SECTION FOURTEEN

sm
COLUMN FIFTY-FOUR, DECEMBER 1, 2000
(Copyright © 2000 Al Aronowitz)

AM I STILL HERE?

Subject: just checking...
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 18:07:10 -0400
From: Denise Locke <dlocke@bestweb.net>
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com  

Hello Mr. A.,

I would like to send you a long letter regarding the fact that your columns on the Woodstock Festival and the Isle of Wight are the most fascinating, entertaining, and enjoyable writings I have ever read on the subject of Bob Dylan (and I've read a lot about Dylan). I am hesitating only because I've just read your 'request for manuscripts' in which you say you will post another column every month, and I see that the last one was posted in October of '99, so I'm wondering if you're still there and reading emails before I go off on a tangent of praise and encouragement and begging for more. I've read a few of the other columns also, and intend to read them all as soon as time permits. So if you could just assure me that you are there, I could get started, if you don't mind. Having read your 'Heart Attack High', I hope you have fully recovered from both the cookie and the attack. Kudos on your contribution to the A&E biography on Dylan.

Best wishes,
Dee Locke  

P.S. I do have some writings and a drawing or two I'd like to send which might amuse you. ##

* * *

MORE G.O.P. BULLSHIT

Subject: [BLACKJ] Al Gore and the Internet: Not Just Another Urban Legend
Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2000 03:17:15 -0500
From: Jules Siegel <siegel@cafecancun.com>
Reply-To: BLACKJ@egroups.com
To: BLACKJ@egroups.com  

That Al Gore, he's quite a character, claiming that he invented the Internet, isn't he? It's an urban legend, but not the way you might guess. He never said it. Not only that, but he has every right to brag about his role in legislating the development of the Internet.

According to the Republican National Committee attack ad, Gore's claim is yet another deplorable example of his shifty character. To the pundits, the TV spot means George Bush Jr. can't run a clean campaign.

When it comes to Al Gore and the Internet, however, the GOP commercial is 100% horse puckey. He's the guy who did the most to put the Web on your kitchen table.

Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. He said, "During my service in the U.S. Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." This just happens to be absolutely true. When most politicians still thought a byte was an example of how Johnny couldn't spell, Al Gore already had a complete vision of computers connecting to computers for the benefit of mankind.

In March, 1986, he sponsored the Supercomputer Network Study Act, a plan to figure out how to get the nation's silicon resources linked to the nation's public information needs.

"Libraries, rural schools, minority institutions and vocational education programs will have access to the same national resources -- databases, supercomputers, accelerators -- as more affluent and better-known institutions," he said, according to New York Daily News columnist Lars Erik Nelson, who examined the controversy earlier this year.

At the time, what is now the Internet had only just begun to evolve from a Defense Department project called Arpanet, started in 1969 to try to make sure key computer installations would function even after a nuclear attack. By 1986, access to the network was mostly limited to government facilities and academic institutions -- some 5,000 computer hosts in all.

"Back in the '80s, Mr. Gore was the only national political figure who understood what the Internet could mean to America's future...when Apple still didn't even have e-mail," wrote Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier (who invented the term "virtual reality") in a letter published in the Washington Post April 21, 1999.

In 1991, then-Senator Gore introduced the High Performance Computing Act. Reluctantly signed into law by President Bush, who favored a more gradual approach, Gore's bill made about $2 billion of government money available for development of the Internet. Since then, the Internet has grown from 376,000 hosts to more than 72 million as a direct result of Al Gore's visionary legislation.

The very term "information superhighway" first came to public notice in the writings of Al Gore. "He deserves bragging rights," Lanier concluded.

Despite this very well-documented history, news reports fail to mention that the Bush commercial is a fake, just like so many other stories that portray the Vice President as self-invented.

Gore never said that he and Tipper were models for the main characters in Eric Segal's novel Love Story. He referred to an article in The Tennessean attributing the statement to Segal -- erroneously, as it turned out. Then Segal confirmed that he did draw on Gore for a principal character. Still the story refuses to die.

