community. Other UM groups supporting the event included Students for Economic and Social Justice, Students for Peace and Justice and the International Action Center in Montana.

The day before the Missoula event, activists and members of Amnesty International and the IAC gathered In Dillon, Mont., on the campus of the University of Montana Western. They heard Larry Hales speak about Mumia’s case and then engaged in a lively discussion to plan further actions in support of Mumia and the statewide movement against the death penalty in Montana.

The meetings in Missoula and Dillon were the first held in the state by the International Action Center in Montana, and are seen by state organizers of the IAC and other involved groups as stepping stones to building a statewide network to not only oppose the racist death penalty and the unjust imprisonment of oppressed and poor people, but also to engage in other political action against economic and political injustice.

—John Lewis