EMAJ

Recently Mumia visited in prison with Stephen Vittoria, the Director of the riveting new documentary, Mumia: The Long Distance Revolutionary (The Journey of Mumia Abu-Jamal). Going with him were educators Cornel West and James H. Cone, and also journalist Chris Hedges, who had written earlier about a previous visit to Mumia. West a prolific author and speaker has among his most recent books, Democracy Matters. Equally productive, and the early pioneer of Black Liberation Theology, is James Cone, still turning out prominent texts, such as his recent The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

The account below by Vittoria is a moving documentation of a great meeting among leaders of liberating struggle. Vittoria’s essay is entitled “Imagine.”
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Imagine
(Written by Stephen Vittoria, May 15, 2013, Los Angeles. Original post with photos)

An educator, an activist, and a photojournalist, Mev Puleo died in 1996. She passed way too soon at 32 years old. But her passion lives on in her writing and her spirit. Two years before her death she published “The Struggle is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation” – an amazing reflection and compassionate work on the force of liberation theology. Puleo opens her book on an early life journey: “I was fourteen years old, touring Rio de Janeiro with my family, when I first rode that bus to the statue on the hill. That day, as images of opulence and misery rocked my world, a crisis of conscience took root in me.”

Too few of us, when we ride that bus to the statue on the hill, even notice the chasm between opulence and misery, even fewer have a crisis of conscience. If you know anything about Mumia Abu-Jamal, you already know this: when he rode the bus to the statue on the hill, the images of opulence and misery rocked his world and a crisis of conscience took deep root in his soul.

Liberation theology – the political and spiritual movement that understands the teachings of Jesus Christ as an emancipation from the repressive reality of unjust political, economic, and social tyranny – has come under attack from the sadistic gatekeepers of Christendom and their armed forces employed by the American Empire. Liberation theologians and those who become naturally aligned with the justice they offer are attacked as being Marxist and communist and because these movements have dared to challenge the status quo, also known as predatory capitalism. Liberation theology, and those who subscribe to its compassionate tenets, see injustice through the eyes of the poor and then struggle to demolish the ties that bind. For a crash course, check out the murderous U.S. actions that have wrecked havoc throughout Latin America over the past countless decades, especially at the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency (read “Masters of War” by Clara Nieto, experience your government and tax dollars at work).

So this past week, three giants of liberation theology rolled into the Keystone State: Cornel West, James Cone, and Chris Hedges. Prophetic every time they utter a word, these three dudes visited Mumia this past week at SCI Mahanoy – one of America’s franchised gulags, this one in rural eastern Pennsylvania on land once bursting with high luster anthracite coal. “It was like four nerds just kickin’ it,” Mumia told me. “Man, you would have been the fifth.” Flattering, but just call me Pete Best.

Chris Hedges and I visited Mumia back in December and we decided this visit needed to happen. Dr. West and Dr. Cone needed to finally meet Mumia… and Mumia needed to finally meet these two vanguards of revolutionary thought, men who have influenced Mumia greatly, and of course vice versa… men who have both written forwards to Mumia’s books yet never entered the bowels of hell from where this wrongly convicted journalist has worked and lived for the past 30-plus years.

But this past week they did. Chris told me, “Steve, it was, as you might expect, very moving. Watching Mumia being affirmed with such enthusiasm and passion by two of the greatest African-American intellectuals in the country was, for me, a powerful and special moment. Mumia was crying when we left.” Then today (Wednesday, May 15), Chris Hedges was a guest on Pacifica’s DemocracyNow and Amy Goodman asked Hedges about his recent visits with Julian Assange and then his visit with Mumia. Chris said:

“I think the courage of a Manning, the courage of an Assange, the courage of a Mumia – I mean, how that man remains unbroken. I was there with Cornel West and the theologian James Cone. I mean it was a privilege for me. I mean, three of probably the greatest African-American intellectuals in the country, and certainly radicals. It’s those people who hold fast to the kind of moral imperative, or hold fast to the capacity for dissent, whether that’s Manning, who exhibited—I was in the courtroom when he read his statement—tremendous courage, poise, whether that’s Assange, whether that’s Mumia, let’s look at where all those three people are, because for all of us who speak out, that’s where they want us to be, as well. And that gets back to this AP story, because that is exactly the process that we are undergoing and where—if they win, where we’re headed.”

