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Supreme Court hears Voting Rights Act challenge: The legal fight to protect white power
March 15, 2013
Scalia has made it clear why this case is before the Court – it’s about race and white “race entitlement.” The Voting Rights Act was passed because no group is going to “apportion themselves out of power.” If the Court rules in favor of Shelby County in the face of its racist record, it will be doing nothing more than validating white power and racism.
Chowchilla Freedom Rally to draw hundreds of Bay Area residents to Central Valley to protest women’s prison
January 24, 2013
Hundreds of Bay Area residents will be getting on buses and into cars Saturday morning, Jan. 26, making the long trek to Chowchilla where they will join hundreds of other Californians at a Freedom Rally in protest of horrendous living conditions in the notorious prison, Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). Let’s make enough noise so that the decision makers in Sacramento have no choice but to hear our demands! Solidarity actions are encouraged! Read more for when, where and how to get there …
Tears of sorrow and rage: Oakland PD, the Black Panthers and Alan Blueford
November 30, 2012
For decades, the Oakland Police Department has been the focus of fear. For a brief time, the Black Panther Party put a crimp into their strut. But the Black Panther Party is no more, and the repression has come surging back. The family of Alan Blueford continue to organize resistance to this campaign of repression. You can join that campaign at justice4alanblueford.org.
Prisoners at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison on hunger strike
May 27, 2012
On May 22, brave prisoners at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison began a hunger strike. A recently released prisoner discusses torture at Red Onion: “having your fingers broken, being bitten by dogs, being strapped to beds for days, being forced to defecate on yourself – I mean all of this has led to these men demanding to be treated as human beings.”
Youth of color: Watched and shot
May 25, 2012
Trayvon Martin and Mumia Abu-Jamal. One is dead. One languished on death row for 30 years. They are separated in age by a generation, separated by different locations and different life-histories, but their stories of being under surveillance, watched and shot, intersect strikingly with each other and with many other people.
Memories of Maroon
May 17, 2012
His name is almost legendary: Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, an affiliate of the Black Panther Party, activist and Black revolutionary.
‘What do they want?’
December 30, 2011
With few exceptions, major corporate outlets, networks, national newspapers and the like have treated the protests such as Occupy Wall Street as something akin to a UFO: odd, alien and inscrutable.
Carl Ray’s HBCU tours motivate students to succeed
December 28, 2011
Arriving at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport from cities throughout America, aspiring college students were excited. The tour would visit Spelman College, Morehouse College and Clark-Atlanta University in Atlanta, also Alabama State University and Tuskegee University in Alabama.
From state pens to Penn State
December 26, 2011
The shocking child sex scandal rocking Penn State University in State College, Pa., is an explosion of almost nuclear proportions. The scandal has shown how great wealth, fame and the business of college sports corrupted everything and everyone to keep the gravy train rolling.
Call for prisoners in solitary nationwide to strike in solidarity with Pelican Bay
September 26, 2011
I am serving 21 years in federal prison – in solitary confinement – because I protested the Iraq War. I am with the men of Pelican Bay and am calling for a federal strike to support the men in PBSP as well as all those held in such housing in all U.S. prisons.
Question marks, the elephant in the room and the refusal of nuclear power defenders to consider what has happened to people and the environment since Fukushima and Chernobyl
June 25, 2011
Given the detection of “hot particles” in Japan and as far away as Seattle, there is reason for concern. When ingested or inhaled, “hot particles” give intense radiation to local tissue areas. We acknowledge that many factors can cause infant deaths, but the critics who ignore Japanese fallout as possible contributing factors are acting irresponsibly.
Living on this earth 95 years!
June 6, 2011
I was born on June 11, 1916, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. My parents were Mr. Thomas Alfred Nisby (born August 1886) and Ms. Lillian Lumpkin Nisby (born June 1892). To this union, there came a family of six girls and two boys, 10 all together when we would sit at the table.
3rd Circuit appeal ruling favoring Abu-Jamal smacks down US Supreme Court
April 26, 2011
The federal 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, in a stunning smack at the U.S. Supreme Court, has issued a ruling upholding its earlier decision backing a new sentencing hearing in the controversial case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
‘Bombing his own people?’
March 17, 2011
As pro- and anti-government forces battle for supremacy in the cities and deserts of Libya in North Africa, the tenor and tone of U.S./Western reporting puts the lie to the often heard claim of journalistic objectivity.
From Montgomery to Los Angeles and beyond, formerly incarcerated people are building a movement
March 3, 2011
Would you feel like a full citizen if most of your civil and human rights were denied you? If the privileges afforded to community members were withheld from you, would you feel like a welcome member of the community?
Round 2: 3rd Circuit Court panel re-hears issue of Abu-Jamal’s death penalty on orders of Supreme Court
November 24, 2010
The three-decades-long murder case of Philadelphia journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was back in court Nov. 9 with a three-judge federal appeals court panel. The three judges seemed, in their initial remarks and in their questions, to be leaning towards the defense view.
Mumia must live and be free! End the racist death penalty!
November 18, 2010
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets outside the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals here and around the world Nov. 9, demanding that Mumia Abu-Jamal must live and be free and that the U.S. must abolish the death penalty and end racist killings and brutality by police.
Paul Robeson, a great human being
October 8, 2009
Paul Robeson was an extraordinary and versatile individual, world famous during his lifetime, who has been deliberately erased from the dominant myth of U.S. history for speaking the truth about conditions both domestic and abroad – his opposition to racism, fascism and colonialism and his support for civil and human rights, democracy, national liberation, socialism and the day-to-day resistance of working people of all lands to oppression, knowing that his fame would allow these messages to be more widely heard.
Tasering: The new terror in our schools
October 2, 2009
It seems that there’s a new, easy-way-out solution for security people having to deal with troubled kids who act out or cause disruptions in school: Taser them! That’s right. Zap them with electricity. Elementary and high schools across this great land of ours are hiring security guards equipped with the nasty little weapons that the manufacturers call “non-lethal.” In fact, over 4,000 law enforcement agencies now arm their security people with Tasers.
‘Jailhouse Lawyers’ by Mumia Abu-Jamal
July 18, 2009
“Jailhouse Lawyers, we are learning, are often people of extraordinary firmness who fight for a law that rarely fights for them.” “Unity is feared … isolation is favored.” – from “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.” by politically condemned death row prisoner, journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal
“This landmark legislation (Prison Litigation Reform Act) will help bring relief to a civil justice system overburdened by frivolous prisoner lawsuits. Jailhouse lawyers with nothing else to do are tying our courts in knots with an endless flood of frivolous litigation.” – Sen. Orrin Hatch, former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee