Mumias Kolumnen
aktuell
For a Revolutionary Black History Month
[col. writ. 1/21/12] (c) '12 M. A. Jamal
As we once again approach February, the papers and TV
stations will feature programming that shows more Black faces than usual. Some will show movies, some documentaries
and some will feature history in celebration of Black History Month.
Undoubtedly, Martin Luther King Jr's epic "March on
Washington" speech will be samples, its grainy, black and white videotape the
very symbol of a bygone era, and it's key catchphrase....Thank God Almighty,
we're free at last!" ~ a haunting and ironic mockery of the real state of most
of Black America.
One tape that invariably will not be shown is one of the
final press conferences of the nation's first (and perhaps only) Black U.S.
Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, aged and ill, yet with the presence of
mind to announce, "I'm still not
free."
For millions of Black Americans, this Black History
Month, while perhaps rich in symbol, comes amidst the greatest loss of
collective assets in our history, crippling joblessness, haunting home
foreclosures, public schools that perform more mis-education than education,
rabid police terrorism and perhaps the highest Black incarceration rates in U.S.
history, and all that entails.
That we have Black History Month at all is due to the
Black Freedom Movements of the '60's, and the dogged persistence of Black
Historian, Carter G. Woodson, who began his efforts with Negro History Week,
back in the 1920's! Yet, it begins,
as do all struggles for progress, with the Movement.
If Black mothers and grandmothers, and later Black
schoolchildren, didn't follow King, we wouldn't know his name, except perhaps as
an Historical footnote. For, without followers, there is no movement - and thus
no progress.
The late, great Marxist Revolutionary historian, C.L.R.
James, in his finest work, Black Jacobins, a History of the Haitian Revolution,
illustrates how the leadership - including Gen. Toussaint L'Ouverture - tried
repeatedly to betray the Revolution, on to face two immovable forces -the racist
recalcitrance of the French government of Napoleon (who wanted to restore
slavery), and the militancy of the Black soldiers, who pushed onward to
Revolution.
The point?
People make history, by mass movements, often ones which go faster and further
than the leaders want. And masses
make and sustain revolutions - often against 'leaders' whose every instinct is
to betray them.
In a forward to one of the many editions of Black
Jacobins, James reminds us, "...that it was the slaves who had made the
Revolution. Many of the slave
leaders to the end were unable to read or write"
(James, xvi)
But they sure knew how to fight.
Africans, by the tens of thousands, broke their chains,
and though penniless, hungry, and scarred by the ravages of bondage, found
weapons and the will to fight for freedom against the defenders of slavery:
France, Britain, and Spain. They
beat them all, because their hunger for freedom was greater than anything.
ANYTHING.
And by so doing they changed world history.
They shattered French dreams of an American Empire; and
enabled the U.S. to double in size after it's purchase of Louisiana from
Napoleon.
They also did what no 'slave' army had ever done in
modern or ancient history. They
defeated an empire.
That is Revolutionary Black History ---and it deserves
to be remembered during Black History Month.
(c) '12 maj
==============
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MUMIA ist nach SCI MAHANOY verlegt worden!
Datum: Donnerstag, 15. Dezember 2011 11:58
Hallo an alle,
Mumia ist nach SCI Mahanoy verlegt worden (siehe untere Nachricht
des
New Yorker Free Mumia Bündnisses). Er wird dort vermutlich auch in
den
"Normalvollzug" verlegt.
SCI Mahonoy ist in Pennsylvania.
Es wird gebeten, dort anzurufen, um den Behörden deutlich zu machen,
dass eine Weltöffentlichkeit auf Mumia achtet. Fragt bitte
allgemeine
Fragen, damit ihnen klar ist, dass sie nichts mit Mumia im
Verborgenen
machen können.
Tel: 001 -
570-773-2158
Mumias neue Adresse ist jetzt:
Mumia Abu-Jamal, #AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
Viel Post an diese neue Adresse wird den Behörden ebenfalls
auffallen
sowie Mumia selbst natürlich freuen.
Auch für geplante Besuche ändern sich die Anträge. Weiteres in der
unteren Meldung.
Mit solidarischen Grüßen,
Berliner Free Mumia Bündnis
WE WHO
BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
Kontakt- & Diskussionsmöglichkeit
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