Imagine Mumia interacting with the likes of Cornel West, James Cone, and Chris Hedges on a regular basis – free and unencumbered. Imagine that happening all the time, as a matter of course. Imagine if that was happening over the last thirty some-odd years, those stolen years that these sadistic bastards have taken from Mumia, from us, thirty some-odd years that they’ve railroaded him into their so-called justice system.

Imagine.

Well, I do. It’s why I made “Long Distance Revolutionary.” It’s why Mev Puleo lived her life the way she did. It’s why Cone and West, now both at Union Theological Seminary, undertake a life of compassionate and revolutionary action. It’s why Mumia does the exact same… it’s because when we first rode that bus to the statue on the hill, images of opulence and misery rocked our world, and then a crisis of conscience took root in our lives.

Imagine. It’s easy if you try.

by  Mark Lewis Taylor

A new film, Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary (A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal), opens May 3 at Philadelphia’s Landmark Ritz on the Bourse for at least a week. Film-goers again consider Mumia Abu-Jamal, the revolutionary journalist who recently won federal court rulings that his death sentence was unconstitutional. He is now serving a life sentence in prison, after having served nearly 30 years on death row.

The film comes as new “Bring Mumia Home” campaigns build momentum. A petition to the Department of Justice supports claims to innocence that Abu-Jamal has maintained ever since he was arrested for the 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia Officer Daniel Faulkner. In calling for his immediate release, the petition cites the “cruel and unusual conditions” of his long-term confinement, recent exculpatory evidence and Amnesty International’s 2000 judgment that Abu-Jamal’s trial was “irredeemably tainted by politics and race.”

The film at Philadelphia’s Landmark Ritz already has achieved “Official Selection” at multiple film festivals, ranking number 3 nationwide when it opened in New York City (number 1 in Los Angeles and the Bay Area). It has played on campuses such as Princeton and Temple Universities.

The film dispels a number of myths about Abu-Jamal, not the least of which is the most flagrant and defaming one, that he was just an angry young Black Panther “out to kill a cop.” The real story of Abu-Jamal is carried in the film-title phrase: “long distance revolutionary.”

“Revolutionary” for what, some may ask?

The answer, as dramatized by the film’s riveting, historical treatment of Abu-Jamal, is freedom – a mode of freedom the media and mainstream rarely treat. It would be a freedom for America’s poor communities which, since the late 1960s, have been trapped in a pincers movement of social dispossession and police repression, resulting in a seven-fold increase in the U.S. prison population since the 1970s (“One in 100” Americans imprisoned, the Pew Center reports).

Numerous scholars meticulously explain this pincers movement (Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Bruce Western, Loïc Wacquant). As “safety nets” were slashed for the socially vulnerable, state powers offered only “dragnets,” ramped-up policing that swelled the prisons. Across decades of social service cutbacks for the poor, like the 1996 “Welfare Reform” bill that cast 6.1 million off welfare (315,000 being children with disabilities), there arose across the same period omnibus crime bills, mandated long-term sentences, media-hyped racial stereotypes of the poor, and a failed drug war that didn’t stop drugs but did fill prisons with non-violent drug users.

Law professor Michelle Alexander argues in her new book, The New Jim Crow, that the real problem lies in the prisons’ scandalously disproportionate confinement of people of color, often on drug charges despite the majority of users being white. No other nation incarcerates its racial/ethnic groups at a higher rate. A new racialized “caste” has emerged, Alexander writes, like the old Jim Crow. Especially Black communities are locked into an ever-deepening politics of disempowerment.

So, “long distance revolutionary” for what?

