In Solidarity with the Occupy the Justice Department protest in Washington, DC
on Tuesday, April 24th - Mumia Abu-Jamal's 58th Birthday
End Mass Incarceration!
4PM - RALLY at 14th and Broadway, Oakland
Occupy4Prisoners and supporters will rally at Oscar Grant Plaza, where awareness and understanding regarding the brutality and corruption within the United States INjustice system will begin to rise up. We will be doing educational outreach about the prison system with music, speakers, a "Truth Mob" and amplifying the voices of people inside of prisons. 5PM - MARCH to Federal Building and Obama Headquarters
We will take to the streets to march as an expression of our solidarity with the 2.5 million people incarcerated in the country. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country, with 743 people in prison per 100,000 of national population. Occupy4Prisoners brings to the attention of the greater Occupy Movement how we cannot forget the bottom 1% of the 99% in our greater struggle for justice and equality.
The march will continue past the Federal Building (13th and Clay) where representatives from the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia and the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal will speak. Folks from the Bradley Manning Support Network will share information about Bradley‚s plight when we reach the Obama Headquarters (17th and Telegraph.) Then we will march to... 6PM - THE INJUSTICE SYSTEM ON TRIAL - 19th and Telegraph
Once we arrive at the 19th and Telegraph Plaza, we will be putting the Injustice System on trial. Powerful local activists will preside over a trial that is actually about the truth.
The prosecutor will be Anita Wills, (Oscar Grant Committee and Occupy4Prisoners), the defense attorney will be Deborah Small, (Break the Chains), and the judge will be Jerry Elster (All of Us or None). The system will be played by Dan Siegel (National Lawyers Guild).
The jury will be YOU!
These witnesses will be bringing evidence against the system regarding the following charges:
Targeting youth of color
Chris M, Occupy Oakland Sagnicthe Salazar, Youth Together and Xicana Moratorium Coalition
Allowing murder and assault by police to go unpunished
Denika Chatman, Kenneth Harding Jr. Foundation Carey Downs & Dionne Smith Downs, A Mother's Cry for Justice
Enforcing racism at every level
Jabari Shaw, Rapper, Laney College Black Student Union Manuel La Fontaine, All of Us or None and Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
Holding political prisoners hostage
Kiilu Nyasha, Independent journalist and former Black Panther Aaron Mirmalek, Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee Oakland
Torturing people inside the prisons
Sharena Curley, Oscar Grant Committee Luis Bato Talamantez, California Prison Focus and one of the San Quentin Six
Conspiring to commit mass incarceration
Linda Evans, All of Us or None and former political prisoner Ghetto Prophet, Onyx Organizing Committee and spoken word artist
Please check out the phenomenal Political Prisoner radio show broadcast on April 19 with tons of info very eloquently and passionately delivered by Prof. Johanna Fernandez and Sis. Jamila Wilson, please check out the podcast and broadly repost!!
Teach-In About Mumia Abu-Jamal and MOVE Organized by Sandra Jones at Occupy Delaware, 800 N. French St., Wilmington, DE
Sunday, April 22, 2012
4:00pm until 7:00pm
Please join us for an amazing line up of speakers who will provide information about Mumia Abu Jamal, Pennsylvania political prisoner, to include a legal update on his case, as we build for the April 24th event Occupy the Justice Department.
In addition, the MOVE Documentary will be shown and MOVE members will provide information about the unjust incarceration of the MOVE 9, as we build for the May 12th event in Philly, when the May 13, 1985 BOMBING of the MOVE house occurred.
Speakers include:
Pam Africa, from Philadelphia (MOVE Organization)
Ramona Africa, from Philadelphia (MOVE Organization)
Jack Bryson, from Oakland (family friend of Oscar Grant, murdered by BART police in Oakland three years ago)
Sandy Jones (Delaware Chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty)
Who Is Mumia Abu-Jamal?