Gore never claimed that he discovered the Love Island disaster. The story was faked in a press release widely distributed by the Republican National Committee.

Robert Parry explained in Washington Monthly that Gore told a group of Concord, N.H., high school students that a girl from Toone, Tenn., had complained to him about toxic waste pollution. He investigated, held Congressional hearings, looked for other examples and came up with Love Canal.

Toone "was the one that started it all," Gore said. The GOP changed this to "I started it all." Unscrupulous right wing publications such as the Washington Times and the New York Post picked this up, and national media called Gore "delusional" "a liar," "Pinocchio,"  Parry says.

David Letterman jumped in with "Top 10 Achievements Claimed by Al Gore." The Concord kids, outraged by the way Gore's remarks were twisted, issued their own press release: "Top 10 Reasons Why Many Concord High Students Feel Betrayed by Some of the Media Coverage of Al Gore's Visit to Their School."

Oh, sure, those naughty Republicans are playing dirty by making personal attacks. That's a story. But it's a fact that Gore didn't lie at all, and that the ridicule is based on false reports spread by the Republican National Committee and its gullible media allies.

--

JULES SIEGEL Apdo 1764 Cancun Q. Roo 77501
http://www.cafecancun.com Fax1.530.706.8739 Tel 1-52-98 83-36-29   ##

* * *

JOURNALIST MURDERED IN MOSCOW

Subject: [Fwd: Fw: [creative-radio] Radio Liberty Reporter murdered in Moscow]
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 12:10:40 -0600
From: Cordley Coit <l.corazon@prodigy.net>
Organization: Rocky Mountain Media Collective
To: John QUinn <hawk_news@yahoo.com>  

So it looks like Putin is working out fine for our masters. Sounds like he met a FOB. We need something on the tech warriors, those high tech security firms that handle everything from writers to rival .coms  to small republics. Cordley

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Fw: [creative-radio] Radio Liberty Reporter murdered in Moscow
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 08:57:24 -0600
From: Cordley G Coit <cordleycoit@juno.com>
To: L.corazon@prodigy.net 

--------- Forwarded message ----------

From: "George(s) Lessard" <media@web.net>
To: creative-radio@egroups.com
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 21:26:24 -0500
Subject: [creative-radio] Radio Liberty Reporter murdered in Mosco 

--------------------------------------

Radio Liberty Reporter murdered in Moscow

-----------------------------------------

On Friday Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reporter Iskandr Khatloni was attacked in his Moscow apartment by an unknown, axe-wielding assailant.

Mr Khatloni was struck twice in the head, according to the Moscow bureau of RFE/RL. He then stumbled onto the street and collapsed, to be found later by a passerby. Mr Khatloni died later that night in Moscow's Botkin Hospital. Local police have opened a murder investigation.

Mr Khatloni had worked since 1996 as a Moscow-based journalist for the Tajik service of the US-funded RFE/RL, which beams daily news programming to Tajikistan.

A RFE/RL spokeswoman said Friday that at the time of his death, Mr. Khatloni was known to be working on stories about the Russian military's human-rights abuses in Chechnya. The topic is controversial in Russia; earlier this year a senior official in Russia's Media Ministry announced that RFE/RL was “hostile to our state”.

Source: http://www.cpj.org/news/2000/Russia22sept00na.html - Committee to Protect Journalists

-----------------------------

Media News is archived at <http://www.ejc.nl/mn/searchnews.asp> and searchable on keyword. *****

Visit the European Journalism Centre website at <http://www.ejc.nl> for information on training activities, EJC publications and useful tools for journalists.  ##

* * *

QUESTION

Subject: Allen Ginsberg and the beatniks
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:20:40 -0200
From: danielle_sales.consultant@peoplesoft.com
To: blackj@bigmagic.co 

Dear Al Aronowitz,

My name is Danielle, I'm a student of Translation/Interpretation – English language - here in Brazil.

Nowadays, I am doing my conclusion work at college and it is about Ginsberg and his poem 'Howl'. I will try to tell the beat's history through this poem.