For a freedom from this legacy of the 1960s, freedom from powerful structures that dispossess and incarcerate the black, brown and poor, freedom from racist regimes that undermine national ideals of justice for all. Abu-Jamal has been a “revolutionary” for that freedom.

Martin Luther King, in 1963, named prisons and policing as threats to full freedom in rarely-cited words of his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.” There, he intoned, “Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.”

King felt even greater persecution and surveillance after his 1965 speech criticizing the Vietnam War, U.S. imperialism and corporate power. A White House advisor termed this “Martin throwing in with the Hanoi Hawks.” Authorities feared rising national alliances of Blacks, Asians and other war-dissenters.

The film dramatizes Abu-Jamal’s struggle through these times. From his youth in the late-1960s, he organized among his city’s racialized poor communities. He was personally “staggered by the winds of police brutality,” recalling King’s words.

Abu-Jamal and Black communities in Philadelphia suffered this in full measure in the years of former Mayor Frank Rizzo: high schoolers beaten for peaceful protests, whole neighborhoods suffering police brutality, community leaders harassed. In 1985, police dropped a military explosive on the MOVE family/activist home, decimating 65 neighboring homes.

As funding grew for policing in cities like Rizzo’s the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) under Director J. Edgar Hoover acted out its fear of a “Black messiah” rising from urban communities. While Abu-Jamal had never been charged with a crime, the FBI compiled over 600 pages about him. COINTELPRO targeted King and other leaders in the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, American Indian and Chinese-American movements. This is meticulously documented in works like Kenneth O’Reilly’s, Racial Matters.

In sum, the state’s fear of activists organizing in their communities of color prompted both repression of those activists, and also the “drug war” policing of activists’ entire communities, thus driving U.S. mass incarceration to unprecedented levels, and anchoring the racialized caste regime of today.

Altering these state practices will require, as Alexander warns, nothing less than a “mass movement.” This is because ending mass incarceration demands ending the politics of dispossession and repression that drive it. It will require anti-racist advocacy, and ending government’s dispossession of the poor. It means also, she stresses, ending the ways U.S. weapons industries and private companies now invest heavily in U.S. prisons.
For such a mass movement, whole communities must tap into a collective “long distance revolutionary” spirit.

Abu-Jamal, alongside other political prisoners, has been an exemplar of this spirit, from days as a young activist to his present writings from prison. Across seven books and thousands of essays, he has exposed, explained, and resisted the political maneuvers creating today’s “prisons for profit complex.” Moreover, he has linked that complex – as did Martin Luther King, Jr. and others –to U.S. wars abroad.

The film, Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary, shows no stereotyped revolutionary. Instead it foregrounds the long-distance struggle of one whose journey has been to create life in the face of systems of social death. That struggle delivered Abu-Jamal into a racist trial, decades on death row, and now prison. But this film is one more testimony to the power of his struggle, a “long distance revolutionary” struggle – for a comprehensive and liberating justice, for all, which is the mark of any real freedom.

Mark Lewis Taylor is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture, Religion & Society, at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Newark activists for Mumia.

On April 24 activists for Mumia rally all afternoon in Philadelphia at D. A. Seth Williams’ office, demanding Mumia’s release, and then gather in the evening with educators, artists, activists and human rights groups at the North Philly Church of the Advocate. Details can be found here in the A24 Philly Press Release .

But activists are also at work in Newark, protesting on Friday, April 26th at 12 noon, the cancellation by Cityplex-12 the showing of Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary. Again, for details about this important upcoming event, see the special-design Newark Press Release . And Temple University professor and award-winning journalist, Linn Washington, Jr., has an article on the “Nonsense in Newark” that is not to be missed!

See you at these exciting well-planned events. The momentum builds for activists’ “Bring Mumia Home!” campaign.

