Search results for ""Author Mumia Abu-Jamal""

"A must-read for anyone interested in social justice and inequalities, social movements, the criminal justice system, and African American history. An excellent companion to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th."—Library Journal, Starred review "I was fortunate to grow up in a community in which it was apparent that our lives mattered. This memory is the antidote to the despair that seizes one of my generation when we hear the words 'Black Lives Matter.' We want to shout: Of course they do! To you, especially. In this brilliant, painful, factual and useful book, we see to whom our lives have not mattered: the profit driven Euro-Americans who enslaved and worked our ancestors to death within a few years, then murdered them and bought replacements. Many of these ancestors are buried beneath Wall Street. Mumia Abu-Jamal's painstaking courage, truth-telling, and disinterest in avoiding the reality of American racial life is, as always, honorable."—Alice Walker "Prophet, critic, historian, witness . . . Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the most insightful and consequential intellectuals of our era. These razor sharp reflections on racialized state violence in America are the fire and the memory our movements need right now."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Mumia Abu Jamal's clarion call for justice and defiance of state oppression has never dimmed, despite his decades of being shackled and caged. He is one of our nation's most valiant revolutionaries and courageous intellectuals."—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt "This collection of short meditations, written from a prison cell, captures the past two decades of police violence that gave rise to Black Lives Matter while digging deeply into the history of the United States. This is the book we need right now to find our bearings in the chaos." —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States In December 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot and beaten into unconsciousness by Philadelphia police. He awoke to find himself shackled to a hospital bed, accused of killing a cop. He was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has denounced as failing to meet the minimum standards of judicial fairness. In Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia gives voice to the many people of color who have fallen to police bullets or racist abuse, and offers the post-Ferguson generation advice on how to address police abuse in the United States. This collection of his radio commentaries on the topic features an in-depth essay written especially for this book to examine the history of policing in America, with its origins in the white slave patrols of the antebellum South and an explicit mission to terrorize the country's black population. Applying a personal, historical, and political lens, Mumia provides a righteously angry and calmly principled radical black perspective on how racist violence is tearing our country apart and what must be done to turn things around. Mumia Abu-Jamal is author of many books, including Death Blossoms, Live from Death Row, All Things Censored, Writing on the Wall, and Jailhouse Lawyers. "[Mumia's] writings are a wake-up call. He is a voice from our prophetic tradition, speaking to us here, now, lovingly, urgently."—Cornel West "He allows us to reflect upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect them."—Angela Y. Davis "These writings date from the late 1990s and often show prescience on the part of the author, who was writing well before the Black Lives Matter movement that 'when the system kills Blacks, there is no outrage, for it has been normalized by centuries of white enslavement, terrorism, and injustice. Such violence is simply the accepted way of how things are.' Also included is a series of articles on the killing of Trayvon Martin, accurately anticipating the acquittal of the white man who shot him, and another series on Ferguson and its aftermath—how 'Ferguson may prove a wake-up call that Black lives matter. A call for youth to build social, radical, revolutionary movements for change.' The last piece is the longest, a pamphlet on how to build such a movement with a historical perspective on why this is necessary."—Kirkus Reviews "While the author does reflect on the widely reported cases of police violence against African Americans, as well as on the role of the media in determining what gets attention, the strength of the book rests in the essays that draw attention to lesser-known victims of police violence, particularly women of color whose stories never reached the mainstream media. Over the course of nearly four decades in prison, Abu-Jamal . . . has become an astute student of the justice system as well as a particularly cogent opponent of the death penalty.”—Publishers Weekly

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"Writing from the barren confines of his death row cell, Mumia Abu-Jamal provides a remarkable testament about the Black Panther Party. . . .an amazing book that illuminates the truth of what his membership in the Party was about, and reveals the extreme price extracted from him for having learned, and for now telling the truth."—Kathleen Cleaver, from the Introduction Mumia Abu Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner, is internationally known for his radio broadcasts and books emerging “Live from Death Row.” In his youth Mumia Abu-Jamal helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, wrote for the national newspaper, and began his life-long work of exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, and unending police brutality. In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines his memories of day-to-day life in the Party with analysis of the history of Black liberation struggles. The result is a vivid and compelling picture of the Black Panther Party and its legacy. Applying his poetic voice and unsparing critical gaze, Mumia examines one of the most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups in the US. As the calls that Black Lives Matter continue to grow louder, Mumia connects the historic dots in this revised/updated edition, observing that the Panthers had legal observers to monitor the police and demanded the “immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people.” By focusing on the men and women who were the Party, as much as on the leadership; by locating the Black Panthers in a struggle centuries old—and in the personal memories of a young man—Mumia Abu-Jamal helps us to understand freedom.