As I have seen your pages on the Internet, I would like to ask you some help. Do you know any book or Internet page that contains analysis of 'Howl'?

Thanks in advance,

Danielle Sales  ##

* * *

ANSWER

Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg and the beatniks
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 07:00:24 -0400
From: al aronowitz <info@blacklistedjournalist.com>
Organization: THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
To: danielle_sales.consultant@peoplesoft.com
CC: "Rosevalley@aol.com" <Rosevalley@aol.com>  

DANIELLE:  I suggest you contact Bob Rosenthal, Allen's long-time secretary and administrator of his estate, who is also receiving a copy of this e.  Sorry for the delay in this response.

--

Al Aronowitz
THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj ##

* * * 

FROM THE (SOA) SONS OF AFRIKA LIST

1. G.O.P. WARS ON NATIVE AMERICANS

Subject: [soa] [ndn-aim] Democrats, Indians denounce GOP plan seeking to ban Tribal Governments
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 05:57:01 -0700
From: "Claudia K White" <msdarkstar@mailcity.com>
Organization: MailCity (http://www.mailcity.lycos.com:80)
To: MainLineNews@egroups.com, Bay_Area_Activist@egroups.com, soa@egroups.com 

Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 20:06:24 -0700
From: "Lona" <kikipuppy@mindspring.com>
Subject: Democrats, Indians denounce GOP plan seeking to ban tribal
governments 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2000/07/08/sta 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

            Democrats, Indians denounce GOP plan seeking to ban tribal governments

            MICHELLE DeARMOND, Associated Press Writer    Saturday, July 8, 2000
            Breaking News Sections  

--------------------------------------------------------------------

            (07-08) 17:25 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Outraged by a GOP effort in Washington state to abolish tribal governments and a threat by one party member to use military force against Indians, California Democrats and Indians on Saturday passed a resolution denouncing that state party's actions.

            The move to abolish tribal governments passed quietly last month in the form of a resolution at a Washington state Republican Party convention and attracted little attention until just days ago when news of it slowly spread through Washington media and an Indian news Web site.

            The resolution calls on the federal government to terminate tribal governments as unconstitutional because reservation residents who are non-Indian can't vote in tribal elections.

            Tribal governments are self-governing sovereign entities with a goverment-to-goverment relationship with the U.S. government.

            The California Democratic Party Native American Caucus passed its own resolution Friday denouncing the Washington state GOP's resolution, and the general assembly meeting Saturday in Los Angeles approved it. It was co-authored by Chairman Art Torres and Frank LaMere, a vice chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and member of the Winnebago tribe there.

            ``It is an outrage. I call upon the Republican National Committee to publicly repudiate the wayward and blatantly racist actions of the Washington Republican party,'' LaMere said.

            ``It is divisive to even speak of turning our military against our own. That's what they have done in Washington and they need to be ashamed,'' said LaMere, who lost a brother in the Vietnam War.

            LaMere and California tribal leaders are trying to generate support from other politicians across the country in denouncing the Washington state GOP resolution. A Republican National Committee spokesperson did not immediately have a reaction Saturday, but Democrats and Republicans alike have said they doubt the Washington resolution would make it into the national GOP platform.

            The resolution's main author has said he wants party delegates to try to insert a similar measure into the national GOP platform and threatened to use the U.S. military to battle any tribes who would fight an abolition of their governments.

            Washington GOP officials have been unable to explain how they  intended to carry out the resolution, and calls left for officials Saturday were not immediately returned. The main author of the resolution, John Fleming, has been unavailable for further comment. He did not immediately return a phone call Saturday.

            Fleming lives within the Swinomish Reservation in Washington, but is a non-Indian, and is active in organizations opposing treaty rights. The resolution comes amid growing controversy there over reservation rules affecting non-Indians, ranging from hunting privileges to liquor sales.

            Despite skepticism that Fleming's resolution has much likelihood of getting national support, California Indians don't want to leave anything to chance. They already are calling on politicians and writing letters about the resolution.

