CHICAGO, IL —Rev Pinkney is a political prisoner. He languishes in prison, now for over 400 days, for the ‘crime’ of exercising his democratic rights on behalf of the people of Benton harbor and beyond.
Those who have followed his story here in the People’s Tribune, and now with a media outcry all over the US and the world, and who read his own writings, understand what a fascist attack his conviction and unjust incarceration represent. This is part of the larger attack by the corporate-controlled government, led by the dictatorial Emergency Managers in Michigan against the people who are being displaced and abandoned as the economy tanks.
The corporations that no longer need people’s labor, especially in the once heavily industrialized Rust Belt where Pinkney is active, will no longer bother to keep them alive and will exercise state terror against anyone who resists and speaks up. Now Rev. Pinkney is not being allowed to communicate beyond prison walls, because the ruling class fears his message. This will not stop the growing movement in this country, or stop his message from being heard and spread.
The corporations and the owning class must deal with the millions of people who are being thrown out of work and into dispossession, poverty and misery. People don’t put up with having their children’s future stolen from them, along with their homes and ability to live. They are furious when their water is poisoned because of greedy privatization schemes put in place by corporate dictators, as is happening in Michigan and all over the country. In Pinkney’s Benton Harbor, the Whirlpool Corporation acted as though it owned the town and could seize public spaces for its own use. The corporate-controlled government agreed. Rev. Pinkney and the people of Benton Harbor, mostly poor but not powerless, disagreed and organized. They exercised their democratic rights in a recall campaign against a corrupt mayor.
The ruling class is putting laws into place to deal with the gathering storm of protest and people’s demands for what they need to survive, whether they have money to pay for it or not. A movement is gathering all over the country to demand the right to these things, and that the government respond and provide. The corporate-ruled government can only impose fascism, and try to lock up and silence the truths spoken by such people’s leaders as Rev. Pinkney. The defense of Rev. Pinkney is a defense of our whole class.
As he has written, “it is not about Black and white, it is about the haves and the have-nots.” This message is one that strikes terror in the hearts of the oppressors and rouses people to unified action, to create a world where children aren’t poisoned or forced to go to bed hungry, and the people own and control the corporations. This message, shared by Rev. Pinkney and millions of others, is a practical vision whose time has come. Defend Rev. Pinkney and spread his message of a just and truly democratic society!
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