Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Essays
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Podcast Description
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who chronicles the human condition. He has been a resident of Pennsylvania's death row for twenty-five years. Writing from his solitary confinement cell his essays have reached a worldwide audience. His books "Live From Death Row", "Death Blossoms", "All Things Censored", "Faith of Our Fathers" and "We Want Freedom" have sold over 150,000 copies and been translated into nine languages. His 1982-murder trial and subsequent conviction have been the subject of great debate. Major issues in the trial have led to a worldwide campaign to gain Mumia a new trial and, ultimately, to gain his freedom.
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Whitney Houston 1963-2012 | -- | 2/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners | -- | 2/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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For a Revolutionary Black History Month | -- | 2/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Of Love and Struggle | -- | 2/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Memories of Maroon | -- | 2/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Peace Equals War | -- | 2/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Comments from Mumia, Part 2 | From Sunday evening 1/29/2012Question 2: What is next?Prison RadioProduced by Noelle Hanrahan. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Comments from Mumia, Part 1 | From Sunday evening 1/29/2012 Question 1: What is General Population like? Prison RadioProduced by Noelle Hanrahan. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Of Idiots and Sages (Read by Noam Chomsky) | -- | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Of Idiots and Sages (Read by Mumia Abu-Jamal) | -- | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Rosa Our Rosa | 'Rosa Our Rosa', a new commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal read by Goldie (Mumia's daughter) and Frances Goldin. You can also watch the video at http://prisonradio.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/rosa-our-rosa-by-mumia-read-by-goldie-and-frances-goldin/ “We gather today over 140 years after the birthday of Rosa Luxemburg – The brilliant thinker, writer, activist and revolutionary who’s memory still burns bright around the world.” Prison and government officials are trying to censor and silence Mumia Abu-Jamal. We stand with the many Americans who believe that there is tremendous value in his voice being heard. We will fight to make sure that both his voice and his body are free. For updates on Mumia's current condition go to www.prisonradio.org Solidarity,Prison Radio | 1/16/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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'Toy Soldiers' Read by Ron Kovic | For Mumia Abu-Jamal, I am Ron Kovic author of Born on the Fourth of July.According to recent news accounts, shattered and shredded body parts and remains of U.S. servicemen were found in a landfill.Despite political spins, this sobering image is a telling, true-life metaphor for what those in power really think of soldiers, many of whom are but boys and girls freshly loosed from High School.In recent years, politicians, especially when on TV or radio talk shows, are apt to say, when addressing a vet, "I thank you for your service." In truth, this is robot-talk, kind of like when a parrot is trained to say, "Hello!", and about as meaningful.The American poet, e.e. cummings once said, “A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat, except a man."John Africa said, "A politician will tell you he wasn't born of a woman, if it'll get you to vote for him."In these passing years, since 9/11, wars have been fought that have devastated countries, economies, and world peace. Untold thousands have died, many for nothing more, nor less, than American paranoia. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have died defending American lies.And tens of thousands have returned, bodies, minds, souls shattered by political calculations driven by arrogance, greed and sheer stupidity. Thousands of marriages have ended in divorce because of forced years apart, and families have been broken asunder because some greasy politician wanted to play 'War-President' (or Senator, or Representative.)In a real sense, military body parts tossed into landfills as trash is more than metaphor.It is truth.(c) '11 maj Prison and government officials are trying to censor and silence Mumia Abu-Jamal. I stand as one of many Americans who believe that there is tremendous value in his voice being heard. I am others will fight to make sure that both his voice and his body are free. Ron Kovic. For Mumia Abu-Jamal.Ron Kovic. For Mumia Abu-Jamal. | 1/10/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Slow Death Row | Jan. 1st 2012 Prison Radio announces that it will continue to record and distribute Mumia Abu-Jamal's radio essays in the face of State censorship and State sponsored torture. Mumia is being kept in solitary in SCI Mahanoy's dungeon. Its restrictions and conditions belie its modern construction.The defeat for the State, having to openly declare that Mumia will live, and the fact that they can no longer legally execute Mumia, has meant a severe backlash. After his transfer off of death row, Mumia was thrown in the hole at SCI Mahanoy.The prison administration excuse that "paperwork" is holding up his transfer to general population in this medium security prison is transparent.The disinformation is part of the strategy to create confusion and disorient.Make no mistake. These conditions are clearly designed torture. They are being enacted to elicit Mumia and our silence. Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in extremely repressive conditions. And like thousands of prisoners, residents of solitary confinement and isolation units in every hole in every prison across the country, Mumia is being subject to draconian, dehumanizing and brutal conditions. He is chained in leg, waist and wrist irons, behind Plexiglas during visits. Subject to strip searches before and after visits. Unable to walk freely. Having bits of paper to write notes on, with a rubber flex pen. No shelves, no books. Limited access to new reports, letters delayed. Resitricted visiting. Lights on 24hrs a day. Only one brief phone call to his wife. No access to adequate food or commissary.Please stay in touch as we bring you more updated information.contactNoelle Hanrahan for more information.info@prisonradio.org | 1/1/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Prison (The Prison Nation) | -- | 12/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Madame Danielle Mitterrand - Presente | -- | 12/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Beyond Penn State | -- | 11/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tahrir Square Part 2 | -- | 11/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Whom Do They Represent? | -- | 11/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From State Pens To Penn State | -- | 11/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Managers Of Money | -- | 11/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Joe Frazier: 1944 -2011 | -- | 11/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What Do They Want? | -- | 11/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Life of John Carlos... Who? | -- | 10/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Interruptus In Iraq | -- | 10/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tea Parties And Protests | -- | 10/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Sylvia Robinson: Rap's Mama Passes | -- | 10/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Lydia Barashango - Presente! | -- | 10/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Occupation | -- | 10/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Rape Blocks | -- | 10/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Troy Davis: Movement Lessons | -- | 9/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Jobs Bill Ain't Enough | -- | 9/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The World Weeps | -- | 9/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Palestine At The U.N.: Nationhood | -- | 9/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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911 Plus 10 | -- | 9/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Nick Ashford 1941-2011 | -- | 8/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Who's King? | -- | 8/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks to the Grass Roots Radio Conference | -- | 8/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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With Leaders Like These | -- | 8/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What 'Jobs' Really Means | -- | 8/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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London Afire | -- | 8/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Grand Bargain... For Surrender | -- | 8/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mubarak In The Dock | -- | 8/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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National Debts | -- | 8/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Against Japan's Nuclear Dangers | -- | 7/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Amy Winehouse: 1983-2011 | -- | 7/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Dying For Sunlight (Pelican Bay Hunger Strike) | -- | 7/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Media Is Master | -- | 7/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Media And The Medea Complex | -- | 7/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Teachers: On The Frontlines Of Class War | -- | 7/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Good Night, Afghanistan | -- | 6/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Drugs And Taxes | -- | 6/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wars And Revolutions | -- | 6/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mad In The Middle East | -- | 6/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Geronimo, Born Elmer G. Pratt, Returns To His Ancestors | -- | 6/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gil Scott Heron: Radical Poet 1949-2011 | -- | 6/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Neo-Neocolonialism? | -- | 6/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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American Corrections | -- | 5/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Echoes Of Empire | -- | 5/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Spoils Of War | -- | 5/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Kent To Kal-El | -- | 5/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Lesson From The Osama Hit | -- | 5/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What Osama's Killing Means | -- | 5/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Fate Of Kings | -- | 5/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Method Of Their Madness | -- | 4/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Manning's Malcolm... And Ours | -- | 4/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message For Anti-War Rallies | -- | 4/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The War That Never Ended | -- | 4/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Did You Vote For This? | -- | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Reading Fanon | Fanon's action is within the context of post-war marked by the ideological struggle between the Western bloc led by the United States and the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union. The division is clear between the capitalist and the socialist bloc, a third world emerging in the years 1950-1960: it is the third world that also claimed his place in international relations and its share in the wealth sharing the planet. Third World states for the first time its political existence in 1955 at the Bandung Conference, proclaiming his refusal of the bipolar world. Many Third World leaders appear simultaneously with the movements of national liberation struggle and lead a more radical in Africa, Asia, Latin America. The 1960s were marked by violent repression and assassinations of politicians representing the struggle of oppressed peoples: bloody crackdown in Indonesia in 1965 (500,000 dead), assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, murder of Che Guevara in Bolivia, killing Malcolm X, Martin Luther King in the U.S., assassination of Mehdi Ben Barka in Morocco, the Rivonia trial in South Africa where Nelson Mandela and his companions were sentenced to life imprisonment ... Fanon, FLN activist, editor of the newspaper El-Mujahid, will represent the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria, without, knowing the victory achieved this dream in which he contributed so much. He said that the release by the killing of the colonial system and the opening of another channel. Fanon, whether the madness, racism or the "universalism" confiscated by the powerful, do not stop, basically, trying to put "living together", like a transformation acts in situations