Even as we view with disbelief the Military Bases of Pentagon assisted by NATO in every single continent ,with contingents of 48 troops stationed only in one country, Afghanistan; to remind ourselves of the political , social and cultural history of colonization and occupation which has ravaged the continent of the Americas among other continents, including of Africa, Australia and Asia, it is necessary to read what one of the most important political prisoners of conscience in the United States , Mumia Abu-Jamal has to say on the US holiday ” Thanksgiving” which commemorates the assistance Native Americans rendered to European settlers which sums up the history of the occupation of the Americas as seen from the perspective of the Native Americans which could reflect what the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, the Congo, Honduras among others,feel to-day, while demanding his release.
In the words of Mumia Abu Jamal, a political prisoner jailed for racist reasons in the United States of America, whose incarceration for several decades, despite proof of a racist Judge and Jury who is representative of the real situation of middle income and working classes of the African-American community and whom the President of the USA does not represent, Thanksgiving means in his word:
“To this day, I can hardly bear to think of that quintessentially American holiday – Thanksgiving .
Centuries later what can Thanksgiving Day mean to Natives Peoples…
Thank you for stealing our land? Thank you for wiping out our people?
Thank you for placing a remnant of our once great numbers on rural ghettoes called Reservations?
Thank you for abolishing most of our ancient traditions?
Thank you for poisoning what little Indian lands remain with Uranium.
Thank you for poisoning lands inhabited with Whites.
Thank you for letting Indians fight in American wars against our people .”
Even as citizens of the United States are waking up to the need for mass civil disobedience and non -cooperation against the militarization hemorrhaging their savings and social security with 25 % unemployment and even as the citizens of the NATO powers face economic insecurity and uncertainty of a kind that they have not faced in half a century, they must understand what the policies of militarization of their government have done to peoples throughout the world and now devouring the employment , saving , social security and well being of their own people.
Before the government of the United States requests for the release of political prisoners in other countries and seeks to pronounce itself on human rights of various societies, it is necessary for the United States to release Mumia Abu-Jamal among other political prisoners and for the Pentagon and NATO to vacate military bases destroying the Human Rights of the people of occupied countries and the rights of all those peoples where these bases are situated.
