PAKISTAN

Gagging social media

Editorial 

DAWN

Published July 6, 2024 

IT is hoped that better sense prevails and the prime minister turns down the Punjab government’s troubling suggestion calling for the gagging of social media apps during Muharram.

The provincial administration had earlier written to the interior ministry calling for a shutdown of various platforms — Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, X, etc — between Muharram 6 and 11 “to control hate … and to avoid sectarian violence”, citing the threat of “external forces” supposedly disseminating hate material.

Security concerns are absolutely valid during Muharram, which begins either tomorrow or on Monday, but mass shutdowns of the internet/social media are not the most advisable method of ensuring peace. This policy focuses more on the symptoms — hate material and misuse of social media — rather than the actual disease — the presence of violent hate groups that have been fanning the flames of communalism in society for decades.

The fact is that the proposed move can be used as a precedent by some elements within the state to permanently throttle free expression, and deny access to apps that have become part of life for millions of Pakistanis.

Shutting down apps can result in disrupting communication across the country, while businesses that depend on these platforms would face immense losses. Moreover, if the state starts deploying such unwise tactics, they can also be used, in future, to shut down apps when strikes, protests or rallies are called by parties or organisations that are not in the state’s good books. This has occurred in the past as social media apps have been shut down during PTI rallies post-May 9.

Instead of gagging social media, less intrusive and less draconian methods can be applied to maintain peace during sensitive periods, primarily through greater vigilance and monitoring. In this regard the Punjab government’s decision to have all majalis recorded and submitted to the relevant police station may help in monitoring controversial content, and prosecuting hatemongers of all persuasions. This will require considerable manpower as thousands of majalis are organised during the first 10 days of Muharram. But if Punjab’s rulers think they have the technology and manpower to pull off this feat, then they could help contain the spread of sectarian material. Since the police will have recordings of all speeches, any errant individuals can easily be traced and investigated.

The fact is that in most countries Muharram passes off without incident. But because significant chunks of society in Pakistan have been radicalised, and confessional differences exploited, things are different in this country. Shutting down the internet, phones and social media is not the way to ensure communal peace. Going after hatemongers and violent sectarian groups, as well as monitoring troublemakers from all confessional backgrounds, can be much more effective in keeping violence at bay.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2024

AI, Hollywood Strike & Ordinary Workers

Prabhat Patnaik | 26 Jun 2024

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Large-scale adoption of AI within the capitalist segment would generate massive unemployment, both in the metropolis and in the periphery.

The fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue. Much has been written about the various problems associated with the introduction of AI; but the one that concerns us here relates to the massive unemployment it would generate.

This problem, it must be noted, relates exclusively to the application of AI under capitalist conditions. But capitalism being the reality over much of the world, the threat of AI to the working people remains extremely serious. In any society that follows a work-sharing, product-sharing ethic, such as a socialist society, the introduction of AI that reduces human workload cannot be objected to on grounds of destroying employment, no matter what ethical and other objections one may have against it. But the modus operandi of a capitalist society is far removed from a work-sharing, product-sharing ethic.

The difference between capitalism and socialism in this respect can be illustrated with a simple example. Suppose with the help of AI, or any labour-saving innovation for that matter, a given output of 100 can be produced with half the labour force that was required earlier, by 50 workers in the new situation compared with 100 earlier. In a socialist society, each worker will work half the time that she or he was working earlier, but will get the same wage rate as earlier; the net effect of the labour-saving innovation would be to increase the amount of leisure that each worker enjoys while having the same access to goods and services that she or he was having earlier.

Alternatively, the entire workforce of 100 will work the same length of time as before but produce double the output, that is, have no greater leisure than before, but would get double the wage rate compared with earlier.

In a socialist society in other words, an innovation involving a halving of labour input per unit of output, would make the workers better off, either through having greater leisure even with the same access to goods and services, or increasing the access to goods and services for the same amount of effort as earlier.

In a capitalist society, however, any such labour-saving innovation would immediately entail a reduction in employment. In our example, 50 workers will be thrown out immediately in order to cut costs and raise profits through the introduction of the new process. And since the additional unemployment of 50 would increase the reserve army of labour, reducing workers’ bargaining strength, the wage rate would certainly not increase; if anything, it would also fall.