where dominant and dominated each have everything to lose the perpetuation of existing orders and disorders. Fanon, this rebel, a rebel who fight tenaciously and flawless against domination by the powerful over the weak, enlightens us today about the relationship between fundamental one hand, the right to rebellion before a system social, political and economic plunges the world into disorder and secondly, a colonization of a new type. This, the relevance of the ideas of Fanon, which is currently enjoying a boom in many countries around the world, although France remains curiously aloof from this movement. The necessity of creation, liberation, the denial of a historical determinism that trace each time, before the colonized past and the "globalized" of today, forced to submit to market demands , determinism imposed by market forces and the rulers. This alternative was presented yesterday, between the capitalist and the socialist system, Fanon, calling for the opening of another channel. And today, the same alternative choice may be between a universalism recovered by the powerful in the context of the capitalist system is also said globalization and the struggle to build an international society based on solidarity, cooperation and friendship between peoples. It is this political aspect of Fanon-known - and which now turns to a news indisputable. Foundation Frantz Fanon, open structure and network, makes sense in this series of questions but also from the question posed by events and reading the world: What happens now at work Fanon, what about his presence and what he thought of building a "new humanity," a universal plural? The Foundation positioned networks (Caribbean, U.S. and Latin America, France-Europe, Middle East, West Africa and East Africa and Asia), working across the board, must ensure the presence of labor to and from Fanon and the world today. The peculiarity of the thought of Fanon, through the various lands he himself has invested, is to have them connected places that seemed distant from each other geographically (France, the Caribbean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa) or institutionally (the psychiatric hospital and politics). This work transversal networks should be used to connect places and compare his thoughts to the experiences, problems and iss | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Enemies We Don't Know | -- | 3/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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And Like That, Blink, A New War | -- | 3/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Two Panthers Die | -- | 3/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Japanese Winter | -- | 3/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Teachers Baaad | -- | 3/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message to Jack Heyman Retirement Celebration 2/25/11 | Long Live John Africa! On a Move! Greetings to all assembled in honor of Jack Heyman, the longtime ILWU organizer and organizer for a half dozen other causes besides. Jack represents the best of the labor tradition, one not bounded by national borders or the other lines we create to keep us corralled into spaces approved by the state. I think the last time I saw him on the tube he was in London before about a million people protesting maybe the stupidest war in generations -- Iraq. Jack knows, as do we all, that our borders are a lot like prison walls that keep us divided and isolated. So he spent a lot of time and a lot of energy with his sledgehammer knocking holes in the walls. Oh, by the way, I KNOW, I KNOW that Wisconsin has him chomping at the bit. Anyway, congratulations on his retirement and, On a Move. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has defended Mumia Abu-Jamal for nearly 25 years, since 1985, including an action in 1999 which closed down all the U.S. West Coast ports demanding freedom for Mumia. This was the first port shutdown in defense of a political prisoner in the United States. Although the union did take a position to free Angela Davis in 1972 no port action was taken. And, the relationship has been mutual. Mumia has supported every strike and action of the ILWU including defense of the Charleston longshore union, support for the Inland Boatmen's Union organizing rallies at the Hornblower Ferry terminal on the S.F. Embarcadero, defense of the two young Black longshoremen victimized by police and security goons in the Port of Sacramento under the guise of Homeland Security. This is a message from Mumia in honor of retiring longshore member, Jack Heyman, who has been an ILWU organizer mobilizing support of death row and political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Kevin Cooper, the S.F. 8 and Troy Anthony Davis; a leader in the struggles against U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and in support of Palestinian rights (shutting down the Israeli Zim Line ship in 2010 in the Port of Oakland); and international labor solidarity for the Liverpool Dockers and against South African apartheid. Jack Heyman is also a member of the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal which organized a labor conference in 2000 that brought many union members, including a delegation of the Charleston longshoremen, into the struggle in defense of Mumia. Jack was honored on Feb. 25th for his leadership in the union and its struggles for social justice at an event which included many rank and file ILWU members, Angela Davis, Brian McWilliams, Leo Robinson, Howard Keylor, many leaders and rank and file members in the Bay Area labor movement, and activists in the causes of Mumia defense, immigrant rights, civil liberties, and Black liberation and against imperialist wars. | 3/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What The Arab Rebellions Mean | -- | 3/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Bombing His Own People? | -- | 3/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Revolutions To Come | -- | 2/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Cracks In The Empire | -- | 2/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Egypt: A Good Beginning | -- | 2/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Cointelpros Then And Now | -- | 2/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Set Up Or The Sell Out | -- | 2/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Allies Of Empire? | -- | 2/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mumia's Address To The Rosa Luxemburg Conference | The Rosa Luxemburg Conference took place on January 8, 2011 in Berlin. The main slogan was: "Learning how we have to fight". It is part of a quote by Rosa Luxemburg in her book about the Russian Revolution. The whole quote: "Amidst history, amidst the development, amidst the struggle, we learn how we have to fight." | 2/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Wikileaks Effect | -- | 2/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Puppets Fall? | -- | 2/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Jay-Z: The Roots Of Rap | For a rapper to write a book, a straight-ahead prose text, is unusual. For they think in rhymes, couplets, metaphors and beats. When books do appear, they are often those dreadful 'as told to' pieces, less written than dictated, more hustle than work of art or deep thought. Jay-Z has produced the former. An MC of almost legendary skills and reputation in the rap world, his work traditionally mines the urban streets for tales of hustling, of survival, and often, wild parties. They can mime the highly polished art of braggadocio, of wealth and hedonism for which rap is renowned. But Jay-Z's new book, DECODED, is an honest, sober, well written and surprisingly political work which chillingly recalls the era of rap's birth in Brooklyn and his struggle to find a place in it. Remarkably, his attempts to get signed by label after label were repeatedly rebuffed, a measure of just how clueless record companies were in rap's crib days. But he really soars when he writes of his generation's need to pick through the refuse of the past, to fill the aching spaces of fatherlessness, made worse by the ravages of the Reagan era and the drug scourge. He writes: I feel like we-rappers, DJs, producers -- were able to smuggle some of the magic of that dying civilization out in our music and use it to build a new world. We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift; we got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. That was part of the ethos of that time and place, and it got built into the culture we created. Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something new. {p.255} The book is richly supplemented with lyrics from Jay-Z's most famous raps, and even several collaborations. It is thus a treasure trove for rap and hip-hop heads. DECODED is a map of an era that gave birth to one of the most influential musics of the 20th century. Jay-Z has contributed something remarkable as an historical document of the period. --(c) 1/17/11 Mumia Abu-Jamal [Source: Jay-Z, Decoded, {Spiegel & Grau: New York, 2010] | 1/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Cities For Sale | -- | 1/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When 'Nut' Ain't Enough | -- | 1/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Bullets Or Bucks | -- | 1/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Campaign To End The Death Penalty Interview With Mumia | The following is the print version of the original written exchange as it appeared in the October 2010 issue of THE NEW ABOLITIONIST which is the newsletter of The Campaign To End the Death Penalty. www.nodeathpenalty.org Mumia’s voice should be included By Marlene Martin Mumia Abu-Jamal is probably the best-known death-row prisoner in the United States—both because of the powerful campaign to prove innocence and win his freedom, and because of his own role in speaking out from death row for justice, whether the issue is capital punishment or racism or unjust wars. But some abolitionists in the U.S. feel that Mumia’s voice “endangers” our chance to win abolition of the death penalty, and so they attempted to have that voice barred from addressing a gathering of abolitionists at the Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held in December 2009 in Geneva Switzerland. U.S. members on the steering committee of the World Congress sent a “secret memo” to Congress organizers urging them to exclude Mumia from speaking via a planned telephone address, because, they claimed, “involvement of Mumia Abu-Jamal endangers the U.S. coalition for abolition of the death penalty. When Mumia did speak, a group of U.S. attendees stood up and walked out of the room. In a nutshell, their memo argues that Mumia is attracting too much negative attention from the likes of the Fraternal Order of Police, and as a result is threatening the “delicate balance” to be achieved with law enforcement and prosecutors that they claim is essential to win an end to the death penalty. According to the memo, “The voices of the innocent, the voices of victims, and voices of law enforcement are the most persuasive factors in changing public opinion and the views of decision-makers (politicians) and opinion leaders (media). Continuing to shine a spotlight on Abu-Jamal, who has had so much public exposure for so many years, threatens to alienate these three most important partnership groups.” Signers to the memo include: Elizabeth Zitrin, Death Penalty Focus; Renny Cushing and Kate Lowenstein, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights; Speedy Rice, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Kirstin Houle, Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; and Juan Matos de Juan, Puerto Rico Bar Association. Soon after learning of the “secret memo,” the Campaign to End the Death Penalty issued an open letter to the abolitionist community in defense of Mumia. (You can read it at nodeathpenalty.org.) We condemn any attempt to exclude Mumia’s voice from our movement, a voice that has been so sharp, so insightful and so important in helping to build and shape that movement. As of now, not a word has been written about this incident by any of the individual signers or the groups they belong to—no retraction, no clarification, no explanation. And none of the groups these individuals belong to would sign onto the Stand with Mumia statement that other groups and individuals have endorsed (see page 7). I wrote to Mumia to get his reaction. Our exchange follows: ********************** I thank the Campaign to End the Death Penalty for your wondrous support. When the letter was read to me, I felt an odd mix of rage and disbelief. It speaks volumes of the movement and why it is so moribund. Once again, a white elite “polices” (pun intended) the movement, making sure it’s not too “radical” and is acceptable to the system. That ain’t a movement; it’s a regression! When you heard that a group of abolitionists walked out of a meeting to protest your speaking, what was your reaction? Well, I didn’t know these people, so it didn’t make any sense to me. I remember thinking that it was somehow political—but again it didn’t make any sense; had the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) infiltrated the anti-death | 1/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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War Crimes And