49th parallel, Hutterites and Mumia

I was watching the Powell and Pressburger film 49th Parallel last week which made me think about Mumia. The film about Nazi's fleeing across Canada is propaganda but has its moments. One is when the Nazis meet a Hutterite community and one of their number throws off the fuhrer worship to join the Hutterites as a baker, he is killed by the other Nazis.

I was invited to visit the Anabaptist Hutterites in Robertsbridge, Sussex...they are close to Mumia, these Christians who live in common without private property and one of their number in Philly was at the time Mumia's spiritual advisor.

The campaign, for Mumia in 1995, in Britain, when he was close to being executed linked ecosocialists, black activists, the spartacists and the Hutterites.

To think that Mumia is still on death row and still writing.....

To think the Hutterites originated with Muntzer's peasant rebellion against the german princes in the 16th century...like Mumia, fiery exponents of religions socialism.

Muntzer ofcourse argued it is intolerable that '"all creatures have been made into property, the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth--all living things must also become free'" (Muntzer, Collected Works, p. 335; Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, p. 172).


Some people campaign for Mumia's freedom...I say read his words as well.

While I am not a Hutterite, the experience of meeting and eating with them was powerful.

Religion and ecosocialism, the debate will no doubt continue...