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By Steven Argue
On December 6th Congress voted 368 to 31 to back the racist frame-up of Mumia Abu Jamal by condemning the decision of the French city of St. Denis to name a street after the innocent death row inmate. This anti-Mumia resolution, HR 1082 (also called HR 407), asks the French government to intervene against the city.
Voting against the resolution were members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Congressperson Robert Scott. He argued that the case was still being decided in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and that it was inappropriate for Congress to take a position.
In reality Mumia’s case is such a blatant and outrageous frame-up that it should be considered the responsibility of Congress to intervene on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal in particular and against the racist death penalty in general. Yet under the current racist government of Democrats and Republicans Robert Scott is correct in opposing Congress’s intervention. As Pam Africa, chair of the International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, has pointed out, “the House action is designed to weigh in on and promote an atmosphere in the U.S. judiciary that is prejudicial to Mumia's receiving any form of justice today.”
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing arguments in January. This is Mumia’s final appeal. It will decide if Mumia is set free, given a new trial, held in prison for life, or executed.
The resolution falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)
31 Democrats in Congress voted nay while 151 voted for the resolution. All Republicans voted for the resolution as did fake Vermont “socialist” Bernard Sanders (really just a rightwing social democrat).
Those voting against were Abercrombie, Clay, Cleaver, Conyers, Cooper, Davis (IL), Grijalva, Hinchey, Honda, Jackson (IL), Johnson, E. B., Kilpatrick (MI), Lee, McKinney, Meeks (NY), Nadler, Oberstar, Owens, Pastor, Payne, Rangel, Rush, Scott (VA), Serrano, Stark, Towns, Udall (NM), Velázquez, Waters, Weiner, and Woolsey.
Joining in the racist lynch mob voting for the blood of an innocent black man was Democrat House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She has also announced that she and the other Democrats will continue funding the war in Iraq. In voting against Mumia Abu-Jamal Nancy Pelosi has voted for the death of an actual anti-war and anti-racist leader of the people, while her career has been firmly planted atop the corpses of over 650,000 dead Iraqis by her continuation of the slaughter.
Also voting for the lying resolution backing the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal was Dennis Kucinich.
In the last presidential election Dennis Kucinich portrayed himself as an anti-war candidate in the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich campaign stated that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness. As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to failure.”
So Kucinich is a frugal spender for imperialist murder.
This is the same position taken by two U.S. generals waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq General Stanley McCrystal complained, "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!"
Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided munitions, "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!"
The contradiction here was purely limited to the difference between the pure profiteering of the military industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results for imperialist victory on the battlefield.
Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action claiming, "We [he and the congress] did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy."
Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress, with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one exception, voted for Bush's war.
Since a different vote was later taken authorizing the US war in Iraq, the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to authorize the US war on Afghanistan.
In stark contrast to Kucinich’s vote for war Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote on March 2002, “When U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about an "endless war," some took it as mere political speech, or rhetoric designed to gain the top spot on the evening network news. I did not. "W" is an agent of his class, the wealthy oil merchants of the land, and his intentions are to press for an ever-wider war in all corners of the earth, to make the world safe for capital exploitation and unbridled commerce. This will eventually become a war that reaches into a slew of countries in the Middle East, on behalf of the rich and powerful elites who rule. Make no mistake: this is a war that has nothing to do with democracy. The U.S. enters the region, armed to the gills, not to defend democracies, but to defend theocracies; to defend kings, princes and sultanates; to defend U.S. access to vast oil resources in the region.”
The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed tens of thousands of civilians and brought the Afghan nation to back to the chaos of fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA government.
On September 12, 2001 this author wrote: “Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.
“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.
“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests.”
Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to deny it, voted for the war in Afghanistan and played his part in making it happen.
On the war in Iraq Kucinich now states, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds." (Rep. Kucinich, The Huffington Report) This is a good position, but it is also being put forward by a politician that voted for the war in Afghanistan, wants a leaner meaner imperialist military, voted for the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and who has worked hard to bring the anti-war movement into the pro-war Democrat Party.
Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich had any intention of winning the presidency when he ran. His role was one of bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the establishment and the twin parties of war and racism back into the fold of the pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he states, "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy" (Counter Punch, April 2003).
Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that despite its name, is not democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of the people towards war and turn us into the water boys for “responsible” politicians.
It is such "responsible" politicians, including Kucinich, that voted in their vast majority to back the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of a racist legal lynching, while doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.
