State Supreme Court Rejects Mumia Abu-Jamal

From Hans Bennett/Sis. Fatirah

=================================

This is NOT the decision from the 3rd
Circuit Court. It is a separate appeal
with the State Supreme Court.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...Wha9gD8UTLLAG0

Mumia Abu-Jamal Loses Bid for Hearing

HARRISBURG, Pa.
(AP) — Pennsylvania's highest appeals court has rejected a request by convicted killer Mumia Abu-Jamal (moo-MEE'-ah AH'-boo jah-MAHL') for a hearing into his claims that witnesses in his case perjured themselves.

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a unanimous ruling saying the
former Black Panther and radio reporter waited too long to file a
post-conviction appeal in the matter.

Abu-Jamal was convicted of shooting to death Philadelphia Police Officer
Daniel Faulkner in 1981. A federal judge in 2001 overturned Abu-Jamal's death
sentence but upheld his conviction.

His case has attracted international notoriety. A separate appeal in the
case, regarding claims of racial bias and faulty jury instructions, is pending
before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

---FROM: Associated Press, Tues, Feb. 19

For background on this appeal, see these 2 previous articles from

Betsy Piette: http://www.workers.org/2007/us/mumia-appeal-0719/

Michael Schiffmann: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8603

==============

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=6184

PA Supreme Court rejects Mumia Abu-Jamal's PCRA appeal

--Critics say the ruling is unjust

By Hans Bennett (Abu-Jamal-News.com)

On Tuesday, February 19, in a ruling unrelated to the pending US Third
Circuit Court decision ,
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected death row journalist Mumia
Abu-Jamal's appeal of a 2005 ruling by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas
Judge Pamela Dembe, which denied Abu-Jamal's Post Conviction Relief Act
(PCRA) petition, on grounds that it was not "timely." (See reports by
The Associated
Pressand
Philadelphia
Inquirer)

This recent PCRA petition was based on
affidavitsby two
witnesses that did not testify at the original 1982 trial: Yvette
Williams and Kenneth Pate. Yvette Williams states that key prosecution
witness Cynthia White told her that she had been coerced by police into
giving false testimony against Abu-Jamal. Defense witnesses Veronica Jones
and Pamela Jenkins have given similar accounts of Cynthia White's coerced
testimony against Abu-Jamal. As *Amnesty International* has documented,
White's alleged eye-witness account was altered, as each subsequent account
given to police further served to support the prosecution scenario used to
convict Abu-Jamal. Kenneth Pate says that prosecution witness Priscilla
Durham confided to him that she had also lied in court when she stated that
she's heard Abu-Jamal confess at the hospital. Even before Pate's affidavit,
Durham's account was very suspicious.

The alleged "hospital confession," where Abu-Jamal reportedly declared, "I
shot the motherf***er and I hope the motherf***er dies," was first
officially reported to police over two months later, by hospital guards
Priscilla Durham and James LeGrand (Feb. 9, 1982), P.O. Gary Wakshul (Feb.11),
P.O. Gary Bell (Feb.25), and P.O. Thomas M. Bray (March 1). Only 2 of these
five witnesses were called by the DA: Gary Bell (Faulkner's partner and
"best friend") and Priscilla Durham.

At trial, Gary Bell testified that the 2 month lapse resulted from him being
so upset over the death of Faulkner. Priscilla Durham testified, and added
for the first time, that she had reported the confession to her supervisor
the next day. Neither her supervisor, nor the alleged handwritten statement
were presented in court. The DA sent an officer to the hospital, returning
with a suspicious typed version. Sabo accepted the paper (not signed)
despite both Durham's disavowal, and the defense's protest that authorship
and authenticity were unproven.

For more on Kenneth Pate and Yvette Williams, please see German author
Michael Schiffmann's 2005 analysis
of Judge Pamela
Dembe's ruling.


RESPONSES TO THE COURT'S DECISION Immediately following Tuesday's news, I
asked several people to respond to the court's decision: Pam Africa, Robert
R. Bryan, Dave Lindorff, Michael Schiffmann, and Linn Washington Jr.

*PAM AFRICA*

*—Coordinator of The International Concerned Family and Friends of
Mumia Abu-Jamal*

I am not shocked by this decision. The PA Supreme Court has never ruled
fairly in Mumia's case, especially with former Philadelphia DA Ron
Castille's participation.

This should wake people up to see the injustice in Mumia's case. Why can
the media report so quickly on this decision, but not report on the newly
discovered crime scene photos? These photos are serious evidence, but the
media has ignored them.

The media and courts are complicit in the railroading of Mumia.

I urge readers to please help fight the media bias by going to
Abu-Jamal-News.com to see the new photo evidence, downloading the
information, and spreading the word, at this urgent time in Mumia's case.


*ROBERT R. BRYAN*

*—San Francisco, Lead Counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal*

Mumia and I had a long conference this afternoon, shortly after the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court made its ruling. We were not surprised since
that court has a history of not addressing the racism and fraud that has
dominated the prosecution since its inception over a quarter of a century
ago. By dismissing the appeal on procedural grounds, the court avoided
dealing with the compelling facts establishing that the prosecution of my
client was based upon lies, half-truths, and bigotry. It is sad that the
state court used possible mistakes of the previous lawyers in the case as an
excuse to dodge the truth.

This state ruling has no bearing on the the proceedings pending in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. If the federal decision is
favorable, then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court judgment will be moot.
Otherwise, I plan to seek relief in the U.S. Supreme Court. I will not rest
until Mumia is free.

LINN WASHINGTON JR.

--Philadelphia Tribune Columnist, Temple University Professor of
Journalism, and graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program

This ruling is sad but not surprising. It continues the infamous
Pennsylvania Supreme Court tradition in the Abu-Jamal case of abusing law to
block justice. Until this Court grants a new trial to Abu-Jamal where both
sides can fairly present evidence, any ruling it issues is legally corrupt.

DAVE LINDORFF

--Author of "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia
Abu-Jamal"(Common
Courage Press, 2003)

It comes as no surprise to hear that the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court
has rejected yet another appeal by Mumia Abu-Jamal, the state's
longest-surviving death row prisoner. The court, which is led by former
Philadelphia D.A. Ron Castille (who helped fight Abu-Jamal's appeals in his
role as DA and has yet to recuse himself from decisions involving this
case), has never issued a ruling favorable to Abu-Jamal.

That said, it is clear that the prosecution's case was rampant with examples
of suborned perjury, from the belated and choreographed lies by police about
having heard a shouted out confession in the hospital--an event no nurse or
attending physician heard, and which police at the time curiously failed to
note in their reports on the evening's events, to "eye-witness" testimony
from a taxi driver whose taxi nobody remembers seeing where he said it
was--parked directly behind Officer Daniel Faulkner's car. And of course
more recently we have the newly discovered news photos showing police
tampering with the evidence at the very scene of the crime.

In a fair world, this case would have been tossed out long ago, but as the
PA Supreme Court has demonstrated yet again, we do not live in a fair world.

DR. MICHAEL SCHIFFMANN

—German Linguist at The University of Heidelberg, co-founder of Journalists for
Mumia, and the author of "Race Against Death; Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black
Revolutionary in White America"

The original decision in May/June 2005 by Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela
Dembe to dismiss Mumia Abu-Jamal's 3rd PCRA petition was already a travesty
of justice. Everything in that decision was tailored to deny Abu-Jamal
relief. After sitting on the case for almost four years, the judge deciding
it evidently didn't have a clue about the most elementary facts.

That was not necessary, though; all that was needed was to twist the law in
such a way that Abu-Jamal wound never have a chance, regardless of what he
presented.

Abu-Jamal's 3rd PCRA petition presented testimony by two witnesses that
attacked the arguably two single-most important prosecution witnesses at the
June/July 1982 Abu-Jamal trial, prostitute Cynthia White and hospital
security guard Priscilla Durham. As discussed extensively in work on our
website www.abu-jamal-news.com and elsewhere, not least in many, many
defense briefs, these witnesses were highly incredible even without that new
testimony.

All the same, it was crucially important: New witness Yvette Williams
testified that Cynthia White had been blackmailed into fingering Abu-Jamal
as the murderer by death threats on the part of the police, and new witness
Kenneth Pate testified that Durham had been peer-pressured by the police
into falsely accusing Abu-Jamal of having boasted about having "shot the
motherfucker" Daniel Faulkner and hoping he would die.

If proven in court, these two new claims in themselves would be enough to
prove that the case against Abu-Jamal was hopelessly contaminated right from
the start and to explode it once and for all.

By bending even the reactionary new Clinton-era laws to expedite the
application of the death penalty out of shape, Judge Dembe at the time
concluded that the new evidence was not presented in a "timely" fashion. The
Pennsylvania Supreme Court now does the same, inventing yet other and
different reasons why the evidence is "untimely."

It's not worth going again into the "legal" forks and angles of that new
decision. It's a repeat performance of the 2005 Dembe decision which I
analyzed at the time and which got a worthy response by the defense, as we
now see without avail. What simmers through in every line of those decisions
is that one thing always left unsaid: "WE ARE AFRAID OF THE FACTS."