Under capitalism, therefore, the availability of a labour-saving innovation, makes workers worse off both by increasing unemployment and also by reducing real wages. An innovation that has the potential for reducing human drudgery and improving human happiness, which it actually does under socialism, ends up under capitalism making workers actually worse off. It is within the capitalist social arrangement that the introduction of AI will cause havoc for workers.

To argue in this manner would appear at first sight to subscribe to the erroneous argument of the Luddites, a group of textile workers in early 19th century Britain, who had gone around breaking machines because they believed that machines caused unemployment among workers.

But the Luddite argument was not wrong in seeing machinery as causing unemployment; the Luddites just did not see this phenomenon as arising because of capitalism. They mistook a social phenomenon as one caused by and inherent to technology; but they were not wrong in identifying the phenomenon, whatever their mistakes in identifying its causes. As a matter of fact, it is those economists who saw machinery as being beneficial for employment who were theoretically wrong.

The most prominent among these economists was David Ricardo. He argued that, assuming wages always remained at a subsistence level, machinery, displacing labour and causing additional unemployment immediately, would raise profit margins and hence the profit rate. Ricardo, a believer in Say’s Law that there could never be a deficiency of aggregate demand in a capitalist economy, then argued that since all wages were consumed and all unconsumed profits were saved and invested, an increase in the rate of profit would raise the rate of investment per unit of capital stock, that is, the rate of growth of capital stock, and hence the rate of growth of output and employment.

This means that while the introduction of machinery causes some unemployment immediately, it also raises the rate of growth of employment, so that after some time not only is the additional unemployment temporarily created, eliminated, but the time-profile of employment becomes greater than it would have been in the absence of the introduction of machinery. Machinery, it follows, no matter what temporary aggravation of unemployment it causes, causes higher employment in the long-run than what would have prevailed in its absence.  

To this day, Ricardo’s argument remains the main counter to trade unions’ claim that the introduction of machinery is inimical to employment. But his argument is wrong for two obvious reasons. The first is that it refers to a single shot of introduction of machinery; if the introduction of machinery (or of labour-saving innovations) is a continuous process, then the generation of transitional unemployment caused by each such introduction would also be a continuous process; the promised day when the time-profile of employment would be higher than what it was to start with, may not arrive within any meaningful time-horizon. Over any specific period, the actual employment profile would have been lower than it was before the continuous introduction of machinery.

The more important point, however, relates to the following. Capitalists invest when they expect the market to expand, not when the profit margin, and hence the profit rate, is higher because of a lower unit labour cost arising from labour-saving.

Now, consider the period when the machinery is introduced. Since employment, by Ricardo’s own admission, would fall immediately, with real wages fixed at the subsistence level, the wage bill and hence workers’ consumption, would fall compared with what it would have been otherwise. Capitalists consume a small proportion of their profits (in fact, for simplicity, let us assume that they save their entire profits). The total consumption in the economy, therefore, would have gone down in that period; and there is no earthly reason why investment should increase at all.

It follows, therefore, that aggregate demand and hence output would have fallen in that period. In such a case, the time-profile of investment, instead of being higher than earlier, as Ricardo had argued, would be lower. The time-profile of employment too would, therefore, be lower.

The old, workers’, argument that the introduction of machinery is harmful for employment, both in the short and in the long run, thus remains valid. Why is it then that we do not actually find a steady increase in unemployment in Europe owing to the introduction of machinery, as our argument against Ricardo would suggest? There are two obvious reasons for this: one is the massive emigration from Europe to the temperate regions of white settlement, where the migrants dispossessed the local inhabitants and took over their land. This kept the level of unemployment low in the European economies and wage rates higher than they would otherwise have been.

According to W Arthur Lewis, 50 million Europeans emigrated to Canada, the US, Australia. New Zealand and South Africa in the “long nineteenth century”, that is in the entire 19th century plus the period before the First World War.

The second reason why unemployment did not become acute in Europe is the incursion of European goods into pre-capitalist markets in the tropical colonies and semi-colonies, like India and China, where they displaced local craftsmen. This amounted in effect to an export of unemployment: the export of goods from Europe that caused “deindustrialisation” and hence unemployment in these pre-capitalist economies, was simultaneously the generation of employment within Europe.

These particular safety valves that imperialism provided to metropolitan capitalism, apart from being oppressive and hence obnoxious, are no longer even available to metropolitan capitalism, let alone to the capitalism in the periphery.

