Thousands at SF MLK Parade

In bone-chilling, foggy 48 degree weather, thousands marched in San Francisco on January 20, 2003 to celebrate the 74th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Among the participants were enthusastic supporters of Muma Abu-Jamal, an award-winning African-American journalist on Pennsylvania's death row for over 20 years, falsely accused of killing a cop who is still imprisoned even though the actual killer has confessed! For more on Mumia's case, see:
http://www.freemumia.org
http://www.j4mumia.org
http://www.mumia2000.org
http://www.freemumia.com
http://www.refuseandresist.org/mumia/index.html
http://www.rwor.org/s/mumia_e.htm

The Free Mumia contingent was joined by the Freedom Socialist Party/Radical Women and their enthusiastic bullhorn team which provided a wide variety of energetic chants to Free Mumia, Abolish the Death Penalty, Abolish the Prison-Industrial Complex, End Police Brutality, fight racism and support the peace movement.

The crowd was more energetic than in previous years and the most likely reason for that is the tremendous energy we all are receiving from, and hopefully giving to, the peace movement. Many of us had participated in the 200,000-strong San Francisco peace march of January 18, 2003, and brought that energy to the King Birthday Parade today.

Union representation included the longshore workers, ILWU; the Communication Workers of America and UNITE (uniform and laundry workers). UNITE is currently engaged in an organizing drive at Cintas. For more information on the struggle, see:
http://www.uniformjustice.org/
and
http://www.uniteunion.org/

The local crowd was joined by the Freedom Train that annually comes from the Peninsula to the train station at 3rd and Townsend to join the San Francisco Parade which marches up 4th street to Market, then on Market to the Civic Auditorium where the City of San Francisco sponsors a free official celebration with entertainment and speakers.

The participants were predominately African-American with a significant number of Asian-Americans, whites and others. The parade had a colorful, noisy final continent of Chinese lion-dancers.

In honor of Brother Martin's birthday, let us look to a black newspaper of San Francisco, San Francisco Bayview, which had an excellent editorial of 1/15/03 in support of the January 18, 2003 peace march by its editor and publisher, Willie Ratcliff. entitled "Stop the War at Home and Abroad" at
http://www.sfbayview.com/011503/saturdaymarch011503.shtml
Quotable quotes:
"The corporate money machine nullified the Black vote from Florida to San Francisco, allowing the kangaroo Supreme Court to put a junta in the White House."

"What do these American terrorists want? They want to grab the land and all its wealth. In Iraq, they want the land for its oil. In Hunters Point, they want our land for its invaluable views so they can build their mansions where public housing now stands, molding away."

"Whether at home or abroad, to grab the land and plunder the resources, they send in the armed forces to move the people out. They send in forces armed with weapons of mass destruction and terror to divide and conquer and kill."

"In San Francisco, the government raiders know how to grab Black people’s land and resources and drive Black people out of their homeland, because they did it in the Fillmore – destroying 5,000 Black homes and 200 Black businesses with bulldozers. The Redevelopment Agency even admitted, in writing, a few years ago that San Francisco’s official policy was to drive Black people out of the City. And it still is."

"On Third Street, the main artery of Bayview Hunters Point, the City used National Guard tanks to terrorize the people and quell an uprising against economic strangulation and police murder in 1966. Today on Third Street, the Redevelopment Agency is going door to door documenting blight to justify a new land grab. "

"Yet the little bit of blight they find is the result of redlining by banks and government agencies that deny Black people the ability to maintain and develop their own property."

The struggle continues.