But those facts won't go away, if we fight to disseminate them, to get them
out into the public sphere, and to have them finally heard on court. That is
the most urgent task in the weeks and months to come.

*JOURNALISTS FOR MUMIA* RELEASES NEW VIDEO: "This government, using
corporate media, is laying the groundwork for a murder."

The "Murdered by Mumia?" press conference has just been made into a short
video. (VIEW PARTS ONE
AND TWO)

This is also available UNEDITED in two parts on Google Video
(1/2,
2/2 ) and in
11 parts on You Tube: Hans Bennett,
David A. Love , Dave Lindorff (
1/2 ,
2/2),
Linn Washington, Jr. (1/2
,
2/2),
Pam Africa (1/2 ,
2/2),
and questions about The Polakoff Photos
(1/2,
2/2 ), Media
Bias,
and The May 17 Oral Arguments .

Our recent slideshow presentation of the Polakoff photos is now also
available separately on You
Tubeand Google
Video .

Along with The SF Bay
View,
the photos have now been spotlighted by
Reuters,
NBC's Today Show
, National
Public Radio ,
Indymedia.org ,
Counterpunch , The
Philadelphia Tribune , The
Black Commentator,
Dissident Voice,
Media Channel,
Workers World , and The
Philadelphia Weekly .

---For more information, please visit the new Journalists for Mumia
Abu-Jamal website: *http://Abu-Jamal-News.com *

Also visit: FreeMumia.com (NYC Coalition to Free
Mumia), FreeMumia.org (San Francisco Mobilization to
Free Mumia), EmajOnline.com (Educators for Mumia),
PrisonRadio.org (Mumia's Radio Essays), or
contact:

International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ
P.O. Box 19709
Philadelphia, PA 19143 Phone - 215-476-8812/ Fax - 215-476-6180
E-mail - *icffmaj@aol.com*

Between Rap and Raggae by Mumia Abu-Jamal

{col. writ. 2/8/08}
(c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

When we discuss the social and global impacts of both rap and reggae, we are looking at the art forms which share many similarities, but both also possess significant differences.

Initially, both rap and reggae are the productions of Black ghetto life, and are thus, cultural responses to the socio-economic conditions of exclusion, poverty, class oppression, and the de industrialization of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.

Those similarities are offset by the cultural choices made by many of the early creators and modifiers of these art forms, however.

For while inner city poverty gave birth to a music that spoke to conditions of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and East Coast life in worsening ghettoes, reggae emerged from the slums of Jamaica, where the poor were informed, not only by their poverty, but by the decades long socio-religious movement of Rastafarianism, which, with its return-to-Africa ethos, gave a future vision of hope to people in largely hopeless conditions.

"Religion," Napoleon Bonaparte has opined, "has kept the poor from killing the rich."

It is this quality that distinguishes reggae from its American cousin, rap. For, while rap was born in the ghetto, amidst the most concentrated deprivations in modern American history, it hasn't stayed there. It is, today, a multi-billion dollar industry that sells its products around the world. And while its most recent incarnation may be laden with ghetto centric language and accents, the most successful practitioners live as far from the ghetto as their automobiles can take them. They live the lives of yesteryear's rock stars -of mansions, millions in disposable income, and conspicuous consumption.

Reggae's most successful superstars also made prodigious amounts of money, but many remained in Jamaica, its message of resistance to 'downpression' putting it in the thick of things, both at home and abroad.

In its video portrayals (where, to be honest, rap is preferred over reggae, which is rarely shown on national networks like BET), rap is distinguished from reggae by its choice of love interests (or should we say, 'lust interests?') in its portrayal of the desirable female(s).

In most videos, rap projects very light-skinned Black girls, relatively light-complected Latinas, and sometimes, a girl with Asian features. Brown or Black women (I mean here women of a truly dark complexion) are rarely featured, especially as the central 'lust interest' figure. Reggae videos tend to take the opposite tack, by portraying black or deep brown women as central 'lust interests', which may be attributable to the influence of the conscious Africanity and nationalism of the Rastafarian movement.

A popular reggae tune goes like this:
la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, - Happy Birthday, African females;
You know I looove you;
You know I neeeed you, gal---;
la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, Happy Birthday, African females!

A rap song featuring such lyrics is improbable (even though rap is widely consumed throughout Africa).

Rap evolved as a strategy not just to make music, but to escape the dangers of the urban ghetto; in a sense, it used ghetto isms to escape the ghetto.

Reggae evolved as a music of the 'downpressed', but exhorted its listeners to heed the message of redemption in Rastafarian beliefs, as well as escape, not the ghetto, but Babylon -- the system.

As such, while the ghetto was a problem, it was not the problem.

The problem was the entire oppressive system, represented by all the governments of the West, and, in the Jamaican sense, independence from England didn't solve that problem, it just added another problem.

Salvation lay in returning to the 'Promised Land' - in Africa.

Rap has no equivalent vision.

Indeed, it is a business, like any other, where culture is the commodity; a thing to be made, and sold.

In rap, the 'promised land' is Money. Paper. That's why many of the most successful adherents rap so strongly about acquiring wealth.

It is American capitalism, with a beat.

--(c) '08 maj

Brave New World by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[col. writ. 2/6/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

For several years in the '80's and '90's, stories raced throughcommunities of people being seduced, drugged, and when they awakened, to theirhorror, an internal organ, like a kidney, had been removed.

Several horror movies played on these fears, and undoubtedly attractedsignificant viewers and money, by stoking these fears.

Recently, it has been reported that there is a brisk and bustlingbusiness in a country touted as 'the world's largest democracy', where the illicitsale of kidneys has become a kind of cottage industry!

In India, that nation-state that dominates the Asian subcontinent, withover a billion residents (according to a July 2006 estimate), is also home toan industry where almost everyone benefits, except the poor sap who onceowned the kidney!

People told of waking up with searing pain in their abdomens, at least500 such people, usually poor laborers, rickshaw drivers, or farmers on thebrink of peonage.

Many of the men were offered jobs, and indeed some were told openly whatwas wanted, for a payment of between $1,000 and $2,500.

The men were approached by kidney scouts in Delhi, or Uttar Pradesh,one of the poorer regions of the country.

The ring, composed of dozens of paramedics, doctors, nurses, privatehospitals and pathology clinics, were acquiring the organs for use by richIndians and foreigners, according to published accounts.

Organs for sale?

There is a malevolent logic to this practice in this, the age ofglobalism, where everything - everything - is for sale to the highest bidder.

There is something nightmarish, ghoulish, and Frankensteinian about thispractice, but it is also a telling commentary on how the rich regard the poor among them.

For the men who've had their organs snatched, almost none of them hadbeen paid the promised fee, even if they willingly agreed to the sale.

They were taken to a clinic, their blood was tested, and they werethreatened by armed guards to neither resist, nor tell about the practice.

This is the shadow side, the unstated reference point to the free market.

That said, India isn't a poor country. Its GDP is about three timesthat of Great Britain, its former colonial power. Its economy is one of thefastest growing on earth.

Yet, this illustrates how great wealth may exist amidst great poverty.This ain't hatin' on India, for great distances between wealth andpoverty isn't an Indian peculiarity: it is a global one.

It is globalism made plain; everything for sale.

-- (c) '08 maj

{Source: Gentleman, Amelia, "Kidney Theft Ring Preys on India's PoorestLaborers, " New York Times, Wed., Jan. 30, 2008, p.A3}

Media Trips by Mumia Abu-Jamal

{col. writ. 2/9/08}
(c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

If this election season has shown us anything, it is that the nations' media has been almost always wrong.

In some cases, as in the primaries in the U.S. Northeast, polls were to blame, but what of other boo-boos?

In late 2007, virtually every media outlet was crowing about the demise of Arizona Senator John McCain. That call was based on his lack of funds, which most reports erroneously equated with the death of his campaign.

Such unfulfilled predictions are all the more remarkable given his recent rising to the top of the Republican field.

Just two days ago, so-called Super Tuesday was supposed to be the definitive breakaway event for the Democratic presidential primaries. But events didn't turn out that way. The candidates are essentially locked in a head-to-head race.

How does this happen?

Well, most reporters rely on polls - yes - but reporters also rely on other reporters. If one news agency reports a trend, then others rush to second that report. These reports morph into a kind of conventional wisdom, and only the crash of reality can knock it down.

It's also true that polls are little more than snapshots in time. They therefore reflect brief blinks of a certain moment. If needs are changing, or if new audiences are entering the fray, these moments are missed.

As for new audiences, I mean young people from 18 to 35, many of whom have never had (or don't now have) land lines - and polling companies are forbidden by law from contacting people vial cell phones.

Thus, a whole cohort of people - young people - those most apt to change their minds -- are lost to pollsters.

Another factor is, in this age of new media, news shows don't report what happened anymore; they rush to report what will happen next.

When this is done, it presents a 50/50 proposition; you're right 1/2 the time, or wrong 1/2 the time. You simply can't be right 100% of the time!