            ``I couldn't believe it that in the year 2000 that this type of racist attitude was able to get the support,'' said Mary Ann Andreas, Morongo tribal chairwoman. ``I would be horrified to find out that these people knew'' what they were doing.

            Beth Jensen, chairwoman of the Washington state GOP platform committee, has said the Fleming resolution was barely discussed and admitted she was unfamiliar with the issue. The committee considered 29 resolutions in two hours, and there wasn't time to discuss them, she has said.

            LaMere scoffed at suggestions ignorance might explain the party's actions.

            ``Involvement in the political process and in all those processes that govern our lives requires commitment and total attention. If they can't do the job right, they should not embark upon the endeavor at all,'' he said. ``There was reckless disregard. They can't hide from that fact.''

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxox

Web Read Main Line News:
http://www.egroups.com/messages/MainLineNews

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Claudia White~Main Line News~Human & Civil Rights Campaign Internationale' \
Free Mumia Abu Jamal~Free All Political Prisoners~End the Drug War!
Stop the US Bombing of Vieques & use of depleted uranium!
http://www.angelfire.com/ut/Angel1

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Pray for the Dine'h and traditional Hopi at Big Mountain, AZ, USA.
http://members.xoom.com/senaa/HomePage.html
UN draft declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 10:
"Indigenous Peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or
territories. No relocations shall take place without the free and in-
formed consent of the Indigenous Peoples concerned ....(...)........."

>See the video "Vanishing Prayers" at: http://www.freespeech.org/senaa<

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Send FREE Greetings for Father's Day--or any day!
Click here: http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/redirects/fathers_day.rdct  

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Best friends, most artistic, class clown Find 'em here:
http://click.egroups.com/1/5533/0/_/30504/_/963173056/

----------------------------------------------------------------------- 

FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET IS REAL.......  ##

* * *

2. A VISIT WITH MUMIA

Subject: [soa] [MainLineNews] A death row visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal - by Jeff Mackler
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 20:30:03 -0700
From: "Claudia K White" <msdarkstar@mailcity.com>
Organization: MailCity (http://www.mailcity.lycos.com:80)
To: soa@egroups.com, rites@listbot.com, sonsofafrika@listbot.com  

--------- Forwarded Message ---------

DATE: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 17:34:07
From: "Claudia K. White" <msdarkstar1@angelfire.com>
To: <snip>

 --------- Forwarded Message -------- 

DATE: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 20:15:56
From: Mark Clement <MClement@bruderhof.com>
To:  

Greetings Mumia Supporters!

The following is an article recently written by one of the Mobe's co-coordinators, Jeff Mackler.

_________________________________________________

A death row visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal

By Jeff Mackler

The misnamed Progress Drive, a quarter mile long road an hour's drive east from Pittsburgh, PA. dead ends at State Correctional Institute (SCI) Greene, the super-modern prison where innocent death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal resides. Caged 23 hours daily in a tiny cell for the past 19 years at Greene and elsewhere, Mumia appeared to me in the best of humor. A unique and shining example of an individual whose gentle revolutionary spirit has enabled him to face down two execution orders and pursue an inspiring uphill battle for his life and the lives of all the oppressed and exploited, Mumia greeted my upraised hands on the impenetrable Plexiglas barrier between us, by placing, "high five" style his handcuffed palms on mine with a smile as broad and warm as one could imagine.

"Mumia, you look fantastic," I said in earnest as his eyes greeted mine with enthusiasm and instant friendship. "You need to lose some weight Jeff," he answered with a hearty laugh in response to my unflattering paunch, an all too obvious component of my persona.

I was the guest of the Bruderhof Community the day before my June 12 two hour and ten minute visit with Mumia in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. The Bruderhofs, associated with the Hutterite faith until some five years ago, live in a gentle, loving, and highly political religious-based utopian village of 400 members at New Meadow Run in Farmington, PA. The faith of this 4,000 person religious and cooperative endeavor (with associated villages nearby as well as in New York state and other nations) stems from a vision of the meaning of Jesus Christ that some would compare to the early utopian socialist experiments in Europe and the U.S.

