Mumia SPEAKS at the First World Congress Against the Death Penalty
From Our Sista in Struggle, Leslie Jones
ona move!
25 Jul 2001 --with everything going on.... MOBILIZATION for Mumia is going on WORLDWIDE! we are at a CRITICAL STAGE in mumia's case.... join us in philadelphia on August 17th & 18th........ MUMIA IS ALL OF US! WE NEED YOU!
here is a report-back from the First World Congress Against the Death Penalty.........
ANGELA DAVIS & ICFFMAJ REPRESENTS FOR MUMIA IN STRASBOURG FRANCE! Last month the International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal sent a delegation to the First World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held in Strasbourg, FRANCE, June 21-23, 2001.
Julia Wright of ICFFMAJ - Paris/COSIMAPP arranged for the delegation to attend the Congress on behalf of Mumia. Julia Wright was joined by activist and scholar Angela Davis, former Amnesty International Director for US death penalty programs Sam Jordan, and ICFFMAJ Youth Coordinator Leslie Jones. Julia Wright also arranged to have Mumia's taped message to the Congress played on June 22nd--the one year anniversary of the legal lynching of Shaka Sankofa by the state of Texas.
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal was interjected by the ICFFMAJ delegation into the political strategies session on June 21st, and the June 22nd session which specifically focused on the use of the death penalty in the "democratic country" of the United States. Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, also mentioned Mumia's case to the Congress when he gave testimony as a relative of those sentenced to death; and, during his talk on the death penalty and discrimination. Mumia's case was also discussed in a special session for all of the American delegates hosted by Walter Schwimmer, Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
A meeting specifically on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal followed a 5000+ person demonstration which took place in the streets of Strasbourg on June 23rd. The demonstration was led, in part, by Angela Davis, along with several prominent members of the European community. Following the demonstration, the ICFFMAJ delegation was joined by L'Humanite journalist Michel Muller; a member of the French assembly and mayor of Bobigny, France, Bernard Birsinger, who visited Mumia on death row last year--after adopting Mumia as an honorary citizen of Bobigny--and joined a French delegation in New York City last December 9th and 10th for both Mumia and Leonard Peltier; and, a representative for MRAP. We collectively provided the Congress with the facts of the case; the conditions on death row at SCI-Greene; and, the latest legal developments in Mumia's case, including Judge Yohn's arbitrary rejection of four Amicus Briefs (one of which was submitted on behalf of 22 members of the British Parliament), the confession of Arnold Beverly, and the state of Pennsylvania's challenge to Mumia's choice of British Barrister Nick Brown for his new legal team.
The ICFFMAJ delegation was also able to talk one-on-one with dozens of people at the Congress. We were interviewed by several reporters from CNN, International and the Strasbourg Director for the Agence France-Presse. We updated long-time supporters like former First Lady of France Danielle Mitterrand; the President of the Italian Senate Mr. Casini; Mario Marazziti, Spokesman and Director of International Relations for the Sant'Egidio community in Italy; and, Lode Vanoost, Vice Chairman for the Belgium Chamber of Representatives. We were able to introduce Mumia's case to the US Counsul General for Strasbourg, Gayleatha Brown; Attorney William Kerfoot of the Legal Resources Center in Cape Town; the Director of AMICUS, a London-based nonprofit organization whose specific purpose is to "assist lawyers for justice on death row" in the United States; and, several others from all over the world who either stopped by our table, or stopped us at lunch and in between the formal sessions held in the Parliamentary Assembly Chamber of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. The First World Congress Against the Death Penalty was an historic event! The strategy of the ICFFMAJ delegation was to expand the discussion and debate to include the prison industrial complex and the war against poor people and people of color, in addition to the death penalty. We exposed the fact that there are two very different death penalty movements in the United States: one that seeks to abolish capital punishment in its entirety, as it explains the underlying issues of the criminal INjustice system which surround the prison industrial complex; and, another which seeks merely to halt executions momentarily while the death machine is "studied" for disparities. One movement is underfunded and understaffed, while the other is the preference of the mainstream press and liberal funding sources because it is a moderate, less confrontational, and "safer" position. The latter is also a movement which "excepts" Mumia's case precisely because it deals with what goes on everyday in the streets of America and its halls of "justice:" racism, the criminalization of young people of color, police brutality, incarceration as opposed to education, and the government targeting of those who dare say anything about it. Mumia's work, and his case, inspires and encourages grassroots organizing, as opposed to the endoresments and resolutions required by the moratorium movement. Mumia's case INSPIRES and CALLS for a UNIFIED DEMAND for ABOLITION, not moratorium. We thank the Congress, and its participants, for the opportunity to air ALL sides of the issue.