Major corporate media outlets do this because it's a battle for audience eyes - and market share. Predicting news is a lot sexier than reporting it, especially to younger viewers who are drawn to the interactivity of the Internet.

Similarly, newspaper circulation is tanking these days, in large part because youngsters aren't in the habit of reading paper copies. For most newspapers, circulation has dropped at least 10% since 2000.

Also, many people, young and old, felt burnt by the cheerleading role played by the media in the selling of the Iraq War. The corporate media has gotten it wrong - again.

--(c) '08 maj

Frederick Douglass: The Freedom of Some, or the Freedom of All?

{col.writ. 2/9/08} (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

As the presidential campaign of Senators Hillary Rodham-Clinton (D. NY), and Barack Obama (D. Ill.) continue in their breakneck race to acquire the most delegates (and thus the nomination), various segments of the population have endeavored to pose the questions of whether gender should trump race in this rare historical moment.

Some have suggested that Sen. Clinton, as a woman, deserves the nomination given the nation's delay in granting women's suffrage until 1920. Some have argued that because Black men could vote since the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, in 1870.

Of course, this is a cribbed reading of American history, for passage of a constitutional amendment was one thing, the actual implementation of such a right would be almost a century for half the country.

It took long and tortuous struggle for the alleged constitutional right to vote to be made real. For, if the constitution were sufficient, why would a Voting Rights Act (passed in 1965) have been necessary?

One great Black leader, Frederick Douglass, was an outspoken defender of women's rights, and never stopped being so during his long public career, both before and after the Civil War.

Indeed, the love of freedom being so close to his heart, when he escaped to England to raise the money to legally purchase his freedom, he used his time there to criticize the conditions of white, poor working classes in England, Scotland and Ireland. He would write in The Liberator: "...Though I am more closely connected and identified with one class of outraged, oppressed and enslaved people, I cannot allow myself to be insensible to the wrongs and suffering of any part of the great family of man. I am not only an American slave, but a man, and as such, am bound to use my powers for the welfare of the whole human brotherhood....." I believe that the sooner the wrongs of the whole human family are made known, the sooner those wrongs will be reached.

When the princely sum of $750 was raised by British friends and supporters, Douglass bought his own freedom, and indeed, had the bill of sale to his own self, placed in his hands.

When he returned to the U.S., he wrote in his own paper, The North Star, and announced from public women's conventions, that "Right is of no sex."

When women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton introduced the resolution for women's suffrage in 1848, Douglass was the only man, Black or white, to step forward and support her motion, and argued that political equality was necessary for the complete liberation of women.

In The North Star of a week after the convention, Douglass reiterated his support, writing, Standing as we do upon the watch tower of human freedom, we can not be deterred from an expression of our approbation of any movement, however humble to improve and elevate the character of any members of the human family.... We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man..... Our doctrine is that 'right is of no sex!' We therefore bid the women engaged in this movement our humble Godspeed.

There are few Black leaders, whether they call themselves radicals, liberals, or even conservatives, who do not turn for inspiration to the words and wisdom of Frederick Douglass.

As an activist, as an agitator, as a premier journalist, as a powerful spokesman, he had few true peers.

Without a doubt, he was a leader, and not a follower.

The he informs our steps now, over a century after his passing, is a testament to the clarity of his vision, and the power of his spirit.

He didn't serve the interests of power, he critiqued it, he assailed it, he used his gifts to push it closer, ever closer, to a more human expression.

We all live in a world that still bears his imprint.

--(c) '08 maj

[Source: Douglass, Frederick, On Slavery and the Civil War: Selections From His Writings. (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publ., 2003), pp. 5-6, 13.]

Italian Interview With Mumia Abu-Jamal

Check out this new Italian interview with Mumia: For a taste of anti-Mumia sentiment among Philly liberals, check out the comments on this page where I posted the article:

http://youngphillypolitics.com/italian_media_interviews_mumia_abujamal

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41202

RIGHTS-US: Journalist on Death Row Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal

_

Mumia Abu-Jamal with his son Mazi, before his arrest for murder in 1981

Credit:Abu-Jamal family_ (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41202)

BOSTON, Feb 14 (IPS) - Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and black activist who exposed corruption in the Philadelphia police department, is among the best known of America's 3,500 death row inmates. For years, lawyers have been fighting to overturn his 1982 murder conviction. They argue that Abu-Jamal was condemned due to his skin colour and undue influence from the powerful Fraternal Order of Police.

Abu-Jamal and his chief lawyer, Robert Bryan, are currently awaiting a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on their request for a new trial. If a re-trial is ordered, many believe it will be one of the most sensational in U.S. legal history.

In this rare interview from Pennsylvania’s death row, Abu-Jamal talks about being a journalist on death row with IPS correspondent Adrianne Appel and radio journalist John Grebe. "Writing from a radical and populist, black liberation point of view, never left me," he says, "We do truly live in amazing times, times that are challenging, times that are dangerous -- but also times that are inspiring."

IPS: Through your radio broadcasts and columns about politics, race, black liberation and the death penalty, you have continued to be a leader for those on the left, and I suspect an inspiration to those in prison and on death row. Do you hear from others on death row?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: I do actually receive letters from guys literally all around the country and -- truth be told -- around the world. Some express solidarity, many request to correspond, some just ask questions on history because they’ve heard of my history with the black liberation movement. I know that many people on death row are projected as monsters andreally evil people. The fact of the matter is, most of the people I’ve met,I’ve heard about, or know about on death row are on death row because of their poverty. If they were men or women of means and could have afforded a decent defence at their trials, many wouldn’t be in jail. And if they were not in jail, they wouldn’t be on death row.

IPS: You have great support in Europe but not here in the U.S. What accounts for this difference?

MAJ: The [U.S.] media has really been an adversary and not an aide. The struggle waxes and wanes, ebbs and flows.

IPS: Public sentiment here seems to be shifting away from the death penalty, especially in light of the 126 people who have so far been exonerated -- six in Pennsylvania. Have you and your legal team sensed any change in attitude towards your case -- more openness to the idea that you did not receive a fair trial?

MAJ: I can’t say that I have. How do you gauge such a thing? There are many people who -- because of what they read in the paper -- firmly believe I am no longer on death row. I have read articles to that effect. Unfortunately, those articles are misleading. I have never left death row for one day. I am on death row.

IPS: Are you confident you will receive a fair trial this time?

MAJ: I’ve learned not to be in the business of prediction. That’s a risky business. We’re certainly working toward that end and I’m certainly hopeful. But I’m not in the prediction game.

IPS: Of the 35 states with a death penalty, conditions on Pennsylvania’s death row are among the most inhumane. The 228 death row inmates are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day in small cells. You are kept shackled when not in your cell, even in the shower. You are not allowed physical contact with visitors, with no one at all. How does this affect you?

MAJ: It affects how you interact with family and friends, staff people, females. It affects everything. Years ago in Huntington [another prison], I was taken to a dentist. As I was coming back and crossing the central portion of the prison, there were several hundred men walking toward their dining area. Because it had been so many years that I had been away from a large mass of people I froze, I just froze. The guard with me pushed my back and said, "C’mon Jamal", but I couldn’t move. I was so stunned to be in the presence of hundreds of guys. I hadn’t been around a group for so many years. I didn’t know how to interact with that situation. For years I had lived in a cell or in a cage by myself.

John Grebe: As a young, working reporter what inspired you?

MAJ: My life as a writer on the staff of the Black Panther newspaper. Just learning from people in the ministry of information of the [Black Panther] Party, that really did inspire me -- even when I left the party, when it fell apart in disarray -- that part of my life, writing from a radical and populist, black liberation point of view. It never left me. I learned some important lessons. When I talk to people in the biz I say I’m glad I never went to journalism school.

IPS: You’ve written five books from death row and produce weekly radio commentaries. Why do you still speak out?

MAJ: It’s still interesting. We do truly live in amazing times, times that are challenging, times that are dangerous -- but also times that are inspiring. We have a government that for all intents and purposes now says that torture is cool. We have secret prisons, so-called black sites, where people from all around the world are held in the name of the United States of America -- whose names you cannot know. People who are tortured.

I feel compelled to write because they move me. I’m still a writer, an author, a journalist. They touch me. I would be remiss if I did not write about those things. If you recall, after 9/11 quite a few of the journalistic mainstays in this country did not write about those things. They endorsed the war, they supported the war. They came with what some people would call a mimeograph service for the state. I chose not to take that role.

IPS: Pennsylvania death row has twice as many black people on it as white people, something that does not reflect the makeup of the population in Pennsylvania. What does this say about the courts in Pennsylvania?

MAJ: It says much about the courts in Philadelphia as opposed to Pennsylvania. Philly [Philadelphia] is a national leader in the death penalty business.

Many cases that would be considered third degree or even volunteer manslaughter, or not guilty in other counties, become first degree [murder] or death [penalty] cases in Philly. That’s because the political system in Philly has been formed around the death penalty.

Anyone who doesn’t believe in the death penalty is automatically excluded from the jury. Well that’s a different kind of jury. It’s profoundly unfair at its very foundation. If you pick a jury that is fundamentally unfair, you can only get a fundamentally unfair result.

