Forum Post: Mumia Abu-Jamal is a big step backwards
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 17, 2011, 10:21 p.m. EST by paulg5
(673)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a big step backwards, support of him is supporting violence, he killed a cop in phila. OWS should stay out of judging those that have been convicted of crimes and stick with the agend!
My email to OWS admin:
The post on your website (occupywallst.org) Mumia Abu-Jamal:”To My Friends Of OWS” condones violence, Mumia Abu-Jamal is a convicted murderer. He shot and killed a police officer in Philadelphia and is serving a life sentence. Your homage to him is disrespectful to the family and friends of the slain officer, and sends the wrong message to Occupy Wall Street Participants. Please take it off or you'll be eliminating many potential people from your group who will not join the cause because of your poorly chosen sponsorship of Jamal. Ows is getting further and further away from the capability at making any substantive change because of the tangents the organization wonders off into. This Jamal letter is a prime example, introducing violence and playing the race card is very much in my view contrary to OWS values. Thank You
Well wheres the link?
race or nationality is used to justify unfair treatment
needs further explaining, (point)
arbitrary
My e-mail to OWS admins:
Is the justice system in this country fully functional? Absolutely not. There are serious issues ranging from the manner in which bail is set to the development of "assembly-line justice" in which plea bargains (which innocent men who are ill-equipped to win a trial may in fact take rather than risk a harsher sentence) to the woeful deficiency in competent public defenders (too few of them means caseloads that are so high that few cases actually go to trial) to the fact that you're actually more likely to find innocent men on Death Row than in the general population to the fact that the war on drugs almost exclusively targets young inner city males.
All of that is true. The fact of the matter remains that like it or not Mumia shot a cop and was in fact proud of it. Given the fact that the cop in question may well have been beating the shit out of somebody else there were extenuating circumstances, but even if that was the case the cop should have been hauled up on charges of assault, or at the very least disciplined for use of excessive force, not shot by a random passerby. The idea that what this man did is acceptable is not something we want to be promoting, intentionally or otherwise.
Accepting this man's endorsement to the point of putting it on our main page makes it appear that one of two things is true: either we're a bunch of lovey-dovey idiots who don't believe that there should be consequences meted out for committing crimes (which is not only patently false but really not going to sell well with ordinary people) or that we don't consider Mumia a criminal because we accept as morally just the shooting of police officers (which is even more false and makes for an even more inflammatory accusation).
Given the trouble we're already having with our image, embracing the endorsement of a convicted cop killer is a fast way to blacken ourselves even further in the eyes of mainstream America for no good reason. The letter needs to come off the site and Mumia needs to be told thanks but no thanks.
Exactly!
More FACTS going to... http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/886/mumia.html http://www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/intro.html
I, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, declare:
The chain of events started with Faulkner stopping a moving vehicle near the southeast corner of the intersection of South 13th Street and Locust Street in downtown Philadelphia. The United States Court of Appeals, in ruling against Abu-Jamal in 2008, described the killing of Officer Faulkner thus:
On December 9, 1981, between three thirty and four o'clock in the morning, Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner made a traffic stop of a Volkswagen driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother, on Locust Street between 12th and 13th Streets, in Philadelphia. Officer Faulkner radioed for backup assistance, and both men exited their vehicles. A struggle ensued, and Officer Faulkner tried to secure Cook's hands behind his back. At that moment, Abu-Jamal, who was in a parking lot on the opposite side of the street, ran toward Officer Faulkner and Cook. As he approached, Abu-Jamal shot Officer Faulkner in the back. As Officer Faulkner fell to the ground, he was able to turn around, reach for his own firearm, and fire at Abu-Jamal, striking him in the chest. Abu-Jamal, now standing over Officer Faulkner, fired four shots at close range. One shot struck Officer Faulkner between the eyes and entered his brain.[3]
Abu-Jamal collapsed nearby and was taken into custody by responding police officers. Daniel Faulkner was pronounced dead-on-arrival. Abu-Jamal was charged with murder in the first degree and convicted of that charge in 1982. Abu-Jamal claims that he is innocent of the crime, with his supporters citing perjured testimony (later recanted) and contend that the Philadelphia Police Department knowingly presented false testimony against him.
I am sorry but if i can't find why he was pulled over, he is not guilty. If you infringe on anybody's rights without justification you are guilty. A cop outside the law is an armed criminal nonetheless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Faulkner ++++++++++++++ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal++++++++++
I will admit if I am wrong but the burden of proof is now on you.
STFU... Quit dictating what OWS should do.