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American writer and journalist, author of six books and hundreds of columns and articles, who has spent the last 30 years on Pennsylvania's death row and now general population, wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer, Daniel Faulkner. His demand for a new trial and freedom is supported by heads of state, nobel laureates, distinguished human rights organizations, scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists, the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress, the NAACP, labor unions, and by countless thousands who cherish democratic and human rights – and justice -the world over
They don't just want my death, they want my silence. — Mumia Abu-Jamal
The MOVE 9 are innocent men and women who have been in prison since August 8, 1978, following a massive police attack on us at our home in Powelton Village (Philadelphia). This was seven years before the government dropped a bomb on MOVE, killing 11 people, including 5 babies. The August 8, 1978 police attack on MOVE followed years of police brutality against MOVE and was a major military operation carried out by the Philadelphia police department under orders of then-mayor, Frank Rizzo, whose reputation for racism and brutality is well known; it followed him up thru the ranks of the police department to the police commissioner's office to the mayor's office.
During this attack, heavy equipment was used to tear down the fence surrounding our home, and cops filled our home with enough tear gas to kill us and our babies, while SWAT teams covered every possible exit. We were all in the basement of our home, where we had 10 thousand pounds of water pressure per minute directed at us from 4 fire department water cannons (for a total of 40 thousand pounds of water pressure per minute). As the basement filled with nearly six feet of water we had to hold our babies and animals above the rising water so they wouldn't drown. Suddenly shots rang out (news reporters and others know the shots came from a house at 33rd and Baring St., not our home, because they actually saw the man shooting) and bullets immediately filled the air as police through-out the area opened fire on us.
Officer James Ramp, who was standing above us on street-level and facing our home, was killed by a single bullet that struck him on a downward angle. This alone makes it impossible for MOVE to have killed Ramp, since we were below street level, in the basement. MOVE adults came out of the house carrying our children through clouds of tear gas, we were beat and arrested.
Television cameras actually filmed the vicious beating of our brother Delbert Africa (3 of the 4 cops that beat Delbert went to trial on minor charges). Despite the photographic evidence, the trial judge (Stanley Kubacki) refused to let the jury render a verdict and himself acquitted the cops by directed order. Nine of us were charged with murder and related charges for the death of James Ramp.
Within a few hours of our arrest, our home (which is supposed to be the "scene of the crime" and therefore evidence) was deliberately destroyed, demolished, by city officials when they were legally obligated to preserve all evidence, but we were held for trial anyway. We went to trial before Judge Edward Malmed who convicted all nine of us of third degree murder (while admitting that he didn't have "the faintest idea" who killed Ramp) and sentenced each of us to 30 - 100 years in prison. Judge Malmed also stated that MOVE people said we are a family so he sentenced us as a family; we were supposed to be on trial for murder, not for being a family.
It is clear that the MOVE 9 are in prison for being committed MOVE members, not for any accusation of crime. Three other adults that were in the house on August 8th did not get the same treatment as those that this government knows are committed MOVE members. One had all charges dismissed against her in September of 1978 with the judge saying that there was no evidence that she was a committed MOVE member when the issue was supposed to be murder. The second one was held for trial but released on bail; she was acquitted. The third one was held for trial with no bail, convicted of conspiracy and given 10-23 years; she was paroled in 1994.
It is obvious that everything depended on whether or not the courts thought it was dealing with a committed MOVE member, court decisions had nothing to do with the accusation of murder.
It has been 25 years since the August 8, 1978 police attack on MOVE, 25 years of unjust of imprisonment, but despite the hardship of being separated from family-members, despite the grief over the murder of family-members (including babies), the MOVE 9 remain strong and loyal to our Belief, our Belief in Life, the Teaching of our Founder, JOHN AFRICA. We have an uncompromising commitment to our Belief, which is what makes us a strong unified family, despite all this government have done to break us up and ultimately exterminate us.
It will take a massive amount of public pressure to force this rotten corrupt government to release the MOVE 9 and all political prisoners----What can YOU do to add to the pressure?
Published: 10 April, 2012, 10:28
Edited: 11 April, 2012, 08:38
RT has become the first TV channel in the world to speak to former journalist and Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal since he was removed from death row in January. Abu-Jamal will spend his life behind bars for killing a police officer in 1981.
Considered by many to be a flagrant miscarriage of justice, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal has gained much attention worldwide. The defense claimed Abu-Jamal is innocent of the charges as the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses was not reliable. For decades, supporters have rallied behind him.