In fact, even State expenditure that, Keynes thought, could create demand for the capitalist segment, just as pre-capitalist markets had done earlier, and thereby boost domestic employment within the metropolis, no longer works under neoliberal capitalism, as is evident from its current protracted crisis.

Under these circumstances, large-scale adoption of AI within the capitalist segment would generate massive unemployment, both in the metropolis and in the periphery. It is not just the writers and voice artists, who have been vocal on the issue, that are faced with unemployment; ordinary workers, too, face dire prospects. It is important that workers’ struggles, raising suitable demands, get launched to prevent the realisation of these dire prospects.

Bengal: Thousands Join Left Parties’ Anti-Zionist Protest in Kolkata

Sandip Chakraborty | 27 Jun 2024

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Citing the genocide in Palestine, Left parties decried US backing for the “crime against humanity” being carried out by Israel.

Left parties hold huge rally in support of Palestine in Kolkata.

Kolkata: In solidarity with Palestine, tens of thousands of Left protesters flooded the streets in Kolkata’s Central Business District on June 26, moving toward the United States Information Centre (USIC) on Chowringhee Road. However, the rally was stopped by the Kolkata Police, after which the protesters squatted on the streets and began a sit-in demonstration against Zionist occupation.

Holding placards, festoons and hand cutouts, the vibrant rally saw determined protesters who sat on the streets for over two hours. 

The rally was addressed Left Front chairman Biman Basu, CPI(M) leaders Mohd Salim, Surjyakanta Mishra, RSP leader Manoj Bhattacharya, Forward Bloc leader Naren Chattopadhya among others. Left parties outside the Left front, such as CPI(ML) Liberation and SUCI (C) also joined the rally.

Addressing the protesters, Basu said that the anti-imperialist tradition of Kolkata was not folklore but a matter, from ‘Go Back McNamara’ slogans in the 1960s to the present times.

He recollected the traumatic assault by Israel in the Gaza strip that continues till today and has so far claimed over 50,000 lives, leaving more than 1 lakh people permanently injured.

“This crime against humanity is being supported by the United States, which is backing this genocide in the Gaza Strip. Women and children are particularly being killed by the occupying forces and this war on Gaza is a blot on humanity,” he added.

Arindam Mukherjee, a peace activist, told NewsClick: "The war against humanity is being fought in the Gaza Strip, how can we, as peace-loving Indians, stay aloof from that?"

 

He said that the state of Israel reflects the aspirations of imperialism and Zionism and was carrying out mass genocide.

“In the present times, more and more European powers are finding it difficult to support Zionist Israel. There is not a single European country where there has been not a peace march in support of the Palestinian people. Peace loving people from the whole world are coming on the streets to decry the blatant effort to erase Palestinian people from their homelands," said Mukherjee.

The peace activist advocated an “intermingling of demands of the working class, environmental demands and demands against the corporate loots to be incorporated within the ambit of the peace movement of the country.”

Mukherjee highlighted that wars were often the result of a conspiracy by certain groups who seek economic and political gains. “These groups include imperialists, big corporations and some mainstream media outlets who promote war efforts and create war hysteria….Such propaganda can influence the common people and lead to devastating consequences, like the ongoing conflict in Palestine where the people's right to self-govern has been curbed by the war waged by Israel,” he added. He called for peace and understanding among nations.

CPI(M) Condemns ‘Vicious Communal’ Assaults on Muslims Post Election Results

Newsclick Report | 27 Jun 2024

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The Left party called upon party units for protests, vigilance against “unscrupulous manoeuvres by BJP and other communal outfits” that suffered a setback in the recent elections.

New Delhi: The CPI(M) has strongly condemned the spate of “vicious communal” attacks on Muslims in various parts of the country after the election results on June 4.

In a press statement, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has called upon calls upon all its units to remain vigilant against such “unscrupulous manoeuvres by the BJP and other communal outfits.”

“Such sharpening of communal assaults following the setbacks suffered by the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections highlight the fact that the BJP and the Hindutva communal forces will intensify their attempts at polarization with a renewed vengeance,” read the statement.

Listing out the spate of such attacks on Muslims in Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Telangana etc, the Left party also called upon all its units to organise protest actions immediately against the “vicious attempts at vitiating the atmosphere and seeking to divert the attention of the people.”

