An Appeal to the International Community

from the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP)

to  Raise their Voice against State repression in Lalgarh, West Bengal, India

Friends,

A collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples' movements in India by providing informationand analysis (www.sanhati. com) have taken the initiative in circulating a statement against the Indian government's proposed military offensive against alleged Maoist rebels.

Oct. 13—In massive national protests, tens of thousands of campesinos, union workers, students and Indigenous people blocked roads and bridges on Oct. 12—El Día de la Raza—effectively paralyzing many parts of the country including this capital city of 3 million.

From the official beginning of the current economic crisis in December 2007 to the present, the number of unemployed workers has risen roughly from 7 to 15 million members of the US labor force. But there is no government program directly to hire these millions of the unemployed. The Bush and Obama administrations quickly and boldly addressed the crisis by socializing a major part of the credit system, replacing or guaranteeing private debts with a ballooning US government debt. While aggressively becoming the lender or guarantor of last resort in many credit markets, the federal government has been inactive about unemployment in the labor market. The private sector provides ever fewer jobs, yet the government refuses to become the employer of last resort.