JG: Do you currently have communication with people in the black liberation movement?

MAJ: There are many elders who I do hear from. They’re wonderful brothers and sisters. Many are no longer with us. But some of them are. I delight in having contact with many of those people.

(END/2008)

The Black Vote (Past and Present) by Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Black Vote (Past and Present)
[col. writ. 2/18/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Although Blacks constitute a distinct national minority, because they have traditionally been politically active, they have had a disproportionate impact on the electorate and election outcomes.

Think of the squeaky-close presidential elections of 2000, which
was decided by several hundred votes in Florida.

While it is true that both Blacks and Hispanics constitute distinct minorities, most have forgotten that 8% of Blacks, and 31% of Hispanics voted for George W. Bush. And while Hispanics accounted for a mere 7% of the electorate that year, without a doubt their 31% vote for Bush contributed to his win, especially when one considers that in Florida, a significant percentage of Hispanics are Cuban-Americans, and thus they trend more conservative than say, Puerto-Ricans or Mexican-Americans.

In a recent report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, we find that Blacks are far more politically active than commonly supposed. This is particularly so of Black younger voters, who are often portrayed as politically inactive or inattentive. According to the Joint Center, this portrayal is false, for their reporting reveals a cohort that is increasingly engaged in electoral politics. The report notes:

"In 2000, African Americans between 18 and 29 accounted for 2.1 million votes, representing 2 percent of the voting total (105 million). In 2004, young African Americans (18-29) accounted for 3.7 million votes, representing 3 percent of the voting total (122 million). Thus, in 2004, 1.6 million more young African Americans cast ballots than in 2000." [p.2]

The joint Center for Political & Economic Studies has reported that Black voters, who remain overwhelmingly democratic, contributed winning perscentages in States where the Democratic candidate won. The 2004 presidential race, for example, featured a 2-to-1 split in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. The Joint Center reported:

Higher Black turnout contributed to John Kerry's narrow victories in Pennsylvania, where the black share of the statewide vote rose from 7 percent (in 2000) to 13 percent (in 2004, and in Michigan, where the black share rose from 11 to 13 percent). [.p2]

In Ohio, the Center reports, Kerry lost, and the Black vote showed a far more modest growth. Of course, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama throws much of the traditional statistical analysis on its head, for, although he may be a Black candidate, the vast majority of his votes comes from white, majority populations, something frankly quite unprecedented inelectoral politics.

No matter who becomes their party's nominee, and who ultimately runs in November, 2008, Black votes will undoubtedly prove pivotal.

The question, what will they get for such votes -- but more false hopes?

--(c) '08 maj

{Source: Bositis, David S., "The Black Vote in 2004," Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies (Wash., DC: JCP&ES, 2004).}

Cash Culture by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[col. writ. 2/26/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

At the heart of the modern American entertainment industry, is the shameless, savage pursuit of profit.

I don't mean the commercial end, as is usual, but the so-called creative end, as shown by the flood of alleged "reality shows."

For many of the (as yet) unfamous, one is promised a knot of money; the more one gets, the more one debases himself. 'Eat a handful of writhing worms, and get a thousand bucks.' While the many shows have various themes, this is its essence; money for humiliation.

And with the recent writers' strike, we have seen the growth in such programming -- which often needs little or no scripting.

I'm convinced that such shows do far more than reveal a shadow-side of the American psyche; they reflect the will of the well-to-do; the wealthy few of the society, who demonstrate their power and dominance by such public displays.

Two thousand years ago, a handful of coins were cast to the teeming crowds as they gathered at the Coliseum. Then, as now, entertainment reflected the cruelties inherent to their cultures, and how such shows reinforce the positions of the powerful.

We can look beyond the contours of the idiot box to the outer world in which we live and breathe. Such shows give us insight into how workers daily are forced to accept humiliations in order to pay for food and shelter. Such shows merely reinforce this social dynamic.

Moreover, what is our politics but a grim replay of the same?

Politicians willingly humiliate themselves daily, wear silly hats, and make stupid promised, to get elected.

These exercises cost absolutely obscene amounts of money. Just as the nation slides into recession. For example, each Democratic presidential candidate has raised (and spent!) over $100 million dollars. $100,000,000! -- for a job that pays $400,000 a year!

And, truth be told, politicians, even the seemingly most powerful, are but puppets of those more powerful than they.

Such is American cash culture at the beginning of this new century, where everything is for sale -- for the right price!

But just because something is for sale doesn't mean it's truly worth anything.

--(c) '08 maj

Reporters of Imperial Scribes by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[col. writ. 3/1/08] (c) '08
Mumia Abu-Jamal

Several days ago, I wrote on the resignation of Cuba's Fidel Castro-Ruz from the rigors and responsibilities of Office. I commended him and the Cuban people for a heroic history of resistance and socialist humanism.

But when I read, or heard, or received pieces by other journalists, I was struck by the tone. There was ill-disguised glee at Fidel's health issues which forced him to step down, and reportage that bristled with references to the popular Cuban leader as a "dictator," coupled with the demand that Cuba import some American - style "democracy" to the island.

Not one story that I read or heard mentioned the obvious; that the best known torture chamber on Cuban soil is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States government. It's Guantanamo.

As for dictators, how do you order a nation to war against another nation on a lie- a nation that never attacked yours - unless you are a dictator?

You order your subordinates to torture other people - men, women, and children - and then say: " We do not torture," while the world snickers.

And as for free elections and democracy, the world knows that it's just words in America. It's been weeks since the California primaries, and they're still counting ballots. In the 2000 and 20004 U.S. presidential elections, tens of thousands of votes were stolen, voters were wrongfully denied access to the ballots, and others had their votes erroneously allocated to the wrong candidates. Free elections? Democracy?

My God! What would rigged elections and disenfranchisement look like?

And from these perverse processes have come perverted results: a president, a congress, and judiciary that is as twisted as the process that brought them forth.

A century ago radical American writer Jack London published The Iron Heel (1908) in which he noted the following:

"Even as late as 1912, A.D., the great mass of the people still persisted in the belief that they ruled the country by virtue of their ballots. In reality, the country was ruled by what were called political machines. At first the machine bosses charged the master capitalists extortionate tolls for legislation; but in a short time the master capitalists found it cheaper to own the political machines themselves and to hire the machine bosses."

That was Jack London, writing in 1908. A century later, and we see the clarity of his vision, for what is this election but a business proposition?

In truth, your votes are all but superfluous - for you don't really vote for candidates (even if you did choose them -which you didn't!); you vote for electors - or delegates, whose votes determine not just candidates but elections. And delegates are almost always big people - the wealthy, well-to-do or well-connected.

How's that sound, for a democracy?

--(c) '08 maj

[Source: Monthly Review, Mar. 2008, p.63]

Check It Out -- New Mumia Abu-Jamal Film

In Prison My Whole Life is a look at the life of imprisoned political journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Click on the link below to view the one minute or two minute trailer. Please add your supportive comments to the blog. And circulate this email as widely as possible.

About the film: Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested the day William Francome was born. William is now 25 years old. Mumia is still on death row. William Francome goes on a journey to find out about the man who has been in prison William’s whole life. The film is showing at the Sundance Film Festival.

Mumia’s case is currently before the US Court of Appeals and a decision on whether or not he will receive a new and fair trial is due any day.

http://www.myspace.com/inprisonmywholelife

For info about journalists in support of Mumia and an excellent article that was featured in the British Guardian, please go to www.globalwomenstrike.net Global Women's Strike philly@crossroadswomen.net 215-848-1120
========================

These are two new articles about IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE, which is featured at this week's Sundance Film Festival

Another take on Mumia

Sundance screens a film by one obsessed with Abu-Jamal.

By Sam Adams

For The Inquirer

PARK CITY, Utah - When the lights come up after a film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the stage usually fills with directors and producers, actors and crew, all basking in the audience's applause. But after Sunday's screening of In Prison My Whole Life, director Marc Evans apologized for the absence of the movie's "star": Mumia Abu-Jamal, on Pennsylvania's death row for the 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal is unquestionably the subject of the documentary, but as far as on-screen time goes, he plays a supporting role to 26-year-old William Francome, the "my" of the movie's title.

Francome said he was born on Dec. 9, 1981, the day that Abu-Jamal was arrested for Faulkner's murder. In Prison uses that coincidence to underscore the length of time Abu-Jamal has spent behind bars, most of it on death row - a circumstance the movie condemns as inhumane and unjust.

Francome appears as a cross between a crusading journalist, tracking down evidence to contradict the prosecution's case, and a wide-eyed student avidly pursuing the history of American racism.

The result is largely a recap of arguments for Abu-Jamal's retrial or exoneration and a broad overview of the history of American dissent.

Held together by Francome's narration, the movie oscillates between arguing the injustice of Jamal's case and charting Francome's education in the ugly side of American history.

Through interviews with the likes of Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky, In Prison attempts to place Abu-Jamal's case within a larger social context. The 1985 MOVE bombing and the 1987 videotape in which a Philadelphia prosecutor instructs young colleagues on how to keep African Americans off juries are part of the film's background. So are the FBI's Cointelpro program and Hurricane Katrina.