Take another step with us in the effort to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Support his struggle for freedom, and help us keep the heat on Philadelphia officials by rallying for his freedom. Every day of Mumia’s life is precious in the struggle to free him, and also for his and our justice-making work in this country and the world – to end mass incarceration here and the U.S. export of its “prison solution” abroad. Mumia has long been a “voice of the voiceless” for those suffering the labyrinthian worlds of mass incarceration, solitary confinement, immigrant detention, and torture. He has been present, lifting his voice on issues of white racism, class war on the poor, repression of workers and dissidents everywhere, the imperial wars and policies of transnational capital. Stand with him and us on April 24th. Be a part of this historic effort.

For the write-up about the April 24th celebration at the Free Mumia web site in NYC.

You can also DOWNLOAD A COLOR FLYER for this April 24th event, also from the Free Mumia Website. Make copies, distribute widely and bring your friends and colleagues. EMAJ will be there with banner.

On Monday, February 25, 2013, Prof. Judith Ritter of Widener Law School and Christina Swarns of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. filed an appeal in the Superior Court of Pennsylvania challenging the fairness of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas’ surprise August 2012 Order resentencing Mumia Abu-Jamal to life imprisonment without parole. That brief, which is attached, demonstrates that the trial court violated state and federal law by resentencing Mumia without providing him, his counsel or anyone else notice that a resentencing would occur; by failing to give Mumia or his counsel the opportunity to appear or present information or argument prior to sentencing; and by failing to make any effort to ensure that Mumia was informed of his appellate rights. Given these errors, the appeal requests a new sentencing hearing. Here are the next steps:

(1)   The Philadelphia County District Attorney’s Office will file a brief responding to our appeal, we will file a reply to the DA’s brief, there may be oral argument, and then the Superior Court will issue an opinion.

(2)   The Court has three options: it can (a) conclude that there was nothing wrong with what the trial court did and uphold Mumia’s life without parole sentence; (b) conclude that the trial court made mistakes but there was no harm to Mumia because the outcome — a life without parole sentence — would be the same even if the proper procedures had been followed; or (c) vacate the trial court’s order and send the case back to the Court of Common Pleas for a new sentencing hearing that complies with state and federal law.

It is hard to know how the court will rule, or how soon an opinion will be issued. We will certainly let everyone know as soon as a decision is announced.

Thank You, The Legal Team of Mumia Abu Jamal

This is only the beginning… much more to come, BUT:
We MUST Push
We MUST Mobilize
We MUST Sell a Boatload of Tickets This Weekend.
We MUST Do This RIGHT NOW.

In solidarity, all of our connections & network MUST Buy Advance Tickets for MUMIA in Philadelphia!
Showing at the Landmark Ritz at the Bourse, 400 Ranstead Street, May 3rd – 9th. The more tickets we sell now, the greater chance the film will be shown in the largest capacity theater at the Ritz, the more people we can get to pack the house to experience Mumia’s story… And even more important, the more shows that are packed (and/or SOLD OUT) between now and May 3rd, the greater chance the film has of being held over for a second week, creating more of an ongoing, serious change in the conversation around Mumia in Philadelphia. Let’s make it impossible for the so-called City of Brotherly Love to ignore us.

But, even more important:

LET’S MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR A LARGE CORPORATE THEATER CHAIN TO CAVE IN TO THE PRESSURE IT WILL SURELY RECEIVE TO CANCEL THE MOVIE. HERE’S HOW:

(1) Encourage groups to buy tickets to a particular show NOW and work out the details later.

(2) Encourage individuals to buy tickets to any first weekend show NOW and decide who to invite later.

(3) Encourage folks to buy more than one or two tickets… tell them they will always find a friend or relative to go.

(4) Encourage folks to buy and donate 5-10-15-20 tickets to a church, a school, a community center, a senior citizens community, a bookstore, a political organization…

(5) Encourage folks from all corners of the country & planet who love freedom, justice, and truly care about shining a light on Mumia’s struggle to buy and donate tickets to pack the house NOW.

