Mumia Abu-Jamal, Solitary Confinement and Indefinite Detention USA

Keeping it Real

By Larry Pinkney

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully from nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government... I cannot be silent."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. [From the speech entitled, Beyond Vietnam - A Time To Break Silence]

"Mumia [Abu-Jamal] may be in solitary, but he is not alone. The PA [Pennsylvania] Department of Corrections holds approximately 2,500 people in solitary confinement on any given day, many of them for years at a time."

- Human Rights Coalition [January, 2012]

Even as everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation are mercilessly stomped on by Barack Obama (and his Democrat and Republican party cohort's) 2012 New Year's trojan horse law - of unmitigated repression, in the form of the so-called National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - which law legalizes the right of the U.S. military to carry out secret kidnappings, indefinitely detain, interrogate, torture, and murder U.S. citizens without even the right to jury, trial, legal representation, or the requirement that the government produce evidence against the accused - we ordinary people struggle simply to survive as dignified human beings. [Reference The Black Commentator, January 5, 2012, 'Beyond Vietnan' Into Afghanistan and Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens.

Yet, there's more.

The United States of America has officially, for many decades, lived in denial of the fact that there are thousands of political prisoners and/or prisoners of conscience confined in its brutal and barbaric prison gulag system nationally. Many citizens have chosen to pretend that we in this nation are protected by the U.S. Constitution. Thanks to COINTELPRO (the infamousand ongoing U.S. government's Counter Intelligence Program), the so-called 'Patriot Act,' and the heinous and hideous National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), no critically-thinking and conscious person can honestly subscribe to the notion that this nation does not engage in institutionalized torture or that the United States is a people's democracy. In this 21st century, even the U.S. Constitution itself (which in any case was often ignored) has met the ignoble fate of being blatantly destroyed and trashed by the opportunistic, corporate politicians of this nation.

The physical and/or psychological torture and deprivation of prisoners (political and otherwise) in the United States of America is standard operating procedure. It is routine - considered as no big deal. Nonetheless, many persons in this nation continue, like euphemistic ostriches, to hide behind the decaying mythology of a very dead U.S. Constitution and non-existent democracy. The daily horrors and deprivations endured by the many wrongfully imprisoned blatant U.S. political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart and so many others is but the tip of a blood curdling, burgeoning ice berg.

For the poor and dispossessed of this this nation, irrespective of their color, justice is a sick joke. Be clear about this: If you do not act NOW, YOU can and will be next! The disgusting debacle of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners is but a reflection of what occurs on a daily basis with prisoners inside the United States itself.

So you think you have human and political rights in this nation?! Stop fooling yourselves, you don't, WE don't! This political and judicial system is all about serving the rich and the powerful, not the everyday people of this nation or world.

We must understand that we are ALL Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and Lynne Stewart! We are ALL prisoners of this self-serving, viciously hypocritcal system of physical and mental confinement! But we are not helpless! There is much we can and must do! Time to break the bondages as we wage this protracted and collective people's struggle!

The time is upon us to bring about an absolute end to this corrupt political system. We must have real systemic change. Not reform, but real systemic change!

For whom does the bell toll? It tolls for us - ALL of us! No more damn wars abroad or the glorification of them! No more corporate domination, replete with its privatized U.S. prisons and hegemony of the daily lives of WE, THE PEOPLE, inside this nation and around the world!

Remember Mumia! Remember Leonard! Remember Lynne! For we are all of them and so many others. Mother Earth calls and we must answer! Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward...!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.



Uplifting Dr. Martin Luther King’s Legacy:

A View from the Battlefield


By Jamala Rogers


BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board



It’s that time of year where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s uplifting speech permeates the air. It’s a time when killers of the dream are allowed to pontificate their own version of “I Have a Dream.” It’s a time when the drum majors for greed, racism and injustices are paraded out to receive awards in the name and spirit of Dr. King.




I have attempted to lift up the brilliance and complexity of Dr. King’s work and his enduring analysis of this country’s three evils: racism, war and poverty. Over four decades since his death, these three evils are alive and well. Dreaming won’t rid us of them either.




Black people are still being lynched in the 21st Century. Billions of tax dollars are spent each year in military aggression. One in six Americans now lives below the poverty line. The unemployment rate for black people has been doubled that of whites since 1972 so when white unemployment dips, black folks are under water. Currently, unemployment for African-Americans is the highest in nearly 30 years. The twin towers of poverty and economic injustice are remain indomitable .


The King had many profound insights about life in the U.S. and it has taken years to uncover his many speeches and writings that expose the barriers to peace and prosperity for all American citizens.


One book that recently came to my attention is written by Michael Honey, a professor of labor studies and American history at Washington University in Tacoma. While doing research at the King Center in Atlanta some years ago, Honey discovered a folder of King’s speeches to labor unions and workers’ rights organizations. Most had never been published and so Honey put several of them together in his book, All Labor Has Dignity (King Legacy). King rightfully saw the labor movement as an indispensable ally of the civil rights movement.


