This thread has included a lot of heated exchange, but not much principle. In a campaign to free a prisoner, participants have no legitimate right to demand that the campaign be democratic. Mumia's life is at stake, not yours. How do you gain the right to decide strategy for a campaign whose outcome will determine not your life or death, but his? Only he has the right to determine the line and leadership of the campaign to free him. If you disagree, you can either keep your disagreement to yourself, or find another activity. A hallmark of Trotskyist and Maoist sectarianism during the 1970s was their attempts to impose "democratically" their own slogans and leaders on political prisoners' cases as a condition of support. To their great credit, during the 1970s when dozens of such struggles were waged successfully, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (formerly the Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners) and the Workers World Party did not place such demands on the prisoners who needed support.
Ken Lawrence