The Democrat Party was also involved in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal from the beginning. Democrat Ed Rendell was the Philadelphia district attorney that successfully worked to frame Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1982. Later, with a lynch mob attitude created by the lies of the corporate press, he successfully ran for mayor of Philadelphia on a platform that included promoting the murder of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was Mayor from 1992-1999. Bill Clinton then helped get him the position of chair of the National Democratic Committee. Since 2003 he has been the Governor of Pennsylvania. In addition Ed Rendell is a member of the Fraternal Order of Police that is calling for Mumia’s blood while his wife is an appellate judge on the Third Circuit US Court of Appeals that is going to hear Mumia's appeal. Besides framing Mumia, Rendell also presided over the police bombing of the MOVE home in Philadelphia in 1984, resulting in 11 deaths and 65 homes destroyed.
California representative Sam Farr [D] was among the eight that voted “Present”, choosing not to vote for or against the resolution. This despite Sam Farr sending this author a letter promising to back the Congressional Black Caucus’s position, that having been a position in support of framed political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sam Farr also sent a copy of a letter that he sent to the Congressional Black Caucus with the same promise. These promises, as it turns out, were nothing but lies.
This vote by the racist US Congress was also an affront to the people of St. Denis that have chosen to support and honor Mumia. Would Sam Farr stand aside in a similar way if a resolution came before him that called for action against his constituents in the City of Santa Cruz, where the city has also passed resolutions in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal?
Mumia is innocent, and much of the world knows it.
Here is the response the City of St. Denis had to earlier attempts to coerce them into ending their support for Mumia Abu-Jamal:
“The city hall of Saint Denis denounces the manipulations of certain ultra-conservative pressure groups, and reasserts its commitment in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal
“The city hall of Saint Denis re-affirms yet again its support to the women and men who are demanding Mumia Abu-Jamal be treated with fairness and justice. The picket this 30th day of November 2006 has been organized to protest against the pressure brought to bear on the city of Saint Denis by members of the American extreme right in order to bring about the cancellation of our decision to name one of our streets after an African American militant who has been unfairly incarcerated and sentenced to the death penalty.
“This ultra conservative pressure group, based in Philadelphia, has not hesitated to make use of the grossest manipulations. Thus, the widely disseminated information according to which the city of Philadelphia is suing the cities of Saint Denis and Paris, because of their commitment in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal - is nothing but a lie. The Mayor of Philadelphia, as well as the president of its city council, informed the city of Saint Denis that they never intended to file any kind of suit, and have absolutely nothing to do with this campaign.
“This manipulation was unmasked, and it should be know that the Philadelphia politician who initiated it, though a member of George Bush's party, was defeated during the recent American elections.
“Whatever the case may be, the city hall of Saint Denis is proud to have named a street of this city in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has become one of the symbols, of the struggle for justice and the abolition of the death penalty in the US and throughout the world.
“It is not the first time that an international mobilization has taken place in favor of American citizens who are unfairly sentenced in their own country. Such was the case for Nicola Sacco, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, between 1920 and 1927, for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who died on the electric chair in 1953, and subsequently in 1972 for Angela Davis initially sentenced [sic, she was actually never sentenced] for murder, before being acquitted of all charges.
“The city hall of Saint Denis will steadfastly pursue the struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal, so that this man incarcerated for a quarter of a century for a crime he has always claimed he did not commit - be reinstated in his human rights.
“Saint Denis 30th of November 2006”
The people of the world should not forget this hypocritical act of the US Congress, a governing body of a nation that falsely claims to uphold the values of human rights on a world scale. Likewise this once again exposes the need for the American people to build a socialist alternative to racist and repressive Democrat and Republican Parties.
As Mumia Abu-Jamal says, “Conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires. But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit...”
Mumia stands up for unions, against war, against racism, equality for gays and lesbians, for the poor, and against the many injustices of the so-called criminal justice system. Mumia speaks up on many of the issues ignored, lied about, or glossed over by the corporate media and the corporate politicians. We need Mumia, yes we need him alive, but we also need him free. Yet all of the evidence shows that Mumia won't get justice in America unless we turn up the heat.
********************
For a complete listing of individual votes see: clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll527.xml
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States on death row. For more information on Mumia's case and how to get involved, check out the following web sites:
Yet Another Witness Comes Forward and Refutes The Frame-Up Of Mumia
Abu-Jamal! By Steven Argue
www.freemumia.com/policecoercion.html
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.laboractionmumia.org/
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.mumia.org/freedom.now/
Free Mumia Coalition, NYC
www.freemumia.com/
San Francisco Free Mumia Site
www.freemumia.org
Chicago Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.chicagofreemumia.org/
This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
lists.riseup.net/www/info/...ation_news
On December 6th Congress voted 368 to 31 to back the racist frame-up of Mumia Abu Jamal by condemning the decision of the French city of St. Denis to name a street after the innocent death row inmate. This anti-Mumia resolution, HR 1082 (also called HR 407), asks the French government to intervene against the city.