 

Read the full statement below:

 

Press Statement

 

Strongly Condemn Vicious Communal Assault on Muslims

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemns the spate of attacks against members of the Muslim community in various parts of the country in the period since the election results were announced.

In Chhattisgarh's capital Raipur, three Muslim men transporting bullocks were branded as cow-smugglers and killed by so-called cow-vigilantes. In Aligarh, a Muslim man was beaten to death on allegations of theft.

In Mandala, Madhya Pradesh, eleven houses of Muslims were demolished within 24 hours after alleged reports of "beef" being recovered from their refrigerators.

In Lucknow's Akbarnagar, a predominantly Muslim area, homes of over a thousand families were bulldozed for the construction of the river front.

People belonging to the Hindu community in the neighbourhood have come out in open protest against the allotment of a flat to a Muslim woman in in a low-income group housing complex under the Chief Minister's Housing Scheme in Gujarat's Vadodara.

In Himachal Pradesh's Nahan, the shop of a Muslim was looted and vandalised after allegations that he had sacrificed a cow during Eid-al-Adha. A case has also been registered against him for the alleged cow slaughter. All the other 16 Muslim shop-owners in the town have been forced to flee following the incident.

In Delhi's Sangam Vihar there are reports of residents fleeing the area after provocative speeches made by members of Hindutva outfits, following the recovery of a cow carcass near a place of worship.

Such sharpening of communal assaults following the setbacks suffered by the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections highlight the fact that the BJP and the Hindutva communal forces will intensify their attempts at polarization with a renewed vengeance.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) calls upon all its units to remain vigilant against such unscrupulous manoeuvres by the BJP and other communal outfits. Party units throughout the country should organize protest actions immediately against the vicious attempts at vitiating the atmosphere and seeking to divert the attention of the people.

1 Worker Dies Every Week, In India Yet Media Normalise Sewer Deaths

Sheeva Dubey | 26 Jun 2024

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The collective voice of the manual scavenging community, such as protests, got coverage by only nine reports out of 207 sampled.

In May this year, 11 sewer deaths were reported in both public and private spaces, cleaning septic tanks, sewer lines, and even working inside under construction sewer lines. Such reports on sewer deaths keep appearing in the news media regularly. The courts keep reprimanding the government and the government keeps promising action. Yet, the deaths continue and have now started getting treated as day-to-day affairs across these institutions.

This writer analysed news reports on sewer deaths in the past one year for patterns and gaps in the way the issue was being reported. The sample includes 207 English news reports, from May 23, 2023 to May 25, 2024, in Indian newspapers and news websites.

A total of 67 deaths have been reported in the news media in the given span of one year, averaging to more than one death every week. Yet, hardly any of the sampled newspapers or websites is treating sewer deaths as a burning issue needing immediate attention and solution.

Comprehensive critical analysis of the situation and persistent discussion in the news for stopping sewer deaths are mostly missing. As much as 69% coverage was given to the issue by print media while online news websites gave the remaining 31% coverage. However, more coverage by a publication or portal does not mean good quality reporting which can drive change.

Only when the deaths happen the news media find it worthy to cover the issue, that too briefly. Majority of the reports that came on sewer deaths in the past one year were only to report new sewer deaths. A few reports also came when multiple sewer deaths happened in a short period of time, and some are follow-ups on sewer death cases such as reporting when notices were issued, cases filed, arrests made, or compensations paid.

In total, individual cases of sewer deaths trigger about 47% of the reports. Another major trigger for about 38% reports on the topic was when sewer deaths got discussed in Parliament, ministers’ responses, courtrooms, verdicts, and government reports and announcements, or some government authority took some action such as municipal corporations issuing guidelines or buying robots.

The collective expressions of the manual scavenging community, such as their protests, got coverage by only nine reports out of 207 sampled. The pattern shows that most of the time, news media need a “trigger event” to be reminded that the issue of sewer deaths exists in this country. Only 8% reports discussed sewer death without any immediate trigger event. And only seven reports included the narratives of the people still engaged in manual scavenging. With such limited reporting, the discourse on manual scavenging remains highly dominated by the government.

Voiceless Victims or Vocal Citizens?

