Editorial
November 1999
Temporary stay of execution leaves Mumia in the balance-mobilize now!
From its beginnings as a slave society, "American civilization" has been
put on trial and found guilty. Though racism, particularly in its virulent
and often genocidal forms, has most often been the charge, the specific
facts of the case change according to definite social relations that exist
in any given period. Since the 1970s, the quickening cadence of jack-boot
government repression of social movements in the U.S. have brought the
nation inexorably to the brink of civil war.
In 1977, a power blackout in New York City saw Black and Latino revolt
illuminate the social darkness of permanent joblessness and grinding
poverty. At the beginning of the Reagan era, this was followed by three
consecutive years of urban rebellion in Miami-Dade County's Black
communities in response to one police killing after another. Finally an
altogether new stage was reached in 1992 when the Los Angeles rebellion, in
response to the verdicts exonerating four Los Angeles police officers in
the Rodney King beating trial, very nearly became a NATIONAL insurrection.
Each time, revolt ignited in poor Black communities under siege. Each time,
Black resistance to repression had a face: New York had the face of a new
class, the so-called "underclass"; as in so many cities today, Miami-Dade
County had the local faces of victims of police killings; and L.A. had the
pulverized face of Rodney King. From the high point of the early '90s,
however, we've reached a new stage at the end of the decade. Not only is
there a new face, but a new voice-Mumia Abu-Jamal.
1990s VOICE OF RESISTANCE
Mumia Abu-Jamal has sat on Death Row for the last 17 years, had the U.S.
Supreme Court three times deny his request to hear his appeal of 14th
Amendment due process violations in his original case, and on Oct. 13 had a
second death warrant signed on him by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the face and voice of a worldwide movement to free him,
and of a growing national movement against the death penalty, prosecutorial
misconduct resulting in the wrongful convictions of untold scores of
innocent men and women, rampant police brutality, and against America's
burgeoning "prison-industrial complex."
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the face, voice, and symbol of these combined movements,
so much so that we risk losing sight of Mumia Abu-Jamal, THE HUMAN BEING,
whose state-sponsored murder by lethal injection was scheduled for Dec. 2
until Federal District Judge William sH. Yohn granted a stay of execution
on Oct. 26.
We in the movement fought powerfully and tirelessly for Mumia Abu-Jamal,
the symbol, in 1995 when newly-elected Governor Tom Ridge signed the first
death warrant. Mumia Abu-Jamal just as tirelessly fought through the power
of his voice and written words to remind us of what we are fighting for in
all these struggles evoked by a racist criminal injustice system. Now, like
never before, we must fight vigorously, intelligently, and irrepressibly
for Mumia Abu-Jamal, THE HUMAN BEING.
You should know that he's a man whose greatest personal anguish is being
separated from his loved ones, and whose family and social background in
Black working-class Philadelphia made him, as a classmate from junior high
school recalled, one of the few youth in the 1960s who radically identified
himself as Black "while the rest of us were still calling ourselves
'Negro.'" You should also know that his youthful radicalism never made him
anything other than a "gentle spirit." You should know that Mumia Abu-Jamal
THE HUMAN BEING is a father whose bond of love with his children is as
strong as his love of freedom for oppressed humanity. You should know that
in his mind they are inseparable
We need to know THE HUMAN BEING we're so passionately fighting to free as
much as the symbol we've made the face and voice of the movement. At the
moment, we need to know this more than ever before.
ACT NOW, FREE THIS HUMAN BEING!
Undoubtedly the latest developments in his case have put Mumia Abu-Jamal in
his most difficult situation to date. It is no less true, however, that the
system that put him there is also in a difficult situation. The face,
voice, and written words of Mumia Abu-Jamal are the face, voice, and word
of forces of revolt in this country whose resurgence can overnight return
the initiative from the forces of repression into the hands of the forces
of revolution.
The road ahead is difficult. Mumia hasn't despaired, neither must we. Nor
must we ignore the meaning of what Mumia knows is the truth of the struggle
for his life, namely that "The various struggles that we are involved in
unite around a central core: the freedom of people to resist the
stranglehold of the state and capital. All of us struggle for that freedom
that is tightly bound with our own, the freedom to resist, fight back that
society that increasingly sees us all as unworthy of life. To that end, we
must fight."
To that end, we must fight on to free Mumia Abu-Jamal! His life is in OUR
hands! America's criminal injustice system is on trial!
ACTION ALERT!
Mumia's case has been assigned to Federal District Judge William H. Yohn,
who issued a temporary stay of execution on Oct. 26 and has said that all
sides in Mumia's case can send letters and petitions to him stating their
position on the case. International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
is asking that you send messages in support of Mumia to his attorney
Leonard Weinglass:
Judge William H. Yohn
c/o Leonard Weinglass, Esq.
6 W. 20th St. Suite 10A
New York, NY 10011
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