"I think it's part of a narrative," Francome says. "We could have made a film that was just purely about the case and looked into every single detail, but we've got 90 minutes to tell a story, and at the same time we're trying to make an entertaining film. I think we're making valid connections between certain issues."

Although the Sundance screening was not met with the rapturous whoops and standing ovations that greet the festival's instant hits, it was clear that at least some in the audience had no difficulty connecting Jamal's case and larger issues of racism, the death penalty and government corruption.

Sundance's audiences are well-known for their liberal bent, and its documentary programming tends to favor issue-oriented films. During the post-screening Q and A, one questioner asked if Abu-Jamal's bid for a new trial, currently awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be rejected because "the consequences might be too huge to allow that to happen."

The British-born Francome, son of a British father and an American mother, describes his mother as a product of the '60s counterculture, and says she reminded him that each birthday he celebrated meant Abu-Jamal had spent another year in jail. But it wasn't until he was a teenager and heard Rage Against the Machine take up Abu-Jamal's cause that Francome connected the dots. "It was like, 'Hey, that's that Mumia guy mum's always talking about,' " he recalls in the film.

In his 20s, Francome began writing treatments for a film about the case. Through his girlfriend's godmother, he met Livia Firth, wife of actor Colin Firth, and Colin offered to produce the film and introduced him to Evans, an established feature and documentary director.

Firth also got in touch with Amnesty International's Piers Bannister, who had written a 35-page report condemning Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial as failing to meet "minimum international standards." Bannister, who appeared at the Sundance screening, shared his research with the filmmakers, and Amnesty vetted the film after it was completed.

"When we finished, we came back and said, 'This is the film. Tell us if we did a good job,' " Firth says. "They tore the film to pieces. They analyzed every single word." In addition to fact-checking the film, Amnesty suggested changes in the wording of Francome's narration to better represent its stance on the case and related issues such as the death penalty. The result, Firth proudly says, is the first film endorsed by Amnesty's secretariat. In Prison opens with Amnesty's logo, which is followed immediately by the logo for Myspace, which helped finance the film. "Those two badges kind of reflect who the film is for," Evans says.

The question of the film's potential audience, Evans says, greatly influenced its form. Rather than evaluate every claim pro and con, In Prison is pitched at an introductory level.

"The bit of filmmaking I dislike the most is you have to say, 'Here's the film, now who's the audience?' " Evans says. "Is it for a very well-versed insider? Perhaps this isn't the film for them at the end of the day. I don't think the audience the film really appeals to are people who are necessarily politically clued in and have read a lot about their civil rights history. It's a series of inquiries and conversations by a 25-year-old, starting with a teenage obsession."

Crisscrossing the country, Francome pounds the streets looking for the truth of what happened on the night he was born. He talks to the authors of several books critical of Abu-Jamal's trial. He meets with photographer Pedro Polakoff, whose photos of the crime scene seem to show a police officer handling Faulkner's and Abu-Jamal's guns with his bare hands. And he interviews William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother, who says that Faulkner addressed him with a racial slur and began beating him, unprovoked, in the moments before the shooting. Cook does not, however, discuss what happened next, and says he will do so only in a court of law.

Conspicuous by their absence are Faulkner's supporters, or any evidence that might weaken the movie's claims, like the fact that Cook was convicted of assaulting Faulkner. The sole argument in favor of Abu-Jamal's conviction is made by prosecutor Joseph McGill, who appears in excerpts from the 1996 documentary Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt? (When citing the film, In Prison omits the question mark.) Francome says attempts were made to contact McGill, representatives from the Fraternal Order of Police, and, through the FOP, Faulkner's widow, Maureen, and no responses were received. But Evans also says that they pursued advocates for Abu-Jamal's incarceration and execution only "up to a point."

"We're making a film that starts from a particular point of view, with a particular interest," Evans says. "To me, the proper way to proceed is to invite people to the table, and respond when people come to the table. Not to go, 'The film I'm making is so responsible for the truth.' It's not a journalistic film in that sense."

The film contains a handful of factual errors which, while evidently below the radar of Amnesty's fact-checkers, could damage its credibility with Philadelphia audiences. City Council president Anna Verna is referred to as "Ann," and the neighborhood of Powelton Village is referred to as "a suburb of Philadelphia."

Evans knows that Abu-Jamal's case raises heated emotions in the city, and that the battle between "Free Mumia" and "Fry Mumia" factions leads many to tune out the case altogether. That, he says, only heightened his curiosity.

"For us, coming in from the outside, the fact that people are so fed up with hearing about it, the fact that it gets people so riled up, that in itself is interesting. The fact that this guy can raise so much hatred or so much empathy . . . I find that absolutely fascinating."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/livia-giuggioli/obama-in-context_b_83275.htmlObama in Context, Huffington Post

by Livia Giuggioli

My husband Colin and I have ongoing discussions on who we would support for this presidential campaign. Obama, Clinton, Edwards -- I tend to go for Obama but yesterday, while having lunch with friends here in Sundance, an African American studio executive said that should Obama be elected, he fears there would be several attempts to assassinate him simply because he is black. This sent an icy shock through me.

Walking through the crisp white snow at the Sundance Film Festival to a screening of our documentary In Prison My Whole Life, I started to wonder whether the optimism that we had felt in making the film had been misplaced. The movie centers around the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, a vociferous and radical black journalist who, after 25 years in prison, has become America's most famous Death Row inmate. Despite the injustices surrounding Mumia's case and some of the dark historical events that the film portrays, it is doggedly optimistic in approach. Mumia's continued articulate commentary as a radio journalist, broadcasting from his cell by means of typewriter and telephone, had inspired us. His voice is heroic and connects to a tradition of dissenting black voices which have always found a place in America. With our films' Sundance screening coinciding with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this surviving continuity seemed even more poignantly alive.

Producing In Prison my Whole life is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. People have asked me many times what shocked me most while making the film and my answer is always the same: how much I fell in love with America all over again. There is a general perception in Europe that "America" is "Bush". So when we left for the States to film and found ourselves listening to people like Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Russell Simmons, Howard Zinn, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def (I could go on for hours, we met the most amazing people!) it reminded me what a wonderful country America is and what a powerful counter culture still exists.

This is the country which fought many of the biggest civil rights battles, and our film endeavors to ask what is the nature of dissent in America today.

I recently read an interview with the fantastic writer David Grossman who said, "One of the great questions that people living in this age must relentlessly ask themselves is: in what state, at which moment, do I become part of the faceless crowd, "the masses"?"

If you think about it -- this question IS the most fundamental one and I guess this is why I/we found ourselves doing this movie. Among the questions "In Prison My Whole Life" raises are: Is racism in America still endemic? What did we learn from Katrina? What is the state of the American judicial system? Was it unbiased in Philadelphia in 1982 when Mumia was on trial? Was it unbiased in the election of 2000? We must never stop asking questions. Documentary filmmakers have the opportunity to engage in the great debate, to resurrect -- if one can use that word - the urge to dissent, to ask questions again, to fight for change and to fight the blindness and ignorance of racism and injustice that still exists not only in this country but all over the world.

Baseball Over Terrorism by Mumia Abu-Jamal

* Baseball Over 'Terrorism? *
* {col. writ. 12/13/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
As the global news media salivated over charges of steroid use in professional baseball, what got lost in most of the sauce is the news emerging from the nation's chief Latin city: Miami.

There, 7 young Black men from Liberty City were either acquitted or received a hung jury in a case that ex-Attorney General Alberto 'Fredo' Gonzales described at the time as "homegrown terrorism."

The 7, known as the Liberty City Seven, were charged with plotting to bomb the famed Sears Tower of Chicago, as part of a broader Al Qaeda terror plot.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie argued to jurors, "These defendants came together with the sole purpose of waging war in the United States." According to federal prosecutors, these 7 guys planned to destroy federal buildings, and even to poison salt shakers in restaurants.

One of the men's defense lawyers, Ana M. Jhones, told the jury that this was more a case of a con job than terrorism, and that her client, Narseal Batiste, wanted to coax a Yemeni man lining in Miami into giving him money. The man, an FBI informant, held the keys to this alleged plot from the get - go. He bought and equipped the men with uniforms (which looked like jumpsuits in news photos) and boots. He also promised weapons and explosives, but delivered none.

Homegrown terrorism. indeed.

These were poor men, living in a poor, neglected side of town.

To say that they has a beef with the well to do society around them is kind of like calling pig pork -- it's obvious -- but 'homegrown terrorism?'

It might be more apt to call it 'hyped up terrorism", for this was a classic case of government entrapment.

Poor men, without resources, can't wage war on cockroaches.

They claimed membership in the Black religious group known as the Moorish Science Temple, a community founded in 1913 by a man who came to be called Noble Drew Ali, in Newark, New Jersey. The MST spread up and down the East Coast, took root in several southern cities, but really took off in Chicago, which featured it's largest community.

Some have looked at the MST as a kind of Muslim vector through which Al Qaeda used its call to jihad to entice the men.