In May 2023, it had been more than a year of Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) protesting sewer deaths and referring to sewer victims as “citizens”. In this remarkable protest, where manual scavengers and their families came out themselves and raised their voices to demand justice, these deaths were referred to as “murders” and the community collectively asked the government and society - “Stop Killing Us,” which was also the title of their campaign.

The shared sense of injustice because of denial of their fundamental right to life was so strong that the community demanded an apology from the Prime Minister for the ongoing sewer deaths. None but one story appeared in the mainstream newspaper The Times of India and two on news websites, The Mooknayak and NewsClick. And not surprisingly, no apology came from the Prime Minister for sewer deaths happening across the country every other day.

 The community most affected by sewer deaths has very less say in the way it is being framed and discussed in the mainstream. About 72% of the share of all the people or institutions cited or quoted was of government authorities or experts. Also, the quotes of activists were used more often than that of actual manual scavengers.

The workers’ voices, expressing their concerns, opinions and demands, were starkly missing in most of the sampled reports. Among the manual scavenging community, the families of the victims of sewer death were quoted in 20 reports, while the workers still engaged in the practice were quoted in only seven reports.

In the absence of their narratives in the mainstream discourse on the topic, it is no wonder that the policies and schemes designed to curb manual scavenging and sewer deaths and to rehabilitate the community have failed and would continue to do so.

The recognition comes only in death. The names of manual scavengers come up only when sewer deaths are to be reported. And quickly after, they become part of the macro statistics on sewer deaths in India. Manual scavengers, thus, remain dehumanised even in news reports about them, their narratives of struggles for survival dying unheard along with them. While the community has a voice, it is being treated as mute by the news media, adding to the injustice that it is already facing.

Dalit Deaths, by Accident or by Design?

The focus in these news reports was mostly on reporting deaths and cases in which compensations were paid. However, these are not accidental deaths. Sewer deaths in India have been by now widely discussed and critiqued in courtrooms, Parliament, and even in news media.

Those hiring workers for manual cleaning of sewer lines or septic tanks, and even those availing these contracts are likely to be well aware of the fatal risk. Yet, only 9% of the studied news reports directly or indirectly raised questions about the number of convictions in these death cases.

Convictions didn’t get mentioned much even in reports on the judicial discussions on the matter. Most of the judges were quoted mainly for rebuking the government for non-implementation of safety measures or non-payment of compensations, but not much on the poor rate of convictions. Among the 38 reports on judicial proceedings, only eight reports mention judges commenting on the poor rate of convictions, not invoking the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and not booking senior government officials in the cases of sewer deaths. The news that the Madras High Court clearly asked to file FIR against Commissioners of Corporations, Municipalities and Panchayat Unions in case of any sewer death got covered by only four news reports among these.

Additionally, majority of the news reports do not emphasise on the people that were behind these deaths. Among the mere 28 reports that have named the accused, most have named small-level people, such as small-scale contractors that are often themselves sanitation workers, supervisors, organisation’s staff members, or poor house owners.

Even when companies get named, their small-level employees get targeted and booked, but not the leadership. Only one report mentioned the Director of a company being booked and another named a Ward Councillor being booked after the intervention of a political leader. This goes on while the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013 holds the principal employer responsible in cases of manual scavenging, hazardous cleaning, and sewer death.

Based on this law, various high courts and the Supreme Court have also asked top-level officials to be booked in cases of sewer death, as mentioned earlier. The result of this lapse in reporting is a gross depoliticisation of the issue. The media attention is instead on keeping an account of the number of deaths and compensation settlements. While strict convictions of those in decision-making positions could have stopped this evil practice long back, the discourse keeps the society distracted in the mundane. The routine of sewer deaths has thus been tacitly accepted, even regularised, normalised or rather institutionalised with the help of such unquestioning news media discourse.

Not more than 13 reports (6.3%) engaged in deeper comprehensive critical analyses of sewer deaths. Seven among these are from online portals, including one by BBC, and two reports each by Newslaundry, The Mooknayak, and The News Minute. The remaining six are done in print media, which includes three detailed reports by The New Indian Express, and one each by Deccan Herald, The Indian Express, and The Times of India.

Most of these reports include quotations and data from multiple sources, and the narratives of manual scavengers are given substantial attention. While 11 of these 13 reports connected the issue of sewer death with the caste system, only seven reports pointed out the exploitative nature of neoliberal contractual practices.