No I can state my opinion just as you can
No evidence that he killed the cop, and the "eye witnesses" recanted their testimonies. Sorry, but no one on this planet just randomly backs a guy just because they think he isn't guilty. There has to be evidence supporting that claim.
Again, as for the alleged innocence of "Mumia Abu Jamal" and also Troy Davis, aren't those conspiracy theories in the light of the evidence against them?
I am 58 years old, lived in Philadelphia at the time and followed the case very thoroughly. I don't know anything about Troy Davis, and Mumia Abu Jamal I do not need convincing of. His innocents through
any kind of conspiracy theory is made up of mostly hearsay and created by his fan club, which OWS like it or not has become a part of. I chose to stick with the information that is most current to the case and not base my opinion on false claims or associations that are sometimes 15 years or more after the fact. And one more thing the evidence against them are not conspiracy theories the evidence has convicted him so the evidence is not theory its led to a conviction. NO ALLEGED......... CONVICTED!
I think he was voicing support for OWS, not necessarily the other way around...though I'm sure a lot of people support Mumia as well.
It's like a thank you card from the devil, I wouldn't display it on the coffee table.
Intelligent people who fight for a just world and who are aware of the great big world where Mumia has stand are not blinded by white racial arrogance know that Mumia is a towering figure and even has a street named for him. From death row, for how many years now, he has written, commented on radio, inspired people!
http://www.emajonline.com/2006/10/why-naming-streets-for-mumia-makes-the-powers-rage-mark-lewis-taylor/ Why Naming Streets for Mumia Makes the Powers Rage (Mark Lewis Taylor) Posted on October 1, 2006 by EMAJ Outrage over the French city of St.-Denis, for naming a street after Mumia Abu-Jamal, has poured forth from the City Council of Philadelphia , from some in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and, of course, from the Fraternal Order of Police. The Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution condemning St.-Denis’s action. PA representatives in the U.S. House followed suit with a similar resolution.
Why have authorities in Philly and the U.S. gone ballistic over a suburb in Paris that names a street after Mumia?
This is all the more interesting a question because the outrage has not helped the movement to execute Mumia. In fact, it has reignited the steady advocacy of human rights groups and people of conscience worldwide who have not gone away, who will not allow Mumia’s life to be taken. It has forced the press to lift Mumia’s struggle back into the public eye.
Official rage has prompted some new and unfounded claims about Mumia and the death of Philadelphia officer, Dan Faulkner. Officials are exposed as all the more clouded by an unreasoning rage. The resolution in the U.S. House, for example, suggests that Mumia struck Officer Faulkner “four times” in the back before shooting him. Not even the prosecutors against Mumia claimed at trial that such an action transpired.
Mumia’s accusers now stand exposed in their rage. And just what now is exposed? The answer is this: there is a drive to execute Mumia that runs roughshod over evidence and facts, and that will invent any new “fact” that officials think will help rationalize Mumia’s execution. The killing rage is exposed as the unreasoning rage it has been since Mumia’s apprehension in 1981.
But how did naming a street in France unleash this rage of Pennsylvania powers? We do well to understand the reasons.
My interpretation is that when citizens of St.-Denis inscribed Mumia’s name onto a street sign, they helped pull Mumia out of his cell, setting him loose, as it were, into the valued, everyday existence of people of their municipality. To be sure, Mumia is still in Waynesberg, PA ; not yet greeting his friends in St.-Denis (dare we dream!). Mumia’s accusers have always had success when they can cordon him off, deny him presence everywhere save that 8 x 10 cell in a far west corner of PA. In so doing, they seek to put him outside the daily to-and-fro of everyday life, make him less a human being by removing him from our memory, from our thoughts. Hence he becomes “other,” demonizable, executable.
But comes now St.-Denis. All of a sudden there’s a street sign with Mumia’s name on it. It names a thoroughfare. People see the name, they know he must be important if the street bearing his name is also the place where many walk each day. The powers rage because they cannot stand that. They cannot tolerate Mumia’s name and life having reference outside his 8 x 10 cell, being a name that directs part of the daily flow, part of people’s routine coming and going, their meaningful life and work.
There’s a lesson here for those of us in the movement for Mumia. We should inscribe Mumia’s name in all the places where we have common interchange and habitation. True, many have already done this. You’ll find Mumia’s name carved in wet cement, in telephone poles, on walls of prisons and streets throughout the land, in the organizations of campus, labor and more.
But I’m thinking of a still more challenging way to inscribe his name. Let us make his name a commonplace in the transactions and dealings we all have – at work, at home, in church, at whatever club or society we frequent. A street-naming does that kind of work.