Voting against the resolution were members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Congressperson Robert Scott. He argued that the case was still being decided in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and that it was inappropriate for Congress to take a position.
In reality Mumia’s case is such a blatant and outrageous frame-up that it should be considered the responsibility of Congress to intervene on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal in particular and against the racist death penalty in general. Yet under the current racist government of Democrats and Republicans Robert Scott is correct in opposing Congress’s intervention. As Pam Africa, chair of the International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, has pointed out, “the House action is designed to weigh in on and promote an atmosphere in the U.S. judiciary that is prejudicial to Mumia's receiving any form of justice today.”
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing arguments in January. This is Mumia’s final appeal. It will decide if Mumia is set free, given a new trial, held in prison for life, or executed.
The resolution falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)
31 Democrats in Congress voted nay while 151 voted for the resolution. All Republicans voted for the resolution as did fake Vermont “socialist” Bernard Sanders (really just a rightwing social democrat).
Those voting against were Abercrombie, Clay, Cleaver, Conyers, Cooper, Davis (IL), Grijalva, Hinchey, Honda, Jackson (IL), Johnson, E. B., Kilpatrick (MI), Lee, McKinney, Meeks (NY), Nadler, Oberstar, Owens, Pastor, Payne, Rangel, Rush, Scott (VA), Serrano, Stark, Towns, Udall (NM), Velázquez, Waters, Weiner, and Woolsey.
Joining in the racist lynch mob voting for the blood of an innocent black man was Democrat House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She has also announced that she and the other Democrats will continue funding the war in Iraq. In voting against Mumia Abu-Jamal Nancy Pelosi has voted for the death of an actual anti-war and anti-racist leader of the people, while her career has been firmly planted atop the corpses of over 650,000 dead Iraqis by her continuation of the slaughter.
Also voting for the lying resolution backing the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal was Dennis Kucinich.
In the last presidential election Dennis Kucinich portrayed himself as an anti-war candidate in the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich campaign stated that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness. As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to failure.”
So Kucinich is a frugal spender for imperialist murder.
This is the same position taken by two U.S. generals waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq General Stanley McCrystal complained, "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!"
Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided munitions, "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!"
The contradiction here was purely limited to the difference between the pure profiteering of the military industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results for imperialist victory on the battlefield.
Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action claiming, "We [he and the congress] did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy."
Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress, with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one exception, voted for Bush's war.
Since a different vote was later taken authorizing the US war in Iraq, the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to authorize the US war on Afghanistan.
In stark contrast to Kucinich’s vote for war Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote on March 2002, “When U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about an "endless war," some took it as mere political speech, or rhetoric designed to gain the top spot on the evening network news. I did not. "W" is an agent of his class, the wealthy oil merchants of the land, and his intentions are to press for an ever-wider war in all corners of the earth, to make the world safe for capital exploitation and unbridled commerce. This will eventually become a war that reaches into a slew of countries in the Middle East, on behalf of the rich and powerful elites who rule. Make no mistake: this is a war that has nothing to do with democracy. The U.S. enters the region, armed to the gills, not to defend democracies, but to defend theocracies; to defend kings, princes and sultanates; to defend U.S. access to vast oil resources in the region.”
The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed tens of thousands of civilians and brought the Afghan nation to back to the chaos of fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA government.
On September 12, 2001 this author wrote: “Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.
“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.
“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests.”
Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to deny it, voted for the war in Afghanistan and played his part in making it happen.
On the war in Iraq Kucinich now states, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds." (Rep. Kucinich, The Huffington Report) This is a good position, but it is also being put forward by a politician that voted for the war in Afghanistan, wants a leaner meaner imperialist military, voted for the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and who has worked hard to bring the anti-war movement into the pro-war Democrat Party.
Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich had any intention of winning the presidency when he ran. His role was one of bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the establishment and the twin parties of war and racism back into the fold of the pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he states, "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy" (Counter Punch, April 2003).
Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that despite its name, is not democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of the people towards war and turn us into the water boys for “responsible” politicians.
It is such "responsible" politicians, including Kucinich, that voted in their vast majority to back the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of a racist legal lynching, while doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.