Wikileaks | -- | 1/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Teena Marie | -- | 12/30/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Out Of Georgia | -- | 12/30/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Rumblings In The Distance | -- | 12/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Allies In Lies | -- | 12/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ask, Now Tell? | -- | 12/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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News Flash: Nixon Was Racist | -- | 12/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama: Clinton With A Tan | -- | 12/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Selling Out Softly | -- | 12/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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'Chalmers Johnson: 1931-2010 - The Death Of A Right Wing Anti-Imperialist | -- | 12/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Prison Industrial Complex | -- | 11/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wars Against Ourselves | -- | 11/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Kanye's Comments | -- | 11/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Way Of Zinn | -- | 11/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gregory Isaacs: Love Reggae | -- | 11/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Murder Ain't Murder | -- | 11/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Swing And Counter Swing | -- | 11/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Dirty Game: Politics | -- | 11/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Politics Of Fear | -- | 11/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Justice Denied Film Premiere Phone Broadcast | -- | 11/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Firing Words | -- | 10/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Oscar Grant Rally Address | -- | 10/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The State And Repression | German Conference On Political Repression Discusses Mumia Abu-Jamal From October 8 - 10 people gathered in the German city of Hamburg for an international congress on political repression. "New Roads of Solidarity": http://www.antirepkongresshh2010.tk/ In two events Mumia Abu-Jamal was discussed. In the first one, different activists gave reports on experiences with political repression. Among them Dr. Michael Schiffmann from Heidelberg, who spoke on long time political prisoners in the US, especially from the Black Panther Party, the BLA or the MOVE 9. He introduced some prisoners to the audience and highlighted the common thread in all of their prison sentences: no evidence at all, combined with a political agenda was enough to get these activists in prison for most of their life. Afterwards someone from the Berlin Free Mumia coalition gave a report on the prison industrial complex and the death penalty in the US. While the audience seemed to be very much aware of the immense human rights violations regarding both subjects they were stunned by the fact, that the US is "the jailer" of the planet, who according to the UN, imprisons more than 20% of all prisoners worldwide. The obvious tradition from slavery to the prison industry was well understood. In Europe various states are just beginning to establish a similar industry, such as the UK, Poland and Germany. Afterwards both described the urgent situation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who's life is on the line again in a November 9th U.S. Court of Appeals hearing. The need to increase the solidarity with Mumia now was pointed out. About 80 people from all over Germany signed a letter to Mumia, took info material and discussed practical steps. One of them will be a FREE MUMIA demonstration in Berlin on December 11, 2010 marching from the borough of Kreuzberg to the US Embassy in the city centre. In the closing event of the conference Mumia's recorded message was played to an audience of appr. 350 people. Michael Schiffmann introduced Mumia's speech. Afterwards loud applause arouse and the audience seemed to be very moved that someone in the isolation of death row was able to address them especially. | 10/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Lost Opportunities | -- | 10/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Party Fever | -- | 10/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Politics Of Culture | -- | 10/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Media And The Boogeyman Syndrome | -- | 9/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tea Parties: The Politics Of Fear | -- | 9/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Already Forgotten War | -- | 9/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Jobless On Labor Day | -- | 9/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Fanon To Africa, With Love Part 2 | -- | 9/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Fanon To Africa, With Love Part 1 | -- | 9/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Honor Rallies After War | -- | 8/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mad Nation | -- | 8/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Shock And Awe To Aw, Shucks | -- | 8/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Matter Of The Mosque | -- | 8/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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George Jackson | -- | 8/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Looney Laura | -- | 8/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Marilyn Buck Presente! | Black August by Marilyn Buck Would you hang on a cliff’s edge sword-sharp, slashing fingers while jackboot screws stomp heels on peeled-flesh bones and laugh “let go! die, damn you, die!” could you hang on 20 years, 30 years? 20 years, 30 years and more brave Black brothers buried in US koncentration kamps they hang on Black light shining in torture chambers Ruchell, Yogi, Sundiata, Sekou, Warren, Chip, Seth, Herman, Jalil, and more and more they resist: Black August Nat Turner insurrection chief executed: Black August Jonathan, George dead in battle’s light: Black August Fred Hampton, Black Panthers, African Brotherhood murdered: Black August Kuwasi Balagoon, Nuh Abdul Quyyam captured warriors dead: Black August Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ella Baker, Ida B. Wells Queen Mother Moore – their last breaths drawn fighting death: Black August Black August: watchword for Black liberation for human liberation sword to sever the shackles light to lead children of every nation to safety Black August remembrance resist the amerikkan nightmare for life Marilyn Buck wrote this poem for Black August 2000. She was released July 15, 2010, after 25 years as an anti-imperialist political prisoner. Then suddenly, only 19 days later, she was gone. Her comrade and fellow former political prisoner Linda Evans broke the sad news: “Our dear comrade Marilyn Buck made her transition yesterday (Aug. 3, 2010) at 1 p.m. EST peacefully and surrounded by friends.” Sister Marpessa Kupendua wrote: “Former political prisoner Marilyn Buck made her transition. Peace and blessings be upon her revolutionary soul! Let her passing motivate us to be on point for all those denied medical care within the walls. Serious illnesses ARE death sentences! Much respect to her struggle on our collective behalf and all those who loved her so strong in her final days!” | 8/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wikileaks And The Imperial Press | -- | 8/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Malcolm Shabazz In Coversation with Mumia Abu-Jamal | -- | 7/31/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Selling Out Shirley Sherrod or The Beck Effect | -- | 7/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Brother Charles: 1951-2010 | -- | 7/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Massacre Is No Crime | -- | 7/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Punishing Lynne | -- | 7/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Mehserle Trial | -- | 7/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Hero To Zero In 60 Seconds | -- | 7/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Man Called Robert C. Byrd | -- | 7/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is Steele Too Real? | -- | 7/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What to a Slave is the Fourth of July written by Mumia read by Bernadette Devlin McAliskey | -- | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The New Jim Crow: Book Review | | 7/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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For Lynne Stewart | -- | 6/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message to the U.S. Social Forum | Ona Move! Dear Friends at the Social Forum, As I write this, it has just been announced that the petro-multinational, BP, has failed at its "Top Kill" plan, and the Gulf of Mexico is being more fouled by the hour. If ever there were a time to honestly question the madness at the heart of capitalism, it is now, as people are repulsed by what they are seeing, week after week, and now month after month, of environmental wreckage, corporate greed, and government subservience. Because, in truth, this is what capitalism, unbridled, unregulated, looks like: the spoilage of the natural world for private gain. Just a few weeks ago, we saw the Supreme Court essentially write off the damages awarded to the devastated native population of Alaska, who suffered from the Exxon Valdez disaster. Their award was cut by over 90%, making it a windfall for Exxon. It's no wonder their bottom line is looking so good. Again - that's capitalism! If folks at this Forum don’t grasp this moment, to build the Movement, then this moment will pass, and the era of crony capitalism will give us all nightmarish dystopias that will make these days look like the good old days. To quote the late, great Kwame Ture, "Organize! Organize! Organize!" This is written, by necessity, several weeks before the Forum, but I'm willing to bet that even as these words are heard, either the leak will not have been fixed; or, even if it is, then the Gulf waters are still as foul, still as toxic, still as ugly: if not worse. If the struggle isn't to make such environmental crimes such as these unthinkable, then it is for nothing. Thank you all! Ona Move! Long Live John Africa! Mumia Abu-Jama | 6/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Good Empire | -- | 6/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message in Support of Sekou Odinga | -- | 6/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From the Spiritual to the Profane | -- | 6/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gaza Prison | | 6/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Helen's Forbidden Opinions | -- | 6/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Soul Music | -- | 6/9/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Before BP (British Petroleum) | -- | 6/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ecocide | | 6/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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John Africa on Water and Pollution | -- | 5/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Lessons Lost (re Iraq and Vietnam) | -- | 5/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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State Against People | -- | 5/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Fall of the House of Labor | -- | 5/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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May 13th at 25 Years | -undefined- | 5/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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This Time, Time Squared | -undefined- | 5/9/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Arizona | -undefined- | 5/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Union Busting Rio Tinto Style | -undefined- | 5/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Oil on the Waters | -undefined- | 5/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Teaparties and the Fear of the Future | -undefined- | 4/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message for Civil Rights Rally 4-26-2010 WDC | -undefined- | 4/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message to April 24th Birthday Events | April 24th: Philadelphia Events in Support of Mumia! Join The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Pam and Ramona Africa for the: RISE UP AND GET READY TO WORK FUNDRAISER!!! FEATURING: UMAR BIN HASSAN OF THE LAST POETS, SONIA SANCHEZ, MAMA CHARLOTTE O'NEAL, MRS. BETTY'S SON, LINN WASHINGTON, ATTORNEY LEON WILLIAMS, ATTORNEY MICHAEL COARD, SUNDIATA SADIQ, UNIVERSAL AFRICAN DANCE AND DRUM ENSEMBLE! Benefit for THE CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGN to release Mumia Abu-Jamal and rally at the Justice Department in Washington, DC on APRIL 26TH!! The Justice Department has stated that if we can show there is evidence of an ongoing conspiracy to stop Mumia from having a fair trial, they will intervene. We have the proof. See freemumia.com and STAND WITH US on 4/26 in D.C. SATURDAY APRIL 24, 2010 12:00-5:00 PM AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE CENTER 1501 CHERRY ST., PHILADELPHIA, PA $15.00 