The delegation emphasized to an international community that the focus cannot simply start and stop with death row, but must include a more wholistic and community-based agenda to tackle all the underlying issues which allows the death machine to exist in the first place. We also dispelled the myth that the American media alone could be relied upon to turn the public tide against capital punishment. The death penalty represents a HUMAN RIGHTS issue, and we called on the international community at the Congress to take an affirmative stand to ABOLISH capital punishment in the United States and in other countries where it is practiced.
The finale of the Congress was the presentation of the "Passport for Freedom" to Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Passport was presented by a member of the European Parliament, and was signed by over a dozen prominent members of the European legal community and government officials. The Passport represents their support for Mumia's freedom, and his honorary status as a citizen of the world! Mumia joins the likes of Nelson Mandela as one of the few recipients of this very distinguished, international pledge of support. This Passport further signifies the acknowledgement that Mumia's case represents a human rights issue, and the WORLD is watching! Angela Davis accepted the replicated US passport on Mumia's behalf. Mumia's case and his message were shared with the world community. Thanks to Julia Wright and COSIMAPP, we were able to put either a French or English transcription in every hand. Mumia's speech is included below.
For more information on the delegation contact... Leslie Jones at 607-327-0735 or youth4mumia@hotmail.com (USA)
Julia Wright at 011 331 4579 8844 or gresist@wanadoo.f r (Europe)
For more information about the Congress, check out its website: http://www.ecart-type.com .
Start preparing NOW for December 8, 2001!
Mumia has been on death row for nearly twenty years! This year marks the 20th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in FRANCE, and will mark the year that THE PEOPLE BRING OUR BROTHER HOME! People get ready! We need EVERYONE'S support to DEMAND JUSTICE for Mumia Abu-Jamal!
For more information contact ICFFMAJ Coordinator Pam Africa at 215-476-8812.
Message from Mumia Abu-Jamal to the First World Congress Against the Death Penalty Strasbourg, FRANCE June 22, 2001
Bonjour mes amis du mouvement d'abolition de peine de mort en Republique francaise. I thank ya'll and particularly our hard working sister, Julia Wright, who has been a light and strong arm of freedom movements for several generations. Merci ma soeur! Friends, supporters, comrades: your vigourous and various struggles against the death penalty are a light unto the world, and a welcome voice for many of us who dwell in what has become the prisonhouse of nations.
America's voracious appetite for death is growing.
The recent selection of George W. Bush to the American presidency bodes ill for men, women, and juveniles on death rows all across the nation--state and federal. Bush, the younger, was elevated to the office by the Supreme Court in an unprecedented act, and following a hotly-disputed election. His term as Governor of Texas is among the bloodiest in history. While Governor of the Lone Star State, the death chambers were drenched in blood. Texas led the other American states in legal lynchings, and that gruesome fact became an important qualification for higher political office. Governor Bush became President Death.
To the United States (called a "hyperpower" by some French critics), international law is just a tool to be used against nations it doesn't like, and something to be ignored when it comes to the U.S. itself. Several international treaties forbid the execution of people who were 18 years or under at the time of their offense. The legalized lynching of Shaka Sankofa (born Gary Graham), who was 18 at the time of his arrest, proves that, to the American empire, international law is a dead letter. And to such a "hyperpower," international law can be violated and passed over with impunity. They are so powerful, so feared, that their very violation of the law is seen as legal.
