Throw Nutter In the Gutter --
Hands off the City Hall 2!

On Thursday, March 19 police attacked two organizers of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement during the City Council meeting to feature Mayor Michael Nutter and his introduction of the highly controversial 2010 city budget. During this process, InPDUM members were holding signs protesting Mayor Nutter's current budget that spends more than $1 billion a year for police and prisons, which attack the black community. Subsequent to the police attack, InPDUM International Organizer Diop Olugbala (aka Wali Rahman) and InPDUM member Shabaka Mnombatha (aka Franklin Moses) -- now known as the Philly City Hall 2— -- were brutally arrested and now have a list of charges, including aggravated assault on police!

As the meeting started, some of the many InPDUM supporters present were holding up signs saying "Unite Philadelphia through Economic and Social Justice," "Jail Killer Police," "Stop the War on the Black Community," and other demands upholding the rights of the impoverished black community.

The City Council meeting began with a resolution to recognize the unbeaten Frankford Chargers youth football team. The Chargers were wearing black armbands in memory of their teammate, 14-year-old Sharif Lee Jones, who was murdered by Philadelphia police on August 24, 2008.

As the team left the chambers, civil affairs police gathered behind the InPDUM organizers and demanded they immediately sit down and stop protesting. A Civil Affairs officer put Diop Olugbala into a chokehold. When Diop and the entire audience protested this attack, the police threw Diop and Shabaka down and arrested them. During the violent attack, the police threw at least two elderly people to the ground, and another member of InPDUM, an elderly African woman, was taken to the hospital having suffered a fractured hip.

Attack on African Democratic Rights is the "Philadelphian Way"

This type of attack is not uncommon in Killadelphia. Brutal attacks on the African community and its organizational leadership are regular occurrences. It is not unlike when the Philadelphia Police Department, in September of 1969, attacked the office of the Black Panther Party, then parading several of its members nude before the community with the goal of demoralizing the people. It is not unlike when the City, in 1985, dropped a C4 bomb on the African community in West Philadelphia to silence the MOVE organization killing at least five children and six adults because the City didn't like what MOVE talked about.

This was the City's same response to Mumia Abu Jamal, who has been on death row for nearly 30 years after being set up because of his involvement in the Black Power Movement of the Sixties and because as a journalist he exposed the city’s attacks on the African community.

It is no different from State sponsored violence reflected in the 2009 Pew Report that confirms what InPDUM has been saying: that the City of Philadelphia has an astounding 50% of households living on $35,000 or less, and up to 76% poverty in certain African neighborhoods. Instead of addressing this poverty, Nutter’s budget deepens it with a 19% property tax increase and raising sales taxes by 1%. The budget cuts essential services from the poorest sectors of the city – while continuing to give breaks to wealthy sectors through tax abatement policies. It is not unlike the 200,000 Africans and Latinos the police stopped in 2008 through Stop & Frisk. When Nutter sent the police to attack us, he continued the City of Philadelphia’s tradition of violating our first amendment right of free speech and our international right to self determination.

InPDUM the Fighting Vanguard of the African Community's Resistance

For years the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement has been courageously and boldly leading the struggle in Philadelphia and around the world to defend the democratic rights of the African community and to unite the entire population against the anti-democratic policies of City Hall which clearly serve the interests of the City's ruling elite. In Philadelphia we have held demonstrations against the police violence in the African community, sometimes being the only organized voice of resistance.

Most recently, we held a Tribunal (court) to put the City of Philadelphia on trial for crimes of genocide against the African community. In the process of building this tribunal, our International Organizer Diop Olugbala physically served Mayor Nutter and Police Chief Charles Ramsey with the People's Subpoena to appear at the Tribunal during the December 10, 2008 Townhall Meeting Nutter organized at Ben Franklin High School. In fact, the following week the Coalition to Save Public Libraries organized a People's Injunction that was clearly influenced by InPDUM's December 13 Tribunal.

Subsequent to the Tribunal we returned to another Mayoral Townhall Meeting at Martin Luther King High School to announce the People's Verdict -- which came in the form of several demands including jailing police officers who murder African people. In that process Nutter had Diop Olugbala physically removed from the meeting for exercising our democratic right of free speech.

These attacks, compounded with Nutter's intensifying war on the African community in the form of at least four police murders of African citizens since January and more and more economic threats on the people, including the imposing of a fee for not picking up garbage, made it necessary for InPDUM and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement to begin holding bi-weekly People's Townhall Meetings. These meetings stand in contention with Nutter's Townhall meeting as a forum through which the people's concerns would truly be heard and as a strategy to address the concerns. These struggles have served to unite the City of Philadelphia for real social and economic justice under the leadership of the African working class.

These struggles have also greatly contributed to (if not being the primary reason for) Nutter's rescinding of his proposal for budget cuts on essential services. However, he continues to attempt to solve the economic crisis of the City's ruling elite at the expense of the people. His most recent ploy is to impose property and sales tax increases on the people. This is a form of economic warfare to which we all should be opposed. But more than that, we should be opposed to the spending of the people's resources on the police containment and imprisonment of the African community -- as Nutter has clearly expressed he plans to continue to do. While we can unite with the demand to save essential services and institutions like public libraries and fire fighters, we are adamantly opposed to the $1.1 billion currently being spent on police and the containment of the African community.

