bell hooks: feminist icon: presente! © 12/21/21 by Mumia Abu-Jamal She was born Gloria Watkins 69 years ago in Hopkinsville, Kentucky on September 25th, 1952. But the world knew her by pen name, bell hooks, and readers recognize that name by its distinctive use of lowercase letters. Why lower case? Two principal reasons: one, to remind readers it wasn’t about her but about her work, and two, it was a tribute to [...]
The Tears of Empire © 8/2021 by Mumia Abu-Jamal With the dramatic fall of Kabul, through the forces of the Taliban, the alligator tears of the political class are falling. Decrying the costs of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. What has been thoroughly forgotten, however, is the unprecedented mass protests of February, 2003, before the [Iraq] war began. When the earth shook with antiwar, fervor and countries across the globe. Then-president George W. [...]
“Genocide Schools” by Mumia Abu-Jamal © 07/02/21 While most of us think of schools as a social good, in the history of some people, that has not been the case. Among Canada’s indigenous people, those we have come to call “Indians,” schools have become a place of pain, sorrow, and loss. For the better part of a century these schools, called residential schools, were where indigenous children came to be whipped, punished, [...]
The Status of Mumia By Mumia Abu-Jamal I don't normally do this, that is, I don't write about myself. I find it much more interesting to tell other people's stories, the spinning balloon we live in, stories generated by the fragile human condition and the liberation struggles of humanity. But I divert from the topic, uncomfortably. This is a commentary on the commentator. Several weeks ago I underwent a medical procedure known [...]
THE AMERICAN WAY OF FASCISM [col. Writ. 1/30/21 (c) ’21 Mumia Abu-Jamal] Look at the crowds savaging the walls and halls of the U.S. Capitol. Who are they? Where did this mob come from? Well over a decade ago, an American journalist saw them and wrote about them. Chris Hedges, who once wrote for the New York Times as foreign correspondent covering wars, famine and fallen states, published a rather remarkable [...]
MURDER INCORPORATED: Empire/Genocide/Manifest Destiny Book Three: Perfecting Tyranny by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vittoria, Foreword by Angela Davis Prison Radio, San Francisco CA, 2020, 420 pp., $20, ISBN 978-7346489-1-1 (softcover) also available as hardcover and e-book (softcover $25 including shipping from Prison Radio, PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141, https://prisonradio.org Reviewed by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action LA-People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART) The culminating third volume in the history of US empire and [...]
[column written 12/09/2020 © 2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal] As joblessness and deep hunger creeps across America, politicians have pulled out the fear card: socialism, to insure that voters stay in their place. Astonishingly, for almost a century, this ploy has worked, and almost worked when President Herbert C. Hoover ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, which Hoover decried as socialism, and a threat to the American way. Roosevelt [...]
Disaster at the Heart of Empire © 2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal, 10/14/20 As Americans slink toward the elections, a sense of disquiet haunts the land. It's a feeling of heightened caution, the shadow of fear radiating from a proto-fascist government, one riddled with disease, the fruit not just of the coronavirus, but of unease, unwellness, a mind burdened by weight. This must be what fascism feels like: Deep, gnawing [...]
A LITTLE MATTER OF HISTORY {col. writ. 7/26/20 ©’20 Mumia Abu-Jamal When I was a young man (a boy really), I found barber shops to be fascinating places, for there, men gathered in an air of relaxed familiarity, and discussed things they didn’t do elsewhere. I heard tales of ancient African empires, of unknown roads of Black history, and often the name of the brilliant self-taught historian, J.A. Rogers. I’d [...]
CHILDREN OF THE CORN {col.writ.7/13/20} © 2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal When we think of politicians, we too often see them as great, even mighty figures, seemingly larger than life. That’s because of how the media projects them - and far too often, protects them. But in times like these, times of plague, crises, massive failures of institutions, and yes, of death, we begin to see them differently. For some, the spell [...]
After One Hundred Thousand © 2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal https://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia/after-one-hundred-thousand-220-mumia-abu-jamal One asks, when the counter strikes 100,000, [what happens]? Nothing. One hundred thousand American dead. That means, for all intents and purposes, nothing much. But does the counter stop counting? Or does it continue rolling on, like the mighty Mississippi River? Is one hundred thousand an end, or just another number? And as summer begins to emerge, and people rush [...]
LOCKED UP AND LOCKED DOWN! (col. writ. 4/10/20) ©2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal For nearly a month now, all prisoners in PA State prisons, over 40 thousand men and women, have been locked down. What does locked down mean? When I was on Death Row, all of us were locked down, as the saying went “23 & 1”: or for twenty-three hours a day, with one hour for out-of-cell exercise - [...]
