Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Decent post.
The problem with all of this is its completely subjective nature. A definition of "political prisoner" by The Anarchist Black Cross Federation, is as valueless as ISIS' definition of themselves as God's representatives. Anyone who's not part of your interest group will simply shrug and call bullshit. The ABCF definition is further confounded by its reliance on terms such as 'legitimate struggle' and 'illegal government policies', which themselves are thoroughly contentious. It's not a definition, it's a political statement.
It doesn't exactly trip off the tongue but it's better than political prisoner. I'll give you that. You also have to consider what you're trying to achieve by categorising Mangione as such. The intent behind his action is going to be key in his defence. When you say "actions consciously undertaken to resist exploitation", what does that mean? Is that resistance of exploitation an attempt to scare business leaders into better behaviour, or simply an attempt to draw attention to unfair industry practices? For us, discussing it on the internet the difference may seem trivial but to Luigi Mangione, it's the difference between first and second degree murder.
Regarding the collection, even if we accept that the organisers are genuine about assisting LM (and that's probably the case), the rest of the post you quoted still stands. Anyone contributing still has to have faith in D4Legal and their idea of what political prisoners are, bearing in mind that they are raising money for someone who gunned-down a man in the street.
There's not much of interest in the videos from the collection organiser. He's just saying what you'd expect him to say, and that every American deserves a defence, which nobody has denied. More interesting is the statement in the second video that LM's lawyers have said they won't accept the money and the piece in the second half of the second vid by the former defence attorney when asked about his possible defence strategy. It's notable that the politicised element is absent and she only talks about running an insanity defence. There aren't many other options for them. The other common defence against murder is self defence, which in this case would be preposterous.
Shooting a CEO dead because he's a scumbag who runs a shitty unfair business is NOT a legally acceptable defence to murder. You will not hear that as mitigation from the defence team in court, although they might cite it as something that affected LM's state of mind as part of a mental illness defence. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.
I think this trial will be a lot shorter than many seem to think. Whilst LM's action may generate discussion about the healthcare industry outside of the courtroom, the legal case is pretty clear. Unless a diminished responsibility defence is successful, it won't take a jury long to figure out that he's a murderer, and he's going to get a life sentence.
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