Bruderhof's respected minister, Steve Wiser, like me, serves as one of the National Coordinators of Mumia's defense. Steve is also a spiritual adviser to Mumia and in that capacity takes on a myriad of responsibilities from arranging for drafts of Mumia's books and articles to reach appropriate destinations, to weekly consultations on innumerable aspects of Mumia's struggle for freedom.

Nestled in Western Pennsylvania's lush mountainous pine forests, deep in the state's former coal country, many of Bruderhof's social activists are active opponents of the death penalty, racial and social injustice, U.S. intervention, and the murderous sanctions imposed on Iraq. Far from a reclusive sect, they send delegations to learn about politics in nations from Cuba to Nigeria. When Mumia was transferred to SCI Greene some five years ago, Wiser and the Bruderhofs made his freedom a focal point of their work.

SCI Greene, midway between the rural Bruderhof community and urban Pittsburgh, strikes one immediately as a bizarre place. Surrounded by high chain link fences topped with rows of fearsome razor wire, it is from a visitor's vantagepoint, an immaculate institution whose every inch is planned for maximum security, human repression, and in many instances, death.

Before entering the visitor waiting area, I was given precise instructions as to my conduct, including prohibited possessions, (pen, pencil, paper, camera, video and taping material, etc.) and then subjected to a guard monitoring an unfamiliar machine that detects minute amounts of illegal drugs. Failure to pass this test results in exclusion from the prison I was informed. While a written flyer explains that Greene's policy is aimed at a "drug free" prison, the obvious impossibility of any visitor passing a package of illegal material through the massive sheet of plexiglas that separated my visitor's cubicle from Mumia's was striking.

Waiting room visitors were treated to a display case featuring trophies won by SCI Greene guards in inter-prison guard baseball, bowling, golf and other sports competition. The guards, however, entered and left the waiting room's multi-locked steel doors unimpeded, including drug tests.

In short order, I was called to begin a near quarter-mile sojourn through what seemed an endless series of massive sliding doors that opened as I approached only to clang shut and lock behind me whereupon I had to await the opening of the next door some ten feet farther. This echoing steel and plexiglas tunnel finally opened into yet another visitor holding room where I was scrutinized by yet another security guard who, a the third time, checked my papers and directed me to a numbered cubicle where I awaited Mumia's entry.

With access to CNN cable television, Mumia was intensely aware of the current raging controversy over the death penalty brought to national attention in June by the 1973-95 Columbia University Liebman study that demonstrated that some 68 percent of appealed death row sentences were reversed based on police wrongdoing, "prosecutorial suppression of evidence that the defendant was innocent," and "egregiously incompetent counsel." While Liebman's work, unintentionally, of course, served to highlight key elements of Mumia's trial, the national headlines it provoked became inseparable from the fight for Shaka Sankofa's life.

Mumia expressed his deep appreciation of the fact that the case of Sankofa had been given the full attention of his supporters. Indeed, in the month before Texas Governor George Bush Jr. murdered the innocent Sankofa on June 22, Mumia solidarity groups across the nation took this lesser known case to the attention of millions, thereby extracting a political price from the state power that stole Sankofa's life. Shaka died with dignity, purpose, and pride knowing that a renewed movement against the racist and classist death penalty was on the rise.

The broad support Mumia had won for his own case was readily transferred to the effort to save Sankofa's life as organizations ranging from the European Parliament and the Japanese Diet demanded that Sankofa's execution be stopped. Mumia, whose tribute to Sankofa had been widely disseminated, was delighted that the compelling evidence of Sankofa's innocence, banned from jury and court examination by technical time limits approved by the Supreme Court, had compelled The New York Times and other major media to take up the case and question the legitimacy of the impending execution.

I learned that Mumia had recently earned a Masters degree and that his thesis dissertation was on the Black Panther Party. Mumia, a former Panther himself, was acutely aware of the intense and illegal government pressures on the Panthers as well as the critical internal disputes and disagreements over political orientation that contributed to its eventual decline and demise. Similarly, he expressed a passionate concern in regard to the current state of the movement for Black liberation today. We spent considerable time exchanging ideas and information about this subject.

