Daily Archives: 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

The powerless are always at the mercy of the powerful. In San Francisco, voters would not knowingly allow the poor to be pushed out of the city. Those who have the votes, but not the information, often buy the explanation that gentrification is an economic issue. It is an economic issue but not the reason that causes the community of the poor to be displaced.

Drama has been a valuable art form to the Black experience in Amerikkka since before slavery. It was one of the ways that we maintained our history, although huge segments of the population couldn’t read or aren’t reading. I have only been to a few theatrical plays, but I love cinema, with some of the best dramatized movies to me being “dead presidents,” “Brown Sugar” and “Juice.”

Where do we go now? Yes, keep up the struggle for budget justice, but let’s look at another frame based in our own gifts, our thrival, not just survival – a plan of action to move off of the grid of philanthropy pimps, globalization pimps, non-profit pimps, to reject the lie of budget cuts, to reclaim our land and resources stolen from us so long ago!