--- Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear at earthlink.net> wrote:
> From: "Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear at earthlink.net>
Story on the Statement By Jamil
> Abdullah Al-Amin [formerly H. Rap Brown]
>
> Note by Hunterbear:
>
> The up-coming death penalty trial of Jamil Abdullah
> Al-Amin [H. Rap Brown]
> is something on which to keep an eye. He was the
> last chairman of SNCC
> [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] during
> the active life of the
> organization which was founded at Raleigh in 1960,
> blazed for several years
> a dramatically effective social justice trail across
> the South, and was
> functionally gone by the end of the decade. Rap
> Brown, as he was known
> then, came into the Southern Movement rather late
> and, although I knew most
> of the SNCCers during my continual period in the
> South -- 1961-1967 -- I did
> not know him. [We may have met briefly before he
> assumed the chair of SNCC.]
> He succeeded the late Stokely Carmichael [Kwame
> Ture, 1941-1998] in the
> chair capacity -- Stokely having ousted John Lewis
> [now a Congressman --
> Georgia.]
>
> The circumstances of the present case are obviously
> controversial. But most
> media who have covered it have done, at least
> implicitly, a hostile job --
> frequently playing up Mr Al-Amin's brief affiliation
> with the Black Panthers
> and playing down [or not even mentioning] his SNCC
> affiliation. [In
> addition to John Lewis, another prominent Georgian
> long active in the old
> SNCC, is Julian Bond -- now national president of
> NAACP.]
>
> Also, in a very broadly related context, here is the
> link for the excellent
> Civil Rights Movement Veterans website, large and
> authoritative, which
> contains much on the Southern Movement and its
> people and its historic and
> contemporary collateral dimensions
> http://www.crmvet.org/
>
> And here is the short piece from the Atlanta
> newspaper discussing Jamil
> Abdullah Al-Amin's statement as his trial draws
> close.
>
>
>
> Claiming innocence in letter to mosque, Al-Amin
> decries death penalty
>
> By LATEEF MUNGIN
> Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
>
> In a seven page-letter from his cell in the Fulton
> County Jail, Jamil
> Abdullah Al-Amin railed against the death penalty
> punishment he possibly
> faces and said he did not kill Fulton deputy Ricky
> Kinchen or wound deputy
> Aldranon English.
>
>
>
>
> John Spink / AJC
> Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin said the death penalty is "no
> less brutal" than a
> Roman circus.
> "I am writing you from my cell in the Fulton County
> Jail where I reside
> falsely imprisoned," Al-Amin states in a letter he
> sent to his congregation
> at the Community Mosque of Atlanta on Dec. 14. "I am
> falsely accused of
> shooting and injuring a Deputy Sheriff and denying
> another of his life. I am
> forced to suffer in silence without the benefit of
> declaring my own
> innocence ... "
>
> Al-Amin is charged in the March 16, 2000, shooting
> of Kinchen and English.
> Kinchen died in the shooting. The deputies were
> looking to arrest Al-Amin on
> a Cobb County warrant when they were shot.
>
> Jury selection for the death penalty trial begins
> Jan. 7.
>
> Al-Amin's defense attorney Jack Martin said he knows
> of the letter but
> cannot comment on it because of a gag order imposed
> by Fulton County
> Superior Court Judge Stephanie Manis. Manis imposed
> the gag order at the
> request of defense attorneys who said the
> prosecutor's office was improperly
> leaking prejudicial information to the media.
>
> The prosecution also cannot comment, said Erik
> Friedly, spokesman for the
> Fulton County district attorney's office. Friedly
> said the gag order applies
> to Al-Amin as well as the attorneys, but only a
> judge could determine if the
> letter is a violation of the order.
>
> Al-Amin is well knownfor years of civil rights
> activism in the 1960s with
> the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and a
> short stint as a member
> of the Black Panther Party where he was known as H.
> Rap Brown. But in the
> letter Al-Amin tried to separate from that past.
>
> Al-Amin also talked about his views on the death
> penalty.
>
> "State executions are little more than ritual
> murders that mock justice
> ...," he wrote. "It is as evil and cruel a
> punishment as the Roman circus
> feeding men to lions. It is no less arbitrary and no
> less brutal."
>
> The letter will be read at an upcoming weekly prayer
> meeting at the mosque
> that Al-Amin heads, said Nadim Ali, a spokesman for
> the West End mosque. The
> letter will be printed in an upcoming mosque
> newsletter, Ali said.
>
> Ali said it is important that the mosque leader be
> able to speak to the
> public in his own words.
>
> "There was a media barrage on [Al-Amin] after the
> incident and then the
> judge slapped a gag order on him," said Ali.
>
> "He never got a chance to declare his innocence and
> we feel it may hinder
> his ability to get a fair trial."
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Hunter Gray [Hunterbear]
> www.hunterbear.org (social justice)
>
> Left Discussion Group
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Redbadbear
>
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===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
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