Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Speech
Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!

EVENT:

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
Sponsored by the Partisan Defense Committee

Friday, December 15, 7 to 10 pm
Steelworkers Hall
25 Cecil Street
(1 block south of College at Ross Street, west of Queen's Park Station)
$5 advance, $8 at the door

Speakers:

Jonathan Piper, Partisan Defense Committee; Attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1990-1999
Dave Bleakney, Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Frank Dreaver, Founder, National/International Spokesperson, Leonard Peltier Canadian Coalition
Political Hip-Hop Association, University of Toronto, Mississauga
Ali Mallah, Canadian Arab Federation; VP - Equity, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Toronto District Council
Miriam McDonald, Trotskyist League
Macdonald Scott, No One Is Illegal; Member, Law Union of Toronto

I'm the Executive Director of the Political Hip-Hop Association at the University of Toronto and our office is located at the Mississauga campus so please feel free to come down if you have any sort of interest. What we try to achieve is to inform young people who are not necessarily interested in politics or anything remotely close to it about the world around them. Mainly, we try to expand the limited framework of discussion that they have grown accustomed to and accepted through the use of hip-hop music. With the proper mix and balance of responsible intellectualism and great music from all the rappers and producers involved in this venture, this task becomes that much easier. From there we establish networks in order to figure out other means to push our causes.

When it comes to Mumia Abu-Jamal's case, the concept of a limited framework of discussion is quite relevant. The people who question the problems that arise regarding his conviction and the challenges posed by groups such as the one that put all this together. It is the possibility that the U.S. government, its domestic policies and justice system, took 'em for a bunch of fools that is put into question ... that it's not possible, it can't be possible.

Just like it's not possible for the most basic and elementary facts about the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers and what it contained and revealed about U.S. intentions there: to win militarily because of the fact that they had no political support whatsoever anywhere in the country. Bombing the Southern part which they claimed they were protecting ... the most intense bombing of the war receiving zero media coverage.

Just like it's not possible that the U.S. supported the most brutal dictators the world has ever seen from America Latina to Suharto in East Timor through political, military, economic or whatever else support they could give 'em so they could achieve their goals of genocide -- from ripping the indigenous population of Guatemala to bits, raping Nicaragua and El Salvador every which way possible, killing hundreds of thousands of people through what they deemed as "toleration" of barbaric and brutal acts ... the term "active participation" totally lost in oblivion.

The fact that the COINTELPRO movement -- FBI plots and knocks to attempt in stiflling the civil rights movement ... from Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, the Black Panthers in general, and so on and so on. Ask some random guy on the street if he knows what J. Edgar Hoover was up to in the 1960's and see what he says.

So for all these people who question the flaws and clear signs of racism that riddles the case of brother Mumia ... what makes you think that the plausibility and possibility that you could be wrong ... and that you have been taken for a fool ... following a well known historical trend ... is not possible? Quite clearly, if you didn't know none of this, it is possible.

As it relates to the issue of the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, it is not a matter of simple moral objection to the death penalty. Honestly, both positions -- whether you're morally for it or not -- is fine, whatever. That's your own moral stance. But what's not fine is when the system of death penalty is inherently racist in that it is aimed at the lowest economic or social strata of society: blacks, Mexicans, Muslims who are subjected to the most racist, bigoted, idiotic forms of prejudice and generalizations today and so on and so on.

And in looking at the case of Mumia in this context and background of lies, brutality, and deception ... in principle, one should at least take the most basic step in saying that something is absolutely messed up and I'm gonna look more into it. In his case, there are too many factors that have been ignored in the past and we owe it to those who have suffered under the thumb of the United States to seriously look into them.

Thank you.