Mumia ' s Kolumnen (Archiv)

A Matter of the Mosque
[col. writ. 8/22/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

In Manhattan, the controversy over the placement of a mosque (or Islamic house of worship) just a few mere blocks from what is now known as 'Ground Zero' -- the site of the New York plane strikes on 9/11, rages on.

Sides have been assembled, and arguments have been hurled like mental Molotov cocktails on both sides of the fray.

The argument, no matter how resolved, shows us how empty is the Constitution, which has an express provision protecting free religious practice.

What an argument for those who claim fealty to the Constitution!

For a right that can't be practiced is no right at all.

One is reminded of how the Constitution 'protected' the rights of Blacks after the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were passed from 1865 to 1870. It looked fine on paper, but over a hundred years later they had no reality in the lives of millions of Blacks, who couldn't vote, couldn't sit on juries, serve in public office, or who lived in segregated housing.

The 'rights' existed on paper, but such rights being practiced offended the sensibilities of southern whites.

Sound familiar?

Americans treat the actual document (the Constitution) as Holy Writ, papers protected from the ravages of time and temperature, and held behind sophisticated security systems.

As for what is says: not so much.

--(c) '10 maj


 

From 'Shock & Awe' - to 'Aw, Shucks!'
[col. writ. 8/19/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal


With the withdrawal of some 50,000 U.S. troops from Iraq after nearly 7 1/2 years of carnage, mass destruction and death, we see that even powerful empires have limits.

The withdrawal of the world's last superpower from a nation shattered into pieces, and riven by ethnic and religious enmity, is in sharp contrast to the (quite literally) bombastic entry of the U.S. former U.S. President George W. Bush famously boasted of America's capacity to "Shock and Awe" both Iraq and the region with the world's most destructive forces.

Seven and a half years later, after years of deadly insurgency and crushing internecine warfare that pushed Iraq to the very brink of civil war, which killed thousands of U.S. soldiers, an uncounted number of Iraqis, and caused the flight of millions of Iraqis to enter the unenviable life of refugees, the war showed how an empire can come in like a lion, but leave like a lamb.

Iraq is a nation in shambles, its infrastructure is toast. Its politicians are little more than western tools, with a few revealing a feel for the breadth and scope of the nation.

Electricity, vital to a modern state, averages about 4 hours a day.

Its very existence, made possible by the U.S. invasion, changes the regions' geopolitical balance, but not the way Americans intended. The invasion led to the rise of a Shi'a state, in a sea of Sunnis, and thus it naturally buttresses Iran, a predominantly Shi'a state.

Thus, Shi'a strength and influence is augmented.

As Britain showed in India, and the USSR showed in Afghanistan, America is now showing in Iraq; empires, like people, can get tired.

--(c) '10 maj


The Passing of a Legend: Abbey Lincoln
[col. writ. 8/15/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal


In the long chain of musical creativity that characterizes Black American music (and increasingly, American music), jazz played a pivotal role.


Although it is now the stuff of college radio, and concerts for the well heeled, middle class intelligentsia, there was a time when it was a radical, and indeed, a revolutionary music, carrying within it the seeds of rebellion and protest.


Among the artists who personified these attributes were the drummer and composer, Max Roach (1924 -2007) and his beautiful, talented wife, jazz singer, Abbey Lincoln.


The power of their performance can be seen in the radicalization of Black revolutionary nationalist, Muhammad Ahmed (fka) Max Stanford, Jr.) who, in his work, We will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations: 1960-1975),explains the potential political impacts of the works of Roach, Lincoln and other jazz artists in the late '50's:


First was going to see Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln present their "Freedom Now" suite at the national convention of the NAACP.....I had been raised on Jazz and had done my homework with Eddie Collier while listening to John Coltrane's Giant Steps.... But this was the first time I had heard "Message music" so direct for my generation. The "Freedom Now" suite immediately raised my political/cultural consciousness {p.xxvi}


Noted musicologist, Dr. F. Ricky Vincent has credited Roach and Lincoln as being among the forerunners of the 'Funk' movement in jazz and later Black popular music; the 'funk' being the realness, earthiness and Africanity that fueled dozens of groups from James Brown to Parliament Funkadelic, and beyond.


Although jazz is a relatively small slice of CD sales these days (2% according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) FOR 2006), it sells more than classical, but less than children's music for the same period; it has had a powerful and outsized impact on music, politics and culture.