DONATION (Your donation will go toward transportation to Washington, D.C. on April 26th and the on-going campaign to release Mumia!) | 4/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Lynching Then and Now Message for Nationwide Tour | Friends, Brothers, Sisters: Ona Move! The anti-death penalty movement is an offshoot of the global human rights movement, as expressed by private associations, and later, by a variety of governments. It is noteworthy, then, for us to cite the state abolition of the death penalty in Kenya, in 2009. We should also note the fact that the rate of juries meting out death sentences has fallen to its lowest in 30 years. And finally, several months ago, the group that was perhaps most instrumental in fashioning the present death penalty, The American Law Institute, announced it would no longer participate in formulating laws governing the death penalty. The ALI, a distinguished group of 4,000 judges, law professors, and lawyers, were the people who initially proposed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that the U.S. Supreme Court adopted in 1976 when it reinstated the death penalty. And yet, despite this, the death penalty is alive and well in America. Why? It makes no economic sense, but politicians are wedded to it. That’s because at its core, the death penalty derives from, and thus replaces, lynch law. Is it mere coincidence that the states which are most active in capital punishment are Southern ones? This is also generally true when we examine the establishment and expansion of the American prison system. After the Civil War, when slavery was abolished by law, states in the former confederacy established the convict lease system, where prisoners worked, without pay, for the state. One man, observing the dreadful loss of life and health for such people, called it “worse than slavery.” In essence, these states made a private institution a public one – and both Black men and women became “slaves of the state.” The U.S. death penalty system performs a similar function. It socialized, or made public, that which had been heretofore the province of individuals – lynchings. MAJ c ’10 | 4/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ticking Time Bombs | -undefined- | 4/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CELEBRATION OF THE LIVES OF DENNIS BRUTUS AND HOWARD ZINN - Mumia's Comment on the passing of Dennis Brutus | CELEBRATION OF THE LIVES OF DENNIS BRUTUS AND HOWARD ZINN Sunday, April 18, 2010, 1-3pm Clapp Hall, 4249 5th Ave. Across from Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Chapel Friends, So many of us in Pittsburgh have had the great fortune to know, learn from and stand together with Dennis Brutus and Howard Zinn on many issues and in many struggles. Through their writings, films and examples they can still inspire young people to take action and help seasoned activists to keep on working for social justice and peace for the rest of our lives. Please join us at this tribute to our wonderful teachers, friends and fellow activists. The program will include speakers, who were their dear friends and collaborators, including Staughton Lynd, "The People Speak" co-producer Lisa Smith, Celeste Taylor, Paul LeBlanc and Marcus Rediker, Chair of the Pitt History Department. In addition, Howard and Dennis will be present through videos. We'll have an open mike for people to speak out or share a favorite poem or excerpt. Their books will be on sale. Spread the word widely and help make this an afternoon of celebration and inspiration. For more info 412-241-6087. | 4/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CELEBRATION OF THE LIVES OF DENNIS BRUTUS AND HOWARD ZINN - Mumia's Comment on the passing of Howard Zinn | CELEBRATION OF THE LIVES OF DENNIS BRUTUS AND HOWARD ZINN Sunday, April 18, 2010, 1-3pm Clapp Hall, 4249 5th Ave. Across from Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Chapel Friends, So many of us in Pittsburgh have had the great fortune to know, learn from and stand together with Dennis Brutus and Howard Zinn on many issues and in many struggles. Through their writings, films and examples they can still inspire young people to take action and help seasoned activists to keep on working for social justice and peace for the rest of our lives. Please join us at this tribute to our wonderful teachers, friends and fellow activists. The program will include speakers, who were their dear friends and collaborators, including Staughton Lynd, "The People Speak" co-producer Lisa Smith, Celeste Taylor, Paul LeBlanc and Marcus Rediker, Chair of the Pitt History Department. In addition, Howard and Dennis will be present through videos. We'll have an open mike for people to speak out or share a favorite poem or excerpt. Their books will be on sale. Spread the word widely and help make this an afternoon of celebration and inspiration. For more info 412-241-6087. | 4/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Storm Over Kyrgyzstan | -undefined- | 4/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4-8-10 Cornel West in Conversation With Mumia Abu-Jamal | Recorded 3-3-10 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton NJ | 4/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Empires End | -undefined- | 4/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message for April 3rd Educators for Mumia Event NYC | -undefined- | 4/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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May Day Admist Global Mayhem | -undefined- | 4/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Address to Live From Death Row | -undefined- | 4/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When There is No Precedent | -undefined- | 3/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Glitch Without a Hitch | -undefined- | 3/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Judges Judge Judges | -undefined- | 3/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Apartheid Schools | -undefined- | 3/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Educational Industrial Complex | -undefined- | 3/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Earthquake | -undefined- | 3/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Democracy of Puppets | -undefined- | 3/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Democracy Without Democracy | -undefined- | 2/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Against War for Ever More | -undefined- | 2/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Haiti Response Guns or Doctors? | -- | 2/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Corporate Supremacy --Still! | The recent Supreme Court decision on corporate personhood, The Citizen's United case, has evoked considerable comment, and even some indignation: "Corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on politicians?!" - "outrageous!" Really? While people have every right to be outraged, we should inform our outrage, for, in truth, corporate interests have owned the political process -- and politicians -- for the better part of a century. In the classic history book, The Robber Barons, by Matthew Josephson (Harcourt: 1969), one encounters scenes of major industrialists buying politicians outright with satchels of money - on the floor of State Senates!! The buying is not so overt now, but politicians are still being bought like hot dogs. What is a modern congressional, presidential or judicial campaign today - but a race for the money? For the man (or woman) who gets money can buy media - and the media decides races. In a real sense, all the court did was open up the spigot for more dough from corporate coffers. In essence, the court said, it's not enough to rent politicians; now you can own them. And they will own them. And where will much of this money go, but into the pockets of corporate media? And what is this but a corporate media stimulus package? What makes this case remarkable isn't so much the result (for this was politically predictable), but the court's reliance on precedent that actually wasn't precedential. For, in the case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. (1886), used as the foundation for the principle of corporate personhood, that principle appears nowhere - but the court clerk wrote it into the head notes of the case, which is not legally part of the case - and 124 years later an error became law, which became precedent, which guides decisions today, which favors corporate wealth and power over democracy. In the 1880's, during the age of the captains of industry who came to be known as the "robber barons", multi-millionaire Andrew Carnegie, threatened with legal action to restrain his corporate excesses, remarked: "What do I care about the law? Ain't I got the power?" (Josephson 15) Thanks to the Supreme Court, they've got even more. (c) 2010 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 2/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Young People are the Enemy | -undefined- | 2/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Interview of Mumia by POCC Minister of Information JR | -undefined- | 2/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Paying The Costs: SF8 | As the once front page story of the San Francisco 8 case winds down, bills are becoming due. The San Francisco 8 refers to 8 former members of the Black Panther Party, charged with involvement in a 1971 homicide. There is little doubt now that the case was initiated more for political reasons than legal ones. The San Francisco District Attorney's office thought so little of the case that it declined to prosecute. California's attorney general opted to try it instead. Almost from day one, the case began unraveling. A few guys took plea bargains to relatively minor charges, resulting in probation. Within months, charges against 5 of the men were dismissed. Only one still has charges pending. The men - Herman Bell, Ray Boudreaux, Henry Jones, Jalil Muntaqim, Richard O' Neal, Harold Taylor, and Francisco Torres - now middle aged and older, stood firm with each other, and refused to flip on each other. Some of them were tortured back in 1973, when charges were originally dismissed. (One man, John Bowman, died before trial) Why this case? Initially, it is the extraordinary resources and papers made available to local jurisdictions by the federal government in the aftermath of 9/11; secondly, California's Attorney General (Edmund 'Jerry" Brown) was anxious to run for governor, and thought this case would prove the right vehicle. But what was sensational in 1971 loses some of it's punch in 2007. The newest headlines from the case isn't what the cash strapped stated wants to hear. San Francisco's Public Defenders office has filed for $2 million in reimbursements owed by the City for its defenses of the men. They are seeking that sum because the State, not San Francisco County, took up the prosecution of the 36 year old case. (c) 2010 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 2/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Black History Month | -undefined- | 2/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Year In: More Same Than Change | -undefined- | 2/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Howard Zinn, Master Historian | It should surprise no one when a man, nearly 90, dies. It is as natural as moonlight, as regular as a rainbow after a summer shower. And yet, the passing of Howard Zinn surprises. He was a few months shy of 90, true, but he was still a bright eyed and brilliant lecturer, whose sense of humor gave a wondrous sparkle to his speeches and humanized his writing. He is perhaps best known for his masterwork, A People's History of the United States; 1492 - Present, (Harper Collins, 1980/2003. which sold millions of copies. Zinn was an adherent of the 'history from below' school of history, and wrote from the perspective of the bottoms of societies, not the top. He wrote about Black slaves fighting for freedom, Native folks fighting for sovereignty, poor white workers fighting for the right to unionize, women fighting for the right to work and vote, soldiers, gay folks, prisoners, and students struggling to learn about the history of their country. And while Zinn was indeed a brilliant, ground-breaking historian, he didn't write about the poor from a scholars distance; he grew up desperately poor in New York, joined the Air Force during World War II, and became a bombardier. Like many young service members, he read incessantly. When he left the service, he used the G. I. Bill to study at Columbia where he earned his Ph.D. And while he earned an advanced degree, he learned things he hadn't planned on when he taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, for his teaching took place during the eruption of the Civil Rights movement, and student protests against the U.S. apartheid system of segregation. Spelman, a Black women's college, had its share of activists, who, when they tried to leaflet, were stopped, threatened and prevented from leafleting by the cops. Zinn, teaching legal history and constitutional law to many of these students, learned that what the law books and cases said meant nothing in the real-life world of Georgian apartheid. In his 1990 book, Declarations of Independence, Zinn wrote: The law was plain. A series of Supreme Court decisions made the right to distribute leaflets on a public street absolute. It