Books on history, Mumia noted, constituted the core of his reading list. No  doubt, Mumia was widely read and saw the lessons of history as an indispensable guide to today's social struggles.

He was inspired by works such as C.L.R. James' "Black Jacobins," the account of the successful Haitian slave revolt in the mid-1790s against the French government of Napoleon Bonaparte. Led by the fifty year old slave, Touisaint L'Overture, the liberation army of Haiti's oppressed defeated successive attempts by the world's most powerful military force to suppress the Haitian rebellion.

Mumia expressed a particular interest in the political background of C.L.R. James, the American revolutionary socialist and brilliant orator who, unknown to Mumia, spent many years as a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.

The works on Malcolm X by another former SWP leader, George Breitman, had also found their way onto Mumia's reading list. He was particularly impressed with Breitman's work, "The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary," an important work that traced Malcolm's views on the key issues facing the Black liberation movement of the 1960s.

We spent time exchanging ideas about the political orientation, affiliation and evolution of a number of today's historians and political writers, including those above. Mumia's essential modesty was ever present. When he was unfamiliar with any aspect of a subject I inquired about, he immediately asked for additional information.

I should not have been surprised to learn that Mumia was unfamiliar with many of the accomplishments of the broad solidarity movement that had arisen in his defense. While often aware of the general outlines of this work, he delighted in the details, as with the recent successful student efforts at Antioch College and the University of California at Santa Cruz to mobilize campus support to include Mumia as a graduation speaker. In these instances, as with others of a similar nature, Mumia's role was to graciously accept the invitation to prepare an audio tape to the graduating class, labor conference, or other event where his voice was requested. But he was largely unaware of the magnificent efforts of so many people to bring these events to fruition. "Jeff," he said, perhaps to emphasize his desire to hear more from his supporters, "I probably know some ten percent of what's happening out there."

Mumia often focused on the central importance of today's youth in the coming struggles that he saw developing in the U.S., from the new battles for civil and democratic rights to the inevitable struggles of working people to reinvigorate the labor movement. He marveled at the role of youth in the WTO and IMF protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C. and was especially impressed with the prospect of labor's rank and file taking action in their own interests. He made a special point to emphasize his interest in and delight at learning from many sources about the emergence of high school age youth in many of today's developing social struggles.

I asked Mumia for his impressions of the many prominent people who had visited him in prison to express their solidarity. He was especially impressed with the visits of Alice Walker and Ossie Davis, two individuals who have made great efforts to bring Mumia's case to the attention of the broader audiences they influence.

In both instances, however, Mumia was more interested in the character of these individuals, in their political insights and lifelong commitment to social justice, and in their work as artists and writers, than he was with their advocacy of his personal struggle. He judged them as equals, as real human beings who were part of the same struggle he was. In this regard, Mumia appeared to me more as an unusually modest and dedicated participant in the struggle for human liberation as opposed to a man preoccupied with his own grave situation.

And like the best of the activists I have known, he had the capacity to see humor in the darkest situation. As we meandered through one subject after another Mumia periodically burst into an infectious laughter that lit up his entire face and animated his body. He was able to step out of the daily misery state power had subjected him to and appreciate and marvel at the beauty of those special moments when the ruling rich exposed their baseness in all its crudity, shallowness, and hypocrisy.

Mumia was pleased to learn that the Cuban government had decided to devote a special television presentation to his case and to the related issues of police brutality and the prison industrial complex in the U.S. His chief legal counsel Leonard Weinglass, and the central organizer of his national defense, and closest associate, Pam Africa, had been invited to Havana for a June 18 broadcast on the popular Cuban television program, "Roundtable." Also joining the show were other national coordinators of Mumia's defense including Monica Moorehead of the International Action Center.

I explained to Mumia that I was also invited to participate in the program but was unable to attend for personal reasons. The Cubans insisted, however, that I participate via a phone hook-up. I accepted their invitation.