Abbey Lincoln, with her moving and memorable contralto, certainly played a leading role in that march, and she will be remembered.


Lincoln was 80 years old.


(c) '10 maj


Marilyn Buck: Presente!
[col. writ. 8/14/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

 

For nearly 30 long, tortuous years, Marilyn Buck was a political prisoner of the state, a captive in the federal prison system for her role in the liberation of former Black Panther, Assata Shakur.

She wrote gripping lines of radical poetry, often about the lives and plights of her fellow imprisoned women, as well as of prisoners who were active in the Black Freedom and Nationalist movements.

For example, back in 2000 she wrote "Black August", an excerpt of which follows:


Would you hang on a cliff's edge

Sword-sharp, slashing fingers

While jackboot screws stomp heels

on flesh peeled bones

and laugh

"Let go! die, damn you,die!"

could you hold on 20 years, 30 years?


20 years, 30 years and more

brave Black brothers buried

in US concentration camps

they hang on

Black light shining in torture

chambers

Ruchell, Yogi, Sundiata, Sekou

Warren, Chip, Seth, Herman, Jalil

and more and more they resist:

Black August....


Marilyn wrote that poem in 2000.


She was released in July 2010, and recently passed away from the ravages of cancer.

Marilyn Buck was imprisoned so long because of her support of the Black Liberation Movement, which made her a traitor, of sorts, to the White Nation. Like John Brown, she fought to free the unfree.


Her spirit of resistance never left her.


Marilyn was 62.


--(c) '10 maj


 

Wikileaks and the

Imperial Press

[col. writ. 8/1/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal


The release of some 70,000 + files from the Afghanistan War has been treated by most corporate media as, at best, a minor irritant, and worst, an act of treason.

The instincts expressed by these outlets betrays the same mind set that whipped the nation to war in the aftermath of 9/11. Media as servant of presidential power. Media as servant of the defense industries - and Empire.

Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, has been lashed for not caring sufficiently for U.S. soldiers or secret Afghanistan informants.

His other offense? Counting the deaths of Afghan civilians killed by U.S. troops. For most of the media, that's a no-no.

This is what the Imperial media sounds like.

As it stands, American corporate media is fast becoming a vanishing breed, for less and less people watch TV news, or read newspapers. Furthermore, young people are leading the trend. According to some reports, the average U.S. newspaper loses at least 10% of its readership every year.

While technology undoubtedly plays some role in this process, the lack of trust must also be a factor.

Their flag-waving, martial music and lies led the nation into disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When an outfit like Wikileaks comes along, with raw files from the battlefield, the corporate media seems superfluous.

And now, like underfed pit bulls, they attack Wikileaks for not playing their imperial game.

They are barking, but Wikileaks is biting.

--(c) '10 maj
===============


Bro. Charles

(1951-2010)
[col. writ. 7/25/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

His name was Ali Shabazz, but most people called him Bro. Charles.

Born Leslie Charles Beasley, in June, 1951 in Phila, PA, he was drawn, like many boys his age, to gang life.

As anyone knows, gang life is a hard life, and Charles, despite his relatively short stature, was as hard as they come. Few saw his sensitive side, but he had a wonderful sense of humor, a rich belly laugh, was a talented artist with a caring heart for younger people.

In 1980, after a series of stick-ups that went badly, he was sent to Death Row, and it was there that Bro. Charles died, not by the hangman's noose, but by "natural causes" (as if any death or life on death row could be considered natural)

His health deteriorated seriously in the last few years, and substandard treatment by prison health personnel certainly didn't do much to arrest that deterioration.

He was a longtime member of the Nation of Islam, from whence came his names: Charles X, and Ali Shabazz.

Bro. Charles was 59.

--(c) '10 maj
==============


When Massacre

Is No Crime
[col. writ. 7/22/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal


Recently, when members of the MOVE Organization filed a criminal complaint in the Philadelphia. trial court, the DA argued against the filing, citing the extraordinary length of time, 25 years, since the May 13, 1985 bombing of the MOVE home by city police, where 11 men, women and children were massacred.

The trial judge, Frank Palumbo, agreed with the prosecutor's arguments, and refused to accept the case for prosecution.

Imagine this: the same office which claimed that 25 years ago was too long ago, tried to convict an elderly man in Philadelphia for a shooting that occurred over 40 years ago.