would be hard to find something in the Bill of Rights that was more clear cut than this. I told my students this. But I knew immediately that I must tell them something else; that the law didn't much matter. If they began handing out leaflets on Peachtree street and a white policeman (all police were white in Atlanta at the time), came along and said "Move!" what could they do? Cite the relevant Supreme Court cases to the policeman. {p.198} This was Atlanta: 1961, and the Movement taught Zinn many realities about America. Howard Zinn. Historian. Activist. Playwright. Prodigious writer. Father of the People's History movement. Friend. --(c) 1/28/10 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 1/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Alice Walker, If I Was President | -undefined- | 1/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Haiti's Suffering | -- | 1/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Haiti on Our Minds | -- | 1/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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More Bad Intel | -- | 1/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From How to Why | -- | 1/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama Post Imperial? | -- | 12/27/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Limits of Our Politics | -- | 12/20/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Just War? or Just War | -- | 12/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wealth Care | -- | 12/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Solidarity Statement for 12-12-09, Oakland Event | -- | 12/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mumia Interview by Noelle Hanrahan on 29th Anniversary | -- | 12/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wars to Come | -- | 12/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ghosts of Vietnam | -- | 11/29/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Babies Behind Bars | -- | 11/29/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Children of the Torn | Several months ago, a commentary was written on the children of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where judges sold their very freedom for private profit. Two prominent county judges (Messrs. Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan) allegedly made millions of dollars by sending kids to a private facility (Pa Child Care) in which they had a financial interest, as opposed to state institutions from which they would've received nothing. How could such a thing happen? How could it have happened for years? It happened because, in part, people both allowed it to happen, and they wanted it to happen. Children were sent to juvenile joints -- for months! -- for playing hooky, for being late, for breaking curfew, and the like. And most people said nothing, did nothing and some even praised this judicial example of "zero tolerance." One woman, Sandra Brulo, the former chief of the county's juvenile probation department, asked about the increasing detentions, told a county commission looking into the scandal, "The judge is the final say", adding that most folks simply didn't want "to question the judge." And so they didn't, while dozens, then hundreds and then thousands of kids were sent to detention. Nobody wanted to rock the boat. It's enough to say it was illegal for judges to privately profit from the juvie prison system, but the PA Juvenile Act (the statute governing this area) made what these judges did illegal as well. That's because most of these transfers to detention took place without legal representation, and the code [§6337] states lawyers "must" be provided for kids, unless a parent or guardian affirmatively waives such counsel -- in court. According to Brulo, in many cases, orders for detention were signed by the judges before the hearings even began! Moreover, in 1966, in Kent v. U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of juveniles to have counsel, just like adults. For years, in Pennsylvania, this meant nothing. What use is the constitution when there's money to be made? col. writ. 11/18/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal [Sources: Strupczewski, Leo, "I Had 'Nowhere Else to Go', Official Tells Luzerne Pane," Legal Intelligencer, 11/11/09, pp.1 10.; T*t. 42 Pa. Consolidated Statutes § 6301 et seq., § 6325: Detention of Child; § 6337: Right to Counsel; § 6311: Guardian Ad Litem for child in court proceedings; Kent v. U.S., 541 (D.C.) 1996.] | 11/29/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Colony Still? | -- | 11/15/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Carnage at Fort Hood Texas | -- | 11/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Pendulum Effect | -- | 11/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Good Occupation? | -- | 10/26/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Dow Says Wow: The People Say Ouch | -undefined- | 10/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama Nobel Laureate | -- | 10/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Afghanistan Trap | -- | 10/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Between Acorns and Blackwater | -- | 10/6/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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G20 Speech | -- | 9/22/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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"For the Children...." | The next time I hear a politician promise to do something 'for the children', I may heave. If one thing is clear in this nation, it is that children are hated. Oh -- we don't use that word to describe our relationships with them, but if we honestly examine those interactions we find that it would be difficult to describe in ways other than 'hate.' For the last several months, I've been reading, studying and thinking about the nation's public school system. I've read classics in the field, like Jonathan Kozol's 1967 work, Death At An Early Age, a stunning account on his years as a permanent sub [!] in Boston's Black populated schools in Roxbury, where kids were taken down into dark, dank cellars and beaten with rattan sticks. But what happened in the dark basements of the buildings, while certainly dramatic and deplorable, could hardly be worse than the systematic slaughter of the minds of tens of thousands of children, who were, in Kozol's words, "intellectually decapitated" daily by a racist, segregated school system. Truth is, any major U.S. city could've been used with similar results - Harlem, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, for nationally, the drop-out rate is 50%. Public schools are places where kids go to get their minds and souls killed. And what is war but old men sacrificing young men in often meaningless battles? What is the so-called 'War on Terror' but a mindless slogan used to sell lies like 'Weapons of Mass Destruction?' And what are soldiers but mostly children, molded into madmen, who fight and die, so that old rich men can get richer? Daily, we drug millions of schoolchildren, some as young as 4 years old with Ritalin, because we describe them as hyperactive or deficient in attention --which means they don't sit still, while we bore them out of their brains, with what we laughingly call an education. 'For the children' we leave a diseased and poisoned planet, an economy on crutches, and a world boiling with hatred for their fathers. Isn't it about time we really stopped doing more damage to the children? 9/19/09 (c) Mumia Abu-Jamal | 9/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Circle of Sameness | -- | 9/14/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Exporting Democracy | -- | 9/13/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Labor Day's Blues | -- | 9/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Health Care that Equals 'I Don't Care' | -- | 9/4/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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June's Jump Away | -- | 9/3/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Between the Government and the People | As democratic forces mobilize in response to the suspicions resulting from the recent Iranian presidential election, they are meeting repression from a government that is fueled by the twin forces of paranoia and theocracy. The Iranian government is paranoid not because they are crazy, but because many remember the U.S. and British supported coup that led to the installment of the dictatorship of the Shah in 1953, and also more recent support for the Iraqis (during the time of Saddam Hussein, btw) when both countries lost nearly a million people during what came to be called 'The War of the Cities', in the '80's. And although the corporate media has pronounced the notion 'loony' that the U.S. has supported the anti-government protests, in truth the U.S. has supported anti-government terrorism against Iran, chiefly via CIA funding and support for the Baluchis, an Iranian national minority group which comprises some 2% of the population, and which seeks independence. Those ways of thinking informs their view of the broader, democratic movement, which may reflect the sentiments, not so much of an Iranian ethnic minority, but of Iran's youth - a percentage approaching half of the country's population. The second force, theocracy, is the very foundation of the government, which is seen in the formal name of the country: Islamic Republic of Iran. That feature, the rule of the clerics, makes all internal conflicts both religious and political, and therein lies the danger. As Europe has shown for hundreds of years, few wars are more brutal than religious wars. For centuries, the Catholic Church waged wars against unbelief, against innovation, against women, and through the Crusades, against Islam. And although the church won many battles, it lost many wars, such as the war against science, where it sent the astronomer, Galileo, to prison for contending that the earth revolved around the sun -- not the reverse. Let us not act as if we've not seen this before, when theocracies tortured bodies, brutalized people, in the name of faith. Have we not seen democracies do the same, in furtherance of the faith in profit -- as the U.S. in Iraq? Iranians must decide the form their government will take: not the U.S., nor the British. The Iranian people will decide whether the ungodly repression they face will stall them, or spur them on to demand more than the change of faces at the top. (c) 8/16/09 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 8/29/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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G20 or GMoney | -- | 8/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Skip Nadra and the Philadelphia Grand Jury | -- | 8/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Rogue States | -- | 8/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Beyond a Beer With the Boys | If the arrest, humiliation and resultant brouhaha over the case of Harvard scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates has taught us anything, it is that we still dwell in separate worlds -- ones which rarely meet. And while some wags have rushed to tell us that the case shows us the continuous clash of class, I beg to differ. If anything, it shows us just the opposite. When it comes to Black people, of whatever wealth, status, class or prominence, the normal rules don't apply. Indeed, Blacks are the ever present exceptions to the rules. Consider this: Americans have said and believed for the better part of a century, that saying: 'A man's home is his castle. Not Black men. How else could 'Skip' Gates get busted on his doorstep -- for disturbing a non-existing peace? In law, a homeowner's property rights doesn't end at his front door. It extends to the street, at the curbside. This is an appurtenance. Imagine if a person slips and falls on the sidewalk in front of a home. What person has a claim on the homeowner, not the city. 