After spending almost 30 years on death row, Abu-Jamal told RT’s Anastasia Churkina that “The truth is I spent most of my living years in my lifetime, on death row. So, in many ways, even to this day, in my own mind, if not in fact, I’m still on death row.”
RT: If you were not behind bars and could be anywhere else in the world, where would you be – and what would you be doing?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Since my earliest years I was what one would call an internationalist. That is paying attention to what is happening in other parts of the world. As an internationalist I am thinking about life lived by other people all around the world. Of course as an African American I would love to spend some time in parts of Africa. But it is also true that I have many friends and loved ones in France. I would really like to bring my family, my wife and kids to come see our street in Paris.
RT: Being behind bars you seem to be watching world affairs much closer than most people who are free to walk the streets. Which event of the last 30 years would you like to be a part of, if you could?
MAJ: I think the first would probably be the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Because of course once being South African, it was also global, because it was the touch point of white supremacy versus the freedom and dignity of African people. So South Africa would be a logical first choice.
But wherever the people are fighting for freedom, that wins my eye and gets my attention and moves my passion.
RT: You turn 56 at the end of the month, which means you will have to spend more than half of your life behind bars. Most people cannot even begin to imagine that. What is it like? How has it changed you?
MAJ: The point and fact is I have spent most of my life, the bigger percentage of my life on death row. And it cannot but have had a profound effect on consciousness and on the way one sees and interacts with the world. I like to tell myself that I actually spent a lot of that time beyond the bars, in other countries and in other parts of the world. Because I did so mentally. But mental can only take you so far. The truth of the matter is that I spent most of my living years in my lifetime on death row. So, in many ways, even to this day, in my own mind, if not in fact, I am still on death row.
RT: Your story has really become a symbol for many of a flawed justice system. Do you personally have any faith left in a fair and free justice system? Considering your life has been so much affected by it?
MAJ: When I was a teenager and in the Black Panther party I remember I was going to downtown Manhattan and protesting against political imprisonment and incarceration and threats facing Angela Davis… When Davis attacked the prison system, she talked about perhaps 250,000 or 300,000 people imprisoned throughout all the US as a problem to be dealt with, a crisis, a situation that bordered on fascism. Fast forward 30-40 years to the present, today more than 300,000 prisoners in California alone, one state out of fifty. The imprisonment in California alone exceeds that of France, Belgium and England – I could name 4-5 countries combined.
We could not perceive back then of what it would become. It is monstrous when you really look at what is happening today. You can literally talk about millions of people incarcerated by the prisoner-industrial complex today: men, women and children. And that level of mass incarceration, really mass repression, has to have an immense impact in effect on the other communities, not just among families, but in a social and communal consciousness way, and in inculcation of fear among generations. So it is at a level and at a depth that many of us cannot even dream of today.
RT: You talk about so many important social and economic issues in your work; do you have a dream today? If you could see one of those aspects changed which one would you pick? What do you wish you could see happen in the United States?
MAJ: There is never one thing… Because of the system of interconnectedness and because one part of the system impacts another part of the system, and because, what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony of the ideological system impacts other parts of the system. You cannot change one thing that will impact all things. That is one of the lessons of the 1960s, because the civil rights movement was talking about integration and changing the schools. In point of fact if you look at the vast majority of working class and poor black kids in American schools today, they live and spend their hours and their days in the system profoundly as segregated as that of their grandparents, but it is not segregated by race, it is segregated by race and class.
The schools that my grandchildren go to are worse than the schools I went to when I was in my minor years and my teenage years. That’s a condemnation of a system but because former generations only concentrated on one thing or one side of the problem. The problem has really got worse and worse and worse. And while there is a lot of rhetoric about schools, American schools are a tragedy.
RT: You were monitored by the FBI at the age of fourteen, now with laws such as NDAA being passed in the United States when people are watched, detained and can be held, that has become easier than ever, do you think Big Brother has officially shown his face in this country?