It's been several months since 74 year old William Barnes was acquitted in a murder trial stemming from the shooting of a cop in 1966. The DA had no problem spending thousands of dollars to try Barnes, 44 years later.

That proves, if anything can, that time wasn't an issue.

What made the case "un-prosecutable" to the judge and DA was who the killers were, as well as the identity of the killed. For the killers were cops (who donate thousands of dollars to their campaigns): and the killed were mostly Black, all money-poor, and members of the MOVE Organization.

So much for "equal justice under the law"!

Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the Mother's Day Massacre (May 13, 1985), spent 7 years in prison for surviving the bombing; and when she argued to her jury that police and the politicians that commanded them should be on trial for bombing MOVE people, the prosecutor told jurors not to worry about that, for other judges and juries would determine their fates, on other dates, in other courtrooms.

It's been 25 years, and except for Ramona Africa, no one even remotely connected with this carnage, has ever seen the inside of a prison cell.

And now this new, offensive 'ruling': "Sorry, too late."

As ever, MOVE will rumble on.

(c) '10 maj
============


Punishing Lynne
[col. writ. 7/18/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Lynne Stewart, the activist lawyer, was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison.

This outstanding lawyer, a 70 year old grandmother, who is facing the serious threat of breast cancer, was originally sentenced to 2 years and 4 months, but the federal appeals court apparently felt that wasn't enough.

The same appeals courts that traditionally reverses the convictions of cops who torture or kill Black citizens, and who traditionally rely on the judgements of the trial courts, reversed Stewart's sentence as not tough enough.

So much for judicial tradition.

For Lynne's tradition wasn't that of the tony, tie and tails law firs of downtown Manhattan. She didn't represent the rich, the powerful, the well-heeled.

She represented the poor, the oppressed, the destitute and the dispossessed; the Black, the Latino, the Arab, the damned; those whom Frantz Fanon famously called 'the wretched of the earth.'

A juxtaposition: Many, many lawyers on the Office of Legal Counsel, in the White House, the CIA, and the Defense Dept. violated criminal laws, the military legal code, the Geneva Conventions, and the Convention Against Torture (CAT) [not to mention the U.S. Constitution!] to aid and abet violations of law -- for years.

Guess how many of them faced trial? Guess how many of them will in future?

How many of them will ever face prison?

None, None -- and none.

For their crimes were on behalf of the powerful; the state; hence their immunity.

Or consider what is know in international law as the 'supreme crime': wars of aggression.

Iraq will be a basket case for generations, thanks to American arrogance and greed.

Will anybody be brought to book for this crime, that shattered a nation, that sent millions into exile, and killed perhaps a million men, women and children?

Don't hold your breath.

There are still black sites, secret prisons, where tortures happen daily. There is still extraordinary renditions - clear violations of the Convention Against Torture (CAT)

But politicians are doing it - not to 'protect' the nation -- but to secure elections. Torture for votes.

And a 70 year old grandmother, a lawyer, is sent to prison for 10 years - for violating a prison rule that is an unconstitutional relic of the so-called war on terror.

This is what an empire in decline looks like.

--(c) '10 maj


OUT NOW!
[speech writ. 7/19/10] (c)

'10 Mumia Abu-Jamal


Ona Move!

It's been two years now into the Obama administration, and despite the hopes of millions who voted for him, the wars are getting worse -- not better.

The Obama administration is engaged in more predator attacks than the Bush administration, and there are rumblings for a war with Iran.

Meanwhile, the anti-war movement has been quiescent, as if Obama bombs are somehow better than Bush bombs!

Isn't it time to heighten the anti-war movement?

War poisons everything; for the state expands its reach and powers through war.

NOW IS THE TIME; NOW IS THE SEASON:
ANTI IMPERIALISM IS THE PERFECT REASON;
IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN WERE FALSE WARS FOR OIL,
IT'S TIME TO BRING THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT TO A BOIL!

These wars aren't against foreign countries alone; they're against you, your communities, your schools, your civil liberties. These wars have resulted in so called black sites (secret prisons), torture, extraordinary rendition, attacks on Arab-Americans and American Muslims, equally under Bush and Obama.

They have bankrupted the treasury, destabilized the region, and created conditions for horrific 'blowback'.

NOW IS THE TIME; NOW IS THE SEASON;
ANTI IMPERIALSM IS THE PERFECT REASON.
IRAQ - AFGHANISTAN WERE FALSE WARS FOR OIL,
IT'S TIME TO BRING THE ANTI WAR MOVEMENT TO A BOIL!