When I explained that I felt compelled to turn down the Cuban invitation to travel to Cuba to speak on Mumia's case because I had promised to attend my son's university graduation, Mumia immediately signaled his understanding. He is a parent himself who understood all too well the pressures on political people to too often subordinate personal and family considerations for urgent political purposes. As most proud parents do, we exchanged stories about our kids and shared the joys of seeing them grow up with loving hearts and a dedication to social justice.

Mumia was a partisan of the struggle of the Cuban people for the return of Elian Gonzales. Cuba was a special place for Mumia, not just because it was the only nation whose government was actively concerned with his fate, but because of Cuba's unique position in the world revolutionary movement as a nation that had not abandoned its revolutionary optimism and commitment to its original principles.

When I told Mumia about the success of the April 29 Berkeley (California) Community Theater "Children of Resistance" event that featured his soft-spoken son Mazi Jamal and the daughter of the deceased environmental activist Judi Bari, a bright smile came over his face. But it was not just because 3000 people had participated in this unusual theater-like remembrance of the Rosenberg's fight for life and justice, and its linkage through three generations of fighters, to today's battles. Mumia explained that years before his imprisonment he had met and interviewed the Berkeley event's central organizer, Robbie Meeropol, the son of the falsely convicted and executed McCarthy-era witchhunt victims, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He remembered asking Robbie at that time if a similar frame-up could be engineered today. With a sardonic smile Mumia recalled that both men agreed that it could and would happen again.

Mumia was pleased to learn of the details of the massive nationally coordinated marches and rallies of last April and May including of the 6,000 people who mobilized in New York City's Madison Square Garden Theater, the 6,000 who marched in San Francisco a week or so later on May 13 and the myriad of protests that took place in some 70 countries on the same day on his behalf. Again, however, he was pleased to be sure, but more so as a participant in the success of a growing social movement that is capable of challenging injustice on all fronts than as an individual recipient of respect across the globe.

Mumia is a man with an incredible warmth and modesty. He has a laughter that touched me deeply, an intense interest in ideas, old and new, and an unflagging revolutionary confidence in today's fighters to win his freedom and to change the world for the benefit of all.

As our two hour visit drew to a close when a loudspeaker signaled the end of my visit, we joked about and planned what we would do upon his release. We agreed on the long walks in freedom we would take, the special dinners we would share with friends old and new and the far away places Mumia would like to visit.

It was a visit with a stranger that was like having a best friend in one's home. Mumia Abu-Jamal is the stuff that revolutionary fighters are made of. When we win his freedom, we will have liberated a precious addition to our struggle and we will have recaptured our own freedom as well.

[Jeff Mackler is a National Coordinator of Mumia's defense and the Co-Coordinator of the Northern California-based Mobilization to Free Mumia

Abu-Jamal.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Claudia White~Main Line News~Human & Civil Rights Campaign Internationale'
Free Mumia Abu Jamal~Free All Political Prisoners~End the Drug War!
Stop the US Bombing of Vieques & Global Genocide of Indigenous Peoples. Web
Read complete archives@ http://www.angelfire.com/ut/Angel1

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Pray for the Dine'h and traditional Hopi at Big Mountain, AZ, USA.
http://members.xoom.com/senaa/HomePage.html
UN draft declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 10:
"Indigenous Peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or
territories. No relocations shall take place without the free and in-
formed consent of the Indigenous Peoples concerned ....(...)........."
>See the video "Vanishing Prayers" at: http://www.freespeech.org/senaa<

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

--------- End Forwarded Message ---------  

Send FREE Greetings for Father's Day--or any day!

Click here: http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/redirects/fathers_day.rdct

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To email plain text is conventional, to add graphics is divine.
We'll show you how at www.supersig.com.
http://click.egroups.com/1/6808/0/_/30504/_/963483212/

------------------------------------------------------------------------  

FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET IS REAL.......   ##

CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMN FIFTY-FOUR


CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMNS

The Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
info@blacklistedjournalist.com
 
 

THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