Tag: former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark

At the modern intersection of Islamophobia and the Black Lives Matter movement resides Jamil Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), the now forgotten civil rights activist and revolutionary leader who, 16 years ago this year, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Fulton County, Ga., Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Leon Kinchen and the wounding of his partner, then-Sheriff’s Deputy Aldranon English, during a March 2000 gunfight.

For over three decades, thousands of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe have mobilized to save Mumia Abu-Jamal from execution, to overturn his conviction, to demand his freedom. Without these international mobilizations, crucially including the organized labor movement, we would not have saved Mumia from two warrants of execution and compelled the state to concede defeat in trying to execute him.

Venezuela Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez recently tweeted that the “U.S. State Department deployed its ambassadors in the region to attack Venezuela. We come with renewed vigor to defeat them at the OAS.” So said, so done. Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Guyana Perry Holloway spewed the U.S. false narrative regarding Venezuela in our local newspapers. U.S. ambassadors in a number of other Caribbean countries did the same. It was a coordinated attempt to mislead the people of Guyana and the region about what is really happening in Venezuela.

Last week the ‪U.S. helped its ‪‎Saudi pals bomb another hospital and school in Yemen. Don’t imagine that its intentions are any more humanitarian in‪ Burundi just because they’re not selling fighter bomber jets and guided bombs to their pal Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president for life. Kagame is intent on bringing down President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government in Burundi, as Saudi sheikhs are intent on bringing down the Houthi government in Yemen.

I answered some heartbreaking calls from Dr. Léopold Munyakazi phoning from an Alabama jail this week. Dr. Munyakazi is a gentle Rwandan born scholar, with a PhD in linguistics and further advanced degrees in French and African linguistics. He has lost his immigration case in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and will all but certainly be deported to Rwanda to face prison or worse.

Celebrate Mumia’s 56th birthday on Saturday, April 24, 4-6 p.m., on KPFA 94.1 FM and KPFA.org. Mumia is the award-winning journalist who has spent the last 28 years on death row. And come to Washington, D.C., on April 26 to call for a Justice Department investigation of his case.