MAJ: If you look back it is clear that FBI and their leaders and their agents knew that everything they did then was illegal and FBI agents were taught and trained how to break into places, how to do, what they called, black bag jobs and that kind of stuff, how to commit crimes. And this is what they were also taught, you’d better do it and you’d better not get caught, because if you get caught you are going to jail and we act like we don’t know you, you are on your own. What has happened in the last twenty and thirty years not just NDAA but the so-called Patriot Act has legalized everything that was illegal back in the 1950s-1970s. They legalized the very things that the FBI agents and administrative knew was criminal back then. That means they can look in your mail, they certainly can read your email, they tap your phone – they do all of that. But they do it in the name of national security. What we’re living today is a national security state where Big Brother is legalized and rationalized.
RT: You have described politicians once as prostitutes in suits giving your apologies to honest prostitutes. It is election season in the US right now and we want to ask who do people trust, who would you vote for?
MAJ: Nobody. I have seen no one who I could in good conscience vote for today. Because most of the people that are out there are from two major political parties and all I hear is kind of madness – a wish to return to days of youth to the 1950s or they talk about the perpetuation of the American empire, imperialism. What is there to vote for? How many people consciously go to the polls voting for imperialism, for more war or voting for their son or daughter or father or mother to become a member of the armed forces and become a mass murderer?
RT:You seem to have endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement that has sprung out the US this year. Is this the type of uprising that you think could change America and do good to the United States?
MAJ: I think it is the beginning of this kind of uprising. Because it has to be deeper, it has to be broader, it has to address issues that are touching on the lives of poor working class people…It is a damn good beginning, I just wish it was bigger and angrier.
RT: You are the voice of the voiceless. What is your message to your supporters right now, to those who are listening to you?
MAJ: Organize, organize, organize. I love you all. Thank you for fighting for me and let’s fight together to be free.
Yesterday approxiamately 600 people encircled the US Embassy in Berlin with a 700 meter (appr. 2230 feet) long banner demanding Mumia's freedom, to abolish the death penalty, stop the prison industrial complex and free the political prisoners. This banner has been drawn by hundreds of different people during FREE MUMIA info events all over the country in the last half year.
Berliner Ostermarsch 2012 - Freiheit für Mumia Abu-Jamal! - Occupy For Peace (April 7, 2012)
German media widely covered the event. We even made it into a news programme of Germany's largest TV station for a couple of seconds. We were supported by the peace movement which led a peace demonstration onto the square in order to take part in this action. It was a strong sign of solidarity when the whole march cued up to pick up a piece of the banner and started walkong around the US Embassy.
On April 21 we will take to the streets of Berlin again when we demonstrate through the city center. Mumia's former fellow prisoner Harold Wilson will join us when we march towards the US Embassy once more to demand the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the many other prisoners, who are incarcerated due to racist laws, political repression and the shear greed to exloit them in the prison industrial complex. We will demand a global abolition of the death penalty, too, highlighting the pivotal role the US has in this.
We hope these actions will help to draw attention to the OCCUPY the DoJ in Washington D.C. on April 24 - we wish you lots of success.
On Monday, March 26, 2012 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal of his capital murder conviction. With a one-page Order, the Supreme Court agreed with a lower court decision denying, without a hearing, Mr. Abu-Jamal's claim that a 2009 report by the National Academy of Science -- exposing serious flaws in forensic evidence routinely introduced in criminal trials -- demonstrated that the forensic evidence relied upon by the Philadelphia County District Attorney's Office in its 1982 prosecution of Mr. Abu-Jamal was unreliable. Because the forensic evidence that was presented at Mumia's trial was untrustworthy and because reliable and potentially exculpatory forensic evidence was never secured or presented by the state, the accuracy of the jury's first degree murder conviction is seriously undermined.
Although this decision concludes all of Mr. Abu-Jamal's pending appeals, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. and Prof. Judy Ritter are actively researching and investigating all options for future legal challenges to Mr. Abu-Jamal's conviction.
NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
Christina Swarns
Director, Criminal Justice Project
On December 31, 2011, William Singletary, a decorated Vietnam Vet who suffered from the effects of Agent Orange and heart failure, died of multiple organ failure. To most of you, he is known as a witness to Mumia’s innocence. Bill came forward in 1990 to testify that he saw another man, not Mumia, shoot Daniel Faulkner and run from the scene. From that time forward, Bill spoke out for Mumia’s innocence and to expose the police brutality directed against Mumia. For that, Bill was harassed by police, driven from Philadelphia, and ostracized by his family and suffered financial problems.