'Skip' Gates was busted not because he violated the law, but because he violated the emotions of the cop who entered his house. He angered him when he initially refused to exit his house; and he angered him further when Prof. Gates demanded the cop's ID. President Barack Obama was right when he called the bust 'stupid', but, as usual, politics prevailed when American rednecks responded with howls of protest. (One need look no further than the email sent by a Boston cop in response to the Gates case, where the distinguished educator was described as a 'jungle monkey' -- no, a 'banana-eating jungle monkey'..' if memory serves! Furthermore, imagine what it takes, not just to write this -- but to write this to a reporter). They took it personally -- just as the cop in Gates' home took it personally. Will a beer with the boys put this fire out? I doubt it, for it ignores what happens everyday, in dozens of states, to countless men and women who don't have Harvard Ph.Ds, or friends in the White House. The sad truth is, being Black in America is akin to being born low-caste in India, where separate and unequal rules remain, despite promises in their constitution. Obama's election hasn't changed reality, but may mask it, by providing cover for the ugly things that Blacks endure in a nation where the elites claim a false 'post-racialism.' A few brewskis ain't gonna change that either. (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 8/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tribute to Reggie Bryant | -- | 7/27/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Repression of the Repressed | -- | 7/26/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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SF Eight No More | -- | 7/23/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Nada for Gaza: The McKinney Israel Trip | -- | 7/20/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Sonia Sotomayor's Stroll to the Supremes | -- | 7/20/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Michael the Meal | -- | 7/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Michael A Man of Contraditions | -- | 7/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Michael Jackson Master Entertainer | -- | 6/26/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Revolution Within A Revolution | As the repression of the state comes down on those protesting against the recent elections, voices -- especially from the West -- are all but predicting the imminent fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They compare it to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when forces arrayed against the dictatorial rule of the Shah, a key U.S. ally, brought down the House of Pahlavi. Is this the same as that? To answer that question requires far more than emotion. It requires study, insight and clear vision, qualities that seem sorely lacking in too much of the corporate media these days. Iranian scholar, Faridah Farhi, in her book, States and urban-based Revolutions: Iran and Nicaragua (Univ. of IL Press, 1990) found one factor was crucial in the success of a modern day agrarian society's revolutions: "....the incapacitation of administrative and military machineries" (.p8) Other elements at work in revolutionary situations are the existence of "intermediate classes" in society which find economic and traditional centers of Iranian life, the bazaars, the clergy existed, amassing wealth and social power, independent of -- and opposed to __ the state. These 90.000 clergy formed the core of Khomeini's revolt against the Shah, and therefore had the organizational and ideological wherewithal to steer the growing movement to their ends. They also had a powerful symbol in the Ayatollah Khomeini. There were other factors - popular mobilizations of the poor, for example -- but without many of the other factors, the chances of a revolution are limited, at best. The country's administrative and military machineries may be many things, but incapacitated they are not. When the Shah fled Iran, the military and administration was both isolated and deeply loathed by the people. When popular upsurges came, many joined the people's side. The major opposition figure of Khomeini, present in 1979, does not now exist (or isn't evident) in today's Iran. And it is quite unlikely that Mir Hossain Mousavi, who is being urged on by Westerners, will play that role. He was one of a very few found acceptable to run by the governing council, headed by Ayatollah A. Khamenei. This suggest he was, like Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the 1979 Revolution, and thus trusted by the clergy. If he learned anything from the Revolution, it was that there's little profit in betraying the revolution. So, unless things change drastically (and that is possible), this is not a revolutionary moment. Demonstrations, standing alone, do not a revolution make. They may be a harbinger of things to come, but as Dr. Huey P. Newton once said, they take "sterner stuff." --(c) 6/24/09 (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 6/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Stateless State of Palestine | The presidential election of Barack Obama has so electrified the world, that expectations have swept past reality into the realm of the silly. Some of this is surely driven by the corporate media, which no longer covers the news, but engages in what might be called 'pre-news', as it tends to predict what will (or may) happen, the better to not be scooped by competitors. And as news makes its hard turn to opinion, it sometimes builds up Obama as a world leader, in ways that are simply unreasonable. This was seen in the run-up to the Iranian presidential elections, where news coverage all but predicted the election of opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Moussavi, and the fall of the irascible Mahoud Ahmadinejad. The result predicted, talking heads opined about the global influence of Obama over the elections. (As for stolen elections, did millions of Americans take to the streets to protest the stolen elections here -- in 2000? Similarly, much news coverage centered on Obama's hard-line on the Israelis, as in his Cairo address when he called for a freeze in settlements. So slanted is U.S. policy towards Israel that a halt in construction in illegal settlements is seen as somehow 'hard-line.' For their part, Israeli right-wingers, many supporters of newly-elected president Binyamin Netanyahu, has postered Tel Aviv with images of Obama wearing an Arab headdress (known as a kaffiyeh), emblazoned with the words "Jew Hater", and "Anti-Semite" in English and Hebrew (an allusion to his Muslim name and family background) To "freeze" a situation that is fundamentally unjust, is to preserve the status quo--a state of affairs that leaves the Palestinian people in an unjust and untenable situation. On top of that, Netanyahu recently announced an essential rejection of Obama's 'freeze', and an alleged support of the establishment of a Palestinian state -albeit a demilitarized one, with foreign affairs to be overseen by Israel. This is a state only in the sense that the old South African Bantustans were independent territories (that is to say, not at all). The Palestinians have had their best lands seized and Swiss-cheesed by settlements, their parliament has been cast into prison, their water is rationed, and their homes have been bulldozed, all while western leaders crow about a 'peace process' that is, ultimately, a freeze in oppression. Meanwhile, Israel, not only the most powerful military in the region, but an undeclared nuclear-armed state, accepts the idea of a Palestinian state, but only if demilitarized -- and this is seen as progress! --(c) 6/15/09 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 6/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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GM is G.O.N.E. | -- | 6/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama in Cairo | -- | 6/4/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Dawud Akbar: A People's Psychologist | For the Black community of Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania, this is a time of quiet mourning. For it marks the unexpected passing of Dawud Akbar, a man who made his home there. Since leaving school in the early 1970's, Akbar built a life of service and caring in Pittsburgh, not just as a psychologist, but as a community organizer, teacher and mentor for many. Born January 6, 1949 in Harlem, New York, he witnessed the murder of his mother at the tender age of 8 years. When he went to college at Morehouse, in Atlanta, GA, he met and was deeply inspired by the renowned Black psychologist, Dr. Na'im Akbar, who so inspired him that he took the name Akbar, and converted to Islam. He earned a Masters degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, and with his wife, Sama'iyah, built a life and family in his adopted city. He founded the Nzingha Institute, and helped to bring the Maafa ritual to hundreds of Pittsburgers annually. The local practice was a ceremony where the history of African captivity, transport and freedom struggles in the Americas was remembered and ritualized. Given the trauma of his childhood, he worked with young people to try to give them a sense of their place in the larger community. He wrote several books on social and familial health and harmony. He worked long and hard to serve the many needs of his community, and even three heart attacks didn't stop him. Recently, he suffered a debilitating cerebral hematoma. Dawud Albar was 60 years old. (c) '09 maj | 6/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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On Race, Racism and the Sotomayor Nomination | It would be easy to describe the present faux controversy over the nomination of 2nd Circuit of Appeals Court judge, Sonia Sotomayor, to the U.S. Supreme Court as media-generated, and thus, unreal. But that would be too easy. As forces on the political right decry the jurist as "racist", "reverse racist", or "biased", such terms do far more than spur flagging newspaper sales, it amps up the summer hearings for her nomination. And while it may not reach the temperature of the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill senate hearings, it will get plenty of attention, if only for the wrong reasons. It is almost laughable to seriously consider the 'racist' claims launched by the Limbaugh, Gingrich and Tancredo axis of the Republican Party, given their manic xenophobia when it comes to Mexican immigrants, an issue that has driven millions of Latinos away from the GOP. But, for argument's sake, let's examine the question, from a central core issue. Are Latinos a race? The short answer is no. Latinos, or Hispanics, are a linguistic and cultural community, but one of stunning diversity. In fact, Hispanics are a conglomeration of many races -- and indeed, many cultures, formed over centuries. There are millions of people who are as dark-skinned (or darker) than African Americas, but are classified as Latinos, who are of Puerto Rican, Dominican or Mexican heritage. The lesson in this is that race is often a national construct, which may be transformed by crossing a border. Decades ago, one would think, there were no Hispanics (or at least the term wasn't used). People were classified according to their national heritage, or they were called "Spanish -surnamed." But the lives, experiences, and dreams of people can be profoundly different, depending on where one's family hails: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Argentina or Cuba. All of these people may be called Latinos, but they are white, red, brown and black. Their familial and genetic histories draw Spain, Italy, the Americas and Africa. In sum, Latinos are not a race, as race is understood in this country, but a linguistic and multi-cultural community of breathtaking diversity. The irony is that Judge Sotomayor, if she were born in many Latin American countries (instead of the Bronx), would have "blanca", or "claro" on her birth certificate (meaning white). Only in the US does she become a 'person of color', simply because whiteness in the American sense, is a narrow, exclusive domain. Many millions who now consider themselves white had grandparents who weren't considered white, especially given their southern European places of origin. But, things change; even our definitions of race. (c) '09 maj | 5/31/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Brown at 55 (and Counting) | It has been over 1/2 a century (55 years) since the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Brown vs. Board of Education case, desegregating American public education. The decision came to be regarded as a landmark ruling, one which transformed the very nature of U.S. public schools. Or did it? There is no question but that Brown dealt a severe blow to the common American practice of educational apartheid, by finding the nation's public school systems, which were unevenly divided between Black and white institutions, were separate and unequal, and thus violative of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. As such, Brown became the precedent by which all racial segregation came to be declared unconstitutional. But back to the public schools. Who can doubt that millions of public school students now attend inner-city schools that are just as segregated as they were 50 years ago? How can this be, we wonder? Well, there are differences. Funding for schools is based on property taxes, and as inner cities are sited in poor urban cores, where taxes are lessened, there are fewer resources for such schools. And while racial segregation is unconstitutional, class segregation is not. This, coupled with the segregated housing customs which still determines where people live, also determines where young people go to school. Just because a law changes, doesn't mean life does. There are other reasons, as well. Millions of whites fled to the suburbs, and many built private schools that could legally segregate. Much of this energy went into the voucher school movement, so that parents could siphon off public monies to pay for private, and even religious schools. With some major American cities facing drop-out rates of 50%, public schools are failing in their mission of teaching and training children to handle the glaring needs of tomorrow. And what of No Child Left Behind? It was by any honest measure, a disaster. The less said about it, the better. --(c) '09 maj | 5/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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GM's Newest Deal | As the prospect of GM (General Motors) being forced into bankruptcy looms closer, the company (as well as the government) enters yet the next phase in a long, bitter