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Profound meditations on life, death, freedom, family, and faith, written by radical Black journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, while he was awaiting his execution."Uncompromising, disturbing . . . Abu-Jamal's voice has the clarity and candor of a man whose impending death emboldens him to say what is on his mind without fear of consequence."—The Boston Globe"A brilliant, lucid meditation on the moral obligation of political commitment by a deeply ethical—and deeply wronged—human being. Mumia should be freed, now."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. University Professor & Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University"A brilliant, powerful book by a prophetic writer . . . his language glows with an affirming flame."—Jonathan Kozol, author of Death at an Early Age and Rachel and Her ChildrenJournalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been imprisoned since 1982 for the killing of a police officer, a crime he steadfastly maintained he did not commit. In 1996, after serving more than a decade on death row, and with the likelihood of execution looming, he began receiving regular visits from members of the Bruderhof spiritual community, a group of refugees from Hitler's Germany. Inspired by these encounters, Mumia began to write a series of personal essays reflecting on his search for spiritual meaning within a society plagued by materialism, hypocrisy, and violence. "Many people say it is insane to resist the system," writes Mumia, "but actually it is insane not to."This expanded edition of Death Blossoms brings a classic, influential work back into print with a new introduction by Mumia, and includes the entire text of a groundbreaking report by Amnesty International detailing the legal improprieties and chronic injustices that marred his trial.Praise for Death Blossoms, Expanded Edition:"For years in my classrooms I have watched Death Blossoms do its luminous work. It has awakened the conscience of so many of my student readers. Once awakened, they begin to shoulder the disciplines of its revolutionary knowing, moral passion, historical precision and clarity of reason. No wonder repressive powers seek death for this prisoner of conscience. Alas for them, Mumia still lives. From streets to classrooms and back, Death Blossoms keeps opening up consciences, hearts, and minds for our revolutionary work."—Mark Lewis Taylor, Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, and author of The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World"Targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO for his revolutionary politics, imprisoned, and sentenced to death, Mumia found freedom in resistance. His reflections here—on race, spirituality, on struggle, and life—illuminate this path to freedom for us all."—Joshua Bloom, co-author with Waldo E. Martin Jr. of Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party"In this revised edition of his groundbreaking work, Death Blossoms, convicted death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal tackles hard and existential questions, searching for God and a greater meaning in a caged life that may be cut short if the state has its way and takes his life. As readers follow Mumia's journey through his poems, short essays, and longer musings, they will learn not only about this singular individual who has retained his humanity despite the ever present threat of execution, but also about themselves and our society: what we are willing to tolerate and who we are willing to cast aside. If there is any justice, Mumia will prevail in his battle for his life and for his freedom."—Lara Bazelon, author of Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction"Mumia Abu-Jamal has challenged us to see the prison at the center of a long history of US oppression, and he has inspired us to keep faith with ordinary struggles against injustice under the most terrible odds and circumstances. Written more than two decades ago, Death Blossoms helps us to see beyond prison walls; it is as timely and as necessary as the day it was published."—Nikhil Pal Singh, founding faculty director of the NYU Prison Education Program, author of Race and America's Long War"For over three decades, the words of Mumia Abu-Jamal have been tools many young activists have used to connect the dots of empire, racism, and resistance. The welcome reissue of Death Blossoms is a chance to reconnect with Abu-Jamal's prophetic voice, one that needs to be heard now more than ever."—Hilary Moore and James Tracy, co-authors of No Fascist USA!, The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today's Movements

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In the speeches and articles collected in this book, the black activist, organizer, and freedom fighter Stokely Carmichael traces the dramatic changes in his own consciousness and that of black Americans that took place during the evolving movements of Civil Rights, Black Power, and Pan-Africanism. Unique in his belief that the destiny of African Americans could not be separated from that of oppressed people the world over, Carmichael's Black Power principles insisted that blacks resist white brainwashing and redefine themselves. He was concerned not only with racism and exploitation, but with cultural integrity and the colonization of Africans in America. In these essays on racism, Black Power, the pitfalls of conventional liberalism, and solidarity with the oppressed masses and freedom fighters of all races and creeds, Carmichael addresses questions that still confront the black world and points to a need for an ideology of black and African liberation, unification, and transformation.

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