That only makes sense if one knew nothing about the Moorish Science Temple, which in belief and practice would be regarded by Mahhabis as anathema. For in the MST, followers read a Koran written, not by followers of the Arab prophet, Muhammad, but by Ali. It is a surprisingly slim, yet readable, philosophical and poetic work, that borrows more from Christian, Theosophical, and even Jewish influences than the Arabic.

That said, the jury took a while. But it is interesting that, in these post 9/11 times, a federal jury looked at the government's case, and most said, "Nah -- we'll pass."

In a time of the so-called War on Terror, isn't this case more important than guys bulking up for baseball games? Sport is, after all, entertainment.

What's more important- entertainment or war? The national, corporate media has answered that question, once again.

We shouldn't forget, the nation's premier sports channel is ESPN - which stands for /Entertainment/ Sports Network.

What's that tell ya? --

(c) '07 maj

{Source: Goodhough, Abby, "Trial Starts for Men in Plot to Destroy Sears Tower," New York Times , Wed., Oct. 3, 2007, p.A16}

The Idea of a Black President by Mumia Abu-Jamal

* The Idea of a Black President *
* [col. writ. 12/18/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
For much of the US populace, the very idea of a Black president is one so new, so novel, that it forces many people to think of it as if it is barely possible; as if it is the stuff of fiction, not fact.

Fiction has indeed been the realm of this idea, as in movies, and television series, actors have played the part, but that, of course, is on TV.

Of course, time will tell if that is more than imagination, but for millions of people who share this vast land space we call North America, the idea is neither new nor ground-breaking.

That's because there are some 100 million people living in Mexico, and that country had a Black president (albeit briefly) --some 173 years ago.

It was during their war for independence from Spain, when a warrior emerged, a Black Indian named Vicente Guerrero. In his first battle, he was commissioned a Captain. As the independence war raged on, many of the leading revolutionaries were either killed, or captured. Guerrero fought on, leading some 2,000 men into the Sierra Madre mountains to continue the fight.

By 1821, the Mexicans were prevailing over the Spanish, and Guerrero was hailed as an incorruptible independence fighter. In 1829 he became President of Mexico, and as scholar William Loren Katz writes in his 1986 book, Black Indians : He began a program of far-reaching reforms, abolishing the death penalty, and starting construction of schools and libraries for the poor. He ended slavery in Mexico. Yet, because of his skin color, lack of education, and country manner, he was held in contempt by the upper classes in Mexico City. This president who had, according to {US. historian M.H.} Bancroft, " a gentleness and magnetism that inspired love among his adherents." was still " a triple-blooded outsider." Black historian J. A. Rogers summarized Guerrero's striking accomplishments by calling him 'the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of Mexico."[p.48]

Guerrero, who in his youth was an illiterate mule driver, once bitten by the bug of Mexican independence, rose to the highest office in the land. He learned to read when he was about 40, and helped craft the Mexican Constitution, of which he wrote the following provision: "All inhabitants whether white, African, or Indian, are qualified to hold office." He wrote this in /1824/, over 30 years before the US Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision, which announced, emphatically, that"...a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect." and that black people weren't, /and could never be/ citizens of the United States.

In that era of revolution and social transformation, a Black man became president of the second largest country in North America.

Today, 178 years later, we still wonder if such a thing is possible.

What does that say about the United States?

--(c) '07 maj

{Source: Katz, William Loren, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 1986 [Simon Pulse/pb ed.,2005], p.42}

Families (Unknown Enemies)

*Families (Unknown Enemies) *
* [col. writ. 12/20/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
There is an old saying: 'knowledge is power.'

The axiom sprang to mind unbidden, when I read an article recently on a distraught, single, Liberian mother, in fear of the violent drug trade engulfing her Staten Island, N. Y. neighborhood, who promptly shipped her oldest son back to their West African homeland.

She reasoned that even war-torn Liberia, which has been plunged into civil war for at least the last generation, would prove a safer place than a project in a New York borough.

What was thought to be a summer vacation with relatives turned into several years amidst a real war, a war which taught the teenaged youth important life lessons about the iniquity of death, hunger, and abundance.

When 17 year-old Augustus Massalee initially arrived in Liberia, he was as mindlessly materialistic as any other over-fed American kid. But life in West Africa gave him a broader, deeper insight.

Like many of his peers, stealing was probably regarded as, at best, a prank; at worst, a hustle. In a recent article in the New York Times , Massalee spoke laconically about the prospects of theft in a poor, mostly rural country: "On that side, if you steal, they beat you or kill you or burn you to ashes."*

But what was most remarkable, according to the article, was the tale of conflict between native-born Blacks and African from the continent, who, /in grade school/, launched slurs at each other, like "cotton picker" and "why don't you go back to the jungle!" / "Cotton pickers?" "Go back to Africa?"/

Not surprisingly, the paper doesn't note how ironic such slurs appear given the specific histories of these two communities of Black people.

For Liberia was established in 1822 by Blacks freed from American bondage. In other words, the African-born children shared nationality with former "cotton pickers." And the ancestors of American born Blacks had indeed "gone back to Africa," to establish the nation of Liberia 185 years ago.

Indeed, beyond their Blackness, it is possible that these two conflicting communities shared the commonality of familial blood -- but who will teach these children that?

How will they learn such powerful lessons within the false, narrow confines of No Child Left Behind?

And if the children were able to read the New York Times account, what would they really learn, other than the Black on Black conflict?

In a nation where whiteness is prized and Blackness is demonized, why are we surprised that conflict is the enduring story, while commonality is virtually ignored?

Knowledge /is/ power: but the converse is also true...'ignorance is powerlessness.'

--(c) '07 maj

{*Source: Barry, Ellen, "Exiled to a War Zone, for His Safety: Staten Island Mother Chooses Africa as a Haven," New York Times , Dec. 14, 2007, pp.A1 - A34.}

Still the Politics of Fear

* Still the Politics of Fear *
* [col. writ. 12/23/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
We live, all of us, amidst what has become an almost permanent campaign. And the central theme is the politics driven by fear; fear of the Other (the immigrant): fear of each other: fear of the outside world: and fear of the future.

Few politicians have played the fear card with more deftness than President Bush. No matter what one may think of him today, it took considerable skill to convince folks to fight a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11; to fight it, bomb it, occupy it, and then dare to try to remake it.

And while it's certainly true to call it a disastrous policy, it's also true that, in large part, he's done it. This is not a statement of the rightness of it, but a simple averment of fact. When the ravenous chickens of revenge finally come home to roost, he'll be out of the White House, and safely ensconced in some pricey think tank, his presidential library, or on the board of an oil company, counting his pile. And there's the payoff from the politics of fear: /it works./ When you try to stoke the flames of fear, it catches on in the minds of many Americans. And why shouldn't it? There's a long history of just this tactic in American politics. As Russian writer, Svetlana Alexisvitch has noted, "We are turning into a civilization of fear. Because what is a disaster? A disaster is a high concentration of fear. The commodity that our civilization creates in the largest quantity is fear."*

For the English and Spanish colonizers of this land, fear of the far more numerous Indians was a constant. That fear was met by a ubiquitous campaign of virtual genocide against red people that lasted for generations. When Indian populations were sufficiently reduced, and there were too few to efficiently labor as slaves, white colonies began the infamous transatlantic slave trade, which brought millions of Africans to these shores.

With this change of conditions came a change in the focus of the object of the politics of fear: Black people. Anyone who has studied southern politics from the 17th to the 20th centuries has seen masters of these politics at work.

Today, that same politics has considerable potency, as we utilize codes that disguise our meaning, while still tapping into the deep American well of fear. Post 9/11, we have seen most of that traditional fear transmuted into a dread of brown people (as in Arabs, and occasionally, Mexicans). Today, we are awash in political shorthand that sufficiently communicates loads in little more than a word: /illegal/ immigration; borders; crime; and the phrase that has come to define our era (even as it has lost a good deal of its juice of late), the so-called 'Global War on Terror.)

The corrosive politics of fear continues, as long as politicians ply that set of wares.

-- (c) '07 maj

{*Source: Pan America: A Journal for Writers and Readers . (N. Y.: {Pan American Center, 2006) }

The Power of Black Music by Mumia Abu-Jamal

* The Power of Black Music *
* [col. writ. 12/19/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
**
**
Music is far more than a multi-million dollar business in the US, and around the world.

It is far more than the stuff that comes out of your radio in an unending roll.

For some people, music, the /right /music, can transform one's way of looking at the world, and even change lives.

By music (as you may have guessed) I'm not talking about bubble gum pop, or rap.

I'm talking about a music form that has been called classical (at least by Black listeners) for generations. I speak of jazz.

I speak specifically, of the music of the late saxophonist John Coltrane (1928-1987), an adherent of the form that came to be called /avant-garde/ (French for advance guard), or free form jazz. In the '50's he was a star player in the Miles Davis quintet.

Later, he would lead several groups, and when not zonked out high on heroin, would play such music as would move millions, even now, decades after his death.

In San Francisco, a church stands today, which has named the musician a Saint of the African Orthodox rite. This is the same church that was the religious branch of the Marcus Garvey Black nationalist movement of the early 20th century.