Follow the link below and choose a date from May 3-9 (right now we’re really focused on May 3, 4, 5) and you’ll see four showtimes a day for Mumia. Pick a showtime and buy your tickets — up to 10 tickets at once. Matinees are $6.50, later showings are $9.50. There is a $1 service fee per ticket.

https://tickets.landmarktheatres.com/(S(keu11ftyjudrcnldwvl2sgjb))/ticketing.aspx?theatreid=274

Like I said on the phone call yesterday, people are always asking “what can I do to help Mumia’s cause?” Well, at this time, on this day, at this moment in history – this is what they can do… a great way to help create change for a few bucks. There is no magic wand that will wave and free Mumia from the ties that bind. Only diligent hard work – hard work like EMAJ, ICFFMAJ, all the movements, Pam Africa, Ramona Africa, Johanna Fernandez, Frances Goldin, Suzanne Ross, Rachel Wolkenstein, Tameka Cage, Martha Conley, Mark Taylor, and all the people I’ve met who are inspirational to me in their commitment, drive, and desire to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.

This is the time to wake Philadelphia up. The critics will be harsh, they will be ugly. The theater filled with people that care will combat the fear and hate with love.

We will work to get luminaries there for the Philly opening, we will work with the Philly-based PR person to work the media, the organizations, etc. But RIGHT NOW, nothing – NOTHING – will beat ticket sales.

Let’s do it. Today. Tomorrow. Saturday. Sunday . . . and beyond. Send us your updates over the next few days on how it’s going.

Let’s engage… onamove.

Steve
svittoria@sbcglobal.net

The momentum in the movement to free Mumia has been picking up steam and the possibilities of this new period are great. We are excited about relaunching the campaign that will bring Mumia home, as we build a movement to end mass incarceration, to free all political prisoners, and build a better world. In this moment, we also have the tremendous new movie on Mumia, The Long Distance Revolutionary, which is showing across the country, and - please note – scheduled now for a run in the heart of Philadelphia, May 3-4-5 with four showings daily. (Support this event by keeping informed of the Philly campaign for the film, and help fill those seats by buying your tickets now. If you yourself cannot go, you can give or sell them to someone else. We hope to have all sold out events.)

Following on the resolutions of our Jan 26 strategic planning event at Temple University, we called the first official meeting of a Coordinating Committee for effort to bring Mumia home. The meeting was be held in New York on February 23. Thosefrom afar had the opportunity to call into the meeting. The meeting was held at Baruch College, 24th Street and Lexington Avenue, in the History Department Seminar Room.

The purpose of the coordinating committee was to help bring to fruition the resolutions established at the January 26 strategic planning meeting.

These include:
1) To use the last term of Obama’s presidency to leverage our demand for Mumia’s immediate release from prison;
2) To continue to identify and implement the strategy that will bring Mumia home;
3) To emphasize in our strategy the 6 areas of work necessary to build a mass movement to Free Mumia and end mass incarceration: 1) Spiritual Communities 2) Labor 3) Students 4) Defense of the Move 9 and other Political Prisoners 5) Media 6) Educators.

4) To consciously and systematically connect all the different people who are already doing this work both in the US and around the world so that we are all working together collaboratively and effectively.

5) To bring newer and younger activists into the leadership body of the Mumia work.

6) To call for our next strategic planning meeting.

With love and in solidarity,

Johanna, Mark & Tameka of Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal
and in Collaboration with Pam & Ramona Africa

Saturday, February 16, is the day that the powerful new film on Mumia Abu-Jamal, The Long Distance Revolutionary, shows on the campus of Princeton University. It debuted last week in New York City and was held over for extended stay because of large audiences. The film in Princeton starts promptly at 12:30 pm, and will be followed by a panel featuring Ramona Africa (Minister of Information, MOVE), Johanna Fernandez (American History, Baruch College CUNY) and Mark Taylor (Religion & Society, Princeton Theological Seminary). It will be shown at the Carl A. Fields Center of Princeton University. Click HERE FOR DIRECTIONS to the Center. Questions: call Mark Taylor (609) 497-7918.