These same resources should be turned over to the African community in the form of genuine economic development -- jobs and businesses that promote the needs of the poor and oppressed African community. In the absence of such economic development, the basis for robberies, the drug economy, and other forms of "crime" that take place in the African community will continue.

Police and prisons are far from a solution. At best, they are a poor substitute for the economic development for which we are calling. More often than not police and prisons facilitate the sharp rate of economic extraction of the African community -- the basis of Philadelphia's economy. The real economic stimulus for the ruling elite of the City of Philadelphia comes from the sub-prime mortgage and subsequent foreclosures spreading throughout the African community like wildfire as well as the slave labor that Africans are forced to perform in the prisons.

The police play an instrumental role in facilitating this parasitic relationship with the African community here in the City. We never see the police arresting the corporate CEOs and crooked politicians who steal from the people. We never see advertisements for AIG and other bloodsucking entities ripped down by the police from the billboards along I-76 or the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mayor Michael Nutter is White Power in Black Face

The reality is that it is the white ruling class that is robbing the African community blind. Nutter is their hired hand and City Hall is the stick up gun! Nutter may be from West Philly and go to the same church as your cousin, but he represents a program that serves the interests of the white ruling class. From his stop and frisk program to the current war budget he imposes on our community, it is clear that he does not represent the African working class. Michael Nutter is white power in black face, not unlike John Street and Wilson Goode before him. In fact, it was Wilson Goode, the first negro sellout mayor of Philadelphia, who made it possible for the police to drop that C4 bomb on the African community. And today, Nutter is dropping an economic bomb on the community - in the form of $1.1 billion on police and prisons.

These neo-colonial forces are put in office by imperialism to validate the oppressive and parasitic relationship it has with the poor and oppressed African community. When we speak out in our own interests, they are used to attack us -- just as the African cops and Mayor Nutter attacked the City Hall 2. The State will do so even at the risk of contradicting the same so-called democratic virtues that they claim to represent. The entire balcony where InPDUM held up our signs was full of other community activists representing various sectors of the population, and all united in opposition to Nutter's war budget. When InPDUM stood up everyone stood up, and many held up signs as well.

However, only InPDUM organizers were attacked. This is very telling, and speaks to a basic assumption Nutter has that when the African working class experiences political isolation, no one will come to its defense. It also speaks volumes to the real significance of the African working class as a social force in this city. Clearly City Hall is determined to silence us by any means necessary. This should be cause for concern for all lovers of freedom and social justice in the City of Philadelphia.

Solution: International African Revolution!

For African people worldwide, this is another reason to unite in the struggle for our freedom. The reality is that we don't enjoy the right to free speech anywhere. And our right to free speech will only be won through a world wide struggle where African people are raising up the same demands moving towards the same goal. Moreover, we wouldn't be in Philadelphia fighting for the right to free speech if it weren't for an attack on Africa, in which process we have been robbed of our right to be a self governing self determined people. The struggle to defend the Philadelphia City Hall 2 must be seen as part of a global effort to unify the African working class all over the world to reclaim the freedom and self determination that we have all been robbed of!

To end the isolation of experienced by the African working class, InPDUM is mobilizing our membership and supporters from the U.S. and Canada to travel to Washington, D.C., on Friday through Sunday May 22-23, to attend the African Liberation Day conference organized by the African People's Socialist Party.

The slogan of this year's ALD is "One Africa -- One Nation: Separated By Colonial Slavery, Reunited By Revolutionary Resistance!" and it will also serve as the conference to build the North American region of the African Socialist International, the single revolutionary organization that will function as the general staff for the international African revolution necessary to liberate and unite Africa and African people worldwide under the leadership of the African working class.

Our first ASI regional conference was in October 2008 in Sierra Leone, West Africa with over 500 African organizations in attendance and we are soon to have an East African regional conference in April.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

InPDUM is prepared for struggle. We were built for struggle. We are calling on all freedom loving people to unite with the struggle to defend Comrade Diop and Shabaka. To help you can do the following:

Call in to Judge Frank Palumbo all day Monday, June 15, at 215-683-7044. In your call or message state:
I am calling to voice my complete disapproval of the attempt being made by the DA's office to charge Diop Olugbala, also known as Wali Rahman, of the felony charge of aggravated assault. I unite with demand for the immediate dropping of all charges of the Wali Rahman and Franklin Moses and that the police officers involved in their attack be immediately fired.
Attend the hearing on Tuesday, June 16 at the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center, Room 504 at 9:00am. We are calling on all the supporters to meet at 9:00AM in front of the CJC (13th and Filbert) to participate in the press conference.
Join the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement.
Make a financial contribution to the City Hall 2 Legal Defense Fund. Send checks and money orders made out to "InPDUM CH2" to:
InPDUM
1245 18th Ave South
St Petersburg, FL 33705

Or donate online.

For more information call: 215-459-7551 or email info@inpdum.org