Recently, the American press has reported a series of cases where juveniles, some as young as 12 or 13 years old, have been tried as adults. Those children have been sentenced to adult prisons, literally, for the rest of their lives. Others, who were 16, 17, or 18 years of age are waiting for death at the hands of the state, as we speak. How can the world's leader in prison population parade as the paragon of human rights? How can women be the fastest growing segment of the prison industry, and the nation that cages them be the arbiter of international law? To an Empire, its will is law alone. No other law exists.
Many nation-states have beginnings in struggles against foreign elites, against repressive feudal elites, and as a by-product of economic activity. America has her roots in slavery. When the Consitution was written, representatives from the Northern and Southern states formed what they called "the Great Compromise," a not-so-great agreement that rewarded the South with more and more representation and power in Congress, as the region acquired more and more African slaves.
Now, a civil war and centuries later, the shadow of those deeply anti-democratic beginnings falls over American domestic policy. For is it but coincidence that prisons are preserved for the poor (especially Black urbanites), or that Death Row is a predominantly African-American reservation?
During the Nixon administration years (circa 1969 to 1974), the nation embarked on a so-called "law and order" binge that continues to this day. It is the modern-day trigger to the prison industrial complex, and one of Nixon's top aides, Chief-of-Staff H. R. Holdman, revealed what was the thinking behind the jargon when he wrote in his diary about discussions with his boss:
"[President Nixon]emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."
Every major government, so-called anti-crime initiative, from the evisceration of ancient habeas corpus rights by the Clinton administration, to the stark militarization of American police as best shown in the brutal, vicious police bombing of the MOVE commune in Philadelphia on May 13, 1985, flows from that tortured, racist logic that Nixon whispered to his top aide. They have created a system that is racist to its core, "while not appearing to." When people are charged with capital crimes, they face a jury that has been purged of virtually all black representation, by design. In what is now known as "The McMahon Tapes," a chief homicide prosecutor in Philadelphia's District Attorney's office, while training junior prosecutors in how to select a jury, made the following remarks captured on video:
"The case law says that the object of getting a jury is to get . . . I wrote it down. I looked at the cases. I had to look this up because I didn't know this was the purpose of a jury. 'Voir dire is to get a competent, fair, and impartial jury.' Well, that's ridiculous. You're not trying to get that."
The prosecutor (named McMahon) left no room in the minds of those whom he was training what the objectives of jury selection really were:
"[. . . ] The only way you're going to do your best is to get jurors that are as unfair and more likely to convict than anybody else in that room."
That's how the District Attorney's office in Philadelphia picks juries, according to their own words. Is there any question that such a system is one that echoes Nixon's old adage to achieve racist ends, "while not appearing to." Indeed the District Attorney, on the same tape, refers to Black Philadelphians and their neighborhoods as "garbage," and taught his juniors how to remove Blacks from the jury for racist reasons, "while not appearing to." Is there any wonder that Philadelphia has one of the largest, Blackest death rows in America, exceeding some Southern states?
There can therefore not be a World Congress that seeks to abolish the death penalty without an acute examination of the Philadelphia experience--for here is the epicenter. There can therefore not be a World Congress to abolish the death penalty without an acknowledgement that the racist instrument of white supremacy devalues Black life, whether that of an accused or a potential juror, while elevating white life. There can be no real movement here unless there is the recognition that law, whether international or domestic, is an illusion that is designed to perpetuate a polite status quo that for decades has been based upon the premise "that the whole problem is really the Blacks," and that the system must recognize this "while not appearing to." It is this very status quo that is the lifeblood of the vampirish American death machine. And it must be shattered if abolition can ever become reality.
Thanks!
Ona Move! Long Live John Africa!
Mumia Abu-Jamal
From Death Row
SCI Greene
June 2001Distributed by International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
- FRANCE/COSIMAPP c/o Le Point du Jour 58 rue Gay Lussac 75005 Paris
Tel/Fax: 01 45 79 88 44 email: gresist@wanadoo.fr (French)
website: www.cosimapp-mumia.orgtake care & stay on the move.... see you in philadelphia!
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