and seemingly intractable war against workers -- and not just members of the UAW (United Auto Workers). For the courtroom represents a battleground more vicious than any negotiating table, for there, the rules are (to borrow a phrase from segregation days) 'separate and unequal.' That's because civil laws favor corporations. How could it be otherwise when lawyers are trained in corporate and contract law -- and rarely, if ever -- labor law? Under bankruptcy law, prior contracts can be broken, and new arrangements made, as long as creditors and investors get paid. What of a man or woman who has spent decades at work for the company? Isn't that an investment? To the investors and bondholders that is irrelevant. They, and the White House, will have driven GM into bankruptcy court, not UAW, which has bent over so far backwards they're in knots. In Sept. 2007, UAW signed a "landmark" pact with GM, in which the union assumed massive health care costs under what's called VEBA (volunteer employee benefit association). According to the terms, GM donates cash or stock to the UAW to administer VEBA, and GM agrees to the present work force of 73,000 workers. The VEBA contract was for 4 years, expiring in 2011. Two years later, and tens of thousands have been laid off. Even before bankruptcy proceedings began, UAW heads were being pushed to accept GM stock (now around $1.40 a share) and corporate debt, instead of cash to run VEBA, and urged to accept "immediate cuts" to retiree benefits at the insistence of Timothy Geithner's Treasury Department, citing GM's "financial difficulties." GM, we tend to forget, is a multinational, which builds and sells cars in Mexico, Canada and Asia. And while sales have indeed slumped in the Americas, sales are hot in Asia. In China, the world's most populous market, an American car is still a status symbol, and China's economy is still the healthiest on earth, growing at an annual rate of 6%. Moreover, while jobs are being lost in the U.S., and retirees' benefits are slashed, the bailout billions will fuel GM's efforts overseas, where, for example, a Chinese auto worker earns $3 an hour, versus $54 an hour for an American. Does that make economic sense? Only when the bottom line is the be-all and end-all of existence (as in capitalism). Meanwhile, six top GM execs recently sold all of their GM stock, sending a signal of imminent bankruptcy. Having eaten the goose of GM profit, they leave the bones. (c) '09 maj | 5/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Politics of Office | -- | 5/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government for Whom | -- | 5/11/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Party of One | -- | 5/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Message to May Day | Message to May Day | 5/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Before a Nation | -- | 4/27/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mumia's Birthday Message | -- | 4/24/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A New Relationship | -- | 4/23/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Pirates and Piracy | -- | 4/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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New Left Forum | -- | 4/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The World To Come | -- | 4/13/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Summitry and Pundrity | -- | 4/6/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Post Supreme Court Interview with Mumia | -- | 4/6/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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John Hope Franklin | -- | 4/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Opening Address at Baltimore City From Below Conference | The City From Below conference opened with this powerful opening statement pre-recorded by Mumia Abu-Jamal. The conference took place 3/27/09 thru 3/29/09 in Baltimore, MD. Their website has updates from the conference. http://cityfrombelow.org/main | 3/31/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Capital Amends Rules | -- | 3/26/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wilburt Bill Tatum: A memorial for Notably Black Publisher in NYC | -- | 3/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Constitution and Other Illusions | -- | 3/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Other Inauguration | -- | 3/10/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Money Changers in the Temple | -- | 3/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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More Lessons From Luzerne County | -- | 3/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Passing of the Papers | -- | 3/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Inheriting An Empire II | -- | 3/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Running Backwards | -- | 3/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wildin on Wall Street | -- | 3/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Osborne Anderson: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Huey Newton: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/26/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Shirley Chisholm: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/25/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/23/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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William Parker: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/22/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CLR James: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tupac Shakur: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/20/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Thousands of Black Women: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Billy Holliday: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/18/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Moses Fleetwood Walker | -- | 2/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Black Women of the Pen: A Profile in Excellence | Black Women of the Pen: A Profile in Excellence | 2/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Fallen | -- | 2/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Albizu Campos: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/15/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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With Judges Like These | -- | 2/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Chinua Achebe: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Harriet Tubman: A Profile in Excellence | -- | 2/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Statement for St. Denis | -- | 2/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Economy of Ashes | What we are seeing in the economy is something not seen in this country since the 1930's -- the time of the Great Depression. If we think of the companies shedding jobs like trees shedding leaves, they are so numerous that it may prove easier to name companies that haven't -- (if we could find any!) In January alone, some 1/2 million workers got pink slips. And this economic crisis is global. Europe is locked in a financial vise, and big countries, like England and France, have announced ambitious stimulus packages. England has openly nationalized prominent banks facing default. Iceland has, for all intents and purposes, declared bankruptcy -- with not just banks, but government itself is failing. And while China, the site of the world's most robust economy is still growing, its rate of growth has fallen so fast that some 20 million people -- 20 million! -- have lost their jobs, a direct result of the U.S. economic recession. Over a year ago, American economist Nouriel Roubini, speaking at a meeting in Davos, Switzerland, said the U.S. economy looked "like an emerging market." Roubini predicted that the U.S. would enter a recession which would last at least a year. he added, "The debate is not whether we're going to have a soft or hard landing. The question is only how hard the hard landing will be." * A Chinese economist echoed that sentiment. Yu Yongding, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences described the Chinese economy as at "quite a delicate stage." The problem, he concluded, was the "very bad situation" in the U.S. Globalization was sold as the next best thing to the industrial age, when Americans would live in the warm glow of the information age, lit by computer screens, and the rest of the world would do scut work. How's that working out, as the economy crumbles? [*Source: Landler, Mark, "U.S. Policies Evoke Scorn at Davos: Fed Caved In to the Markets (or Maybe It Dawdled), Critics Say, New York Times, Thurs., Jan. 24, 2008, p. C9.] --(c) 2/4/09 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 2/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Music Over the Mall | Music Over the Mall | 1/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Black in Iraq | Several days ago I read an interesting article in the paper on the tiny Black community in Basra, Iraq. The piece was basically a foreign take on the impacts of the Obama election, for Black Iraqis hoped this would signal better conditions for them in the land of their ancestors. Black people are hardly new to Iraq. Their present population stems from slave importations from over a thousand years ago, when the city of Basra, in Iraq's southern sliver, was the seat of Mesopotamia. Africans were kidnapped into bondage, and forced to work (I kid you not) in the region's salt mines. In the early third of the seventh century (ca. 820 C. E.), Blacks staged a powerful rebellion, which forced the government to flee. This revolution, called "The Revolt of the Zenj" by Arab historians, lasted for over 20 years. This revolution was betrayed, and the rebels were slain and some put back into bondage. The name "Revolt of the Zenj" is so named because Blacks from the southeast coast of Africa, called "Zenjabar" by the Arabs (later Zanzibar, and today a part of Tanzania) were captured by the millions and sold into slavery throughout the Arab world. The hundreds of thousands of Black Iraqis today are among their descendants. As such, they live lives of discrimination, poor education, under-and-unemployment and poverty. One Basra father explained his decision to remove his daughter from school because she was teased with the term abd (Arabic for slave) by her classmates. The father said, "it is my wish that she will read and write, but I cannot let her have these...problems." The Black Iraqi population numbers in the thousands, not the millions. But even after a millennia and a half in Iraq, they still sing ancient songs of a distant African memory. 1/25/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal [Source: Madhani, AAmer, "Obama's Rise Inspires Arab Iraqis in Politics", USA Today, Jan. 19, 2009, 9A.; Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (N.Y. ; Faber and Faber, 1991) ] | 1/26/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Oscar Grant & You | Like you, I've seen the searing phone-camera tape of the killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, of Oakland, California. And although it's truly a terrible thing to see, it's almost exceeded by something just as shocking. That's been how the media has responded to this police killing, by creating a defense of error. This defense, that the killer cop who murdered Grant somehow mistook his pistol for his Taser, has been offered by both local and national news reporters -- even though they haven't heard word one from Johannes Mehserle, the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cop who wasn't even interviewed for weeks after shooting an unarmed man! If you've ever wondered about the role of the media, let this be a lesson to you. You can see here that the claim that the corporate media is objective is but a cruel illusion. Imagine this: if the roles were reversed, that is, if bystanders had footage of Grant shooting Mehserle, would the media be suggesting a defense for him? Would Grant have been free to roam, to leave the state a week later? Would he have made bail? The shooting of Oscar Grant III is but the latest, West Coast version of Amadou Diallo, of Sean Bell, and of hundreds of other Black men -- and like them, don't be surprised if there is an acquittal -- again. Oscar Grant is you -- and you are him, because you know in the pit of your stomach that it could've been you, and the same thing could've happened. You know this. And what's worse is this: you pay for this every time you pay taxes, and you endorse this every time you vote for politicians who sell out in a heartbeat. You pay for your killers to kill you, in the name of a bogus, twisted law, and then pay for the State that defends him. Something is terribly wrong here--and it's the system itself. Until that is changed, nothing is changed, for we'll be out here again (in the streets) -- chanting a different name. -- 1/17/09 (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal | 1/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Imperial Power | Address to the Rosa Luxemburg Conference, Berlin Germany 1/10/09 'Imperial Power & Counter-Power':(M.A. Jamal's Remarks to the Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Germany / Jan. 10th, 2009 [SP. WRIT. 12/30/08] (C) '08 MUMIA ABU-JAMAL If one is