Thompson.qxd
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I’m sure that the cause that Fred Hampton Jr. fights for is well understood by the black community–where black babies die in their first year of life at twice the rate of white babies, black children go to schools that are more like prisons, police brutality is an everyday thing, the prisons are stuffed with black people living under inhumane conditions and forced into slave labor, and a black child is left to bleed to death outside a hospital emergency room while staff outside on a smoking break look on.
I am a white person living in Chicago. I became a member of the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, whose Chicago branch was led by Fred Hampton Jr. before he was imprisoned, because I’m sickened by the physical and economic violence carried out against African, Mexican, and Puerto Rican people by the system and by regular white people like the ones who beat 13-year-old Lenard Clark nearly to death.
I think that a leader like Fred Hampton Jr., who puts the needs of the community above his own, is needed here in Chicago. An effort is being made to file an appeal. Funds and legal expertise are needed. I hope that everyone who wants to take a principled stand for justice and freedom for all people, instead of one group at the expense of another, will lend support to the campaign to gain his release.
