Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 01:22:53 -0500 From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> Subject: Re: Cooper on Mumia
Chuck0 wrote:
>> What foolish decisions are you talking about, Chuck?
>* Concentrating the decision-making process in the hands of a few people
In so far as local actions are concerned, decision-making hasn't been concentrated in the hands of anyone. What leftists do here in Columbus, Ohio isn't controlled by anyone elsewhere. Sometimes, Free Mumia actions were called by young white anarchists in the Anti-Racist Action. Other actions were organized by black nationalists, on and off campus. Occasionally, religious leftists took the lead. For all actions, everyone cooperated well. Columbus is a small town that is not hospitable to any leftist politics, so one's organizational affiliation (*if* one has any) has little to do with who works with whom. When an action is small, it means that those who called the action didn't make enough phone calls, made a blunder of calling a demo on the day when some other major leftist event was happening, or something like that. For better or worse, left politics in the USA is *extremely decentralized*.
>* The failure to make Mumia's case part of a larger, unified campaign
>against the death penalty. The inability of Mumia supporters to lift a
>finger to help other folks on death row.
This isn't true. Local people who show up for Free Mumia actions also show up for anti-death penalty actions. The problem is that *most Americans don't think that we should fight to abolish death penalty* and that leftists have not been able to change this fact. Also, we have *no left political party that can unify various single-issue campaigns*. That's the tragedy.
Marc Cooper asks, "Now you want to take the deathly serious issue of capital punishment and tie it to some flaky cult-member like Mumia Abu-Jamal?" Contradicting himself, he writes later in the same article, "Most death row prisoners aren't so cuddly, so politically correct, as Mumia." It appears that his complaint is that while he is against death penalty, he dislikes most death row prisoners, including Mumia, because they are either "flaky" or not so "cuddly"! He basically suggests that only respectable people should have the chance of getting their rights defended by leftists. If any leftists can be said to be doing harm to the cause of death penalty abolition, it is journalists like Cooper, if Cooper can be still considered leftist, that is.
Meanwhile, Mumia himself and his supporters are doing what they can, given the conditions under which we live.
***** Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 23:38:35 -0700 From: "Sis. Marpessa" <nattyreb at ix.netcom.com> Subject: !*"A Man Called 'Shaka'" by Mumia Abu-Jamal
FORWARDED ARTICLE =====================
From: Mark Clement <MClement at bruderhof.com> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:44:11 -0500
FROM MUMIA ABU-JAMAL A MAN CALLED "SHAKA" Column Written 1/3/2000 Mumia Abu-Jamal All Rights Reserved
On September 5th, 1999, the man born as Gary Graham marked his 36th year in life, and his 18th year in a Texas cage. Several years ago, the black death row prisoner changed his name to Shaka Sankofa, after the great founder of the Zulu Empire of southern Africa. For years, he has been fighting for his life, most recently against one of the most brutal killing states in America. Texas leads the nation in executions, spurred, at least in part, by the presidential aspirations of its Governor, George W. Bush.
Supporters from as diverse a grouping as the Pope, the Nation of Islam, and the national Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty have been critical of some aspects of his trial, and called for either clemency or a new trial. Sankofa's trial was marred by conflicting witnesses, ballistics evidence that cleared his weapon from the killing, and even alibi testimony placing him miles away from the crime scene, yet much of this wasn't brought out to the jury.
Five times Sankofa has faced the gallows and five times he has been granted last minute stays of execution.
What disturbs many observers is the provision of Texas law that disallows evidence of innocence that does not come within that state's narrow time frame. Supporters of Sankofa have released a CD featuring music and spoken word to support his new trial efforts called "Let the Evidence be Heard."
In early September, 1999, the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, wrote to Texas Governor Bush, asking, on behalf of Pope John Paul II, that clemency be granted. The Nuncio wrote:
The Holy Father prays that the life of Mr. Graham may be saved through the compassion and magnanimity of yourself, Mr. Governor, and through the Board of Pardons and Paroles. His Holiness counts on your authority to have a life spared by commuting this sentence with a gesture of mercy which would certainly contribute to the promotion of a culture of life and of non-violence in the freedom-loving society of the United States.
But even the appeal of a Pope may have to yield to an even Higher Power - the power of human political ambition. That was certainly the case as regards the late Karla Fae Tucker, whose remarkable rehabilitation was treated like a joke.
Shaka Sankofa has spent half of his life, not only in a cage, but under threat of death, despite considerable evidence of his innocence. From his perspective, the U.S. is many things, but "freedom-loving" it ain't. ©MAJ 2000 *****
****** Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2000 00:04:58 -0700 From: "Sis. Marpessa" <nattyreb at ix.netcom.com> Subject: !*Free Mumia News (1/7/00) Int'l Delegation to D.C./Updates
Please s*bscribe/uns*bscribe "Free Mumia News" automatically at www.afrikan.net/email.html. Thank you! ===============================================
From: Mark Clement <MClement at bruderhof.com>
International Committee to Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal c/o OWC-San Francisco Labor council, 1188 Franklin St. #203, San Francisco, CA 94109 Tel. 415-436-0217. Fax: 415-440-9297. Email: owc at energy-net.org and JANDB99 at aol.com
January 6, 2000 Media Contact: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jerry Gordon 216-382-4597
INTERNATIONAL DELEGATION TO DELIVER MESSAGE TO CLINTON: "STOP THE EXECUTION OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!"
Members of parliaments and legislative bodies from several countries, joined by union leaders and human rights activists, will assemble in Washington, D.C. on January 12 as part of an international delegation to ask President Clinton to stop the threatened execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mr. Abu-Jamal is an African American radio journalist, who has been on death row in a Pennsylvania prison for 18 years following his 1982 conviction for killing a police officer.
On hand from the United States will be Rep. John Conyers, Martin Luther King III, Rev.Walter Fauntroy, a representative from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and others.
Describing the trial that led to Abu-Jamal's conviction as "one of the worst travesties and miscarriages of justice that has ever occurred in this country," Baldemar Velasquez, coordinator of the January 12 delegation, said the group had requested a meeting with President Clinton to ask him "to direct Attorney General Janet Reno to conduct an investigation of the Pennsylvania legal system to ascertain how this terrible situation came about." The delegation also hopes to meet with the Attorney General. Visits to the White House and Justice Department will be preceded by a news conference to be held in Washington D.C. at the National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, East room, at 9 AM, also on Wednesday, January 12.
The delegation will take to Washington petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people in support of an "Open Letter to Bill Clinton" urging the president to act in the Abu-Jamal case, which is currently before a federal district judge in Pennsylvania. The judge there is considering claims of 29 separate violations of Abu-Jamal's constitutional rights. "We know that President Clinton cannot order a new trial in this case, nor can he commute Abu-Jamal's sentence. But ordering an investigation by the Justice Department would go a long way in getting at the truth and would, we are confident, stop the execution," said Velasquez.
Velasquez, who is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee based in Toledo, Ohio, and a vice president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, said delegation members will be coming from Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Martinique, South Africa, Spain and perhaps other countries. "For so many political leaders and other notables to come here - in some cases traveling thousands of miles at great personal expense - to make a statement in this case demonstrates how deeply the feeling is all over the world that a terrible injustice is being committed here and that people of conscience must speak out now to stop it," Velasquez declared. *****
Yoshie