At the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Archbishop Franzo Wayne King presides, and his appreciation of Coltrane's music may be shown as often by his preaching as by his playing of the saxophone in tribute to the Saint. In a recent interview, Archbishop King explained that he heard Coltrane live in 1966, at a local club called the Jazz Workshop, where he and his girlfriend (soon to be wife, Marina) got front row seats. What they heard that evening almost literally blew him away.

King would later explain the experience as his "sound baptism."*

So taken was he by the power and beauty of Coltrane's music that her first organized a small congregation called the Yardbird Temple, named after the nickname of another famous sax player, Charlie Parker. In this initial gathering Coltrane was worshipped as a god, and Parker was seen as a John the Baptist - type figure.

Years later, when he joined the African Orthodox Church, Coltrane was "demoted" to saint.

Today, People come from all around the world to visit the San Francisco church.

The influence of Coltrane has also had far less spectacular, but still meaningful impact, on the lives of people during the '60's.

As Black revolutionary and later scholar, Muhammad Ahmad (who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and other such movements) would later write in his political autobiography, We Will Return in the Worldwind: Black Radical Organizations: 1960 - 1975 (Chi., IL: Karr Publishing, 2007), music opened his mind to political ideas and possibilities:

First was going to see Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln present their "Freedom Now" suite at the national convention of the NAACP, which was held in Philadelphia that year. I had been raised on Jazz and had done my homework with Eddie Collier while listening to John Coltrane's Giant Steps . I had gone to the Newport Jazz festival and was an avid fan of both Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderly. 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. It wouldn't be until a year later that I would listen to John Coltrane's /My //Favorite Things/ and become a "Tranite" until "Trane" passed on in 1967. {p.xxvi}

As Ahmad explained, music was a powerful social force that opened new ways of looking at and thinking about, and living in the world. Music is more, much more than a commodity.

Free jazz of that period represented, quite simply, freedom, in breaking away from the restraints of the past.

This power of music must be recaptured, to become a resource for a people, who are still not free.

--(c) '07 maj

{*Source: Freedman, Samuel C., "Sunday Afternoon Faith, Inspired by Saturday Nights," New York Times, (12/1/07), p.85:Ahmad, M (a/k/a Max Stanford, Jr.) We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, 1960 - 1975 (Chi., IL.: Karr Publ., 2007.}

The 'Oops!' Factor by Mumia Abu-Jamal

* The 'Oops!' Factor ** {col. writ. 1/10/08}
**(c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal **

*
*
*
As the race for presidential primaries and caucuses gains in speed and tempo, this current campaign has taught me at least one important lesson: "You can't rely on polls!"

Talking heads are sounding sillier by the day trying to explain how the junior senator from Illinois went from a double digit lead a day before the New Hampshire primaries, to losing by 2 percentage points by night's end.

I wrote a piece, but just like those talking heads, I got it wrong, and wrote as much. If I'm lucky, you'll never get to hear it.

(OOPS!)

I, too, was shocked by Sen. Hillary Clinton's win over Barack Obama (I bet you so was she!), but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. In my view, it had absolutely nothing to do with Hillary's tears, nor any such nonsense.

It had everything to do with people walking into the booth, pulling a curtain, /and having second thoughts./

It had everything to do with what, to some, is still unimaginable: a Black president of the United States of America. I don't think people consciously lied to pollsters. I think they really believed what they said; but belief and action are two separate things.

Blacks have dreamed of the idea for more than 1/2 a century (if not longer), and past nominees, more often than not ran on third parties, or were 'favorite sons' of certain regions; yet, almost always, they were protest votes, safe alternatives, votes meant to show support, but not to elect.

Some of the names will doubtless ring a bell, but many won't elicit a bare ripple of recognition.

Rev. Channing Phillips of Washington, D.C., was nominated for President at the raucous Chicago Democratic National Convention on August 28, 1968, and received 67 1/2 votes from delegates. Throughout that year, two other Black men, Eldridge Cleaver (then Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party), and comedian turned civil rights activist, Dick Gregory, shared the presidential nominations of the Peace & Freedom Party. Cleaver was on the ballot in at least 5 states, while Gregory polled in at least 9 states. When the votes were tallied, Cleaver took roughly 10,000 votes, while Gregory garnered nearly 50,000.

In July , 1972, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (N.Y.-Dem) received 151.95 votes on her presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Miami, out of 2,000 delegates' votes.

By 1988, Independent (New Alliance Party) Dr. Lenora Fulani, on the ballot in at least 35 states (and Washington, D.C.) netted over 218,159 votes. While seemingly impressive, it pales when one considers that 91.5 million people voted in the 1988 presidential elections (her share of the vote was thus 0.24%). Four years later (1992), with new laws in place restricting ballot access, she would pull perhaps a fourth of that number, as she had considerably fewer states (about 20) in which to find her party represented on the ballot.

It's virtually forgotten now that Rev. Jesse Jackson got over 7 million votes, won 13 primaries and caucuses, and controlled almost a third (29%) of the party delegates in his second run in 1988. Though Rev. Al Sharpton would try his hand in the 2000 and 2004 races, his campaign was widely regarded (at least by the corporate media, and through them, the predominantly white electorate), as a symbolic run, in the long tradition of protest candidacies. Indeed, one observer, law professor Kimerle W. Crenshaw has opined that Sharpton's July 2004 Democratic convention speech "electrified" the place, with his critique of the Bush administration's penchant for appointing right wing judges to the U.S. Supreme Court would whittle away rights won over long, hard struggles. Crenshaw noted:

Not only did journalists such as Wolf Blitzer and others perform a questionable disciplinary role in denouncing Sharpton as being "off message" -- CNN's Jeff Greenfield went further to declare that Sharpton delivered the most incendiary comment of the entire convention. [Fr.: Crenshaw, K.W., "Sharpton Sharpens the Challenge with an Overtime Victory," CommonDreams.org (July 30, 2004).]

In this context, the apparent fawning over Obama by many of these same media figures may owe more to his seeming nonracial presentation, than any real concern for Black political empowerment.

Politics is about more than strange bedfellows. It's ultimately about power, and that's why there are second thoughts.

--(c) '08 maj

The Madhouse Called 'Home' (Kenya)

* The Madhouse Called 'Home' (Kenya) *
* {col. writ. 1/12/08} (c) 08' Mumia Abu-Jamal *

The continuing carnage in Kenya (E. Africa) evokes feelings of confusion mixed with shame.

Confusion because if the cause of such infernal conflict is tribalism, the word has little meaning for U.S. Blacks, for the grandchildren of slaves were detribalized, or perhaps more accurately, compressed into a single national tribe of Blackness.

Shame, because Blacks still feel a kinship for (an idealized) Africa, and thus, their calamities seem like ours, and, since the relatively recent end of colonialism, many African countries have had more than their share of calamities.

Kenyan human rights activist and writer, Koigi wa Wamwere, in his 2003 book, Negative Ethnicity (Seven Stories Press/Open Media) records a harrowing event in 1998 Kenya, when a man named John Mwangi detailed what happened to him in the Makuru district of Kenya:

I am down, and around me a big fire rages. Our village is razed and destroyed. There are screams everywhere. They are hurt and down. I inhale smoke and smell burning flesh, food, and timber everywhere. I see a man coming with a flaming torch for burning houses and food stores, a spear to stab my heart and sword to slit my throat and kill me as they have others. I think this is the end, but not yet. Please, don't kill me, I plead with whatever breath I have left.

We are Africans. We are brothers. Without looking at me, he thrusts the spear into my side and cuts my throat. Die, die, you dirty louse, he says. I am not your brother. I am not your tribe. Tasting blood in my mouth, I slide into unconsciousness with that word ringing -- /tribe, tribe/ - until the world falls silent. When I wake up, I am in the hospital, wrapped in bandages from head to foot. A Good Samaritan picked me up and brought me here. Several months later, I go to my village, but it is no more. Both the new house and the land now belong to him who tried to kill me. Because I am from another ethnic community I am evicted from my home and land and cleansed from the Rift Valley Province where anyone who is not Kalenjin is called a foreigner. I cry and ask, Why? No one answers. [pp. 9-10]

Although the U.S. press has reported that the present tribal warfare was unprecedented in modern Kenya, in fact, such clashes happened as recent as a decade ago (1998), and nearly a decade before that (in 1992). Such clashes are usually manipulated by political leaders for communal ( read: 'tribal') support for a ruthless struggle for resources, cattle, and yes -- lebensraum (German for 'living room').

Wamwere put it pointedly when he recounted a quasi-joking between he and some other Gikuyu and Kalenjin friends. They joked about Kalenjin getting the best jobs, the best spots in school, or bank loans. The Kalenjin would retort, "Now is our time to eat. You Gikuyu had yours." (66)

For Wamwere, tribalism (or in his term, 'negative ethnicity') has been a powerful tool used by politicians to communicate the notion of 'it's our time to eat.'