Jeanette Singletary knew when she married Bill that the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal would be an integral part of their life together .She stood with Bill through the 1995 PCRA hearing and as he continued his public campaign. Jeanette nursed and cared for Bill full-time over the past three years. When Bill died after weeks in intensive care, the family income, which was from his veteran’s benefits and social security disability, was slashed. His claims for benefits as a victim of Agent Orange have been denied. Jeanette has no other source of income. Their nineteen-year old daughter Sheadale, Bill’s pride and joy, began college this year. The Singletary home is now in foreclosure, and there are stacks of bills that Jeannette cannot pay. There is no money to keep up a car, which is necessary to get a job and buy groceries.
Please help this courageous family. Any gift of money will help. Your words of support will be appreciated.
Please send your contribution to: Jeanette Singletary, P.O. Box 71452, Durham, N. Carolina 27722-1452.
You can email Jeanette and Sheadale at: Billsfav19@gmail.com.
In thanks to William Singletary and his courageous defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal,
On December 18, 2011, from his solitary cell at SCI Mahanoy, Mumia wrote a message to the men and women with whom he shared death row. We share it with you here: (courtesy of 'Greater Friends' the newsletter of Pennsylvania Prison Society)
TO MY BRETHREN & SISTAS ON THE 'ROW
It has been barely a week since I departed Death Row, yet I cannot help but look back, for many of you are in my heart.
I may no longer be on Death Row, but because of you Death Row is still with me. How could that not be so, when I've spent more years of my life on Death Row, than in `Freedom?' Or, more time spent on Death Row, than with my family?
I write to tell you all—even those I've never met—that I love you, for we have shared something exceedingly rare. I have shared tears and laughter with you, that the world will neither know nor see. I have shared your anguish when some judge shattered your hopes and spit disappointment; or when some politician sought to use you to climb to higher office.
We have seen time and disease take some of our people off the Row. We have seen several choose their own date to die, cheating the hangman via suicide (William "Billy" Tilley, Jose "June" Pagan). But, Brothers and Sisters of the Row, I write not of death, but of life.
If I can walk off, so can you. Keep rumblin'; keep fightin'; keep rockin'. Check out your Mills issue.
But, there is more. Live each day, each hour, as if it is the only time there is. Love fiercely. Learn a new thing. A language. An art. A science. Keep your mind alive. Keep your heart alive. Laugh!
Look at each other not as competitors, but as fellow travelers on the same red road of life. No matter what the world says of you, see the best in each other, and radiate love to each other.
Be your best self. If you are blessed to have family, send your love to them all—no matter what. If you have a spiritual family or faith, practice it fully and deeply, for this links you to something greater than yourself. No matter what, Christian, Muslim, Judaism, Hindu, Krishna Consciousness, Buddhism, or SanterÃa (or Move). This broadens you and deepens you.
I have been blessed to have many of you as my teachers, and my students. Some have been my sons; some have been my brothers. Yet I see all of you as part of my family.
Take heart, for the death penalty itself is dying. States and counties simply can't afford it, and politicians who run on it are finding fewer and fewer buyers. Juries (especially in places like Philly) are increasingly reluctant to vote for death, even in cases where it appears imminent.
Sisters on the Row, while we have never met, my heart has felt your tears as you are forcibly separated from your children, unable to hold or kiss them. In many ways, as women, your anguish has been the worst, as your loves and sensitivities are deepest. My words to my brothers are yours as well: keep mind alive. Keep hearts alive. Live. Love. Learn. Laugh!
I know you all as few outsiders do. I've met artists, musicians, mathematicians, managers, jailhouse lawyers, and stockbrokers. I've seen guys who couldn't draw a straight line, emerge as master painters (Cush, Young Buck); I've seen guys come from near illiteracy to become fluent in foreign languages; I've met teachers who've created works of surpassing beauty and craftsmanship (Big Tony).
You are all far more than others say of you, for the spark of the infinite glows within each of you. You are on Death Row, but what is finest in you is greater than Death Row.
So, care for each other. Not in words, but in the heart.
Think good vibes on each other.
Lastly, don't rat. (If ratting was so cool, they would've beat me off the Row).
Featuring the poem “Occupy Mumia’s Cell” by Alice Walker.
