Mumia's supporters under attack /
Why they are after Mumia

Read this and see why the powers that be HAVE to get rid of Mumia.

Carolyn
Hi,

One of the ministers here at the Bruderhof is currently writing a book about our nation's attitudes toward parenting, childrearing, and education. The book is called "Endangered: Your Child in a Hostile World." You can get more information and details about the book at the publisher's web site:
          www.plough.com/Endangered
Anyway, what does this have to do with Mumia, you ask? Well, the author, Johann Christoph Arnold, is a good friend of Mumia and often includes Mumia's thoughts and writings in his books. Arnold recently met with Mumia at SCI Greene in Pennsylvania, and gave him an advance copy of his book.

Mumia has since written his thoughts about the book, and Arnold though you would be interested both in checking out the website for his book and in Mumia's intriguing comments on Arnold's book. So here are Mumia's comments, feel free to spread them around (or use them on your radio station.)
Thanx for sharing the draft of "Endangered" with me. It is as Kozol blurbs, a "beautiful" book, and given its precious subject matter (Kids), it could hardly be otherwise.

It does some good things, and does these well, but it has some critical lapses that leaves empty spaces that I found problematic, man.

For a guy like me with a radical (well, actually revolutionary) perspective, I kept looking for more. Let me explain: it's possible to read your book and really get a sense of one to one, or familial relationships, but there is no real sense of one of the most fundamental relationships that people have, that is almost invisible but no less real, is with the state, and economic structures.

That whole dimension is missing from the text, and in its absence, your message seems almost pollyannaish in its appeal for mothers to "stay home." Implicit in that appeal is a notion that it is being addressed to an "average" middle-class family of four, where man is breadwinner and woman is homemaker. While that ideal may have appeal it flies in the face of very real lives lived by millions of Americans, who need two jobs to keep a roof over their families. There are millions - millions - of men and women in America, who work hard every day, and are bitterly poor. How would your book sound to them? Remember "Susan" and "Nick?" (on p 6) There's a reason they were forced to choose a dirty, grimy private day care provider - because there was no clean, safe affordable public daycare!

And that, Christoph, is a political decision, one made at city hall, at the state capital, and in Washington. That is an economic and a political decision that isn't reached by your text; a mission dimension.

Things are the way they are not so much because people are "bad," or even "indifferent," but because one's major life-energy is spent to acquire the resources one needs to survive in a brutal, dog-eat-dog world, and little is left after this draining contest. Indifference didn't build this structure; intent, political and economic intent did. Indifference, born of exhaustion, fear, anxiety, and the like, allows it (this structure) to remain.

Why did some of the greatest religious minds of our age, like Gandhi, or Rev. MLK Jr. speak so sharply about poverty? I am daily reminded of Gandhi-Ji's great insight, "The greatest form of violence is poverty." This saying is rarely seriously examined for its deeper meaning. Why didn't he say war, rape, or genocide? He, an Indian, looking around himself saw a country of over half a billion in grinding poverty, and he saw the violence upon the body, the psyche, the community, the young, the elderly, the family, wrought by poverty.

Poverty is either on the doorstep or in the hearth of millions of people in America. And children, the poorest of the poor, are at the core of this unjust, unnecessary, and planned human suffering. I am glad to have had this opportunity; keep up the good work!

          Alla Best,
          Ona Move!
          Mumia

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*** ALERT - Call the White House Comments Line Daily and Demand Justice for Leonard Peltier! 202-456-1111 or 1-800-663-9566
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Clemency/
http://www.vote.com/

Also, to find out how to support Clark Kissinger, email cck1@earthlink.net
or call 212-571-0962 (one of the leading Mumia activists who is currently imprisoned for giving a speech on Mumia's behalf)
http://www.refuseandresist.org/
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Greetings Mumia Abu-Jamal Activists!

We hope this finds you well and fired up to win Mumia's freedom in 2001! We really need help with the following:

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*** Distribute the 2/24 Call to An Emergency National Conference FAR and WIDE! (attached document) It can be opened on any computer using Acrobat reader which is free - if you don't have the reader, download it from: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html ) The unformatted text is provided at the end of this email.

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*** Huge MOBE postal mailing for Mumia ~
Wednesday, January 3 at 4-7 pm
The Socialist Action Bookstore
3425 Cesar Chavez, San Francisco, CA (between Mission and Valencia)
--(Please call if you're coming later in the day to make sure we're still folding...)

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*** MOBE meeting ~
Saturday, January 6, 10:30 am
The Socialist Action Bookstore (address above)
Come to the meeting and help us build the march!