Let us first look at the relevance of caste here. The data tells that the caste system is still very much alive in this country. To mention a few sectors, we see mostly Brahmins working in the occupations of knowledge creation and dissemination, most Banias still dominating the business sector, and most Dalits still engaged in caste-prescribed occupations.

In one of my previous studies with sanitation workers, it was found that as high as 95% sanitation workers were from Dalit communities. Government data says that 97.25% of the identified manual scavengers are from Scheduled Castes. It is thus their birth in manual scavenging communities which brings them closer to dying a sewer death- vulnerable by birth.

What adds to this vulnerability over the lifetime of manual scavengers is their till-date exclusion from opportunities for good education, employment, networking, and gaining political power, rendering them further available for and dependent on caste-prescribed exploitative “livelihoods”.

The role of caste in sewer death is thus foundational. And yet, only 12% of the studied news reports directly or indirectly identified the deceased workers as Dalits. Most reports managed to avoid referring to caste like this report by The Times of India did even while mentioning the Supreme Court quoting Ambedkar, or this report by the same publication covering the radical Ambedkarite SKA protests. A Scroll report uncritically mentioned the Madhya Pradesh High Court referring to manual scavengers to be from “economically weaker sections of society.”

When Class Capitalises on Caste

India, as a modern state claiming remarkable progress in terms of development and equal opportunities for all should also be able to address the caste-based disabilities imposed on Dalits. However, instead of securing the lives of manual scavengers through their inclusion in formal and accountable employment, the stories of sewer deaths tell a trend of increasing informalisation, lack of accountability, and exploitation of workers which ultimately kills them.

A critical look at India’s neoliberal economic approach is thus needed. The contract system is a child of this approach which has been a key reason for depriving manual scavengers of safety measures and income security. The contractors determine whether workers will be offered good opportunities, wages, and the needed safety measures. The contract system in the sanitation sector shamelessly capitalises on Dalit workers’ dependence on sanitation jobs for the sake of their survival. Dipali Mathur, an international scholar on environmental humanities, would explain this as an example of “caste in class,” where the caste system has been cleverly adopted and used for further profit by the modern class system.

A pertinent question is why for the most part the Indian news media are silent on these larger root causes? Use of any statistics in a news report does make it appear more serious and objective, but is such coverage really fair to manual scavengers? And most importantly, is this kind of journalism challenging the status quo and driving any change?

A recent Oxfam report revealed that the leadership of India’s English news media is highly dominated by privileged caste people. The report also points out that caste-related issues rarely get any coverage on these media portals then. In keeping their reporting on sewer deaths inefficient, the news media thus participate in the processes of maintaining caste and class hierarchies.

Applying the world-renowned Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to this scenario, this can be seen as a classic example of Brahminical bourgeoisie’s propaganda at play, where the system is such that seemingly well-intentioned news is an outcome of a filtering process which aligns it with the propaganda of maintaining the caste status quo. Alternative narratives are rendered unimaginable. Shreyas Sreenath, assistant professor of anthropology at Bowdoin College in the US, identifies this in his recent paper as ‘Brahminical necropolitics’, which has continued the savage caste-based violence in a more civilised manner by using the overburdened urban sewerage as an alibi.

(Special thanks to Swapnil Jogi for his critical feedback on the article)

The writer is Faculty, FLAME University, Pune, Maharashtra. The views are personal.

 

The People’s Struggle will Free Leonard Peltier

Peoples Dispatch | 26 Jun 2024

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Peoples Dispatch speaks to Gloria La Riva, who has spent decades in the movement to free the longest-held political prisoner in the United States.

Photo: Jeffry Scott

Earlier this month, Leonard Peltier, world-renowned Indigenous freedom fighter and the longest-held political prisoner in the United States, had his first parole hearing in over a decade. 

The movement to free Peltier now awaits the decision resulting from that hearing, on whether or not Peltier will receive parole and be able to go home after almost half a century behind bars.

For more perspective on Peltier’s case, Peoples Dispatch spoke to Gloria La Riva, who for decades has been a part of Peltier’s struggle. In 2020, La Riva ran for President of the United States with Peltier as Vice President, under the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Due to health reasons, Peltier later had to withdraw from the ticket in August of 2020. La Riva herself has been an integral part of the struggle for freedom for political prisoners, as well as the struggle to fight for socialism in the United States.