The Democrat Party was also involved in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal from the beginning. Democrat Ed Rendell was the Philadelphia district attorney that successfully worked to frame Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1982. Later, with a lynch mob attitude created by the lies of the corporate press, he successfully ran for mayor of Philadelphia on a platform that included promoting the murder of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was Mayor from 1992-1999. Bill Clinton then helped get him the position of chair of the National Democratic Committee. Since 2003 he has been the Governor of Pennsylvania. In addition Ed Rendell is a member of the Fraternal Order of Police that is calling for Mumia’s blood while his wife is an appellate judge on the Third Circuit US Court of Appeals that is going to hear Mumia's appeal. Besides framing Mumia, Rendell also presided over the police bombing of the MOVE home in Philadelphia in 1984, resulting in 11 deaths and 65 homes destroyed.
California representative Sam Farr [D] was among the eight that voted “Present”, choosing not to vote for or against the resolution. This despite Sam Farr sending this author a letter promising to back the Congressional Black Caucus’s position, that having been a position in support of framed political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sam Farr also sent a copy of a letter that he sent to the Congressional Black Caucus with the same promise. These promises, as it turns out, were nothing but lies.
This vote by the racist US Congress was also an affront to the people of St. Denis that have chosen to support and honor Mumia. Would Sam Farr stand aside in a similar way if a resolution came before him that called for action against his constituents in the City of Santa Cruz, where the city has also passed resolutions in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal?
Mumia is innocent, and much of the world knows it.
Here is the response the City of St. Denis had to earlier attempts to coerce them into ending their support for Mumia Abu-Jamal:
“The city hall of Saint Denis denounces the manipulations of certain ultra-conservative pressure groups, and reasserts its commitment in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal
“The city hall of Saint Denis re-affirms yet again its support to the women and men who are demanding Mumia Abu-Jamal be treated with fairness and justice. The picket this 30th day of November 2006 has been organized to protest against the pressure brought to bear on the city of Saint Denis by members of the American extreme right in order to bring about the cancellation of our decision to name one of our streets after an African American militant who has been unfairly incarcerated and sentenced to the death penalty.
“This ultra conservative pressure group, based in Philadelphia, has not hesitated to make use of the grossest manipulations. Thus, the widely disseminated information according to which the city of Philadelphia is suing the cities of Saint Denis and Paris, because of their commitment in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal - is nothing but a lie. The Mayor of Philadelphia, as well as the president of its city council, informed the city of Saint Denis that they never intended to file any kind of suit, and have absolutely nothing to do with this campaign.
“This manipulation was unmasked, and it should be know that the Philadelphia politician who initiated it, though a member of George Bush's party, was defeated during the recent American elections.
“Whatever the case may be, the city hall of Saint Denis is proud to have named a street of this city in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has become one of the symbols, of the struggle for justice and the abolition of the death penalty in the US and throughout the world.
“It is not the first time that an international mobilization has taken place in favor of American citizens who are unfairly sentenced in their own country. Such was the case for Nicola Sacco, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, between 1920 and 1927, for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who died on the electric chair in 1953, and subsequently in 1972 for Angela Davis initially sentenced [sic, she was actually never sentenced] for murder, before being acquitted of all charges.
“The city hall of Saint Denis will steadfastly pursue the struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal, so that this man incarcerated for a quarter of a century for a crime he has always claimed he did not commit - be reinstated in his human rights.
“Saint Denis 30th of November 2006”
The people of the world should not forget this hypocritical act of the US Congress, a governing body of a nation that falsely claims to uphold the values of human rights on a world scale. Likewise this once again exposes the need for the American people to build a socialist alternative to racist and repressive Democrat and Republican Parties.
As Mumia Abu-Jamal says, “Conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires. But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit...”
Mumia stands up for unions, against war, against racism, equality for gays and lesbians, for the poor, and against the many injustices of the so-called criminal justice system. Mumia speaks up on many of the issues ignored, lied about, or glossed over by the corporate media and the corporate politicians. We need Mumia, yes we need him alive, but we also need him free. Yet all of the evidence shows that Mumia won't get justice in America unless we turn up the heat.
********************
For a complete listing of individual votes see: clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll527.xml
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States on death row. For more information on Mumia's case and how to get involved, check out the following web sites:
Yet Another Witness Comes Forward and Refutes The Frame-Up Of Mumia
Abu-Jamal! By Steven Argue
www.freemumia.com/policecoercion.html
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.laboractionmumia.org/
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.mumia.org/freedom.now/
Free Mumia Coalition, NYC
www.freemumia.com/
San Francisco Free Mumia Site
www.freemumia.org
Chicago Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.chicagofreemumia.org/
This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
lists.riseup.net/www/info/...ation_news
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