to address the reactions to the recent election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency, this can perhaps be best encapsulated by the term, exultation. For if ever a political figure rode the currents of a stellar alignment, Barack Obama did so. The exultation was both national and global. In my 1/2 century of life, I can recall no presidential election that elicited so profound a political -- indeed visceral! -- response. When one considers what role the left had in such a spectacular political event, again we must look to alignments; not of stars, but of constituencies, which converged to not only elect Obama, but to also close the door to the ruinous politics of the U.S. right wing, represented by the incumbent President, George W. Bush, and his presumed political heirs, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin of the Republican Party. While the U.S. left was a constituent part of the larger constituency, it neither drove nor directed the forces that elected Obama. In many ways it was hostage to those forces. Those forces were youth -- those between 18-28, who mobilized in ways never seen before; it was also African Americans who voted in unprecedented numbers for one they perceived as one of their own; add to this millions of women, some of whom felt, frankly, disrespected by the choice of Palin, who, though a woman, betrayed an astonishing lack of knowledge and expertise on issues, especially given the very real possibility that her running mate, sen. McCain, might not survive the rigors of office. But one cannot ignore the significant segment of those who felt betrayed or disaffected by the hard-right tilt of the Republican Party -- which ran almost exclusively on the notion that Obama was a "socialist", who in Palin's oft-repeated quote, "pals around with terrorists." For those beyond our shores, it may be necessary to briefly decode this language. The "socialist" tag was a kind of cleaned - up, classy version of 'communist', the ultimate slur in U.S. capitalist politics, only exceeded by the post 9/11 term "terrorist" (and by calling Obama a "pal" of terrorists, it was tantamount to calling him one). The last reference was to the alleged friendship between Obama and William Ayers, a Hyde Park educator who, in the 1960's, was a leading member of the Weather Underground, student anti-war and anti imperialist activists, who engaged in acts against property, and who supported the Black liberation movements of the era. In point of fact, Obama was, by no measure, a leftist. In the Spring of 2008 issue of The Black Scholar, African-American studies professor, Charles P. Henry makes the point explicitly, citing both Obama's own words, as well as a political biography of him in the New York Times Magazine. (1) Obama's quoted remarks are instructive: The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam, which means that either you're a 'Scoop' Jackson Democrat or you're suspicious of any military action. And that's just not my framework .(2) Obama's choices were illustrative of two poles of the Democratic Party: Sen. Henry 'Scoop' Jackson was so pro-war that he was called the "Senator from Boeing". (3) ; Hayden by contrast, was a student anti-war activist, and member of S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society). (Interestingly, Obama never referred to himself as a Jesse Jackson Democrat either). This leads us to the next query on the role of the U.S. anti-war movement; in a word, it is moribund. This, paradoxically, can be traced to the massive demonstrations of Spring 2003 in protest of the imminent Iraq War. For millions of people, this was their first, and last experience of mass action | 1/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Huey: A Memory (1942-1989) | written 4 POCC 1/15/09 Huey P. Newton's name, and more importantly, his history of resistance and struggle, is little more than a mystery for many younger people in their 20's. The name and works of a third rate rapper is more familiar to the average Black youth, and that's hardly surprising given the failure of the public school system. For the public school system is invested in ignorance, and Huey P. Newton was a rebel -- and more, a Black Revolutionary. Inspired by the civil rights movement and the violent attacks on Blacks trying to vote, Huey felt a bolder, more radical stance was needed. At the age of 24, he co-founded the Black Panther Party, and the group expanded by leaps and bounds. Begun in Oct. 1966, in 3 years it had grown to over 40 chapters and branches across the country, with an international section in Algiers, North Africa. Dedicated to the principles of Black self-defense and Black freedom, the Party became the foremost radical group of the era, with a wealth of supporters and enemies. Chief among enemies was the US government, which, in the words of the FBI's head, J. Edgar Hoover, considered it "the greatest threat to national security." For many thousands of Black youth, the rebelliousness of the Party spoke to their spirits more truly than did the peaceful resistance represented by Dr. Martin Luther King. Huey was not a pacifist, and neither were millions of Black people. But Huey, for all his brilliance, flair and resolve, was only human, and as the saying goes, 'to err is human.' Under attack from without and within, the party made missteps that contributed to it demise by the early 1980's. But it is the best of Huey P. Newton that survives -- the bold soldier, the Minister of Defense, the thinker and writer -- who gave his best to the Black Freedom movement; who inspired millions of others to stand. --(c) 1/15/09 maj | 1/15/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Death In A Cell | 36 HOURS: Death in a Cell 1/12/09 Mumia Abu-Jamal The strangulation death of 19 year old Ronnie L. White in a jail cell in Upper Marlboro, Prince George's County, Maryland, after 36 hours confinement has confronted Ron Harris, the teenager's father. A month ago Harris told reporters, "it's been six months, and still nobody can tell me who killed my son or what happened leading up to his death." Harris added, "I want to know why there is still so much secrecy in this case and why, after all this time, I still don't have answers." And despite the empanelment of a county grand jury looking into the case, Harris still has no answers, for the grand jury disbanded without bringing any indictments. Community groups, from the People's Coalition for Police Accountability, Cas de Maryland, and the Princes George's County of the NAACP have protested the death of Ronnie l. White, and braved the bitter December winds to gather together to demand a true, fair and impartial investigation into his death, and the prosecutions of all involved. That's because White died 36 hours after his arrest in connection with the death of a Prince George's county cop, who was hit by a car allegedly driven by White. White's father is left with little more than questions after the events of June 2008. Ron Harris says, "My son died in solidarity confinement in a jail. They knew who was working in the unit and where he was that day. The doors were locked, and only a few people had keys. Yet, after all this time, they say they don't have enough evidence to know who did it? Why not?" Community groups smell a cover up. For more info: call 301-779-7432 or email : fightpolicebrutalityinpg@gmail.com maj --@'09 {Source: Thomas-Lester, Avis, "Father Seeks Resolution months After Son Dies", washingtonpost.com, Tues., Dec. 23, 2008, B02}. | 1/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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James Main, Jr | -- | 1/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Bombing For Moderates | -- | 1/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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EARTHA KITT -- (1928-2008) | For generations, the name, Eartha Kitt, was synonymous with sexy, sultry, and outspoken. In an industry where careers can sometimes be measured in minutes, Eartha Kitt was the real thing, for quite a while; dancer, singer, actress, and on occasion, a comedian. Since the tender age of 14, she worked the stage, and for nearly 7 decades, she left her indelible imprint by her work on the big screen, TV, and on recordings. On Jan. 26, 1928 she was born in South Carolina as Eartha Mae Kitt. She danced, sang, and acted her way into the hearts of millions. In 1968, she dared speak out against the Vietnam War, when the war was raging at it's hottest, and was both blacklisted and hounded for doing so. That's because she spoke at a photo op at the White House in the face of First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson (wife of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson). For daring to speak her mind at the heart of the empire, and for denouncing an Imperial war, the media and the state tried to 'disappear' her. She had to go abroad to find her freedom of speech, where she remained for nearly a decade. For those who want to see her as a seductive chanteuse, the 1958 film, St. Louis Blues, starring Nat King Cole, Ruby Dee, Pearl Bailey and the gospel great, Mahalia Jackson, is a great source. For a slightly comic turn, see her as an amorous entrepreneurial cougar on the hunt for a young Eddie Murphy in the 1992 film Boomerang starring Halle Berry as the principal love interest. Although she was known as the quintessential sex kitten for her acting, her public outspokenness came at quite a cost. Her comings, goings, doings and sayings were tracked by both the FBI and the CIA. She moved through life with an intelligence, wit and nerve that made her distinctive and unforgettable. Eartha Mae Kitt was 80. --(c) '08 maj [Source:African Arts and Letters, eds, Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (Phila., PA: Running Press, 2004. | 12/24/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Inheriting an Empire | -- | 12/21/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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JR of POCC Interviews Mumia | -- | 12/20/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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296 |
Somalia Woes of peril of Intervention | -- | 12/20/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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297 |
Deregulation Nation | -- | 12/15/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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298 |
Politics of the Present | -- | 12/13/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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299 |
Message to December 6 Philadelphia Rally | -- | 12/7/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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300 |
Message to PDC Holiday Event for Class War Prisoners | -- | 12/7/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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301 |
False Freedom | -- | 12/7/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 301 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
he's still a human being...
to those who stumble upon this podcast, don't listen to the insensitive knocks on this work by the equally insentive people who wrote them. Despite the fact that Mumia Abu-Jamal is a resident of death row- albeit controvesially- he is still a fully capable human being, and a very intelligent one at that. Jamal was an accomplished writer, scholar, and voice of resistance before he went to prison. In the time he has spent at prison, he has continued to study and to further his immense knowledge on the human condtion and the current state of the world. Even if Jamal did kill a man 25 years ago, the man is a genius to say the least, and his words should not be taken lightly. If your skull is not too thick to let some intelligence through it, not unlike the previous reviewers, I would highly, highly recommend this podcast. Don't be superficial. Get past Jamal's apparent past and listen to what he has to say, you just might learn something.
Robots vs. Animals
It's so sad to see that people have judged this man in their reviews without taking a look at his case. Do not blindly accept what this government tells you as truth. Mumia Abu-Jamal whether you believe him to be innocent or not was NOT given a fair trial as he was rightfully due. If the govt. believes the man is guilty beyond shadow of a doubt, then why not give the man a fair and just trial? I believe that America has become a population of robots and animals. The robots are incapable of an independently intelligent thought, while the animals have become so apathetic that they rebel without a cause behaving in irrational and many times violent ways. Working 9 to 5, trying to keep our rent paid, striving to "get ahead" and excel in the daily rat race has many of caught in the matrix blind to what is transpiring right in front of our eyes. Mumia's words are an intelligent and analytical commentary from a man from the outside looking in. I say from the outside because maybe it us who are not "free". Peace.
Don't judge this podcast off of your prejudices
Whether or not Jamal killed that officer or not, the reviews are intended to be about his work on these essays, which are very good. Jamal is a very intelligent man and expresses his opinions well. 5 stars
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