The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief how truly interconnected our world is, how superficial colonial borders are, and thus how the struggle for freedom must link localized organizing to broader global insurgencies. Of course, this is not new. Though our epoch offers unique challenges, problems, and articulations of the dialectic between repression and resistance, history doesn’t repeat itself—but it rhymes. . . .
#FreeThemAll
January 2022 Update: New Legal Filing in Mumia’s Case
In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” With continued pressure from below, 2022 will be the year that forces the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the Philly Police Department to answer questions about why they framed imprisoned radio journalist and veteran Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have filed a PCRA petition focused entirely on the six boxes of case files that were found in a storage room of the DA’s office in late December 2018, after the case being heard before Judge Leon Tucker . . .
Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is Free, But We Need to Free Them All
Of course there is deeply felt happiness that Shoatz will be freed for whatever time remains in his life, but no one should forget the tortures he suffered, including 22 years in solitary confinement. No one should forget the other prisoners such as Mumia Abu Jamal, Ruchell Magee, Sundiata Acoli, and Dr. Mutulu Shakur. They are the best known, but there are hundreds of people imprisoned since the days of the liberation movement. That movement was crushed in part because its most committed fighters were locked away. . . .
Black August: Fight, Study, Fast, Train
Black August is an African (Black) institution that is commemorated annually to honor the contributions of our African freedom fighters who sacrificed in order to strike blows against the U.S. capitalist empire on behalf of the African masses. . . .
In The Spirit of Abolition, Let’s Shut’em Down!
A call to action. National “Shut’em Down” demonstrations are called for August 21st and September 9th. Originally published on the Jailhouse Lawyers Speak blog. . . .