It is of course true that our movement work, our participation in rallies for Mumia, are crucial; but just as important, if not more so, are the ways we talk-up Mumia, inscribing his name, into our everyday places of life and labor.
It has been a baseline truth for Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal that we must etch Mumia’s name into our teaching, our writing and our reading. We regard him as an educator. He is a teacher. He is a colleague in education and writing. And so when we write and publish, especially on criminal (in)justice in the U.S. , or about a wide array of human rights and justice issues in this country, we should reference Mumia’s name, his writings, his struggle. When we inscribe his name in the academic literature, we post his name on the signposts of the academic thoroughfares. We let him live outside that cell where Mumia’s accusers would like to keep him, and from which they hope some day to take him to death, in hopes of erasing his name, repressing his insights.
We do this not to make Mumia “poster boy” of anti-death penalty struggle or of justice work in the U.S., but because he has routinely exposed the struggles of so many others in similar situations, beyond his case. It is this that has made him the special target of officials who don’t want systemic injustice addressed.
People in Harlem want to name a street for Mumia. I say let’s support it. It will make the powers rage even more, to have a street named for Mumia right here in the U.S. But remember, when the powers rage, they show their addiction to hiding evidence, their inventiveness of new lies, and so they undermine their case and help us build ours.
Let’s help the powers rage some more. Now, I wonder if there’s a way to get a street here in Princeton named for Mumia.
You are aware that he did not make a post, that article was posted as news by an admin here. So how is that not showing support to him?
yes, it's news...they posted a letter from mumia...supporting ows...
By posting it they clearly were showing him respect in return.
non argument. you personally might not agree, but OWS or at least people that represent the movement clearly want his voice to be heard.
Call Charles Manson that would really get some attention!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P89PlNkk0eY&list=FLZkUFtaq10j1B_WSceYCjdg&index=7&feature=plpp_video
http://occupywallst.org/forum/why-i-like-trolls/
Klapa Sinj & Iva Ajduković Awsome!
I'm glad you liked the song. Hopefully, you like my cause too. Toshiba and Enterprise must be destroyed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Olh8U_lpyo&feature=related
Troy Davis was also a convicted killer and was unjustly executed even though there was much evidence of his innocence. The OWS movement invited his supporters in the very first stages of occupation as far as I read.
I support Mumia Abu Jamal because I believe he is innocent and deserves a chance to prove himself. I have not yet met anyone who support Mumia Abu Jamal who also support violence or violent actions towards law enforcement. People are rightly upset because of the misuse of law enforcement and the injustice of the judicial system. There are many convicted prisoners who are having their convictions overturned these days.
Several police officers in the past few years have unfortunately been killed in the line of duty in Philadelphia and I'm sure also in many other cities due to lack of gun control. I do not see people marching and protesting for these killers. I certainly wouldn't support anyone who glorifies and support violent actions towards law enforcement or any individual.
A perfect example of the misuse of law enforcement just happened in the past few weeks where innocent. unarmed protestors were violently assaulted, pepper sprayed and imprisoned. Should the general public then turn a blind eye to this because they believe the protestors were breaking the law and deserve the brutality that they received because the media, public officials and law enforcement officers say so?
Mumia Abu Jamal admitted his shooting and killing the officer, that really should be enough for anyone of reason to understand, he has never recanted that statement. As for the actions happening on our streets with the police today, I am just as outraged by most of it as everyone else! Especially considering the financial crisis that almost half of the country in gravely effected by. The military approach the police are taking to the plight of the poor makes me sick and embarrassed by the actions of our country. As far as I'm concerned the protestors should be found open space within the city, in open view to occupy and voice there discontent to whoever will listen. The government; Wall Street, and banks put them there, with thousands soon to follow, and their answer to the problem is to get rid of them, disperse them, sweep them under the rug.
More FACTS going to... http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/886/mumia.html http://www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/intro.html
I, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, declare:
20 years later?
[Removed]
Open Letter to this Racist White Supremacist Forum: http://tinyurl.com/73qtqkp
Racist Racist Racist! I knew that was coming! The cry of the Loser! There are lots of things that happen in life that we do not like or agree with, but hiding behind a cliche and accusations is childish! Look for winning causes to get behind brother, there are plenty of them out there!
ignorant fool
Please forgive some of these white people who are simply ignorant. Some of them actually mean well, they're convinced though that white supremacy (or what they call racism) is "history." I'm going to play a race card here: OWS will wither and die without being open to revolutionary minded Black young people. In fact it will wither and die without revolutionary Black leadership (they can call leadership whatever they want to, there is such a thing and it exists even within OWS.)
Peace and love.