Wamwere tells a classic and chilling tale of when Jomo Kenyatta came to power after colonialism, and his government slew one of its own ministers, Tom Mboya, a prominent Luo politician. Luo riots shook Nairobi and Kisumu. Wamwere recalls how Kenyatta responded by forcing Gikuyus to take a loyalty oath.

Those who didn't take it were beaten or killed. Wamwere explained that he too took the oath, partly in fear, and partly in fascination. This oath was against the Luos. This took place in 1969.

The notion of nation is a transient one; for nations come and go; tribe remains.

So, politicians run on the implicit promise that, 'if you elect me, we will eat.'

And while tribe fights tribe over crumbs, the whole socio-economic order serves to send the fat of the land into the kitchens and coffers of Europe and America, while politicians ship their excess wealth to Western banks to hold. For what are these countries but Western creations, with borders designed to preserve corrupt economic relations where the continent becomes a vast plantation, with Black overseers, who manage Black workers for Western profits and exploitation?

While millions of Africans suffer from malnutrition, millions of Americans and Europeans spend billions to try to manage their rampant obesity.

Tribalism? Negative Ethnicity? Or poor people fighting for scraps? --

(c) '08 maj

{Sources: Wamwere, Koigi wa, Negative Ethnicity: From Bias to Genocide (New York: Seven Stories Press/Open Media, 2003); Wamwere, Koigi wa, I Refuse to Die: My Journey for Freedom (New York: Seven Stories, 2002) (for the author's critique of the Moi dictatorship).}

America's Martin & Martin's America by Mumia Abu-Jamal

America's Martin & Martin's America
[col. writ. 1/11/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal


As millions of people ready themselves for a (hopefully) paid holiday in remembrance of assassinated civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are forced to come to grips with who the man was, rather than who he has been projected to be.

In the words of noted historian (and once King's close confidant) Vincent Harding, America has largely chosen the path of amnesia rather than true remembrance of the man. Prof. Harding wrote, in his 1998 book, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero (Orbis Books):

It appears as if the price for the first nationalist holiday honoring a black man is
the development of a massive case of national amnesia concerning who that
black man really was. At both personal and collective levels, of course, it is often
the case that amnesia is not ultimately harmful to the patient. However, in this case
it is very dangerous, for the things we have chosen to forget about King (and about
ourselves) constitute some of the most hopeful possibilities and resources for our
magnificent and very needy nation. Indeed, I would suggest that we Americans have
chosen amnesia rather than continue King's painful, uncharted, and often
disruptive struggle toward a more perfect union. I would also suggest that those
of us who are historians and citizens have a special responsibility to challenge the
loss of memory, in ourselves and others, to allow our skills in probing the past to
become resources for healing and for hope. In other words, [if] Martin King cannot
challenge those who make him a harmless black icon, then we surely can raise
such a challenge -- assuming that we are still alive. {p.60}

What distinguishes the life and work of King towards his latter days, was his dedication to Black poor folks, a group that seems to be all but forgotten in the years since his passing.

While today's America seems to be on the brink of electing a Black person (or at least possibly nominating one), the plight of the Black poor could hardly be more perilous.

For it is on them that the twin weights of poverty and state repression are dropped, with little relief from a civil rights leadership which occasionally seems overwhelmed with the threats and conflicts facing those of better means and resources.

Indeed, much of that leadership is, as was Dr. King himself, quite highly educated, and seeking entree into the highest levels of state and corporate power; levels virtually impenetrable to millions of Black poor folks.

For them is reserved: the worst of public education the worst housing; brutal treatment by cops; ignored by political leaders (at least until election time rolls around), highest rates of joblessness; the highest incarceration rates -- we know this list can go on and on.

King Day may be remembered, but the man behind the name is fast disappearing.

It is virtually forgotten that he sacrificed his life on behalf of striking garbage men, Black workers who wanted a decent wage to be sure, but also wanted simple, human dignity.

In 1967, one year before his assassination, a perceptive journalist, the late David Halberstam wrote, in Harper's magazine his impressions:

"King has decided to represent the ghettos, he will work in them and speak for them. But their voice is harsh and alienated. If King is to speak for them truly, then his voice must reflect theirs; it, too, must be alienated, and it is likely to be increasingly at odds with American society." [Harding, 62]

America establishes a holiday, and promptly forgets what he lived for.

--(c) '08 maj

The War Against Ourselves By Mumia Abu-Jamal

* The War Against Ourselves *

* [col. writ. 12/1/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *

We often think, when we dare to do so, of the Iraq War as a war over there, against 'those' people - folks other than Us.

Depending on our political perspective, it is either a good war, or an evil war. But, no matter our political, ideological perspective, time will determine whether it isn't a war against us all, as well.
That's because for those tens of thousands who survive, who are neither killed nor maimed, they will return to the U.S., with their minds twisted by an orgy of violence that will not easily be left 'over there.'

It is worthless to listen to any major political figures who speak of this war, for they are speaking with flowery words about unreality, with buzz phrases like, 'support our troops', 'they're fighting for our freedoms', and other such nonsense.

Several recent books, written not by brass but by low level non commissioned officers, tells a story that will never make it to CNN, to the networks, or to the daily press.

That's because these reports, written by line soldiers, are striking in their absence of political jargon, and the illusions usually presented as war reporting.

Do you remember reports about the notorious Iraqi house raids, ostensibly as searches for weapons? Paul Rieckhoff, a platoon leader of National Guardsmen describes how he and his men broke down doors, tied up all the men, and ransacked people's homes. Of these raids, Rieckhoff wrote, in his book, Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier's Perspective (NAL Caliber: 2007) these "were nasty business. Anybody who enjoyed them was sick. /*Sometimes I felt like I was a member of the Brown shirts in Nazi Germany."*/

Rieckhoff writes about men in his platoon stealing money from these Iraqi families, something he describes as not uncommon.

In the corporate media's reflexive war promotion, and its overt message of 'support the troops', who knows what they are supporting?

These books, written from the soldier's viewpoint, tell of the gratuitous killing of unarmed civilians, both by high level bombings, artillery, and ground level shootings. Men, women, and children are shot with an abandon that would make a terrorist blush. One Texan, Marine lance corporal Jeffrey Carazales said, */"Do you think people at home are going to see this -- all these women and children we're killing? F - -k no./ Back home they're glorifying this mo ----f----r,*

I guarantee you."*

No politician, right or left, will describe them as modern day Nazis, riding roughshod over the Iraqi people, and indeed, creating a resistance that didn't exist at the time of the US invasion.

That's how far politics is from the truth, a truth dripping out from soldiers, who are unafraid of self-description.

In the years to come, when people trickle home, they will carry these nightmares into their work lives, and also into their personal lives.

They will be cops, prison guards, politicians, merchants, teachers, and journalists.

Within them will be these silent demons who will not rest in Iraq.

American society was deeply impacted by the return of Vietnam veterans, and not for the better.

We have yet to see the ripples from the war wash against the shores of this land.

We will find that the blood of war, and the perversities of occupation will splash against us all.

--(c) '07 maj

{Sources: *Massing, Michael, "Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs, " The New York Review of Books . (12/20/07), pp.82 -7; Fick, Nathaniel, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer , (Mariner: 2007); Wright, Evan, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (Berkley Caliber:2007.}

Omaha Night By Mumia Abu-Jamal

** Omaha Night **
{col. writ. 12/6/07}
(c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal

A young man strolled into a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, the navel of the United States, and opens up at stunned passersby.

He has a rifle, but what arms him is a deep, abiding sense of worthlessness, depression and despair. He lost his job at a local McDonald's; and he was recently dumped by his girlfriend.

Before the night was over, eight people, 9 including this young man, would be dead.

Robert Hawkins reportedly shot himself to death to end his killing sprees. He was 19.

In a suicide note left at the place he was staying, he reportedly wrote that he wanted to be famous.

What does that say about this American life that one feels so hopeless, and so empty, at 19?

What does it say about the American fascination with fame? And how do you get fired, /from McDonald's?/ What do you think this young man had to look forward to? Unemployed, with few serious prospects. Feeling unloved -- worthless.

The U.S. economy (for working people) has been in virtual free fall since the ravages of globalization have left a smattering of service jobs in the place of missing manufacturing jobs.

The U.S. Army, in a time when they are, quite frankly, desperate for recruits, wouldn't accept this.

Imagine, if you will, what it must be like to be a 19 year old Black youth in present day America? The product of an educational system that can barely qualify for the name.

What do you think /that/ young man has to look forward to?

Both of these young men, the mall-sprayer and the imaginary one, had their educational experiences under something cynically called /No Child Left Behind/.

One wonders -- how could they be /more/ left behind?

One youth walks into a sprawling mall, its floors and shops chock full of shoppers trying to snag a post Black Friday bargain, knowing full well that he'll never leave it alive.

Another gambles his life in a mindless gang banging, or the urban drug trade, willing to kill or die for a brief glimpse of a life long denied him.

It has often been observed that youth think themselves invulnerable and immortal.

In generations past, perhaps this may've been the case.

But as these events show, some youth are so alienated, so lost, that they look to death with longing, as an escape from a life they find intolerable.

What does that say about us?

--(c) '07 maj