Thank you,

Onamove!



Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Man Called

Robert C. Byrd
[col. writ. 7/4/10]

(c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate would've been a title cherished by Robert Carlisle Byrd, who became, among many other things, a respected historian.

Byrd's beginnings were from the white southern poor, and he hailed from a family of coal miners. Despite this poverty, Byrd had a prodigious memory, and he excelled in high school.

But Byrd, being politically ambitious, was much more than a bright schoolboy. By his young adulthood he was a ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, the white terrorist arm of the southern Democratic Party. In West Virginia, this was a ticket to high political office, and Byrd punched his ticket well.

He began, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1953. Six years later he entered the Senate and except by death, never left. From 1959 to 2010 he became the embodiment of West Virginia, and the state became a reflection of him. There are so many roads, schools, airports and government buildings named after him that the state might best be known as Byrdsylvania, or, perhaps better, Byrdistan.

His biographers cite his KKK membership as a youthful indiscretion, a passing fancy almost. But Byrd, historian that he was, made history of sorts when he opposed the elevation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. Marshall was, at that time, one of the most successful lawyers in America, winning 29 of 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court (including Brown v. Bd. of Education) He was a Federal Appeals court judge for the 2nd Circuit (up in New York) for 5 years, and he was U.S. Solicitor General for 2 years.

Why did Byrd oppose Marshall, perhaps the most distinguished lawyer of his generation? Because he didn't want to see a Black man on the court. Period.

Youthful indiscretion? Byrd was 50 when he voted against Marshall's confirmation.

Two years before, when riots erupted across America, Sen. Byrd would opine on the Senate floor that perhaps planned parenthood should be introduced to Blacks so that they wouldn't have so many children who would grow up and be unemployed.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr., in North Carolina, was a man of his time and place.

Perhaps he distinguished himself from the pack best when he rose to the floor, a copy of the Constitution in his shaking hand, and denounce the Bush regime's mad march to war in Iraq, as a violation of the constitution. He voted against authorization for war, saying it was the duty of the Congress to declare war - not the president.

He rose from humble beginnings, with pluck, smarts and dogged determination. He held his office like a pit bull on a bone. He played the fiddle with considerable skill.

But he was a Klansman at heart.

-(c) '10 maj
 


The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
 
Audio of most of Mumia's essays are at: http://www.prisonradio.org
 
Mumia Abu-Jamal's new book -- JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING
PRISONERS V. THE USA, featuring an introduction by Angela Y. Davis --
will be released soon! It will be available from City Lights Books at
a 30% discount weeks before you can get it at any other bookstore, or
from Amazon. Sign up for an email alert and when the book becomes
available for sale you'll receive an email letting you know:
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090
In support of Mumia and the publication of JAILHOUSE LAWYERS,
organizations around the country will be holding "More Than a Book
Party" events on or around Mumia's birthday, April 24, 2009. If you
are planning to organize an event or would like to order in bulk, you
can also receive a 45% discount on any bulk orders of 20 copies or
more. The book retails for $16.95, for orders of 20 copies or more the
discounted price would be $9.32 per book, plus shipping and handling.
Prepayment would be required and books are nonreturnable. If you or
your organization would like to place a bulk order, please contact
Stacey Lewis at 415.362.1901 or stacey@citylights.com
 
Let's use the opportunity of the publication of this brilliant,
moving, vintage Mumia book to build the momentum for his case, to
raise the money we desperately need in these challenging economic
times, to get the word out – to produce literature, flyers, posters,
videos, DVD's; to send organizers out to help build new chapters and
strengthen old ones, TO GET THE PEOPLE OUT IN THE STREETS … all the
work that we must do in order to FREE MUMIA as he faces LIFE IN PRISON
WITHOUT PAROLE OR EXECUTION!
Please make a contribution to help free Mumia. Donations to the
grassroots work will go to both INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND
FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and the FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (NYC).
 
WWW.FREEMUMIA.COM
 
Please mail donations/ checks to:
FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL COALITION
PO BOX 16, NEW YORK,
NY 10030
(CHECKS FOR BOTH ORGANIZATIONS PAYABLE TO: FMAJC/IFCO)
 
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
215 476-8812
212-330-8029
 
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
 
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
 
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