AND – make a whole day of it on Saturday! In the morning we begin with another film, The House I Live In, a Sundance Festival Grand Jury Award winner, which deals with the drug war and mass incarceration. Remember, “the struggle is one:” – fighting to Free Mumia, ending Mass Incarceration, and achieving justice for all. See you Saturday. Princeton Seminary students will be on the Princeton sidewalks on Friday, leafletting about the all day film festival.

For Princeton Seminary’s Poster for this Film Festival, click MassIncarcerationPoster .

© 2013 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Several years ago, in a hotly contested case, Brown v.Plata, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold a lower court ruling declaring California’s state prisons an unconstitutional violation, which threatened the mental and physical health of prisoners.

One of the reasons for this declaration of unconstitutionality was the state’s overcrowding situation, which in 2009, topped 171,000 prisoners. Cali’s prison population is the second highest in the nation, only exceeded by Texas.

Several years after Brown v. Plata, and the state has adopted a strategy of transfer, from state prison to the counties. Also, it has begun to stuff prisoners into other state prisons, including women’s prison.

At Valley State Prison for Women, the state’s prisoncrats are converting it into a man’s prison- and squeezing over 1,000 women and transgendered persons into the two remaining women’s prisons, violating the letter, if not the spirit, of theBrown opinion.

In Brown v. Plata, the U.S. Supremes ordered the State to reduce overcrowding. Despite this, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDOCR) has been playing bait and switch, shipping people around, sending few people home.

On Saturday, Jan. 26th, people are coming together to protest this state of affairs, by rallying at Valley State Prison for Women, demanding, an end to overcrowding, and true release for thousands of people from prison dungeons.

For more information, contact: www.womenprisoners.org

-© ’13 maj
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Mumia’s essays have been lovingly and tirelessly transcribed and broadly posted by Sis. Fatirah Aziz for many years and is a treasure to Mumia (and us all!)

[col. writ. 12/11/12] © ’12 Mumia Abu-Jamal

From every TV and radio news broadcast, the words, `fiscal cliff’ are being mentioned, in a tone and frequency of dread and fear. Listeners, viewers and readers can sense the dread and faux fear, but little clarity arises from the dust.

What is the fiscal cliff?

It is a political creation – made by Congress itself, as a self- made rule to force agreement (but really to blackmail political opponents), or else massive cuts will be automatically made in defense, social services and other government programs.

In the Mel Brooks-made cowboy comedy, Blazing Saddles, a Black sheriff moseys into town to the shock and surprise of the white townspeople. When things get ugly, the sheriff (played by actor Cleavon Little (1939-1992), pulls out his Colt. 45 and points it at himself, warning them to get back, or else he’ll shoot.

The fiscal cliff? It’s “Blazing Saddles.”

But, it’s no comedy.

As Workers World’s Larry Holmes sees it, this so-called `fiscal cliff’ is a recent political invention designed to erect an American austerity program-cut-backs in social services so that more money could be sucked up by the ruling 1 %.
Holmes, in remarks made to a recent Workers World party conference, made the following analysis:

We are going to hear a lot about the so-called “fiscal cliff”. It is worldwide austerity. In Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, in Ireland and in South Africa, all throughout Latin America, and here in the U.S. From the point of view of the capitalists, the idea is to fix their system on the backs of the workers. They can’t get it from profits because of overproduction, so let’s just go literally into the body of the workers and get more pounds of flesh by stealing things from them. It is a mad, insane exercise in destruction, social destruction. It really should be called “the terminal crisis-of-capitalism cliff.”*

In sum, this is economic warfare parading as a political conflict, between two capitalist parties. It is a self-made squabble among brothers.

–© ’12 maj

[Source: * Holmes, L., "Reviving a Global Revolutionary Perspective", Workers World(weekly), Dec. 13, 2012, p.7]
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Mumia’s essays have been lovingly and tirelessly transcribed and broadly posted by Sis. Fatirah Aziz for many years and is a treasure to Mumia (and us all!)