I was particularly struck by a speech delivered to a group of New York Teamsters in 1967. It was given in the middle of King’s unrelenting work around workers’ issues and their connection to poverty. A few months later, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched the Poor People’s Campaign. It is during this period where he felt compelled to go to Memphis at a crucial time of the sanitation workers’ struggle.


Dr. King challenged the Teamsters in his most eloquent but penetrating words. He started off by acknowledging the limited accomplishments of civil rights movements on segregation:

“It will not be easy to accomplish this program because white America has had cheap victories up to this point. The limited reforms we won have been obtained at bargain rates for the power structure. There are no expenses involved, no taxes required for Negroes to share lunch counters, libraries, parks, hotels, and other facilities. For even the more substantial reform, such as voting rights required neither large monetary or psychological sacrifice. . . .”

What Dr. King was saying was that the privileges of white people in an inherently racist society must be scrutinized in the quest for economic equity. White people marching arm-in-arm with blacks for voting rights or to de-segregate a lunch counter was a picnic compared to what it would take to deconstruct an economic system that used race and gender to exploit workers at the bottom. King believed that labor unions had a unique role in this phase of the struggle.


We have been stuck in this phase for much too long. Dr. King understood that it was a class war long before the Occupy protests drew a line in the sand between the 99 Percenters and the contemporary robber barons who head up global finance capital. He understood the need for wealth redistribution long before the Republicans tried to make it a dirty word.


As we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, let justice-seeking people declare that “cheap victories” of the past must be the stepping stones to real equality now. This is a fight for decent paying jobs that guarantee a deserving quality of life for all citizens. It must be directly connected to the struggle of whites to make the necessary “monetary” and” psychological” sacrifices. Full civil and human rights will not be bought at “bargain rates.”

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and the Black Radical Congress National Organizer. Additionally, she is an Alston-Bannerman Fellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Click here to contact Ms. Rogers.

Black Commentator Weighs in on Julian Assange

From the invaluable, right-thinking, cut-to-the-chase Black Commentator:

Dec 9, 2010 - Issue 405

Cover Story
WikiLeaks is the Upton Sinclair of this Century
The Color of Law
By David A. Love, JD
BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor

I find it interesting, though not surprising, that most discussions in the media about WikiLeaks focus on the suitable form of punishment for its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, rather than the nature of the diplomatic correspondence he and his organization have shared with the public.  None of the documents were top secret—as they were either labeled secret, confidential or classified— and arguably they should be a part of the public domain.  Some people are calling for the arrest and prosecution of Assange for espionage, and the branding of WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization.  Rather than condemn Assange, we should commend him for doing all of us a great service.

Commenting on the good that can come from openness and transparency, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”  Well, today we find ourselves in a foul, germ-ridden place, where official misconduct is allowed to breed, infect the body politic and fester.  Things are done in the name of the American people that would outrage them if they really knew the truth.  And some past generations had the benefit of brave individuals to shine the light and clear up the stench, and they were all the better for it.  

    

Without question, Noam Chomsky said it best in a recent interview with Democracy Now!  “One of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population,” Chomsky said.  Of the similarity of WikiLeaks to the Pentagon Papers— a top secret history of the Vietnam War first published in the New York Times—Chomsky noted:

“But if you look at the Papers themselves, there are things that Americans should have known that the government didn’t want them to know.  And as far as I can tell, from what I’ve seen here, pretty much the same is true. In fact, the current leaks are—what I’ve seen, at least—primarily interesting because of what they tell us about how the diplomatic service works.”

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the Johnson administration had lied about the Vietnam War, deliberately expanding the war in private while telling another story in public.  In recent years America has been faced with two costly, deadly and seemingly useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The latter is causing the nation to bleed $2.8 billion a week.  And the military-industrial complex eats up half of the government’s discretionary spending when other nations prefer to spend their money on high-speed rail and green technology.  This comes at a time when Wall Street is awash with record profits, yet millions are chronically unemployed.  

Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor, the highest since 1928, is turning the U.S. into a nation of serfs.  This is why we must embrace the spirit of WikiLeaks in 2010 and beyond, to inform citizens of potentially disastrous government decision making while something can be done to avert catastrophe.

In 1906—65 years before the Pentagon Papers and over a century before WikiLeaks— Upton Sinclair applied his own brand of disinfectant called The Jungle.  His novel depicted the harsh conditions of the meat-packing industry, of diseased animals and dead rats finding their way to the dinner table.  Ultimately, the visceral public reaction to The Jungle led to government reform of the food industry.  More importantly, Sinclair shed light on the plight of poor and working people, on racism and immigration, on wage slavery, and the greed and corruption of people at the top.  It was a book about an era when, like today, capitalism ran amok.  Every generation might not get an Upton Sinclair to make things right, and some generations need one more than others.  At a time when some in the media are far too eager to embed themselves in power rather than expose the powerful, the second decade of the twenty-first century desperately screams out for sunlight. 

Julian Assange is Upton Sinclair exposing the rotten meat.  The message is, don't buy the rotten meat, or the rotten wars they're trying to sell to you.  No wonder Bank of America is worried that they could be next.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to The Huffington Post, theGrio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.