“Ultimately, it will take a people’s struggle to free [Leonard]. It’s been a people’s struggle for all these years,” she told Peoples Dispatch.

Read the full interview below:

Peoples Dispatch: How long have you been involved in the struggle to free Leonard Peltier? What led you into that struggle?

Gloria La Riva: I’ve been involved in supporting Leonard in different actions over the years, beginning in 1985, when I was involved in a national tour demanding the freedom of Leonard Peltier and Nelson Mandela.

In 1985, Nelson Mandela was isolated in a prison in South Africa, and most people did not know who he was in the US. Neither did they know who Leonard Peltier was. We held a national tour to garner support for both men. 

Gloria La Riva with Leonard Peltier (Photo via Liberation News)

PD: Leonard’s first parole hearing in over a decade was recently. What can we expect to come out of this latest hearing? 

GLR: Leonard has gone through several parole hearings over the years. A big block in being able to be considered for parole generally in US prison is that you have to confess to the crime and express regret for having committed it.

Leonard Peltier didn’t commit the crime. He didn’t kill the FBI agents and therefore he’s wrongly convicted. So he’s not going to plead guilty to something he didn’t do. 

Regarding his appeal that took place last Monday, you would have to conclude that it was a setup against him. There were four witnesses who were prepared to speak on his behalf. The parole board reduced it to one. They only allowed one of his several attorneys to speak, but the FBI brought several family members of the two FBI agents who were killed, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, to speak.

What those family members said was basically, Leonard should never get out of prison. He needs to die in prison. That has heavy weight in a parole board, when the FBI is organizing it. 

And so we’re waiting. July 11 is the deadline when he’s supposed to get a decision by the parole board. 

PD: Can you talk more about the FBI’s internal organizing against Leonard, in order to keep him behind bars? 

GLR: The FBI is notorious, especially as it was shaped under J. Edgar Hoover, for carrying out a war against the Black Panthers, against the American Indian Movement and even against Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. 

The FBI was intent on destroying the popular movements of the United States for social and economic justice. This holds true for AIM.

Before Clinton finished his presidency, during the time when presidents typically consider pardons or clemency for people in prison. Clinton openly stated that he was looking at Leonard Peltier’s case, and the FBI mobilized a protest of 500 agents, who had their weapons and signs demanding that Leonard not be freed.

In addition, they organized a petition. Up to 8,000 FBI agents, current and former, had signed a petition demanding no clemency for Leonard. That’s an enormous threat, and Clinton succumbed to it. I wrote extensively on the FBI’s role in keeping Leonard behind bars last year for Liberation News.

Bush also refused to pardon him, as did Barack Obama, and as did Trump. As you can imagine, every four years when he’s waiting for the last moments until midnight to see if he’s going to get freed, what a torture it is for Leonard. It’s been so disappointing for him every time. 

PD: Can you speak more to Leonard’s health, and how that is playing into the movement for his release right now?

GLR: Leonard is going to be 80 years old on September 12 this year, and has been in prison for almost 50 years. Prison always has elements that for any average person would be extremely detrimental. Leonard is confined in a small cell, most of the time being on lockdown, where he can’t even walk properly and have circulation and sunshine and proper food.

Imagine a man, 80 years old, in a cell with a roommate. He has a cellmate, someone his age. He should have his own cell. And he’s in a small eight by ten cell, bunk bed, with another man. That is ridiculous. They can’t even both walk on their cell floor together. One has to be in the bed while the other walks. 

And like I said, most of the time he’s on lockdown. Coleman Penitentiary has been virtually on total lockdown for several years since COVID started. And what this does is, when they end the lockdown, it just creates more violence, because the men are penned up, and whatever unresolved issue happens has still been festering, and the guards don’t promote peace.

He has other issues as well. He suffered lockjaw as a child. He’s basically blind in one eye. He has untreated kidney disease. The doctors at the prison have told him they cannot treat him, he needs special treatment, which they can’t provide at the prison.

He has an aortic aneurysm in his abdomen. He has diabetes. He has high blood pressure. Any one of these comorbidities would be enough to put someone in critical condition, but he has several. 