---1/15 - Mumia/Martin Luther King Jr. March with the MOBE
Assemble at 10:30 am at 4th St. and Townsend at the Caltrains station in SF and march to the Bill Graham auditorium for a 12:30 PM rally. We need volunteers for the MOBE table, to hold banners and to distribute leaflets.
Call the MOBE 415-695-7745
---1/20 - Bush Inauguration Protest in SF
A key component of this protest will be the freedom struggle of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Endorsed by the MOBE; the National Coordinators of Mumia's defense; and many others, this International Action Center-initiated rally begins at 12 Noon, Civic Center Plaza, Grove and Larkin. (In Washington, D.C., meet at 10 AM, Pennsylvania Avenue & 14th St. NW).

---2/9 - UC Berkeley Conference: Breaking the Cycle, Mending the Circle
This student/faculty conference, dedicated to the struggles of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, and endorsed by the MOBE, will address the myriad issues associated with the prison industrial complex and the incarceration of youth.
Call Barbara Mumby: 510-642-2604

---2/24 - National Mumia Conference in DC
National Conference to lay plans for 2001, the year that Mumia's case is expected to be decided. Join in! Call the MOBE 415-695-7745

We look forward to seeing you this Wednesday and Saturday!

In solidarity,

Jeff Mackler, Cristina Vasquez Gutierrez, and Laura Herrera
Co-Coordinators
The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
415-695-7745

Please see attached document for formatted version of this text:
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JUSTICE WILL NOT BE DENIED!
Call to An Emergency National Conference

2001: Stop the Execution of the Wrongfully Convicted Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Saturday, February 24, 2001, Washington, D.C.

The year 2001 will prove to be decisive in the 19-year struggle for justice for death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1982 Jamal was falsely convicted of the murder of a police officer. Sentenced to execution by the notorious "hanging" Judge Albert Sabo, there were more than 30 constitutional violations in his case including coercion of witnesses, exclusion of Blacks from the jury and denial of the right to self-representation.

The movement demanding a new trial for one of the world's most noted political prisoners, award-winning journalist, and fighter for social justice, Mumia Abu-Jamal has registered unprecedented gains.

Mass protests for a new trial have circled the globe with prominent organizations and government officials in 73 nations expressing their outrage at the violation of Mumia's fundamental democratic and constitutional rights, at the threat of his execution and against the barbaric use of the irrevocable punishment of death in the United States.

Indeed, after a decade of hard work, opponents of the death sentence have won majority status in U.S. society as countless millions have learned from tragic experience that race and class prejudice are an inherent component of the so-called criminal justice system. During the past year we have witnessed a growing unity between the forces demanding a national moratorium on the death penalty and those who fight for Mumia's life.

We have won a temporary stay of Governor Thomas Ridge's second warrant ordering Mumia's execution. Now Federal District Court Judge William H. Yohn Jr. is preparing to set the date for the historic presentation of Mumia's arguments demanding a full evidentiary hearing and a new trial.

Critical to this effort is our challenge to recent decisions of Judge Yohn and the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, to refuse consideration of amicus briefs and a writ of mandamus that for the first time provide indisputable evidence of collusion to deny Mumia the right to self-representation.

At "five minutes to midnight" our movement stands poised to mobilize the largest political and social force in the past half century. But we have not yet reached the point where our power can make the price of Mumia's murder too high to pay in regard to a fundamental loss of credibility in the criminal "justice" system. This is the central task before us.

We will assemble in the nation's capital and join forces to give broad and visible expression to our unity and solidarity. We will lay plans for concerted activities on every front in the coming year.

Everyone is welcome! Abolitionists, trade unionists, faith-based activists, human rights organizers, people of every color, faith and sexual orientation, youth and political organizations will assemble to make this year a resounding victory for Mumia Abu-Jamal and, therefore, a victory for our common endeavor for human dignity, justice and fair play.

We invite you to attend this momentous national gathering for a day of plenary sessions, keynote addresses, activist workshops and the launching of a campaign for justice that will not be denied.

In solidarity,

National Coordinators of Mumia Abu-Jamal's Defense: Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Safiya Bukhari, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (New York); Sam Jordan; Jim Lafferty, National Lawyers Guild (Los Angeles); Jeff Mackler, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (Northern California); Robert Meeropol, Rosenberg Fund for Children; Monica Moorehead, International Action Center; Joan Parkin, Campaign to End the Death Penalty; Marcus Redicker, Western Pennsylvania Committee to Free Mumia (Pittsburgh); Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist!; Mark Taylor, Academics for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Stan Willis, African Amercians for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Steve Wiser, Bruderhof Communities; Julia Wright, International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Paris)

Contact 215-476-8812 for additional information.

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