He got COVID in prison in January of 2022, and they didn’t give him any treatment. They threw him into isolation in a cell. He didn’t have water for the longest time. They didn’t even give him ibuprofen for a headache. And yet he came out after 15 days, and he survived it.

He has a strong constitution, but he suffers a lot. The last time I saw him a couple of months ago at Coleman [Penitentiary], he said, my back is killing me. It hurts me all the time. What’s the cause of it? Who knows? He doesn’t get proper treatment. 

But this is true for prisoners in general. It’s not unique to Leonard. And Leonard is unjustly in prison. He should be out, and he should be getting care while he’s in. He has asked several times, his lawyers have appealed for him to get transferred to a prison closer to his family in South Dakota or in Minnesota, where he can get visits, but where he can also be treated, whether at Mayo Clinic, or at another hospital that can treat him properly. 

The last time that he was talking to his supporters and writing to us, he said, I’m going blind, I can’t see, and I need to see a special doctor. 

And then in another moment, a couple of days later, he said that a prison official had come in and said, we’re going to get you the care. But he never did. He never got it.

I imagine anybody who thinks about Leonard wonders how does someone survive this? How do you live through this for 49 years? That’s what the US government does to political prisoners. Whether it’s Mumia Abu-Jamal, or Mutulu Shakur, or Sundiata Acoli, who spend 40, 50 years in prison. It’s called political vengeance. It’s telling them, you will pay a price for your political activism. 

It’s hard to keep up the knowledge in the population of his case because the media does a very good job of hiding the existence of political prisoners in US prisons. 

When Leonard got COVID, we held an emergency press conference. A number of us flew to Tampa near his prison, and we had a press conference there. NBC did a major story on him, and other media as well. ABC, the New York Times has written about him. But it’s not enough coverage. There has to be far more light shed on his case. 

PD: In today’s context of the global movement for Palestinian liberation, how does the movement for Leonard’s release relate to the struggle in Palestine?

GLR: There are definite links between the Indigenous struggle in the United States and the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Both peoples had their lands stolen outright by settler colonialism, and by denying their very existence. The world now knows of the project of trying to wipe out the existence of the Palestinian people, denying their land, expelling them, which goes on today and in an actual attempt at extermination. It’s the same thing that the Native people of the US went through, the outright extermination of many tribal peoples from California, to the Plains, all the way to the Eastern seaboard.

When Leonard Peltier was a child, in the early 1950s, the Eisenhower administration tried to engage in a policy of what they called “termination”. It was the idea of expelling Native people off their lands, off of what were reservations and forcing them into the cities, ostensibly to have employment, but really in order to steal the land again, the little land that remains.

Leonard’s people were also targeted along with the Menominee people. As a child, he told me that he would go to meetings with his father and his uncles where his people fought and successfully stopped the termination. That policy was ended by the struggle of Native people across the country. But still, they were forced at one point to move to the cities. And it’s why at one point in his life he ended up in Seattle.

PD: How can people support the movement to free Leonard Peltier?

GLR: Leonard Peltier is embraced by many Indigenous nations of the United States. The National Congress of American Indians has passed resolutions on his behalf, calling for his freedom. The tribal chief of Pine Ridge is calling for his freedom and so many others.

We’re calling on people to write letters to Leonard Peltier, to sign petitions on his behalf, to contact NDN Collective, which is a non-government entity that has taken up his cause. They actually bought him a house, on his reservation in North Dakota, where he’s hoping to come home, to retire, to be with his family, to be with his people.

There’s a lot people can do to add their grain of sand before July 11. As Leonard himself said, if he’s denied parole, then the lawyers will appeal the decision. But ultimately, it will take a people’s struggle to free him. It’s been a people’s struggle for all these years. 

I have visited Leonard several times. And it’s truly an experience. He is very humble, very kind hearted, and very progressive. He’s always thinking about other causes and issues. He talks about his family. 

One time he told me about his great grandchild who was four years old at the time, she’s nine years old now. And he was talking about how she did a backflip for him in the prison visiting room. He was so thrilled. The last time I saw him, he talked about how she’s so very smart. Her teachers have told her mother that she really needs to be in a special school because she needs more than just a regular education. She’s a brilliant child. But there’s no money for them. Leonard wants to get out so he can help his grandkids and his great grandchildren. He says, “I need to help my people.” That’s his dream.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

FREE PELTIER!